The Haunted Bachelor Party

Bachelor parties have gotten ridiculous. What used to be one booze-filled evening the night before the wedding has somehow become an excuse for a weekend-long, boys-only, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas level shit show.  The idea is that grooms want one last weekend of childish debauchery before putting on a wedding ring, entering the prison of monogamy and spending the rest of their lives locked up to the old ball and chain. There’s a prevailing sense a Bachelor Party is the man’s last weekend of freedom before his balls go on lockdown and he’s forced to bury his sense of fun, along with an entire repertoire of dick and fart jokes. Essentially, bachelor parties function as funerals for a single man’s life and livelihood, though they are rarely somber occasions. Grief is omnipresent, but because bachelor parties are gatherings of adult humans with penises (I hesitate to call them men), it’s almost never discussed; instead, any negative emotions (besides anger) are drowned out by alcohol and other chemicals. In Delaware, we rented a beach house for a bachelor party that was a few days of intensely competitive Beer Olympics. I went to New Orleans for a bachelor party and drank so many hurricanes I couldn’t stop shaking. I’ve been to Vegas for bachelor parties with enough cocaine to kill everyone who saw The Wolf of Wall Street. Thanks to the communal sense of joy and intoxicants, most of the bachelor parties I’ve attended haven't felt like funerals and there was no room for me to feel sadness or mourning.  But there was one I went to where my albinism played a role in amplifying my sense of grief. 

Like many people who go to college and have fun while there, I spent years after graduation hoping to recapture my collegiate sense of joie de vivre, desperately trying to have as much fun at Happy Hours and on weekends as I’d had in my four years of consequence-free partying at school.  My running buddy through many of these booze-soaked evenings was my friend Dan.  We’d gone to college together, were roommates in a larger house our fourth year and, after college, we’d both moved to New York City.  New York City was an incredible place to be young people in pursuit of fun because it’s open all night, there were lots of cute girls and we could drink just about anywhere.  Dan and I went out together three to seven nights a week, cramming as many good times as possible into bar nights, happy hours, brunches and house parties.  Even after I left NYC, I still made it a tradition to head back every year around New Year’s Eve for a few days of getting shit-faced like old times. Dan even came to visit me in LA for long stretches and we’d go out and get hammered like we were still 22.  When I moved to Chicago at 31, I expected our debauched ways to continue but maturity soon found both of us.  Dan was dating the woman to whom he’s now married; as their relationship blossomed, I was beginning a new career and period of personal challenges which would lead me to therapy.  Good thing, too, because two weeks after I started therapy my Uncle drank himself to death, then four months later my Aunt (his sister) committed suicide and a month after that my Mom (sister to both departed) was diagnosed with breast cancer.  Even as a bystander, it was a brutal year.  I felt nothing but grief and was especially poor company for anybody who was in love.  While Dan and I grew up, we also grew apart.  When it came time for his bachelor party five years later, our lives had grown in separate directions to the extent I was mildly surprised to receive an invitation. 

The trip was also a surprise.  One of Dan’s Chicago friends, a guy who is also my friend but better friends with Dan, had planned the whole thing.  He told Dan to pack a bag, but didn’t say why or where he was going. The plan was for three more of us to surprise them at the train station downtown, then head up to Milwaukee for the day, enjoy the city and its brews, crash at an Airbnb and head back in the morning. I wore a t-shirt, jeans and a hoodie because even though Dan and I were 36, I wanted to pass myself off as still in my 20s. The guys we were going with were all that age and this was a throwback weekend.  I got confirmation I looked young at the doughnut shop by the train station when I stopped for coffee and someone asked me, “So, did you just go white really early?” 

I wasn’t talking to this fella. We hadn’t made eye contact.  We did not know one another.  

Though it may seem an odd salutation from a stranger, I’m often greeted like this. As a rule, I don’t like it when people call attention to my albinism and I especially don’t like it when it’s the first fucking thing they say to me out of the fucking blue.  I tend to feel like I’m on display and I get real defensive, real fast if I feel I’m being teased by someone who doesn’t know me well enough to tease me.  However, this weekend was an occasion for joy, so I looked up and smiled.  The man asking me the question was a light-skinned black man in his 20s.  I wanted to ask him if, as a black man, he appreciated it when people called attention to his skin color.  But I couldn’t tell if that sentiment was racist. So, I just remarked, “I have albinism.  My hair’s been this color since birth.” 

“It’s crazy.  Cuz you look young, but…” he trailed off, perhaps realizing how much of his own foot he was cramming into his own mouth. 

“Thanks,” I smiled and paid for my coffee. I looked young.  Mission: accomplished.  As I was handed my change, I heard another voice behind me. 

“What’s up, Professor DeWitt?”  I turned to see a young man in his early 20s.  As I explained in Context is Everything and You’re Not You, I have a hard time recognizing people out of context.  Well, this young man was about 5’ 9” with brown hair and brown eyes, so from a probability standpoint, there’s like a thousand former students he could potentially be. Maybe I’d have recognized him if I hadn’t just been asked about my albinism, but I was on edge, not caffeinated yet and kind of anxious about the bachelor party, so I just smiled, nodded and shuffled to put sugar in my coffee.   

Because I’m legally blind, it’s not easy for me to meet up with people in public.  I have a particularly difficult time recognizing faces in crowds, especially if I’ve only met those people a handful of times.  A couple years prior to this bachelor party, I was meeting some of these same folks at an outdoor German festival.  At that event, I’d walked right up to the group I was meeting and gawked around, not recognizing any of them.  I just stood there like a blind buffoon until one of them awkwardly said what’s up to me and I realized I had unexpectedly found the group I was seeking.  Given that experience and the doughnut shop interactions, I was hyper-aware of my eyesight and albinism and nervous about finding everybody at a crowded Chicago train station on a Saturday morning. After a panic-stricken walk through the station twice, I eventually found a familiar face.  Slowly but surely the group assembled.  Dan was happy to see everyone and we got on the train. 

The day unfolded like most other days of Drinking. There was a massive rush of energy and excitement at first, then this tapered off by mid-afternoon and everyone needed to stop for coffee and water.  Since I don’t Drink like I used to, I’d been nervous about my ability to hang all day but I was feeling energetic and loose. The interactions and anxiety of the morning were forgotten. After recharging, we found ourselves in a tiki bar and conversation turned to the past. As I listened to the four friends tell stories I wasn’t part of, I began to feel like a fifth wheel. They didn’t intentionally exclude me by any stretch of the imagination, it’s just hard to share in nostalgia for experiences I did not have. By the time we got to dinner, the alcohol had begun to betray its purpose. I was drinking to ignore the sorrow I felt at the end of Dan’s singlehood and, by extension, the death of my own youth and carefree years; instead, the alcohol began to fuel my sadness and grief, increasing my sense of isolation and despair. At the steakhouse, I quickly learned an enormous ribeye doesn’t sit well on a stomach full of booze and coffee. My energy and jubilation faded to nauseated sleepiness as everyone else’s drunken night was approaching a crescendo.  The guys struck up a conversation with the table next to us, two middle-aged Wisconsinites.  They explained we were in town for a bachelor party for our friend Dan.  

 She asked “Who’s Dan?” and he raised his hand and then she remarked to me, “So you must be his father.” 

There are times in my life when I would have reacted differently to this slight, which I recognize now, months later, sitting in my office was not intentional.  In the past, I might have called her a dumb B, I might have “accidentally” spilled my drink or food on her or may I would’ve gone outside, smoked a cigarette then come back inside and tried picked a fight with her husband.  Fortunately, this was not one of those times. I just smiled, rolled my eyes and didn’t answer.  Like I said, I grew up. But ignoring her sucked the last of my energy.  I had the guys drop me off at the Airbnb and I passed out on a couch.  They ended up staying out late at a cigar and whisky bar.  I didn’t envy their hangovers on the train back to Chicago in the morning. 

On the subway back to my place, I beat myself up, feeling weak and old, wondering why I didn’t stay out all night, wondering why I’d let other people bringing up my albinism ruin my good time. The bachelor party was supposed to be an escape from despair; instead, I’d let despair overcome me. When I got home, my fiancee (now my wife) gave me a hug and despair lifted. I felt alive in a way I hadn’t all weekend. My understanding of everything changed. I saw I didn’t “let” the people who commented on my albinism ruin my good time, I wasn’t having that good a time to begin with. This statement is not meant as a slight against Dan and the guys at the bachelor party.  They are fun, awesome, hilarious people and when I was young and single, I would’ve had a blast spending all day and night getting drunk with them. But that’s not who I am anymore. The bachelor party didn’t feel like a funeral to me because Dan’s singlehood was dying, it felt like a funeral because the part of me that enjoys drinking all day, having no real responsibilities and being alone died a long time ago.  I was present at the bachelor party, but only as a vague specter of my former self.  I was there as a ghost.  I felt like Bruce Willis at the end of The Sixth Sense. 

My own bachelor party was about six weeks later.  It was low-key and haunted with ghosts in the sense that it was old friends drinking, our once-vibrant, carefree spirits still visible, though only in glimpses and flickers. We exist on different planes now.  Our marriages aren’t prisons and our wives aren’t wardens, but we do have lives we must maintain.  We have spouses and children, careers, subordinates and mortgages, we have personal and professional responsibilities we must tend to with single-minded, unrelenting, never-ending focus.  We’re whatever one’s spirit becomes after being a ghost.  I guess I’m saying we’re zombies now. 

Vision Teachers and Vocations

I went to elementary school in the Fairfax County Public Schools system, which I recognize now was integral to my success.  FCPS is among the best public school systems in the country, probably because it’s just outside the Nation’s Capital and is a county flooded with tax dollars from wealthy residents.  In addition to the wonderful teachers I mentioned in The Eggshell Egghead, I also had one-on-one instruction from low-vision specialists who met with me once a week.  These specialists provided a wide array of training, both scholastic and vocational, which helped equip me with the skills necessary to take care of myself.  

Syd Wharton was a kindly middle-aged man whose body weight fluctuated by more than 90 pounds in either direction during his tenure as my vision teacher.  Remember how Oprah Winfrey couldn’t pick a body type in the 80s and 90s and seemed to balloon up and shrink down almost overnight?  Syd was the same way, sometimes svelte, sometimes enormous.  Given his struggles with body weight, it probably won’t surprise you to learn Syd was big into computers.  Syd understood the importance of technology, so he made sure I knew how to touch type by the time I was eight.  He taught me how to use software, including early versions of MS Word and dictation programs.  He also taught me how to use an abacus, an ancient type of calculator which uses beads for counting and has not come back into use since technology is not cyclical. The instruction I received on technologies which were still emerging proved incredibly helpful.  Because of Syd Wharton, I was comfortable working on computers before computers took over the world.  

In addition to the weekly visits with Syd, a couple of times a year I received mobility and vocational training.  In these instances, a different teacher would show me how to get around the world, usually a woman with a last name I can’t even begin to guess how to spell – it sounded like an eastern European sneeze.  Her first name was Caroline and she was very kind.  She taught me how to look both ways when crossing the street, find a crosswalk and read crossing signals.  When I was older, she took me to the mall and taught me how to find my way around by using the mall directory and reading signs, skills which translate to airports, hospitals and casinos, or any other large building which is difficult to navigate.  At the time I thought it was weird, but the most-used piece of information I remember learning on these vocational lessons was how to find a public restroom.  I don’t know if my vision teacher had a personal problem or she was just way ahead of the game on the idea that everybody poops, but an integral part of my lessons was learning how to find a bathroom in public. For the uninitiated, restrooms are usually near water fountains or restaurants, for example, and if you can find the women’s room, the men’s room is probably close.  My vocational education wasn’t all outdated arithmetic technologies and public bathrooms though; as I got older, these vision teachers also helped me find a job.  

My Dad had been telling me to get a job since the first grade, so when I was 14 and the opportunity presented itself to work, I took it, even though I was only paid $3.70 an hour.  The opportunity came via my vision teachers and it allowed me to work at the Dunn Loring Center, a school for the blind.  I was there during the summer, so I had little interaction with blind students.  Instead, I did administrative support work for the County’s staff of vision teachers.  I did mailroom duties, answered the phones, got lunch, photocopied and assembled large print textbooks and novels. I got to test an early version of Dragon Dictate dictation software and rate the effectiveness of various magnifying glasses and telescopes, the types of low-vision aides the state had been providing for me since I was young.  The ten hours a week I worked felt like an eternity, mostly because there were only about six hours of actual work to do each week. I had to kill four hours a week on my own in an office before the internet existed.  I walked laps around the school, let my imagination wander and sat in the bathroom just staring at the door of the stall to kill the time.    

When I was 16 I was eligible for job placement through my low-vision vocational teacher.  Caroline set me up with the opportunity to be some executive’s assistant but when I went to the interview his handwriting was so small and illegible we both agreed I’d be a terrible fit for the job, which consisted largely of transcribing his chicken scratch.  Instead, I ended up landing a cushy summer gig processing catalogue orders for the Government Services Administration. I took phone orders for government agencies which needed new office supplies, copy toner and toilet paper and made $17 an hour, which to a 17-year-old in 1997 was all the money in the world. In fact, I wouldn’t make $17 an hour again for another 14 years.   

These early work experiences provided by my vision teachers equipped me with on-the-job training and other tools necessary to have the self-confidence it required to enter the job market and find work on my own. During the school year, I got a job as a part-time janitor at my church on Tuesdays and Sunday afternoons.  Very early in my cleaning career, my vision was an obstacle because one of the Sunday School teachers didn’t think I’d done a good enough job. What I saw as clean, the Sunday School Teacher saw as dirty, which was probably true of more than just her classroom.  In any event, this experience taught me how to inspect things closer and that my standards weren’t always good enough.  Overall, my lack of eyesight was a gift as a janitor though. See, many of my custodial duties involved dealing with grossness, like trash and all the exciting things we flush down a toilet. When dealing with these elements of the job, the fact I couldn’t see the disgustingness of what I had to mop up or scrub down was a definite plus.  I also worked at a video store, where my vision was a bit of a setback when it came time to shelve tapes because I couldn’t always read the titles from afar; but, I almost never had to touch feces, except when customers rented FORREST GUMP.    

In high school, I also babysat a boy with Down syndrome and I felt comfortable around kids, so during college I babysat my younger brothers and sisters, who ranged in age from newborn Luke to preteen Matt with Brianna in between.  I was a steal at $12 an hour and working with my brothers and sisters was good in the sense that it connected me to my family and it was incredibly effective birth control. I also tried to work at a big DoD contractor called SAIC for a summer as an intern, but even the $16 an hour wasn’t enough to keep me there. On the third day of my employment, we did an off-site team building exercise during which every single member of my department burst out crying.  After two weeks working in a cubicle, I understood why. My team was insufferable. Everyone worked at a snail’s pace until it was discovered I had a zeal for getting the job done and then they started giving me all their work. I could do a week’s worth of this one guy Alan’s tasks in about two hours and when I tried to explain how to use the computer program SAP to be more productive, he scolded me for working too hard. I loved quitting that job.  While these jobs were fine during college, my limited work experience was terrible when it came time to find a job after I graduated.  I had no relevant experience in any field and my only long-term employer had been my Dad.  

When I moved to New York after college to sell a novel I thought was a comedy but was too dark to be funny, I picked up all kinds of jobs. I worked as a bar back, which was a challenge because a big part of the job was going around and grabbing people’s empty mugs and glasses. Well, in a dark and crowded East Village dive bar, I couldn’t tell when a glass was empty or full so I ended up trying to clear away unfinished cocktails more than a few times. I also got my Real Estate License and worked as a real estate agent, showing units and leasing properties as Real Estate Nate.  This experience was akin to running my own business and gave me my first sense of being truly self-employed.  I met a ton of interesting people and saw some gorgeous apartments and some total dumps. I made decent money and had keys to a lot of vacant units around downtown, which gave me access to a ton of clean, private bathrooms in Manhattan. 

After New York, my Dad gave me a job at his company, which was generous of him and gave my life some much needed structure.  During my tenure at his company, I was proactive in asking for new duties and learned a bunch of marketable skills like bookkeeping and inventory management.  Nonetheless, after 18 months of landscape maintenance I was bored intellectually and creatively.  More importantly, I felt trapped.  Other employers did not think my work experience in college was valid partially because I worked for my Dad and I feared my work experience in my 20s would be seen the same way.  If I didn’t make a change, and fast, working for my father was going to be the only career option available to me and I didn’t want to be in my late 20s and still living off paychecks signed by my Daddy. I was raised to take ownership and accountability for myself and my own happiness.  Having worked on my own and worked for my father, I vastly preferred the former.  Jobs are hard enough without adding a layer of family bullshit to everything.  So, I split town and went to graduate school.

During grad school, I was an intern at several production companies and NBC, all of which were great jobs and none of which were impacted by my poor eyesight or albinism. Although, my own personal myopia kept me from accepting a job offer to be an assistant at NBC because I didn’t think I’d enjoy being a suit.  In hindsight, though, I should’ve taken this job as I’d make an extraordinary television executive.  But, at the time, I thought myself an artist.  My subsequent work as a screenwriter and freelance writer, while not as steady or lucrative as the NBC gig would have been, was also not at all impacted by my condition, except as I expressed in Wrong Man for the Job.  When I took work at a liquor store to make ends meet, my poor eyesight was a minor setback because I couldn’t always see labels, prices or IDs and my albinism was sometimes noticed or mocked by customers.  But I had allies.  One time, some jackass asked my work best friend Mac, “Hey, what’s up with that Albino weirdo?” so she ‘accidentally’ dropped a bottle of wine, shattering it and spraying Cabernet all over this asshole’s shoes and pants. 

When I came to teach college, I didn’t expect my albinism to be a setback and, in most ways, it has not been. I rarely take time to think of my teaching as paying forward the work of my teachers, vision or otherwise; however, when I do think of my work in these terms, I find my eyes get misty and my heart gets warm. Although, since I’ve been teaching my weight fluctuates 20 pounds in either direction during the school year.  As an adjunct professor, even though I’m often the smartest person in the room, I’m also the lowest rung on the higher education ladder.  As such, I’m in a position where I am overworked, marginalized and under-appreciated.  For no reason other than my adjunct faculty status, I’ve been taken off committees I’d served on since their inception, I’ve been asked to leave faculty meetings and a panel at a conference I helped create has been taken from me and given to a full-time faculty member.  I sometimes wonder if I intentionally put myself in a position where I’d be overlooked and undervalued or if that’s just how the life works and we find places for ourselves which resemble situations we recognize.  The indignities I’ve endured as an adjunct professor have nothing to do with my albinism and everything to do with the flawed nature of the higher education system in this country. The reality of life as an Adjunct Professor is one of little institutional support, development or encouragement.  Disappointed with the treatment of adjunct faculty at the university where I teach the bulk of my classes, I have taken ownership of my situation and I’m now Chair of a first-of-its-kind Committee charged with improving working conditions for Adjunct Faculty. While the work of this committee is helping me feel empowered, the reality of life as an adjunct is most like life as a real estate agent: I need to think of myself as a business to be successful.  To that end, I’ve begun working for myself, acting as a freelance educator, teaching multiple courses at multiple institutions. Thankfully, the vocational and technological skills my vision teachers equipped me with, coupled with my own work experience and ambition, have prepared me to succeed in a changing job market. These teachers couldn't improve my eyesight, but they certainly helped focus my vision, allowing me to function in the world with a greater sense of clarity.  

The Perils of Eye Sex When You're Legally Blind

I took health and human sexuality in elementary, junior and high school and they taught us a lot about the normalcy of boners, how lady parts work and how to avoid making a baby, but they didn’t teach us anything about eye sex.  They didn’t even mention it!  A Tribe Called Quest said, “Bust a nut inside your eye to show you where I come from,” but I’m pretty sure that’s not about eye sex in the traditional sense.  Truthfully, I didn’t know what eye sex was until I was 16 and my friend Michael’s normally-sighted older sister explained to me that sometimes two strangers who have sexual chemistry will lock eyes and look at one another lustfully.  My friend’s older sister made eye sex sound like both a lot of fun and a necessary and frequent aspect of dating. This instant ocular intimacy, she said, could happen anywhere. It happened at the gym, in her classes at college, at Starbucks and obviously at parties and bars, where eye sex was often a great segue to the kinds of sex we learned about in health class and had seen simulated on Cinemax. She said it was a great way to meet strangers and feel good about yourself.  It opened doors, could lead to a relationship and, in her experience, eye sex had definitely led to some of the best hook ups of her life. In my experience though, eye sex has been a disaster, mostly because I'm legally blind.   

While there is much debate about who originally said “eyes are the window to the soul” the universal truth of this statement is not debated.  As human beings, biologically there are many emotional and physical cues our vision helps us process and many of these cues come from reading the eyes of other people. A person’s eyes provide information about what they are thinking, what they are feeling and what they might do next. In the NFL, a free safety knows where the quarterback is going to throw the ball because he can read his eyes from 30 yards away.  In discussions in my classroom, a normally-sighted student knows when to lighten up on her criticism of another student’s writing because, from 20 feet away, she can see in his eyes that the critiques are making him anxious.  At a poker table, a gambler knows his opponent is bluffing because he can see the dishonesty in her eyes from five or six feet away.  I’m aware and in awe of these abilities because they are completely foreign to me.  For me to be able to see someone’s eyes well enough to read them, that person needs to be less than three feet from me, any further than that and their eyes are imperceptible oval blurs from which I glean nothing.  However, since I was not raised to be bound by my disability, I haven’t let the fact I can’t see anything keep me from trying to have eye sex, just like most guys don’t let the fact we have no idea what we’re doing in bed keep us from trying to have sex.  

One time at a dark and crowded rock and roll show in Boston I could feel someone’s eyes on me.  Feeling people staring at me was nothing new, but this girl’s gaze felt curious in a positive way, as opposed to the usual slack-jawed gawking of drunken assholes. There was something hungry and carnal in the manner I thought she was eyeing me, though she was on the opposite side of the room. From my vantage point, this chick looked like a punk rock Katie Holmes, so I smiled in her direction and, keeping my eyes on her, approached.  She smiled back and I felt warm and understood the appeal of eye sex for a nanosecond before my leg slammed into something metal and I tripped and fell flat on my face. My eyes were so focused on Punk Rock Katie Holmes I stumbled over a person in a wheelchair who I had not seen.

In my early 30s, walking down a Chicago street around Christmas time, I could’ve sworn a sexy, sophisticated older woman was making eyes at me from down the block. With a smug smile on my face, I approached her, beaming.  Then she seemed to stop moving and I thought for sure she was waiting for me.  I straightened my scarf and adjusted my hat, staring at the red velvet cocktail dress it looked like she was wearing and letting my imagination fill in the details of her body, which I could not fully see yet. In my mind, this woman was shapely and gorgeous and this was the start of a beautiful relationship. As I approached, my love interest revealed herself to be a large red Christmas bow tied to a wrought iron gate.      

Since I’m legally blind and cannot see everything, my imagination fills in the details of what I can’t see with what it wants to see. Most people engage in some version of this same practice, often seeing things in other people which are not really there, particularly early in relationships.  For me, though, I sometimes see things which aren't there in extreme and literal ways. From afar, my first instinct is almost always to assume people are good looking.  I think because most of the people I truly see in full detail and clarity are on enormous movie screens or my 4K UltraHD TV, I tend to I imagine the world is a much more beautiful place than it actually is, which probably seems ironic given my curmudgeonly disposition.  Almost every person in Los Angeles seemed stunning to me, for example; though, even my normally sighted friends had trouble telling cute hipster chicks from homeless people when they were more than 50 feet away.  From across the street, most people in Chicago are model gorgeous simply because they are well-dressed. As I get closer to these imagined beautiful people the image gradually clarifies and sharpens, eventually rendering the truth. But there have been plenty of times when I fell madly in love with a woman across the street only to eventually realize she was not interested, not attractive and sometimes she wasn’t even a human woman.  In college, my friend Michael observed my tendency to think women were prettier than they are.  As a good friend, he took it upon himself to function as my eyes, steering me away from women he thought were ugly.  The only problem with this strategy was Michael’s standards of beauty were so insanely high that a girl had to look like she just stepped out of the pages of Vogue for him to think she was attractive. Thanks to Michael though, I ended up making out and striking out with a lot of girls who were way out of my league.

In grad school, I met my friend Jordan.  He’s the kind of guy who walks into a bar and has had eye sex with seven different women before ordering his first beer.  He’s one of the best pick-up artists I've ever seen and he's probably had sex with more women than I’ve talked to. Given his broad range of experience with broads, Jordan offered a really interesting perspective on sex and vision.  “One insanely magical thing about human beings,” he said, “is that everyone is beautiful when you’re two inches from their face.” Thanks in part to Jordan, I stopped caring so much what people look like and learned to value inner beauty because he’s right, everyone is beautiful when you let yourself see them up close. 

When I turned to internet dating, sites like OKCupid and Tinder helped eliminate the perils of eye sex, but even on a date, my inability to read a person’s eyes was a setback.  I can’t tell you how many times I thought I was establishing chemistry so I went in for a kiss only to realize I'd misread the signals and get rejected.  I'm so happy to be done with dating.  Though, I should point out that just as blind people sometimes develop extraordinary hearing abilities to compensate for their lack of eyesight, according to my wife, who is beautiful inside and out, I developed extraordinary abilities of touch to compensate for my bad eyes.  Turns out poor eyesight doesn’t matter much once the lights are off.

Further Reading: Amuse-Douche

Red, White and Blue

The 2016 Presidential Election was traumatic for many Americans.  The infighting between the candidates was nasty and difficult for many people to watch, regardless of their political ideology. There was a prevailing sentiment neither candidate was ideal or even qualified for the position of President.  The constant bombardment and bickering kept many people anxious and awake at night.  Not me, though. I slept like a baby. In fact, I watched the debates with the same sense of nostalgia I bring to watching re-runs of SEINFELD, and not just because both candidates were self-centered New Yorkers who yelled most of the time and never seemed to learn anything. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were the harbingers of America's downfall, making specious points about their qualifications and track record while trading demeaning insults, none of which felt foreign or alarming to me because it just felt like I was watching my Mom and Dad run for President.  

 

Obviously neither of my parents expected to have a child with albinism.  My Mom was a 30-year-old wanderer whose life before my existence I know little about because I haven’t bothered to ask and she hasn’t bothered to tell me.  My Dad was a 22-year-old jock, just back from the Army and with a divorce already under his belt.  Supposedly, he married a woman before my Mom so she could use his military health insurance to get an operation, but reports of this instance of altruism are unconfirmed.  My parents met at a country and western bar, boned down and made me.  It was July of 1979 and they were God-fearing idiots, so upon learning my Mother was pregnant my parents got married.  They're both religious in dangerous ways, my Mom using religion as a means of denying herself joy because God Sees Everything and my Father using religion as a means of excusing his own cruelty because no matter what he does, God Forgives Everything.  Nathan’s not as gracious. Because of my albinism, they moved from New Hall, California just outside Los Angeles to Kent Washington, just outside Seattle. Rain or shine, their marriage was marked by fights and infidelity. I remember the cops being called a few times because he hit her, which is unforgivable and unfortunately makes complete sense. My Grandpa beat the shit out of my Dad every single day of his childhood and my Mom has absolutely no ability to read a room or to gauge how hard she's pushing another person's buttons.  She has the worst timing in terms of when to 'draw the line' of any human being on the face of the planet. That said, my Dad was an abusive baby and my Mom was right to leave him. Their divorce was final on April 1, 1985, which makes sense given the foolishness of their marriage. They have been campaigning against each other ever since.  

My Mother was valedictorian of her high school and, though she was accepted to MIT, she followed a boy to UCSB. As you may have suspected, he dumped her shortly after college began.  Much like Hillary Clinton, Mom has a lengthy record of receiving mistreatment from men.  She worked for a Department of Defense contractor, where she used her intelligence and work ethic to shatter as many glass ceilings as possible while raising two kids on her own. In the process, she cultivated a genuine and often justified sense of misandry. She shuttled my sister and me to and from soccer, ballet and Super Summer Camp while taking every opportunity to badmouth men from work, my Dad and his lack of real contributions as a parent.  Like Hillary Clinton, she worked incredibly hard every single day and her track record boasts many successful examples of this good work.  When I’d put off doing my math homework and needed graph paper at 9pm on a Sunday, Mom drove me to the store.  When I was interested in stand-up comedy, Mom took me to a show (See The Wrong Man for the Job).  When we went to sporting events or concerts, Mom would tell the event staff my sister and I were legally blind so they’d give us unclaimed tickets from Will Call, often moving us from our nosebleed seats to right in front of the action.  When I wanted to go to school in Boston, my Mom supported me even though it was expensive. When I failed in New York, she was there to bring me home and make me go to therapy. When I went to grad school, she was elated and read every piece of shit script I ever sent her.  She was as attentive and committed as she was able and we did not long for necessities. She was an exemplary Mother, and if I’m half the parent she was, I’ll be twice the Dad my daughter needs. 

When anyone is actively involved in any activity, day in and day out for 18 years, sooner or later, one is going to make a mess of things and my Mom was no exception.  Like Hillary Clinton, my Mother’s track record also holds many incomprehensible, catastrophic failures. She bought a timeshare, which was her own personal Whitewater. Mom could do nothing to protect me from my sister's abusive and violent fits, the small and frequent incidents of domestic terrorism which marked my youth, just as such events marked Hillary Clinton’s term as Secretary of State. Our family Benghazi Attack was when she let an alcoholic drifter move in with us and he got drunk and beat her up. Understandably, she felt overwhelmed and often alone and sought to establish codependent relationships with my sister and me to overcompensate for these feelings of isolation. When the stresses of being a single mother became overwhelming, as they often did, Mom did things her own way, breaking the rules if she had to, particularly while driving. She once rear-ended a car because she was showing me a pimple. Like any compassionate liberal person, my Mom tried to make things easy for my sister and me because it seemed like the right way to treat something she loves with all her heart; in so doing, she left us a little entitled and, in many ways, unprepared for a cruel and indifferent world. My Mom has the kind of narcissism that makes her hyper-vigilant.  She was there, day in and day out, working to make my sister and me better people. Her love was palpable, present and, though often overbearing, it was demonstrated again and again and again. She rarely missed an opportunity to provide for us and she never missed an opportunity to point out what my Dad was not providing, which was ultimately her greatest weakness as a parent. Genetically, whether I like it or not, I’m half my Father. My Mother could never understand that in belittling him, she was belittling part of me.  

My Dad barely graduated high school and never would have graduated college without my Mom doing all his work for him. As a college baseball pitcher, he was more concerned with his “ERA than his GPA,” that’s his line, not mine.  On the day I was born, he elected to go to practice rather than spend time with his newborn son and wife recovering from childbirth. 37 years later, he still tells this story with himself as the hero, taking ownership in having thrown a ball around with some guys he doesn't even talk to anymore in a way he would never take ownership of me. I don’t mean to make it seem like my Dad abandoned us.  He worked whatever jobs he could get to help provide for us, working at the cannery and as a security guard at the Four Seasons while playing baseball and going to school. When my Mom's career took her to Virginia, though their marriage was on the rocks, he moved to stay close to us. After the divorce, we saw him on Tuesdays and two weekends a month. These visitations were often spent shopping for things he needed at the mall, test driving luxury cars he’d never buy because he was too practical a man and too big to fit in most of them, or driving out to the country to look at mansions he couldn’t afford yet, so it’s hard to separate the idea of money from the idea of my Father. Just like Donald Trump.  

I like to think Dad subconsciously understood money was the only positive contribution he was able make in his children’s lives at that time in his.  Regardless of his motives, making money is certainly where my Dad focused his attention and he has succeeded in that endeavor to a degree no one foresaw or imagined.  He began a career in landscape maintenance, running a mowing crew.  He quickly learned the industry, rising through the ranks because he worked harder than everyone else and customers loved his charisma. Just like Donald Trump, my Dad turned a loan from his father and a partnership with a man who would defraud him into a successful business empire but still acts like he’s a completely self-made man who rose from the ether by sheer force of will. Dad has the kind of narcissism that makes him grandiose and infallible. He claims to have started this business so my sister and I would be able to get jobs, which is sweet until you consider we’re academically gifted, legally blind albinos and the work his company does is mostly manual labor outdoors. He’s never understood how smart and capable I am at things which he is not and ultimately this is his biggest weakness as a parent: I’ve known him 37 years and I am a stranger to this man.  He’s never seen me play drums. He didn’t go to my college graduation. We didn’t talk for a couple years and I get the sense it didn’t really bother either of us all that much. Still, like Trump, my Dad is a glamorous figure. When I was growing up, he often referred to himself as a “Disneyland Dad,” though he’d later come to resent this characterization, wishing he were taken more seriously as a parent.  I think my sister and I wished that too. In any event, as he became more and more financially successful, my Dad traded in my Mom for a string of more beautiful, younger women and started new businesses and new families, fathering four more children, none of whom have albinism or a healthy relationship with their Father.  Ultimately, these siblings are the best gifts my Dad ever gave me. And that Maxima was dope as shit before it got totaled. 

My Father's often-stated, not-at-all ironic personal philosophy is “Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story.”  Like Trump, my Father's wealth is ever-shifting.  He's a millionaire dozens of times over when it's time to act like a big shot, but when any of his ex-wives want child support or the government wants taxes, he's a pauper on paper.  He’s the poster-child for “Do as I say, not as I do” and doesn’t understand why his kids don’t listen to his words and instead parrot his behaviors back to him or to each other. He speaks in half-truths and his promises tend to as fantastic as they are empty, he whitewashes the past, gaslights, badmouths people as soon as they leave the room and often engages in what my Mother refers to as “Crazy-Making Shit.”  He seems completely unaware of the fact he's an asshole sometimes, except when he relishes in it and seems earnestly proud of it.  And you know what?  People fucking love him!  They love him.  People suffer his abuse and insults with a smile.  People work like dogs for him and seek his praise. People kiss his ass and want to hang out with him.   People think he's cool, they aspire to be him.  Even though he’s kind of a jerk, people almost always give my Dad what he wants, just like Donald Trump.  

Despite his shortcomings as a man and parent, my Dad was a positive influence in my life. He taught me how to throw a punch and not give up in any fight until it’s over or someone’s pulling me off the person I’m fighting.  I've been able to apply this tenacity in areas of my life besides fistfights.  He taught me to drive a stick-shift and talk to girls.  He taught me business savvy, how to shave and that clothes matter. He helped pay for college, he bought me cars, he let me stay at his house in Florida when I wanted a quiet place to write a terrible book I couldn’t sell. His story is the American Dream personified and the zeal he brings to work, the effort and discipline he sustains inspire and motivate me to this day.  He provided amply in the way he thought mattered.  Because he doesn’t think about anyone but himself, my Dad doesn’t really care whether or not I think he was good enough as a parent.  And, who knows, maybe he shouldn’t. But, for the record, he was the perfect compliment to my mother and, though he fucked up royally a few times, there’s nobody else I’d want as my Dad. If I make half as much money as he has it'll be ten times the money I need.  

I don't think either of my parents would object to being compared to the Presidential candidate they voted for and I know neither would be surprised to hear I would probably not choose either of them as my leader. That said, I've tried both their methods of narcissism. When I’m hyper-vigilant like my Mom, I work hard, I'm reliable, I build a reputation as dependable and exemplary... and I feel like a doormat. I'm passed over for promotions because no one on my lower rung of the ladder works this hard. I’m left off projects because I hold everyone around me to too high a standard. I’m too anal to be well liked. When I’m a grandiose narcissist like my Dad, I’m a lot louder, I make people laugh, my social life is active and people think I’m fun. And I feel guilty and ashamed by the shitty ways I speak of or treat people. I’m considered a blowhard. I end up surrounded by like-minded jerks who don’t care about me one way or the other. I’m too much of an asshole to be well liked. My Mom’s mode of being doesn’t work for me because it’s too interested in pleasing other people and my Dad’s mode of being doesn’t work for me because it ignores other people’s feelings completely. I also think my albinism contributes to my inability to be a successful grandiose narcissist just because no one will take an irrationally arrogant person with such an obvious genetic defect seriously. In this regard, I must admit I'm very grateful for my condition. Sometimes I think my poor eyesight and lack of pigmentation are the only things keeping me from being a belligerent bully jack ass just like my Dad, though there are plenty of people who think I'm a belligerent bully jack ass.   

At my wedding rehearsal dinner, my parents sat at opposite ends of the table, my Mom silently resenting my Dad while he got drunk and acted like the party was being held in his honor.  They don’t communicate with each other.  Sometimes I think the universe got my parents together as some epic practical joke on me.  I picture God up in Heaven or wherever the fuck ever and he or she is there with a smirk saying, “Let's have a jock bully and a nerdy woman who hates men conceive an albino son and watch them try to raise him!”  

When I think of myself as good or successful, which is not as often as I should, I tend to think my success occurred despite my parents.  But that’s dead wrong.  While neither of my parents was ideal for the job, they each offered a valuable perspective. But their perspectives are incomplete.  My Mom’s devotion to others needs to be tempered by my Dad’s selfishness, lest it become self-destructive. My Dad’s ambition needs to be filtered through my Mom’s empathy or it becomes dangerous. My Mom’s desire to eliminate anxiety in my life only works when paired with the individualism and bravery my Dad instilled in me. Both perspectives, while diametrically opposed, were necessary to my complete development just as both political viewpoints are necessary to the development of our country. No ideology is perfect. Regardless of how smart a person is, no one human being has all the answers. In the American system of government, spirited debate is meant to yield solutions of reasonable compromise which are better than the solutions any individual could provide on his or her own. Just as I needed both my parents’ points of view to become whole, our country needs both conservative and liberal viewpoints to function at its best. We need to listen more and talk less. We need to find a means of communicating with those whose perspective we abhor instead of screaming into echo chambers. But that isn't what happens. Instead, we become like our leaders: self-centered people who yell all the time and never seem to learn anything.  

Further Reading: The Perils of Eye Sex When You're Legally Blind

My Hollywood Romance

To me, everyone in Los Angeles seemed really tan, wealthy and obsessed with the entertainment industry. It made me completely insecure. My fair skin didn't glisten in the sun like the throngs of olive-skinned gorgeous people walking down Melrose. My Jetta was beat to shit, not glimmering like the Porsches on Santa Monica. I was living a relatively meager grad school existence compared to the fabulous life I thought I should be living. I was 27 and I thought I needed to meet someone who was a little more Hollywood. I was certain this relationship would cement my identity as the rising writing superstar I knew myself to be. My whole life, I thought if I met the right girl, everything would be easy. Jane was not that girl. (nor is that her real name).

It was like a movie. We'd had a few grad school courses together and she'd even used my apartment to film a short for one of her classes. On the shoot, during a break, we were both in my roommate Katie's bedroom, sitting on the bed, chatting and I was pretty sure I felt a spark. However, I had a girlfriend at the time. But, when my girlfriend and I finally broke up, texting Jane was one of my first forays back into the world of dating. She seemed perfect. She was from the Midwest, had gone to Duke, she was in the prestigious Producing Program at USC and she lived a block away from me. Jane looked like if Claire Danes and Kirsten Dunst had a daughter with none of her mothers' sexual charisma. She wasn't just smart and pretty, she was rich too. Her grandfather had invented the sealed air compressor, which you will find on every refrigerator ever made, so Jane had a trust fund, drove a Beamer and lived in the same complex where they filmed MTV's THE HILLS. She was perfect for me, and not just because all I had to do was walk across the street to get laid.

In Act Two, we went to The Sundance Film Festival together, watched indie movies and snuggled. We stopped by Vegas on the drive home and stayed at the Venetian. For her birthday, we went to the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills where we saw Sylvester Stallone; though, to be fair, all I saw was a wrinkled leather cushion. She interned at Paramount Vantage and I got to meet her on the Paramount Lot a few times, which was a dream come true, except for the night her boss was introduced to me and, because of my white hair, assumed I was Jane's dad. While this moment was humiliating, Jane's connection to Paramount Vantage meant we got to go to their Oscars Party on Rodeo, get hammered on amazing Cabernet and watch BABEL take home the statue. We assumed we'd be a Hollywood Power Couple. She'd produce things I wrote. We would take over the city. It was us against the world. I thought I might be in love. My writing was improving considerably and I even quit smoking cigarettes when I was around her. But the third act twist was coming and, like everything else in Hollywood, beneath the glossy surface, this relationship proved to be empty, meaningless and pretty dark.

One night, we were talking about maybe getting married, imagining the wedding. We were talking about maybe having kids some day. During this romantic daydreaming, holding each other on her couch, Jane, who I would remind you is a fair-skinned ginger herself, had the audacity to say to me, “Of course, we'd have to talk to a doctor and see if there's something he could do to make sure our kids don't have albinism.” The anger I have from this is still visceral and white-hot. I want to say I spat in her fucking face and stormed out of there. I love women, would see that behavior as abusive and am still so angry I want spitting to be how this all ended. Even now, writing this essay, almost ten years removed from this event, I'm so angry about it I want to have screamed. I want to trash her in this essay. I want to talk about how she got a D in calculus like a moron and barely made it out of Duke, I want to talk about what spoiled, condescending whining wimps her dad and brothers were, I want to talk about how terrible she was in bed, or her hoarding habits and obnoxious fucking cats. I'm still so angry about this now because, in the moment, I said and did absolutely nothing. I just took it. If I remember correctly, we had some awkward rough sex and I dumped her two days later.

There was no talk of a sequel. We spoke once after that. In spite of her proximity, there were no backslides, no booty calls, no drunken “You Up?” texts. She met me on the corner to drop off some stuff I'd left at her place, I eventually mailed back her Netflix DVD's and that was the last I ever saw her. There was no contact whatsoever, not until a couple years later. Katie, the roommate whose bed Jane and I had sat on when there was first a spark between us, had moved in with her boyfriend Sean, who was also in my Writer's Group. One Sunday at Writer's Group, Sean let me know he had seen Jane. Apparently she and her fiance had moved into Katie and Sean's building. Jane's new fiance's name was also Nathan (that's his real name!) and I had a chuckle. But I doubled over laughing when Sean told me Jane had gained like 50 pounds.

I wanted a Hollywood Romance and I got just that: a superficial relationship full of gorgeous settings and predictable twists that was over relatively quickly. Turns out I met someone as empty as my aspirations and values at the time. While this experience was painful, the lessons from it have stayed with me. Jane wasn't the first girl with a trust fund I dated, but she was the last. A string of lower-class girls followed, then I dated a series of women without college degrees until finally meeting my wife, who is educated, level-headed, pragmatic and by the way adores my albinism and doesn't care one way or the other if the daughter we're having in April pops out albino. While I'll probably always be angry at her, I don't bear Jane any ill will. Honestly I'm happy for her because I know there's always something the doctors can do about how fat she got.

Further Reading:  Red, White and Blue