That old gang of mine

Sunday, July 18, 2004

Once a month or so, the people I used to work with get together for a long lunch. We've been doing this since January or so, starting not long after the last of us was summarily dismissed in a coup d' corps orchestrated to boost the profit margin.

We were a tightly knit group. Living and working in a small town has something to do with that, as does the "us and them" mindset that's subliminally common in newsrooms. People treat journalists differently than, say, plumbers. (I suppose they also treat lawyers differently, as they certainly do cops, and probably those in some other professions.) So we sort of huddled under a giant fedora with a press card stuck in the band for mutual support against those we perceived to view us as members of the Liberal Media, always sniffing around for the opportunity to destroy someone's life with a trumped-up exposé. But I paranoically digress.

The Gang was supposed to do the lunch thing this weekend -- one of us just returned from a trip to Europe -- but for some reason we didn't. I marked the occasion by not leaving the house all weekend except to go out and call the cat.

Such self-cloistering is death on two legs to me, but it's a vicious cycle I don't seem to have the impetus to break. I can feel the agoraphobia creeping its way back into my brain, and that scares the living john henry out of me.

This is not the way it was supposed to happen. Two years ago I was secure in my job and my relationship. The job often drove me nuts and the relationship had its ups and downs, as they all do, but I more or less accepted those as products of an imperfect world and an imperfect me. I had security -- or thought I did -- and that was the most important thing.

Then my significant other left, literally overnight (I still don't know why; she didn't offer reasons and I'm afraid to ask, afraid to confront what made me unsuitable as a life partner) and eight months later I was suddenly, shockingly unemployed, with a mortgage on a house that had outgrown me the previous October.

So I did what I do well when facing a Kafkaesque scenario: nothing. The alternative, it seemed at the time, was panic, so denial was easier.

Well, okay, I didn't do nothing. Knowing I'd eventually have to sell the house -- I couldn't afford the mortgage payment on a small-town copy editor's salary and I certainly didn't need four bedrooms -- I started to erase some of the effects of three teenagers in the house that had gone unchecked when my s.o. and I were exhausted from our 60-hour work weeks. (I can't pin it all on her kids. The five-foot-tall weeds in the back yard probably weren't their doing, nor was the garage that seemed a candidate for federal disaster aid, a result of the rule that goes something like, "After five years in a new home, approximately half of your stuff will still be in boxes.")

And I got the aforementioned cat. Or, she got me. She appeared at the front door one morning, mewling as if she'd staked a territorial claim. (Hers was not the pathetic meow of a homeless feline, but rather one that dared me to resist it.) Against my better judgement, I set out a bowl of milk -- and that, as they say, was that. I didn't think I was a cat person, but Lucy -- Lucille Esmerelda McGillicuddy -- changed my mind. I adore her, and I think it's mutual.

I talk to Lucy a lot. She's readily available when she's not outside stalking birds and field mice and she doesn't seem to mind listening to such inane questions as "You hungry?" and "Where you been?" Cats are always hungry -- whether they eat what you feed them's another story -- and they never tell you where they've been. I think they take an oath on that one at one of their 11 p.m. meetings.

Lucy talks a lot to me, too. I've gotten to the point where I can differentiate between the "Rrrow?" that goes up at the end ("You gonna scratch under my chin?") and the sustained-tone "Rrowwww?" ("Is it time to eat?" or "I know I came in through the cat door, but now I want out through the front door.")

But y'know, it really isn't the same.

The Gang was my lifeline during those eight months. When I was the first to go in the coup, being removed from the daily camaraderie felt as if a vital organ had been cut out of me, and I missed them more than usual this weekend. I haven't been getting out much lately -- maybe I still haven't quite fully recovered from the Wellbutrin episode -- and it's getting a lot easier to just stay home, fuck around on the internet and pretend to work on the model for a business I'm thinking of starting.

Truth is, it feels as if I'm receding back into the agoraphobic abyss I clawed my way out of years ago when my dad died and something in my head said, "Well, dude, you're on your own now. What's it gonna be?"

The difference is, I had then at the ready a roommate who stood on two legs and spoke more or less complete English sentences. My sister and brother-in-law lived about three miles away, and I had a network of friends in the same city. I'm not the kind of self-sustaining personality who's cut out to live alone, feline roomie notwithstanding. I'm also not the kind of person who calls friends out of the blue just to talk -- even if it's not really out of the blue or just to talk. And instant message beeps aren't quite cutting it anymore.

I'd kill to hear a human voice right now.

© Copyright 2004 Penguin on the Telly. Last update: 7/27/2004; 8:46:01 PM. This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.