The Sportin' Life

by Nancy Frederick

  At first Violet was sweet and understanding, thinking I was ill. She’d come in from school and climb into bed with me for a hug and some cuddling. And although her presence was comforting, the love I felt for her reminded me of loving Kevin and brought back the pain of heartbreak. So instead of talking and playing with her, we watched TV together, because while doing that I could space out and remain numb to all genuine interaction. Eventually Violet grew disgusted with me. One day she tried to cajole me out of the bed (by then it was clear I was not ill—even an invalid like Elizabeth Barrett Browning had recovered more speedily). My only reply to her requests for a trip to the park, the market, anywhere, was that the way I felt, if we went outside, I wouldn’t care if I got hit by a truck.

  “Mommy,” she replied cynically, “If you want to get hit by a truck, it sure isn’t going to happen in here.” Then she glared at me.

  Here I was blessed with a little child who had better sense than I did as an adult, but even that insight did me no good. My muscles worked but my will to move them had atrophied. Now I look back and see that I should have risen from the bed and gone out to play with my daughter. I should have reclaimed my life and shared it with the child I truly loved who loved me as well instead of wishing for a surgeon who would remove my heart and all emotion with it. But I was weak and foolish and made poor choices that served me badly.

  Eventually my alimony ran out. Had it not been for that, I might still be buried in that room and that bed, with the sheets and my life growing moldy all around me. Money. I needed money and had to make a living, because it was clear that child support was not enough to pay all my expenses. The only problem was that I hadn’t a clue about what to do, what to be when I grew up. Rich, I wanted to be rich, or failing that, I wanted a job as wife of rich man, something I felt equipped to do even though it was clear how bad an idea it is to merge your own life so totally with that of another human being that you have to depend on him for all sustenance. That is too great a burden to put on love, because if you lose your love, you lose your livelihood as well. It was easy to see that independence had a lot more to recommend it than being an adult dependent, but how could I turn my life around and make my fortune and my way in the world? I had done a few part time things for creative fulfillment, but had never earned a living.

  I prepared to find a suitable course of action, but was halted at my closet. All my clothes were too tight. I had gained twenty pounds during my year of mourning. Actually it was lucky that I hadn’t developed diabetes. In those days if someone had pumped my stomach and analyzed the contents they would have certified me as the one and only true sugar plum fairy. Now it’s easy to look back and see it as comical, but then it felt like a tragedy, like I was trying to stay erect with nothing but quicksand beneath my feet.

  I needed new clothes to enter the work force but there was no money to pay for them. Just like in the Cole Porter song, bad times had barred me from Saks. That was written before the birth of Bloomingdales, I guess, and I was barred there too. How awful not to be able just to go out and buy whatever I wanted as I had all my life. And with that admission came the realization that I was a silly, spoiled woman, a disappointment on all fronts, a non-person.

  Eventually I got some clothes that were cheap but adequate for doing the only thing that anyone would hire me to do—type and answer phones. Experiencing the nine to five world only confirmed my suspicions about it—it sucks. What does it matter if you’re smart or capable or talented? The working world is structured to ignore talent and potential. Instead they want you to have experience pushing a red button, and they will hire you to push that same red button for seven hours a day. What does it matter that the act of button pushing is largely meaningless and that it chills your very soul?

  I worked at a series of temporary job that paid appallingly little. For seven hours I took orders from people far less capable and intelligent than myself, working mostly on projects of complete insignificance. My day to day life was worse than any nightmare I had ever experienced. How could real life be so completely devoid of meaning and nourishment?

  Each day I would trudge to work, knowing that it was going to be another dismal seven hours of uninteresting, meaningless labor. All I could think was that for boredom like this, they should pay better. Soon, by observing the people in more elevated positions, I discovered that they were no more enthralled than I was. Everybody was just working to get through to the weekend. Oh, there was the occasional lucky slob who liked what he was doing, someone who had managed successfully to merge his being with the routine tasks he completed daily, or someone whose need for recognition propelled him to an executive level and by being there got ego food. “I have a secretary, therefore I am,” seemed the executive credo.

  I felt stale and sour and overwhelmed by everything that seemed like a tidal wave of negative experiences designed to drown me, or worse to drown my spirit while requiring me to remain inside my body as a prisoner of the work force. I had my quota of widgets to produce, whether my heart was in it or not. It didn’t occur to me that this is what grown ups do. Nobody had ever taken me aside to say that every moment of life wasn’t meant to produce happiness or even fulfillment. Sometimes you’re just cleaning a toilet and when it’s clean there is indeed satisfaction in that although no violins may play in the background. Somehow I clung to the notion that I was entitled to be fulfilled, that life should be not just fun but rewarding on another level, that there should be a sense that my time was going toward something which to me had some intrinsic value.

  Even though I worked all the time, there was never any money. What I earned barely sustained me and was not nearly enough to provide fun or entertainment. Once a week if we were lucky, Violet and I would go out. That meant a trip to Napoli Pizza for dinner. Violet was delighted to dine on pizza with pepperoni, but I felt like more of a failure than the women on welfare. My expectations of life were simply too high to be met by my reality, and I had no clue about how to elevate reality to meet my standards. I was trapped. Surely there was something more, but even observing the people who were doing something more, I recognized that their lives and sources of livelihood were meaningless to me and often to them. Even so, I would have been willing to sell out, only nobody was buying.

  Once I had a long term assignment at a foreign bank. That was enjoyable because the people employed there had a terrific work ethic. They liked to work long and hard, not just for the money, but for the experience of the labor itself. Their cheer and high spirits were catching and I found myself enjoying being buried in the letters of credit department. The other part of the story was that the red button philosophy had escaped them. Once the boss noticed that I was smart, he reassigned me from the menial task they hired me to do to something that required thought and skill. And although the work wasn’t hard and had its aura of routine, it was a relief from the meaninglessness in which I usually was immersed.

  Before it was time for me to leave, the Vice President called me into his office and offered me a job paying a salary which at that point sounded like a fortune. And although I had always been interested in more creative endeavors, I decided to say yes. If this was selling out, I would line up to sign up. There was one formality—a visit to the personnel director, who turned out to be the typical red button type. What? Pay me, a mere temp who earned a pittance the princely sum offered? That was out of the question. It didn’t matter that I had a degree or had been doing the work of someone who made twice that. No. She informed me that the Vice President had no right to make that offer, and yes I could have the job, but not at that salary.

  Then I realized that even Vice Presidents had no power. If that were the case, and it was clear that it was, I knew there was no place for me in such an environment. What was the old joke? I’d rather have nothing than settle for less. There had to be another way. When I declined his offer and told him why, he asked me out, but I had a policy of not dating people at work, and so far there hadn’t been anyone attra
ctive or tempting enough to seduce me into changing the rule.

  Oh, I had dates here and there—sometimes two or three with the same guy, but one of us would lose interest and we’d drift away before any real bonds were forged. Once I tumbled into bed with a friend, thinking it would be pleasant and good for both of us, and it would be nice to make love again after so long a spell of abstinence. Only it didn’t work. I was as numb emotionally and sexually as a patient under anesthesia. Instead of being alarmed or frightened by my lack of ardor, I was relieved. No emotion could take me prisoner if I felt no emotion.

  I stumbled along like that, day after miserable, dismal day, no hope, no pleasure, no peace, no redemption, and three years passed. I worked at dozens of places, occasionally receiving job offers, considering the offers, trying to take the offers, but not actually settling in anywhere. It seemed that I couldn’t sell out to save my soul.

  I knew that my destiny was out there, like a free floating phantasm, and somehow I needed to connect with it, but how? What was my destiny, and how could I circumvent the natural flow of time and enter the future, leaving the present to merge unlived with the past? I sought counsel from a number of professionals. First I went to Mr. Mason, the old man who ran the astrology book shop on Lexington. He did my chart and Kevin’s. “He hates women, he hated his mother,” said Mr. Mason about Kevin. How amazing, I thought, when Kevin had always spoken of his mother with such affection and respect. Surely Mr. Mason must be exaggerating. Then he looked at my chart and gave me lots of advice. I should work for myself, running a business that combines creativity and practicality, and then there would be a lot of money. Just have confidence. And consider moving to California.

  That was an exciting experience. Astrology was great. I learned a lot and was enthused about the bright future available to me, but was unclear about how to leap into that future and bypass the present. So I went to a number of psychics. Most of them told me the same thing—that I would make my fortune in my own business, but no one knew what kind of a business; they just saw lots of creative people around me.

  Finally I found a wonderful trance medium who helped me learn more about my reality and my future. I would travel and meet many people. Find my rock and develop it. What did that mean? I puzzled over this advice day after day.

  One day, while mulling over the advice yet another time, and walking along Fifth Avenue on my way home from work, I bumped into Sharon. I hadn’t seen her in years, not since before Kevin broke my heart and I retreated from life. “Liana,” she squealed, and crushed me in a hug. “I can’t believe it’s you!”

  We began to talk about everything. Sharon was still working at the mineral store and she insisted I come back with her until seven when she closed the store. Since Violet was going to be with her father that evening, I was free and went along. The store was quiet and Sharon had time to show me around, to explain the energies of the different rocks and to show off the few bits of jewelry they had featuring raw stones. I admired them all, and Sharon mentioned that they were beginning to sell, but the problem was that their clientele was so specialized.

  Then I began to think. What if she and I became partners? What if we took some jewelry made of raw stones from various artists on consignment and tried to sell them at the many crafts shows they have all around the city? She loved the idea. She had all the sources and was sure we could do it at very little cost initially to ourselves. “Here you go, Liana, keep this as a source for inspiration,” and with that comment, she handed me a chunk of amethyst like a small mountain range.

  “I can’t just take this—it must be expensive.” But Sharon insisted, and when the amethyst was in my hand, I felt calm an soothed, and my mind whirled with thought. Later we went back to my place, where we talked, made plans to get a list of all the shows and where Sharon made calls to all the artists who might want to participate. We also decided to carry some rocks, like my mountain range, in case people responded as enthusiastically to them as I had.

  It worked. Every weekend there was some show or other and Sharon and I went to them all. People loved the stones, whether as jewelry or sources of energy and inspiration. We made money and expanded our line. The shows were great, but what we really wanted was a gallery of our own, where we could sell the stones, and perhaps other hand made things. We were going to call it the Heart In Hand Gallery. Gradually we had the capital we needed, and with an additional loan from Sharon’s wealthy mother, we opened our shop in a little hole in the wall on Amsterdam Avenue.

  We didn’t get rich, but we didn’t fold either, and each of us made enough money to quit our jobs and run the gallery full time. It was a living and it was fun. A total of five years had passed since my separation, and I had gone through the jaws of hell and was coming out intact on the other side. My life was nothing like the domestic picture I’d always envisioned, but it was once again livable.

  One evening, my stepbrother Steve called me from Los Angeles. Steve had been my best friend all through grammar school, and it was because we were always together that my mother met his father and were married. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world for my best pal to turn into my brother. Some people are just inherent kinfolk, whether or not you’re actually related.

  In fact, I gave Steve his nickname, Ace. By junior high he had developed into a star athlete, always winning every sports competition he entered. One day, after coming in first in six different events at our sportsathon, and bragging that they were easy aces, I started calling him Ace, just to tease him. He didn’t mind and everybody else loved it. Steve became Ace after that, and even our parents stopped calling him Steve. The best thing of all was the effect his nickname had on his teachers. Like some kind of subliminal message, the nickname prompted them always to give him A’s on his report card. He was smart enough to earn the grades, but even when he goofed off, he still aced everything. In sports his reputation grew such that his competition was nervous, and so even on off days, he aced them out.

  Ace had been in L.A. for three years, and now he was quite successful. Every cent he made he invested. He would gladly have supported me during my sluggard years, but luckily for both of us, I didn’t let him. Now we each had the beginnings of our own success, but Ace was miserable on another score. An ex-beauty queen had shafted him emotionally and he felt a little worn and weary of the dating wars. Couldn’t I come out there for a visit?

  I decided to go. I hadn’t had a vacation since divorcing and seeing Ace and California seemed like a wonderful idea. Sharon could manage without me for a while. Besides, I remembered what old Mr. Mason had told me when reading my horoscope—that I should go to California.

  I didn’t know what the future had in store for me, but it was no longer confusing or frightening. I had survived my crises and was in charge of my life for the first time ever. There was satisfaction in working, even if sometimes the work included menial tasks. It was better to be a grownup than a child and far better to be independent than dependent financially. Ms. Magazine was right.

  Ace

  Light Weights

  It was such a relief when Liana said that she would come and visit me. Quite some time had passed since we were together for more than a day or so, and it would be good to spend time with someone I love and trust—someone from home. Sometimes I think that coming to California was a mistake. Yes, I make a lot of money here, and yet it is a beautiful place. It’s fun to help people look their best and I enjoy the physical nature of my life and work. But I just don’t feel nourished. The people seem sweet and friendly, but there is this lack of intimacy, perhaps because I’ve been here such a short time, I don’t know, but I never really feel that we’re connecting.

  After I met Tawny it seemed that things were changing. We got to talking in the gym and eventually I agreed to help her train, just as a gesture of friendship, not for any money. Maybe that was my mistake. Girls like Tawny just naturally attract guys who do things for them, whether they deserve it or not. It didn�
�t matter to me that she was a gorgeous blonde, former beauty queen, with a great body, or that she drove a 650SL. She was just so sweet and appealing. She’d smile at me and the freckles on her nose would scrunch up and her blue eyes would twinkle. She’d shrug or grin or bounce and give off such sweet little girl energy that it was hard not to want to take care of her.

  I had grown weary of the women I train. They are insecure and so in need of reinforcement about their self worth that I always have to give them an extra boost of my own energy. After a day of being complimentary and supportive I felt like collapsing in a heap in front of the TV. It made no sense. They always want me to sleep with them, and it’s never because they find me attractive or sexy. They don’t even notice me really, because they are so wrapped up in themselves that they expect sex as just another part of the workout. Their bodies are in shape, they have untold stores of energy, and they want to have sex in front of a mirror in their private workout rooms so that they can admire their looks in motion, as if in rehearsal for the ultimate sex act with someone important whom they want to dazzle. At first I was flattered and impressed to have these gorgeous women throwing themselves at me, and I enjoyed racking up a string of conquests. But then it began to leach out my energy, the way a wrong combination of vitamins can deplete your system instead of enriching it. Ultimately I could see that to them I was just part of the hired help, performing another service, no more personal than a window washing or tire rotation.