Failure Is an Option Read online

  When I was in my early teens, I started getting serious stomach problems. Most people have their first sexual experience then, but I had my first colonoscopy—which is not altogether not a sexual experience depending on your proclivities. Some would swoon at the idea of being probed anally. For me, looking back, I recall those years at school as being consumed by crushing anxiety. Anxiety about everything: about talking to others, about performing academically, about budding sexuality, about being short, about understanding my role in school, in life, in everything.

  And then I started to bleed from my a-hole. Classic overreaction.

  I was diagnosed with colitis, a pretty well-known disease in the pantheon of diseases. But here’s the thing: I grew to love this disease. And not that it wasn’t a seriously debilitating disease. It was. I’ll quickly sketch it out: Thirteen-year-old me would be walking to class with a group of friends and then I would suddenly be overcome with wrenching pain in my abdomen accompanied by the urgent need to shit my pants, so I would buckle over, or “take a knee.”

  Back then, there were no cell phones to pretend to take a call, so I developed a very extensive inventory of feigns, as in things I could do in the event of a colitis spasm. For instance, I would pretend to tie my shoe or drop a book. If people held up and waited, I would signal for them to go on and I would remain, frozen in a full-body seize, until the cramp would pass or I would shit my pants. Sometimes, this process was almost balletic: I would cramp up, bend over, pause for some time, then move again, only to suddenly re-cramp up moments later, and so on, all across the quad of my junior high school. It was like a game of Red Light/Green Light without anyone playing the stoplight. Because of this, I was late for biology a lot.

  But everything became clear in those moments. I found a real and singular purpose: find a bathroom. The ultimate version of this pas seul came much later in my twenties on the second floor of the Kmart at Astor Place in Manhattan. Right as I was about to get on the escalator going down, a cramp hit and I froze up, perfectly positioned about five feet in front of the top of the up escalator. As everyone walked off, I was just standing there in front of them, staring blankly, trying not to evacuate my bowels; but to them, it must have seemed like I was the second-floor greeter.

  I was so stuck and mortified that I just began waving hello to each person in an attempt to make it less curious. The face one makes when he is desperately holding in explosive diarrhea is in the general ballpark of a smile. A weird, very forced flat smile. I think it lasted a good fifteen minutes, and I greeted at least thirty or forty Kmart shoppers.

  I finally gathered myself to shuffle over to my friend Bill’s apartment, who lived relatively nearby in the East Village. And when I reached his bathroom, everything was right in the world and I was alone and at peace.

  As I see it now, colitis was not the disease, anxiety was the disease, and colitis was the cure. It was a safe harbor. And with it, I gained the power to be alone. Being alone is a seriously underrated power. An agoraphobic superhero would make a good TV series some day.

  I used to get to take long reprieves from the real world when I got bouts. I could miss school, stay at home, and be alone for long periods of time. The only enemy to my disease was remission, and when it came, I would be compelled to return to the grind and go back to school and sit in classes dreaming of some near or far-off time when my colitis would return to me, inflame my intestines, then whisk me home to the safety and security of my bedroom leading to my hallway leading to my bathroom.

  * * *

  —

  Now, with this curse comes great responsibility, and I will say that many people befallen by any number of conditions have done extraordinary things because of their disabilities and ill-health and concomitant solitude. And with them, I could share some filament, some connecting tissue, some common yearning to a more complex understanding of the core of human existence. This time alone with my disease could create space for deeper thought—to cultivate the necessary introspection that spins the dreams of reason. Like Descartes during the winter of 1619, when he sat alone in a room with just a stove and conceived analytical geometry. That could be what my colitis could do for me. I just needed time to wait for the thunderclap of inspiration. And I waited, and I went to the bathroom a lot, and I waited some more.

  Descartes is said to have had a series of three dreams during that period, dreams that served as a prophecy, and with that, his life changed. Before the dreams, he was consumed with anxiety and self-doubt, and after the dreams, his purpose was clear and his work took shape, which culminated in Discourse on the Method.

  I’m trying to remember what I dreamed about in my room when I sat there with colitis. I think it was something like this: I was on a boat, but the boat had my childhood bedroom in it, and in my room I was swaying back and forth, and then I threw up a brown, marshmallowy ball, which stuck to my hands. But my dream, unlike those of Descartes’, led to no revelation and no great work to come, just more anxiety and stomach pain. I mean, I still have colitis and still enjoy being alone, and that’s my version of analytical geometry.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Teen Years (or How I Failed Hosting a Bar Mitzvah Party)

  Teen years are frequently beset with failure, so I realize it’s a gray area for me, because by definition, teens are, on the whole, a hot mess and, as a matter of course, so was I. I have a teenage son right now, and he’s mainly an angry cur who eats Cheetos all day and regularly slams doors (not a metaphor). If I left my son home alone with his friends in our apartment for more than fours hours, all the food would be eaten, like all of it, including the dry goods; the furniture would be tossed and turned over; and at least one of the kids would have a head injury or worse. And there would be puddles of piss on the bathroom floor. And one of them would have mixed all the available liquids, including cleaning products, together in a bowl along with creams and powders and old paint to try to make a bomb.

  Teens are this grisly combination of suppressed rage, sexual confusion, vanity, and unrelenting incompetence, but there may be a redeeming sweetness there, somewhere, buried very deep. Just imagine Donald Trump but more agile. Or a turkey vulture. There is a constant war between needing affirmation and shunning affirmation.

  My first connection, and many teens’ first connections, besides with one another, was with music. So music and friends became this identity Venn diagram, and when I entered the seventh grade, music became a driving factor in how I defined myself and how I was perceived by others. I can’t put my finger on it, or how it all started, but I began to like disco. Honestly, it was not a popular choice among most of the people I knew. Like I previously mentioned, my father is a jazz fan and my mother was a ballet dancer, so she listens to primarily classical. My sister, at the time, was into folk and folk rock. Her albums collection was a lot of Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, America, Linda Ronstadt, etc. And Worcester was not a welcoming place for disco.

  I think it started because I went to visit my friend while he was at theater camp, and I met a girl whose father was the head of Casablanca Records—or a girl lied that her father was the head of Casablanca Records—and she played some records for me, like Donna Summer and “Funkytown,” and I believe we kissed. Therefore, I really liked disco.

  And disco was a slippery slope. It was a direct line to roller-skating and that was a very dangerous line to draw. Roller rinks were like Planned Parenthood. Kids who hated disco and roller disco would hang out outside roller rinks to jeer at kids who went in. So the one place young disco lovers could gather was heavily targeted by anti-disco mobs.

  The main enemy to disco was rock-and-roll fans, or burnouts. Burnouts were thirteen-year-old, pack-a-day smokers who wore denim and only listened to Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones, and maybe T. Rex. Double burnouts listened to stadium rock but also dabbled in metal, like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest. The Bruce Springsteen crowd was also squarely anti-disco, and wor
e less denim (but still quite a bit of denim) and more baseball caps. Burnouts would never wear baseball caps. Even punk was represented, but punk rockers were like the Amish. They weren’t missionary. They just hated everybody equally and kept to themselves.

  How did one manifest the disco lifestyle from ages twelve to sixteen? The pre-club and pre-cocaine-sniffing demographic of disco listeners? Mainly, buying the 45s and feathering one’s hair. Slacks were part of it, but I never really got involved in the fashion. Going full disco was an invitation to bodily harm. Worcester was no Stonewall. Antigay sentiment was rampant. I can’t even imagine what it was like growing up gay in central Massachusetts in the seventies, but I had a small taste by liking disco. “Jew fag” was a very popular thing to call me in seventh and eighth grade, and that was primarily by teachers.

  Also, I could dance. The capacity to do the disco splits was a big asset to have in the disco community, and because I inherited a little of my mother’s dance ability, I could pull off disco splits, including with roller skates on—a real advantage. And that feeling of total confidence within the sacred confines of the rink, with the colored lights flashing and “He’s the Greatest Dancer” pulsating and my pulling off a seamless disco split—down and instantly back up. Fucking heaven.

  But then came the cold blast of punishing reality leaving the rink, realizing that disco was a hermetic world, roundly hated by the outside world. They didn’t want us to roller-dance. They didn’t want us to fluidly move our bodies and feel the wind in our heavily sprayed, feathered hair. Look, the bottom line is, disco was not a masculine musical form. I don’t think disco was ever used in a war movie—a bunch of soldiers blasting “Ring My Bell” while gearing up for battle.

  The negative backlash of my pro-disco stance was pretty harsh. I was punched in the stomach at school by some pointed enemies who were radical in their animosity toward disco. This became a day-to-day issue. One particularly chubby rock supremacist would chase me around school to try and rough me up, but fortunately I was too quick to get caught. Still, it took an emotional toll. At a pizza parlor, I got cornered by two Led Zeppelin lovers. They poured the salt and pepper shakers over my head, threw my sub sandwich on the ground and stepped on it, and said, “Fuck disco.”

  Another time, my friend Nathan and I biked in the woods to smoke cigarettes, and we made the dubious choice of riding Nathan’s mom’s tandem bike. We were, unbeknownst to us, followed by a group of kids on dirt bikes who found us in a clearing sitting on a rock, smoking and listening to disco on a transistor radio. Not a great look. They destroyed the bike and the radio and beat us both up. That was a long walk home, carrying that busted-up tandem bike, but that was the price to pay for smoking to disco.

  Threats of violence notwithstanding, the silver lining was that disco dancing was a popular pastime at bar mitzvah parties, and because I was a competent dancer, I was at least good at a party. Bar mitzvah parties were also my first foray into sexual experimentation. It was like junior swinging. But because I was “disco,” negotiating these parties was treacherous. Most of the kids all attended the same parties, and, therefore, I was an easy target at each and every one. Many of those parties involved a kind of stealth blending in, mixed with a hypervigilance because you never knew when contra forces would strike and just start throwing punches.

  This strategy got more and more problematic as parties continued, culminating in a real showdown at the Bancroft ballroom late in the bar mitzvah season. It was a run-of-the-mill party, with all the usual suspects in a hotel ballroom with a DJ playing music and games. I was on the make with a girl in my class when I got word that a disco hater was waiting outside the door, so if and when I left, he was going to kill me. It was like a mob hit, except the mobsters had just finished a Hula-Hoop contest.

  There was only one exit; I quickly realized I was trapped. Melancholia set in as I realized what my disco life hath wrought. I wearily contemplated my future, never-ending struggles to live in peace with my syncopated beat and groovy bass lines. But for now, there was just a dark foreboding of a life spent pointing my finger at the sky, then down at the ground in a diagonal motion, repeated again and again, only in the shadows.

  So, after feeling too sorry for myself, the party was all but empty, and I was sitting against the wall mired in panic. I think I might have even started to cry. Disco lovers aren’t afraid to cry in fear. And then, from above, he appeared.

  He was a boy. His name was Chuck, and he had blond hair in a buzz cut that looked slightly white supremacist—he looked like a character out of a photo from the fifties, where he might have been holding a WE WON’T GO TO SCHOOL WITH NEGROES poster. He was unusually large for thirteen.

  He said he had heard what was going on and told me he would escort me out. A real My Bodyguard moment. I didn’t really know him that well, and I wasn’t sure why he was helping me, but he had made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I gathered myself and followed him out. He stopped me before the exit and said, “You go first.”

  I asked, “Why? The kid is out there.”

  He said, “You’ll see.”

  The kid who was waiting was still there, and as I walked out, he looked at me like an animal that hadn’t been fed. He started toward me, and then Chuck came out and walked right between us, almost on cue, abruptly halting the kid’s advance. Chuck looked down at the kid and said simply, “Hey.”

  The kid looked up in soul-crushing defeat. Chuck signaled with his eyes for me to walk on. I don’t think I ever felt more vindicated in my life as I walked by that sour kid who rained on my Bancroft bar mitzvah party, who knew in one instant that all that waiting was for naught. I took my time striding by, soaking in my moment. I asked Chuck why he did it, why he helped me, and he quietly said, “I like disco.”

  My own bar mitzvah party was going to be the best one of the year, for one simple reason: a disco ball. Yes, a disco ball. The sun of the disco solar system. My father, from his lighting supply store, brought one home. It by no means made up for the fact that my party was to be in the basement of my mother’s dance studio. But, like I said, I had a disco ball, and how many people have a personal disco ball? Maybe at the Neverland Ranch? Maybe the publisher of Hustler’s apartment? Maybe Halston’s yacht? Maybe Saddam Hussein’s torture room? John Travolta’s steam room? Or John Travolta’s torture room? Maybe Dennis Hopper’s van? Or Gore Vidal’s home gym? Possibly Henry Kissinger’s man cave?

  Anyway, access to party lighting was the first real perk (besides decent housing and education and a YMCA membership) of my father’s vocation. He hung it in the center of the room, turned off the lights and tried it out, and suddenly this musty basement became a musty basement splattered with constantly moving patterns of silver light. I stood and paid witness to this otherworldly display, awed by the possibilities of all my secret fantasies realized. A private disco paradise.

  My parents had made an agreement to stay upstairs during the party, and they had arranged for the DJ and some snacks and party favors. This was going to be like if Studio 54 and a Hebrew school had a baby. The DJ arrived, and he seemed a little older than the DJs at most of the other parties I had been to, but no bother—the pool of available bar mitzvah DJs in the Worcester area couldn’t be that large. He set up some albums and plugged in his equipment while some kids started to arrive.

  The small disco light in the center of this beige-painted cinder block room was spinning, and it must have looked like Al Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula was having their holiday party. The DJ started to speak, and he introduced himself to the kids and mentioned he was the afternoon DJ at 14Q, which was the local oldies station. Wait, the DJ was from 14Q? It was the station my parents listened to.

  Sinatra came on. Not kidding. “Summer Wind,” I believe. Not Earth, Wind & Fire, but “Summer Wind.” Kids were confused and milling about. “Summer Wind” played out and seamlessly transitioned into “The Best Is Yet to Come” by Tony
Bennett, with a slow, sappy intro from the DJ about my becoming a man. It was clear now my parents had hired an AM oldies DJ. Also, no party games, limbo, musical chairs, or anything, just music from the soundtrack to Show Boat. So despite the promise of the disco ball, my bar mitzvah party was more like a wedding at Mar-a-Lago than a kid’s disco party.

  I politely asked the DJ if he had anything more modern to play, and he pulled out a few albums, like Chicago and John Denver. John Denver? Playing John Denver at a bar mitzvah would be like playing the Village People at a funeral, with the key exception of one of the members of the Village People’s funeral, in which case it would be more than appropriate to play the Village People. Although it does allow for the possibilities of a “Rocky Mountain Chai” joke (chai the Hebrew symbol, not the tea). . . . But this DJ didn’t tell jokes.

  The party limped on, with kids standing around to the oldies. Chuck showed up, and I was mortified. He had saved me because of disco, and this was how I repaid him? My disco bodyguard stood there listening to Nat King Cole, looking disappointed. He did give me my favorite gift though: thirteen dollars in one-dollar bills. There was something memorably poignant about that gift. It should be the model for all gifts. I got a lot of silver pen sets and Israeli savings bonds but the thirteen dollars in ones was by far the standout.

  Kids started leaving early. Chuck left. The party ended with me and a few kids in the other room while the DJ played his tunes to the revolving spectral gleam of the disco ball alone until he packed up his gear and left quietly into the AM waves of the night. At least my parents didn’t hire a talk radio DJ, although talk radio might have been a little more festive.