I lost my way a while back

Actually, it was way back.

I was twenty nine year old. This was around the time Brenda Holmes my almost best girlfriend of all time dumped me. Why? I don’t know why exactly.

She didn’t believe I loved her enough.

Or at all.

I mean, she used to tell me that. You don’t love me, she’d say. Of course I love you, I’d say. It was one of those deals.

I guess that’s it.

Shit. I’m supposed to remember every detail? It’s been forty something years. My memory’s kind of sketchy. If I could remember every detail of every sad luck story in my life I would’ve jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge by now.

Being a dim memory Dude is my safeguard.

Anyway, soon after she dumped me, she graduated from college and went to Europe for the post grad tour. I had no desire to go to Europe for any kind of tour. But because she went, I decided to go, too. I traveled around over there thinking I’d run into her. Didn’t happen. I should’ve come back to the U.S.A. with the end of summer. Just like all the other college kids doing their Euro Tours. They all came back and started careers.

Me, I met a German woman and married her.

This is not a photo of my German ex-wife.

This is Eva Braun, Adolf Hitler’s mistress. He married her in the Bunker as the Russians were closing in. A few hours after the wedding reception they committed suicide together. Hitler shot himself in the head and bit on a cyanide capsule. Eva opted out of the shooting but did bite the capsule. Poor thing.

You see, I don’t have a photo of my ex-wife. I don’t particularly like my ex-wife to this day. I wish I had met a girl like Eva Braun. She stood by her man. My wife, all she ever did was take, and take, and take…

I would’ve been far happier with Ava Braun.

How did it go from there?

It was a kind of gradual down hill slide. With stops along the way.

Up until then I’d been on a pretty straight course. I was in Grad School, studying Creative Writing. I could end up writing a great novel. Or I could write a half-ass novel, get my master’s degree and snag a job teaching similar dreamy-eyed lug heads at a community college. Either way, I’d be moving along a respectable groove.

Instead I married this disco dance fanatic and part time Jazzercise instructor who dreamed of becoming a prima ballerina.

Okay, so this is not my German Ex-Wife.

Like I told you, I don’t have a picture of her. I do kind of remember what she looked like.

Let me see…

She looked exactly like this German Actress!

So I married her. Who wouldn’t marry her?

You’d marry her.

Any guy I know would marry her. Shit. I even know some women who’d love to marry her…

She wanted to come to America

This was her dream. To come to America.

So we did. We got married in London. She snagged a Green Card (it was pretty easy to do in the early 80s) and we flew back to the good old U.S.A. and settled in San Diego.

Then we moved to San Francisco.

Almost immediately she hated life in America. She though Americans were flakey. For example, they’d make appointments to meet and cancel or not show up. Or if they showed up they’d be late and think it was no big deal. She couldn’t understand that. I told her that’s just the way Californians are.

Flakey, she said. We don’t act like this in Germany.

They don’t, actually. You’re late for a meeting over there you’re in deep shit.

Which is okay by me. I like to show up on time.

But that was the least of her problems. Her main problem was I didn’t have a decent job with enough money coming in to support her in the style she expected me to provide for her.

She wanted me to be a Provider.

In other words, a Workhorse.

I’m no good at being a Workhorse. If I had my choice of a horse, I’d be Mister Ed. That’s the kind of horse I’d be.

Ed never worked. He never carried anybody on his back. He mainly just hung out with Wilber and stuffed himself with the good oats and barley.

In other words, I would’ve been a smarter than average type horse…

But she had me

This German I married. She had me working all kinds of suck ass jobs just to earn enough to keep her in weißwurst braten. She loved that shit. Meanwhile, she took classes.

Here I am busting my ass fifty hours a week to support her through college.

How did this happen?

What the hell…

I’m trying to write while this woman taps back and forth across the Starbucks floor.

She her standing there in those noisy shoes?

She’s like back and forth and back and forth and so on. She can’t get her shit together. First it’s coffee. Then it’s a bagel. Then she needs a napkin. Back and forth. Here she comes again. Tapping away. I’m ready to scream.

“Will you please be quiet please with those fucking shoes!”

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah. So I marry this German and bring her back here to the Good Old U.S.A. and before you know it I’m busting my ass at various dead end jobs supporting her ass so she can go to college.

This is like I’ve fallen into a living hell.

Jesus Christ! There she goes again, tapping her heels across the floor. She’s oblivious to the noise. Or maybe she doesn’t care. She likes it that everybody is distracted by her presence.

Kind of reminds me of my German Ex-Wife.

Now what?

The Lobotomy Dude is eyeballing me.

Why is he always doing that?

Uh oh! Here he comes.

He draws the empty chair at my little table and takes a seat.

“What are you doing, man?” I ask.

I don’t even know his name. All I know he’s the Lobotomy dude. And he never even had a Lobotomy. It’s one of his fables he likes to tell.

He says, “You seem troubled.”

“I’m trying to work here.”

“You seem to be struggling through something.”

“Christ!”

“I detect a life struggle. I have a talent for detecting a deep torment in people. I could have been a Life Coach. My Mother told me so.”

“I thought you killed your mother.”

“This was before. When we were cordial. But this situation here and now is not about me. The life of the common man is often an enigma. Tell me your struggle. Perhaps I can help.”

I’m looking around for the woman with the tapping shoes. I don’t see her. Better, I don’t hear her.

I turn back to the Lobotomy Dude.

“If I tell you will you let me get back to work?”

He nods.

“I’m writing a blog post here. I’m trying to describe how my life sort of went off the rails. Long ago. Back when I was in college. I was on a pretty straight course. I had goals. I mean I had a life plan. But then….I met this woman. A German. I got married. I had to get a job. A real job type job. Just to support her dead ass. And for 5 years I was stuck. I was stuck…and I never seemed to get back on course again.”

“How long ago was this?”

“More than forty years ago.”

“And how old are you now?”

“I’ll be seventy this year.”

“It’s perfectly clear,” he says.

“What’s perfectly clear?”

“You went from A to Z without using the Alphabet.”

“Are you fucking out of your mind?”

“Don’t make this about me.”

He gets up. Very casually. And strolls back to his table.

Now I’m thinking.

I’m thinking he got it right.

I need to rewrite this blog post.

If nothing else, he gave me a title.