Missives From Obscurity

My Summer Vacation

What I Did This Summer

An Essay

By Joe Lopez

This summer I watched the dissolution of my marriage tear apart everything around it like a tornado sucking up the trailer park of my life, leaving behind scattered jagged debris and a toilet leaning drunkenly atop a pile of rubble that used to be the post office. But I was brave. And stoic. I thanked God that I was alive and had my health. I sought meaning and learning out of the experience and tried to be all Dr. Phil and Eckhart Tolle and Yoda about the whole ordeal and I moved in with my brother and niece into their just-off-the-golf-course suburban sanctuary. I swam at the clubhouse pool. I took long and longer bike rides on the paths through Open Spaces between nearby cities. If the green spaces between Westminster and Broomfield, Colorado can be considered exotic, then this summer I visited exotic locales. I saw more prairie dogs this summer than I have ever seen in my whole life. Rabbits, too. Road kill, too. My PTSD from the breakup snuck up on me and I had a couple of emotional outbursts. During one, I broke the chair I used with my writing desk. During another, I demolished the paper tray I had in my bedroom. But what are those losses compared to a broken heart, a broken, bleeding soul? I got melodramatic this summer.

I moped and whined about my unemployment and my broken relationship. I regressed 18 years and rediscovered the agony and the ecstasy of masturbating desperately, silently in my room behind closed doors so that the family wouldn’t know. I moped in front of the computer while I searched for jobs I didn’t want and jobs I totally wanted for which I was wholly unqualified. I discovered the joy of Facebook quizzes and soon thereafter discovered the let-down of being bored by Facebook quizzes. I watched the entire cast of Six Feet Under die and I wept openly and then moped and wore a lot of black listening to the song at the end of the final episode on repeat for hour upon hour – and I’m listening to it still.

I sought solace in yoga classes and found solace in the surrender of yin yoga, the balance of hand stands and the bare chest of the hot little stud muffin in my Thursday night classes. I thought about dating and filled out a bunch of personals profiles online but then realized there was no way in hell I was emotionally ready for putting up with other guys’ little quirks. I thought about committing suicide but couldn’t figure out which was the best method to carry it out. I thought about going back to church and finding God but ha ha ha… whatever. I applied for unemployment benefits and my spirits soared at the prospect of unemployment benefits kicking in some relief from my financial ruin, but the unemployment benefits department of Colorado had other ideas about that. They balked at paying me because I quit one job of my own volition, the job that fired me refuted my claim of being fired, I didn’t look for enough work one week, I didn’t fill out the right form on the right day during the right weather pattern, I smelled funny, I didn’t eat enough fiber, I didn’t wash with the right detergent, I drank too much caffeine, I ate too much fat, I was Mexican. I have still not received one red cent from fucking unemployment benefits. I flipped off every letter I received from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.

I moped. I drowned my sorrows in downloading hot naked pictures of men off the internet and getting lost in Angela’s angst on My So Called Life. I stayed up until 3 in the morning playing Zombie Fluxx at I-Hop with Diane and chatting with Dean online. I wrote exhaustive poems about English moors, vampires, black roses and sad clowns making pancakes for naked girls under tables in flats overlooking the Champs Elysees. I burned all the poems.

I went to the mountains and felt at one with the trees and the wind, the rabbits and the potential elk and the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. I went to the zoo and reached oneness with the wolf and the slow lori, the peacock mother and her chick, and the howler monkey scratching its butt while hanging on the fence in front of its habitat, showing its privates to the crowd. I ate red meat at barbecues like a true blue, redneck, heterosexual, patriotic American male. I grunted and got sarcastic. I shook my groove thing at Pridefest in Denver like a true blue, sequin-striped, homosexual, patriotic American male. I giggled and got sarcastic. I disciplined my self-proclaimed “angry boy” four year old nephew and garnered his nascent resentment and desire for revenge, sweet, sweet revenge against the oppressive adult regime. After three months of unemployed moping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, I finally landed a temp data entry job and now get paid $12 an hour to mope, wail and gnash my teeth in front of a computer doing soul crushing, mind numbing tedium.

Heading home on my bike one night along a lonely country road in the serene respite after the burst of a Colorado summer downpour, I hit a snake in the road. I was crushed. But not as crushed as the snake writhing in agony in the gutter. I stood over its poor body twisting and rasping against the pavement at the side of the road and thought “This is exactly the state of my life right now.”

And that’s what I did this summer.

posted by Joseph T. Lopez @ 2:17 PM