Times are a changing June 2, 1985

 

 Dear Suzanne:

Finally, the mouth of May has gone, and I’ve survived for another year.

Freud called such stuff “Anniversary Syndrome,” and claims we make things happen on specific dates, corresponding to important dates of the past.

I’ve always associated May with disasters. A cheap analysis might associate this with my birthday and a desire to punish myself or to crawl back into my mother’s womb.

I find these explanations unhelpful.

I recall May disasters going back to when I was very young. Some clearly self-induced like the time Hank and I got into an argument in Middletown, New York, and he left me there to make my way home on my own.

Or the time I forgot to fill out specific forms for car insurance and all hell broke loose – my license revoked, and then my registration. It took me the whole month to get it right, and because the company stopped accepting policies in New Jersey due to some change of law, and I had to scramble to get another provider – naturally at a higher cost.

Another year, a friend of my died of an overdose in my room in the rooming house in Montclair. I was still on probation at the time. The cops wanted to charge me with murder.

This year it was family court, my ex-wife and child support payments to welfare. Although it eventually resolved itself in my favor, for a time I thought my ex-wife might go to jail for welfare fraud and my daughter to foster home.

Pauly hasn’t helped matters. He’s up and down like a yoyo with his new love. When he’s down, he can’t stop telling me about her, when he’s up, he doesn’t want to know me.

For a time, I found myself working three part time jobs, leaving me almost no time to write. And the writing I’ve managed looks like shit, spurring on my fear of failure.

As if that wasn’t enough, I woke up one day to find my eyes crusted over and when I managed to pry them open, the whites of my eyes had turned bloody red. My eyes itched like crazy.  Pink eye.

I couldn’t work. I couldn’t buy food.

Pauly went to the store for me, gingerly taking my money, but would not do it again once he discovered how contagious pink eye is. Instead, he left a pair of sunglasses on my door step and told me to go to the store for myself.

It gave me a slight insight into how stigmatized AIDS victims are.

It took a week to recover. But the week off made me realize I’ve been working too much. I dropped one of my jobs and took more steady work at one of the others.

The next issue of Scrap Paper Review goes to print tomorrow morning. It’s going to be our Bible issue.

This has been a tough year overall. Full of change, passing of time, things lost forever. The people who occupy the apartments above me are moving. These are people who have haunted these buildings since the 1950s, and their leaving signifies a significant change in the neighborhood. I almost hear fate whispering in my ear that I should leave, too. I just don’t know where I would go.

Even at work in Willowbrook my long-time friend, Dan, quit without notice and disappeared. His merry gang of followers are on mall management’s hit list, and I expect they will be fired, maybe as soon as today.

Closer to home, my friend, Mary Ann, picked up and left for the Midwest. I’ve known her since Kindergarten, and she has been my closest confidant for years. Her daughter calls me “Pal” instead of my name.

Worse still is the fact that Pauly said he is also moving out, which will leave me friendless in this place again. In some ways, he’s already left – at least in a philosophical way) as he seems to think life has turned bad for him, definitely bad for him and the girl he claims to love. He seems to be going through withdrawal and spends a large part of his time searching for the phone numbers of women who once – in their initial attraction to him – offered him attentions. He seems to be trying to “get even” with Jessica, who he once called the woman of his dreams.

As bleak as all this seems, I actually have high hopes for the future. I’m planning to go back and finish college – part time, anyway, perhaps steer my career towards teaching. My college friend, Teri Mates is steading at Passaic County Community College. Maybe I can, too.

I got your last letter, but this is the first chance I’ve had to respond. I’m glad you have finally met someone with whom you can share time and experiences. If love comes out of it, then you have everything. Enjoy yourself, keep true to yourself. You are an important person in my life, and I refuse to lose people like you.

 

 

Yours always

Al Sullivan

 

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