Even so, I’m not using it. I’m stubborn. I may as well wear a sign around my neck that says I’m useless.
Putting it in the back of my closet, I bury it along with the letter behind a stack of magazines and a pile of shoes. And when I can no longer see it the relief vanishes into thin air and all that remains is embarrassment. It jabs at me. Taunts me. And I don’t know where it came from because it’s a new kind of embarrassment. A branch that grows on the embarrassment tree, but not a limb I thought I’d find myself climbing on. It feels shaky and thin, too small in diameter to hold my weight. It’s embarrassment tied to manliness and virility. Embarrassment tied to attraction and sexual prowess. It’s the realization that men with health issues, men that need things like canes to function, especially at my age, aren’t desirable and I feel like I’ve just lost something else to this disease. I feel like I’ve lost the ability to attract a partner, if and when I’m ever ready for that again.
I know when Faith used the word attractive she wasn’t being condescending. But maybe it’s the fact that she’s an attractive woman, who used the word attractive in her note, that set off the avalanche of epiphanies leading me down the road of imagined lonely, celibate, lifelong bachelor. I know she meant nothing by it. It’s just that sometimes a single word spurs thought. And thought can take the positive route when it comes to the fork in the road, or it can take the negative.
Lately, my thoughts always take a hard left and go negative.
Sometimes I’m irrational, I know I am, but even irrational thought feels very, very real when you’re in the middle of shit.
And smack dab in the middle of shit is exactly where I am.
Shit.
Uneventful and normal, I want to be that guy
present
The kids and I took a walk to the beach after dinner. Faith was standing on her milk crate giving away hugs again. Fear for her was still dominant when I noticed her. Regret was a close second.
Kira got her hug.
The rest of us didn’t.
Faith and I haven’t talked since the cane incident last week. I have trouble looking at her because I know how she sees me. I’m the guy who falls on the stairs and injures himself.
I don’t want to be my MS.
I don’t want to be my symptoms.
I don’t want to be my limitations.
I don’t want to be my pain.
I don’t want to be my embarrassment.
I just want to be the guy who walks up the stairs, and no one thinks anything about it because it’s uneventful and normal.
That’s who I want to be.
Fuck the fa?ade
past
I always wanted the title of vice president before I turned thirty. Titles are important, they signify ascent. And with ascension comes power.
It’s so close now I can taste it. My killer instinct is back. I struggled to keep my shit together the year after Rory was born, but I’m back with a vengeance and determined not to let anyone or anything derail my dream.
The vice president of Marshall Industries is scheduled to retire in three months, and interviews and scouting have begun for his replacement. He’s an old codger whose time came and went a decade ago. For the past few years, I’ve done everything I could to make him look good while still taking credit for the accomplishments simultaneously. That’s quite a task when you’re performing as the conductor and the symphony, and you need the audience to be attentive and take notice of both. The audience noticed.
The president, Loren Buckingham, is a powerful man. He oversees Marshall Industries from his office hundreds of miles away in Seattle. No one ever interacts with him in person, unless they’re summoned to him.
I was summoned last month.
He’s twenty years my senior. Handsome in that dignified way that only excessive money buys and fosters. The glint in his eyes screamed I could buy and sell you, and that's dead sexy to me. Shaking his hand turned me on more than anything I’ve ever experienced in my life. The authority and command in his touch was a lethal transfer of voltage, erotic as hell.
The interview went well.
Dinner afterward went even better.
I returned home confident I’d made it to the next round.
The next round is here.
Seamus wished me luck this afternoon when I left for the airport.
I won’t need it. I’ve got this. This is what I excel at. Closing deals.
Mr. Buckingham’s personal driver picks me up at the airport in a blacked out SUV. When we miss the exit for his office downtown, I inquire.