I opened the rejection letter without thinking.

I wrote the play over a year ago but the letter's contents were much older, drafted by some intern or artistic associate back when dinosaurs like Mac Wellman roamed the earth. I read the apology that came with compliments as if it were addressed to a stranger who shares my name. Indeed, so much had happened since I'd sent it - children conceived and born, friends and relatives given death sentences that are still playing out, cities lived in, jobs lost and found, careers bent unalterably - the letter was truly sent to someone else: a man who looked like me but would hardly be remembered but for photographs. Who was this playwright? And what was this play that did "not fit the needs of the theatre at this time"? Hmmm. I put the letter aside.

The baby was crying.

I knew it was wrong but I did it anyway.

Searched her up at midnight wondering what she was doing.

Was it boredom? Exhaustion?

Once I went out of my way to avoid seeing her in elevators and lobbies of a building we both worked in ( — to no avail really as I still ran into her on the streets, as the help bar, elsewhere — ) and now I was looking for seeds of her life to satisfy a hunger for something that could never be.

I popped the name in the search bar and began sifting.

Instagram. Facebook. Public records. An address in a part of the city I knew and once lived in.

That’s how I found myself in the dark, creeping into a stairwell at midnight to look at a mailbox where I saw her hand in the way an address was handwritten into a mailbox card.

40 was the street number.

The distinctive long horizontal line in the 4 gave me a little rush that I recognized when I got her appointment reminders 48 hours ahead of time.

How pathetic. 57 and standing in the shadows for what?

Part of me doesn’t really want to know, afraid to understand just how big the hole in my life may really be.

The other part knows and is filled with self-loathing.

It is surprising how much regret there is over what I didn’t do and who I never became — a silent rejection of who I am now.

Worse, in the moment, I imagine what would really come of it if she came down those stairs or somehow knew what was happening?

Fear would fill her eyes. Destruction of all that I have and am would likely follow for me

It is wrong. And I know it. But I do it anyway.

What a fool I am. What a fool.

I don’t know what I had in mind so long ago.

But now we’re here and I’m angry about it.

All the therapy and self-help have not kept us from getting fat and resentful.

It has not stopped her from sounding like a nag with the kids and sleeping on the couch in anger.

It’s done very little to deter me from surliness when I’m stressed and writing things like this in the morning.

I’m disappointed in myself for even thinking these things.

I dreamt of my ex-wife last night.

I only remember bits of it.

Her voice doing its thing.

Her strange apartment on 5th and California. An odd manila box with childish but expressively powerful art on the walls.

I was there with a friend who I was trying to impress? (I’m not sure.) I wore an English mod-style jacket that in real life I’d bought with her at a second hand store on Clement in 1998 but haven’t seen in my closet since 2001. (Did I sell it? Did I throw it away? Did I lend it out or give it back to the second hand economy?)

In the midst of the dream I felt an urge to make love to her. Then she twisted upward as she demonstrated something and her shirt (which was already too small) rose up and I saw a few wild black hairs against her soft white flesh.

And I remembered the hair of her body - on the small of her back - and how much it turned me off when we made love so long ago, but how I made love anyway because I was ashamed to feel that way and had to prove I wasn’t.

I remembered how I used to ask myself — am I really this shallow and venal?

That was how I felt in the dream, too.

And nonetheless I felt the intoxication that drew me to her from the start — the idiosyncratic and striking beauty of her strange and fantastical soul.

Overheard on the train 10 years ago.

GUY: I think I should have kids. I think that's what I need. It'll calm me down, you know? I'll be less frustrated and angry, cuz I'll just have kids and I'll know what's important so it'll all be obvious.

I wonder if he ever did it.

When you think about the things that characterize the greatness of a civilization, what do you think of?

Among the various items most people name off — books, art, music, political institutions, leaders who embody social/political/economic movements — buildings are likely be high on the ladder. After all, when we think about past civilizations, we often think about the structures those societies erected.

Some still stand in defiance of time and history — the Pyramids of Gaza, the Acropolis, the Coliseum, the castles and cathedrals of the middle ages, the estates of the Loire Valley.

Others stand only as legends from the past — the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Great Library at Alexandria — but nonetheless loom large in our imaginations.

Over the past century, that greatness has been represented by a very specific type of building, one that could have only been built out of the fires of the industrial revolution: the skyscraper.

Yet these towering paeans to our culture and civilization have become so common to our skylines that we often walk past them, ride in their elevators, look out (and down) from their windows, and generally take them for granted.

”Skyscrapers: A History of the World’s Most Extraordinary Buildings” by Judith Dupre is a beautiful attempt to get us to look up and see the greatest of these giants stretching up toward the sky for what they are: Living artifacts of our social/political/economic organizations, technological advancements, and statements about who we are and aspire to be.

One of the book’s earliest profiles — Ulm Cathedral — gives a strong framework for seeing how deeply these structures and their construction represent the world that they are built in, for and by. Started in 1377, Ulm represents a spiritual view of the universe that took half a millennium to build. Yet the cornerstone was not laid by an official of the church, but by the economic leader of the community, the mayor. It took long term planning and hundreds of crafts people, construction laborers, and what today we’d call engineers to complete. Even the cultural idea of time is baked into this structure: After finishing the choir, the stones were allowed to settle for 50 years before more was done. That means the people who put those stones down did so knowing they would not live to see the next phase of construction — and that it would be their children or grandchildren who’d get it done.

Today, these structures are as likely to be time capsule portraits for who we are as they are to represent various hypotheses for how we should live in the future. Interestingly, many of these ideas about living, working, playing, and shopping all co-existing — and wrought in steel, concrete, glass, and high-tech materials — were created on assumptions about the world that have been called into question by 6 foot social distancing requirements. Nonetheless, many more ideas on sustainability and efficiency are here to stay. For example, the material innovations that diffuse the light and heat of the desert for the Burj Al Arab in Dubai clearly offers ideas that will live on in the next generation of structures.

”Skyscrapers” re-awakens the awe they once inspired in everyone (and still do in kids) through brief case studies in the history of tallness. Along the way, it argues that what we build — the kind of technology we architect into our buildings, how we build and plan our structures, and who builds them (from the owner to the laborer) — is one of the most definitive statements a civilization can make about itself.

I know the next time I ride to the top of a tower, it will be with more awe and wonder about what I’m really inside than ever before.

I don’t know if it’s true.

But I’m told I’m smiling more.

Showing teeth.

Is it that I’ve changed jobs from one where I felt untrusted and unseen to one where the place at the wheel is clear and the people I work with lean in with me to pull in the same direction together?

Or is it that my sister’s issues are so crazy big that it gives me the gift of perspective on everything else?

Then again, it could be the little translucent Buddha I lost at the Hotel Intercontinental, that concrete place of squeaking doors and the neighbor who i overheard weeping the hallway at 3 am?

Who knows?

But I will say it’s hard to be unhappy when you kayak with dolphins on a Sunday morning and learn that at 57 you still have time to discover the ecstasy of attempting to stand on a 9 foot foam board that is riding the ocean surf that rolls with the gravity of the universe at large.

So, yeah, maybe I don’ t just look happier. Maybe I am.

She used to think the future was so far away — a distant dream that was always disappearing into the horizon.

But it was always right there, unfolding in the moment before her in every choice she made.

Still, she never took her eyes off that vanishing point in the distance, so she didn’t see it in front of her happening.

She didn’t understand that every decision was not a step not closer to a rainbow’s end but a step deeper into what and who she already was.

It was a surprise to her to suddenly be told that the horizon would be unreachable and then to look down and see she was enveloped not in a flower, but a coiling thing of her own making.

A play in two acts.

Act 1.
Before the Pandemic: A termination session in person, in a therapist’s office.

The client (a man) talks to the therapist (a woman) about the excitement he is anticipating on a new life he is embarking on. He is confident. She is cold. He is saying goodbye. She is skeptical that he has faced his demons. She reveals that like him, she is an alcoholic.

Act 2.
12 months into the Pandemic: A teletherapy session.

We see their faces on a screen, but also the places they really live in. He does not use a screensaver and his world is neat and put together. She uses a screen background of her old office, but the real room behind her is a shambles. The vaccines are still not widely distributed, but hope is on the horizon. He is broken, and desperate for connection and met not with the real connection he is hoping for, but “unconditional positive regard.”

E is over at the house babysitting. But she’s come with her own kid, a young toddler in diapers with a messy head of blonde hair.

I’ve made a card for her to say thank you for all she’s done with $5 in it. It sits on a silver tray near the door.

We’re in some kind of big apartment that you have to get to by climbing a narrow flight of stairs. It reminds me of the 86th Street Theatre Lab.

Heather is there and oblivious to the card, to the awkwardness of E being in the apartment with us. At one point we are all talking and I turn to E,. She is somehow lounging back in a black bikini bathing suit. But no one seems to notice this. Not even E who just talks like there is nothing unusual. She feels cold, yet tuned in. I think she knows I want to talk to her but she is ignoring me. I feel stupid for wanting to give her a card. Stupid that I feel I need to.

Heather tells me I need to run an errand. I put on my new Taft shoes that have flowers on them. They are like Oscar Wilde’s missing footwear. I leave and I’m in a neighborhood lined with Beaux Arts houses and hedges. It’s very French. Then suddenly I’m on a ski lift type transport taking me along a side boulevard.

People walk beneath me and the sidewalk is busy. A woman in a long dress flashes her underwear as she adjusts something under her skirt waist. She looks around to see if anyone has noticed, but it’s all normal and she walks on: Nothing to see here. Or at least that’s what everyone seems to be pretending.

Someone calls to me from the ground below my ski lift. “Hey Tooey, I need some fashion advice,” I hear. I get off the transom. The man who’s called me is handsome but old. He looks like he has plenty of money from the ski vest he is wearing, his wraparound sunglasses, his capped teeth. He says something about my clothes and I look down at my Taft Shoes. I’m wearing them with a running suit. I tell him I’m not Tooey and don’t know anything about fashion.

Then I’m walking toward my house/apartment and I take a wrong turn and as I correct my path in the drive, I see bored kids in the windows of the house.

I go up the stairs to my apartment and E is still there. She is getting her stuff to go. I still haven’t given her the card which sits like a bomb on the tray.

I go into another room that seems to be used to hold coats for a party. There’s a European style restaurant urinal there and I use it.

Then I go back out to where E and Heather are, still talking.

I wish I could write a poem that shows everyone what a great thing my life is.

A poem that transforms hearts and strikes minds silent with truth and love.

Sometimes I think a photo will do it.

Sometimes I think it will require a whole novel or movie.

Then I realize: Its not always others’ lives I’m seeking to renew: It’s mine.

The mother of pearl sky unrolled from the sea to the mountains.

The dog barked at the thunder and flashes.

The kids ran in excited circles in the backyard and pointed when the red sky turned blue with streaks of lightning.

We waited for the lollipop sized raindrops to fall in warm splashes across our faces.

How long does it take to know you’re home?

Two years of struggling to fit?

One project?

The right AA sponsor?

How long does it take to know you’ve made the right decision to uproot the family, shift careers, change teams, and try something new?

How many therapists?

How many couple’s counseling sessions?

How many laughless nights?

How many deep talks?

How many layoffs?

How many sleepless midnights and early mornings?

How many walks on the beach?

How long is long enough?

Jay Leno, the former Tonight Show host, called to complain about the jokes we didn’t like.

My boss — and friend — who’d been laid off from work was having a birthday and wanted to know where I was.

Heather told me she was unhappy about how self-centered I am.

My kids are sick.

I have a cold.

There was no AA for me because I have a cold.

The executives don’t know which way is up.

We cancelled the couples counselor.

The dog has a cyst on her head.

The internet is slow at all the wrong times.

My edit didn’t work.

My friends all want to leave their good jobs.

I still indulge in the bad habit.

Being close to Heather seems like it’s not an option.

Mom bought a car for my sister who doesn’t have her shit together.

When I calculate our $$ my wife tells me, yeah, but we don’t own a house.

Honestly, I can’t wait to go to sleep when no one will ask anything of me. And even if they could, I’d be asleep.

I feel like a huge failure in every department.

It is definitely raining. And the rainy season is likely going to last another two months.

It’s time for something new.

A new car.

A new house.

A new job.

A new therapist.

A new outlook.

No more of this looking back at what was, what coulda been, what didn’t happen.

It’s time to make the stones different.

To walk differently.

Stand differently.

Time to get going. And keep going.

So let’s leave the old piano behind.

Let’s get some new teeth.

And stop picking at the scalp.

Let’s get going.

There’s no time to waste.

E was a match. That’s the way they put it nowadays. “A match.”

There’s no doubt that it was.

She helped me find the courage to begin exploring the places I’d been too ashamed and angry and “Manly” to explore before with anyone else. I had been pretending for so long to be in control and capable, I did not even know it.

So when I hit the wall and fell apart in her little office at the office, it was refreshing after: A good place to start.

Still, it took me 7 months to trust the trust and tell her things that gave her a lisp when I said them.

Was that the beginning of “presenting” to her?

I don’t know. But at some point, I began showing my problems at an angle that might be useful, but also designed to make me interesting. That’s not to say they weren’t real problems. They were.

Yet, was I working on them with the idea of being enough? Did I fear that my problems weren’t worthy of her time and care? Did I feel the need to justify her presence?

It was as if — having stumbled out of a desert of bewilderment and bafflement, naked and willing — I could see myself. Freeing as that was, I could not avoid knowing that my hair was unkempt and feet muddy. I suddenly wanted to be seen better. The mirror of her helped me see myself and then I began to dress for the mirror.

I know this led me to feel judged because I was judging myself and projecting that onto her. Is this why I read a coldness into her unblinking eyes? Was the coldness I offer myself what I was seeing there?

Now it has me thinking that there was too much unsaid and unexplored there. I would’ve benefited from it. At times, I look back with some anger: Why didn’t I ask her more? Why didn’t I push her when I told her of the plans to go to Santa Barbara and she said she thought we were working on something else? Why didn’t she?

H said to me once, “E really got in there deep.”

It’s undeniable that she did.

So deep, really, that just that statement from H gave me pause. If I agreed, how would she take it? Would she feel betrayed? Would she dream what I was dreaming, that E and I had something more beyond the room because of her knowledge of the steps and program? Such things led me to imagine seeing her at meetings and thinking how odd that would be: How cold.

Maybe that all is what happens anyway when a conversation ends before it’s completed as it did with E. Which was how it had to be in any case.

Which was also likely best.

But with this new therapist, L, there is something else.

The conversation subjects are similar, even the same. But the approach takes angles that settle differently after.

She is patient. She is watchful.

She expresses more somehow with a warmth that is removed but present. The limit is 50 minutes and that is all.

I am likely reading into this, too, but it is there for me, real enough to be useful even if it is imagined. Certainly, I’m not aware of not putting it all on the table the way I wasn’t before. I might note that I am afraid or ashamed, but I still get it out there.

It’s a relationship that has benefited from all my previous relationships, not just E, but H, too. (Fitzgerald wrote that Gatsby was a collection of all the women he knew, but that is wrong: Everyone is collection of all the relationships they’ve been in/are in.)

I was open with L faster and more immediately about what troubled me. There was no months long waiting period like with E — just a jump into the cold water.

(We talked about the boundary that zoom creates too. It is an unexpected frame of safety. I can not as easily paste myself across the dimension or sense the livingness of her in a room with me. A listening box? I’m not sure. But somehow I’m finding some advantage to this virtual room/remove.)

Freud said therapy only works if you say everything. I’m learning that’s true. And I’ve benefited from that, however slowly it’s come to me.

Maybe I’m also learning not to care as much.

Some say there are things you tell your hairdresser that you tell no one else. Still, the hairdresser is still just a hairdresser. It could be I am understanding that’s all there is to it.

The most dangerous attachment isn’t to money or status or a relationship.

It isn’t to a house or a car or a dream or a memory or the feeling of love you got the first time you kissed that someone.

It isn’t to a parent or child or a dog you had when you were 12.

No.

The most dangerous attachment is to any idea of who you are in the future or in the past or anywhere in between.

The most dangerous attachment is to yourself — whoever that may be in your blinking, breathing, snoring, dreaming head.

They aren’t calling.

Sponsors.

Sponsees.

Friends.

People from work.

My sister whose husband has a gun in the house.

So I’m on the island of being all by myself, wondering….

Where are they? What are they doing? Why won’t they call me back?

Occasionally, I’ve woken up ready to do but without a real plan for the doing. ‘

I see the emails and slacks and am not sure what to do next.

Projects seem to need me and not need me.

And then the questions that come my way aren’t answerable.

Where are we on this? What about that?

The world seems scattered and I can’t even figure out which piece to pick up first.

I’d been feeling crummy and disconnected all day.

Agitated.

But no amount of re-arranging of books or folding of laundry could make it go away.

I was trapped in my own skin, looking for a way out.

She asked about it but I was too ensnared in the bubble of discontent to take her offer. Instead I just said, everything’s fine. Nothing’s wrong. Just cleaning.

Then we went paddling in the bay together. Out past the break, we pushed through chop and wind. Our arms were sore with the stroking. Our faces wet with sea spray.

Afterwards, back in the car, we noted the windburn on our faces. It was good.

But as we drove, my funk came returned and I fell back in the stupor of irritation.

Then she asked: What’s your vision for how we’ll be going forward?

It was a simple joyful question.

But the voice of unhappiness called up from the well of despair: I don’t know. I guess we’ll just buy a house and die here.

And there it was, the sudden knife, swinging blindly out of nowhere from some deep part of myself that wants everyone to see my pain. Pay attention to me. See that I should be different, even if I’m not.

There it was.

And five days later I was apologizing for it, wondering where that being is that did that so I can root it out and kill it.