Trying to Make a Difference, for a Change

About a month ago, thoroughly sick of myself, I decided to make some changes.

First, I stopped talking, which was easy because I’d just had throat surgery and couldn’t speak for a week anyway. I fumbled through the quiet days with little cards explaining my silence to people, failed to return even more phone calls than I usually do and used those mute hours to plot even more changes. How could I get rid of this pathetically redundant heap of self and hatch out somebody new?

This wasn’t a true crisis, yet. I wasn’t going to do anything profound, yet. I’d keep writing for a living, though I did consider other job options, the foremost being to own and operate a dry-cleaning establishment. I love the concept of things going in dirty and coming out clean.

I wasn’t going to move out of state--or even out of this house--because I’d get waxed obscenely if I tried to sell now. I thought of moving a little trailer up into the driveway and living in that, but trailers are claustrophobic and smell like the people who used to own them.

I wasn’t going to change my name and renounce all ties to my family, because my family is a good one. In fact, they were apparently not as fed up with me as I was with myself, because they had said nothing to that effect. Maybe they were just being kind, or hadn’t noticed.

What was wrong? Oh, I don’t know--who cares? The cure is usually more interesting than the disease.

I considered such disparate measures as ending my pack-a-day cigarette habit, or cutting my hair real short, or getting a new pair of glasses so I’d look different and better able to view the new me, or starting a journal.

In a fit of minor abandon--the same way I feel every fall when the weather turns--I decided to do them all.

Stopping smoking was difficult. To make it easier, I got some nicotine patches. I spent the first three days pretty much in bed, indicating to my brother by notes that I was “recuperating from operation.” In fact, I was hiding beneath the covers, hoping not to be disturbed, because I would kill anyone who bothered me.

An entry from the new journal will dramatize my state of mind:

“Cigarettes as rage abatement. Most agreeable tranquilizer there is. No wonder people light up 20 or 30 times a day. It’s because 15 or 20 times a day they feel like killing the idiot they’re dealing with. The other times are just to reward themselves for not following through. For every person who dies of cigarettes, a hundred others are actually saved by the calming effect of cigarettes smoked by potential killers. Tobacco’s done more for domestic tranquillity than social programs, law enforcement and liberals combined. End result may be death, but that’s about as tranquil as it gets. God, I need a smoke.”

My loss of voice and loss of cigarettes formed a perfect marriage for that first week: I had nothing good to say to anybody and no way to say it. But the voice returned and the cigarettes didn’t, so for another week I was gloomy, blunt, listless, depressed and generally looking for trouble.

I was no doubt fortified by the 14 milligrams a day of pure laboratory nicotine supplied by my patch. At least I was getting my recommended daily allowance of the drug, though the delivery mechanism wasn’t fun.

I started treating myself to a fine cigar once a night, after dinner, but I’m not sure that there really is such a thing as a fine cigar, and I don’t know if I’ll stick with them. They’re expensive; the only place you can smoke them in peace is at home, and you can’t inhale, so what’s the point?

(One worthwhile point could be to torment strident nonsmokers--a more shrill, puritanical and self-worshiping lot I’ve never seen--but there aren’t many public places where it’s legal to do so anymore. Too bad. I hate those bleating do-gooders. See? I was much more tolerant of nonsmokers when I was full of tobacco. Anti-smoking fascists, take note.)

Anyhow, the biblical urge to “rise up in the field” began to diminish slightly. Fifteen or 20 times a day I got the urge to light a cigarette, and told myself, “I don’t do that. I don’t do that.” So I didn’t, thereby gaining self-control but losing a little peace. Which is better? Time will tell.

Once I felt that I could be trusted in a non-structured setting, I ventured out to the hair stylist and eye doctor.

There I went, rumbling down Laguna Canyon Road in my gas-hogging truck, smoke free and only faintly homicidal, resisting the urge to run a few bicyclers into the drainage ditch or bounce them off the “German Auto” sign to see if their helmets would stay on. What pacifism and control!

The haircut went well. My new style kind of stands up in front and top now, giving me a perkier look. In the morning it all sticks out in one direction, like a cherry bomb just went off beside me. It’s different, all right.

The new glasses look a lot like the old ones, and the prescription is slightly stronger. They cost exactly $193 less than did Mission San Juan Capistrano when it was sold by Gov. Pio Pico in 1845 for $710. All of which caused me to take them off and rub my eyes at the bill. This did no good, because I was seeing just fine.

*

So, transformed by drug rehab, a haircut, new specs and a secret journal, I made the rounds of town one night to judge reactions. The usual bartenders, waiters and hostesses said nothing about my sea change. It dawned on me that no one on Earth could possibly pay as much attention to me as I do to myself, a truth both obvious and a little embarrassing.

Back home, I noted that both of my young striped California desert king snakes (captive-bred and legal) had shed their skins during my absence and were now zipping around their cages with implausibly beautiful new complexions and attitudes of profound rebirth, given that they’d spent their last days under rocks. I lovingly took them out to admire them, but they defecated on me and bit me like they usually do, so I threw them back and washed my hands.

Standing there at the sink, I checked myself out in the mirror, looking shrewdly at myself for the improvement, the evolution, the progress. I could see none whatsoever. Change, yes. A difference, yes. But clean and refurbished as a snake? No.

I was not the sequel to myself. Just the same guy, arranged a little differently, peering through new glass with old eyes, idling on a slightly modified biochemical fuel. All I could do was resolve to be content with what I am not happy to stay.

When real change comes, it’s a storm lumbering in off the Pacific--irresistible and inevitable and much larger than you thought. You don’t make it. You can’t avoid it.

You just stand there, and it blows you into the next thing.