Afraid to Die, Even More Afraid to Live.
Coming of age as a love zombie.
I came perilously close to both life and death at times, but I dodged a bullet. Literally. In the mid 1970’s, at the age of twenty-eight, I was robbed and shot. The bullet hit a rib and glanced off, jettisoning away from my body into the night. The robbers left me there to die, but I lived. Well, kind of lived.
“A quarter inch left or right and you would be dead,” the doctor exclaimed as he sewed up the four-inch furrow the bullet had carved in my flesh. What the doctor did not know was that I had been dead long before the incident. I was among the undead from age fifteen up until that day. I couldn’t be killed by bullets any more than I already was, but I was perishing from profound disconnection. I came close to the final untethering more than once.
At seventeen, I received a draft notice. The Viet Nam war was on, and I was called to duty. I had blown my student deferment with bad booze, bad grades, and bad decisions. The undead must stay just animated enough to know they’re alive, so I fraternized with others of my kind at dark watering holes and in parked cars — drinking it up and trying to get laid. One out of two wasn’t bad.
The Army completed my disconnection from my pseudo-life and provided even more opportunities to drink. Even though underage, I could drink in the NCO Club. They even let us sign up for payroll deduction at the club. My monthly checks were paltry after the booze bill was settled, but I didn’t need money anyway.
Sex remained elusive, but not for lack of trying. You can buy booze with a fake I.D. or get it for free in a military uniform just about anywhere, but you can’t fake or cosplay savoir faire. Women would sense my insecurity with their uncanny antennae and flit away like butterflies. I could attract them, but I always exposed my net too soon. I had a reputation for being “fast” in high school, but I felt way behind my peers. I did not know that most of their claims were exaggerated. They didn’t know the pressure their braggadocio put on me.
I became obsessed. Conflicted. I needed to prove my manhood but had the annoying trait of wanting to be a ‘good’ man. Those other guys were cretins, I was a God’s loan to women. I somehow believed that sexual intercourse with a worthy partner would fix everything. My shame and insecurity could be discharged, once and for all. The extraordinary love I transferred to her would end her suffering too.
My Catholic guilt added to the struggle. When you’re made to feel ashamed for merely wanting something, it just makes that thing more compelling. “It must be damned good, if they feel they need to try so hard to stop me,” I thought. Interesting hypothesis. I was ready to risk eternal damnation just to get past the self-service stage of my sexual research project.
Two weeks before reporting to the Detroit Army Induction Center, I took a trip to California. Facing the possibility of mortal combat in a faraway jungle made me ponder the possibility of my death. I was still on a sacred mission to sacrifice my virginity on the altar of passage, and the sense of urgency was amped up even more.
The first Sunday night after arriving in the Bay Area, I almost scored. So-called “go-go girls“ had become staple items in virtually every bar on the west coast and they often danced semi-nude. I was in one of those clubs and drinking at the bar. A top-heavy, topless dancer finished her act and left the stage just as I was leaving. She caught me at the exit and (still naked from the waste up) she grabbed my shoulder and spun me around.
“You’re not leaving here without me,” she said.
I wasn’t officially a soldier yet, but those were orders I had to follow. Yes mammary.
It seemed too good to be true and it was. As we left the building, a limo pulled up to the curb. “That’s my sugar daddy,” she said, “Sorry I can’t be with you tonight.”
Another brush with life.
I continued the quest for the remaining days of the trip and had a couple more opportunities. Those times, I was the one who bailed. I was cursed with the remnants of a conscience, so I passed on the one that was too drunk to give consent. I had a moral cockblock on the other one too.
She had told me she was interested in studying psychology, so I fed her a line of bull all evening about being a psychology major from the East Coast about ready to graduate. I dazzled her with my knowledge of the human mind. I psychobabbled her right into her bedroom. By the time we got in bed I started to sense her naivete and vulnerability so I couldn’t go through with it. We snuggled a while and fell asleep. It was sweet. The next day I had to return home so I couldn’t see her again and come clean and maybe reboot the relationship. I added her to my list of near misses and occasional Mrs.'s.
In those days I often kicked myself when I did the right thing just as much as when I screwed up. I was frantic for instant intimacy, but I still had fragments of a soul to contend with. I was eager to feel connected but incapable of love. Sex was my holy grail, but I searched in vain as a shadow of shame eclipsed my body’s incessant demands.
I became a soldier, finally got laid, got out of the military, and married the first women I had sex with, all within two years. Marrying was a guilt-driven decision. It was a terrible match overall, but we were perfect for each other at the time. We were both on paths of self-destruction and we served as mutual accelerants. The marriage wasn’t entirely loveless, we just each loved ourselves more than each other. A narcissistic stalemate.
Drama whiplashed us for ten years. The robbery happened in the final year of the marriage and if it weren’t for the robbers trying to kill me, I would have probably died from infidelity. One woman wasn’t enough to prove my manhood and worthiness.
Getting shot was the worst and best thing that ever happened to me. Even in my zombie-like trance I was awakened by an abrupt, undeniable sense of my mortality.
The realization that I had not really been living pierced my brain seconds after the lead tore through my skin. “Not like this,” I cried to the heavens. “I will not die unhappy,” I added - just in case God needed clarification.
I ended the marriage as quickly and gently as I could. I started over, or maybe started living for the first time. I stopped drinking and got some “self” help. I finished college and went on to a post-grad degree. I became capable of and found love. Most importantly, I stopped living in fear which I discovered was just the flipside of finding the courage to love.
This near-death incident revealed to me that disconnection is life’s most cynical robber and fear is its weapon of choice. Dying, whether physical or emotional, is impossible where there is undying love. Today, many years later, I am ever mindful of who is around me because little love shots may miss me by a quarter inch either way. One greeting not given, one question not asked, one smile not seen — that is all it takes for love to miss us and death to find its mark.
