The Story of Therapy Dog Tails 431
Where Everyone Gets a Dose of Puppy Love
CHRONOLOGY 61: Cartoonist 3
Fri., June 12, 2015
… Still, in spite of living a miserable, nightmarish life, I came up with a brilliant idea - Therapy Dog. Here’s the fantasy I was having this morning as I shot hoops by myself at Rahway Park before jogging 4 miles in the heat and humidity. I submitted the strip of the spare tire complaining that he is worried that he’ll never reach his full potential to the New Yorker magazine about 3 weeks ago. I’m still waiting to hear back from them. They say they generally get back within 90 days. I was visualizing someone walking around the New Yorker offices with a print-out of that strip in hand and asking everyone what they thought of it. Everyone takes a look at it and says, “Yeah, that’s me.” Everyone who is doing a job that is less than creative but who is also working on their own things sees the point and relates to it - “Yeah, thats’ me.” “Yeah, that’s me,” says the copy editor. “Yeah, thats’ me,” says the letters editor. “Yeah, that’s me,” says everyone from the layout people on down to the secretaries, mailroom people, if they still have that in this digital day and age, and free lancers covering stories that they know will get published but that aren’t their creative aim. Even those who are getting to do the creative stuff look at it and say, “Yeah, that was me.”
Everyone who has creative ambitions that they are not realizing relates to that strip to the point where they say that this has got to be a weekly feature. I get connected to an agent; the first book comes out less than a year from now and they keep flowing. That’s no pipe dream. Therapy Dog is real. He exists and he is good. This could actually happen.
The amazing thing is that I came up with it when I was barely surviving. I hated the jog, the “home,” and the “family.” I literally hated it all. I still do but at this point I am withholding judgement because if any of it happens, then I might be able to say that it was worth it. Paula might be able to say that it was worth it if she is the beneficiary and that is what I really want. I want for her belief in me to pay off for her. I want for her to be able to say that this really is an amazing guy and he is mine. I want for her to be able to say that she didn’t keep loving me for nothing and that she didn’t take me back when it seemed so wrong for nothing. I want her to be triumphant.
3:18 p.m. Rathskeller. G. #3.
The cartoon would be the most gratifying to me at this point because it was written under the most difficult circumstances. Maybe it’s true that you have to be depressed to create comedy. That seems true in my case. I’ve always had a sense of humor and have always loved humor. I’d say that I’ve always liked making others laugh more than I’ve liked laughing myself. That goes back to high school, junior high, actually, when I wrote that little satirical magazine and passed it around civics class.
The cartoon was truly a means of survival. Maybe the music was, too. The music helped me survive the DOE job but the cartoon has helped me survive both the DOE job at its most miserable and the loss of everything that I thought I had and that I used to believe in. For the cartoon to resonate with a wide public would certainly be the most gratifying to me - even more than the music, which I probably love more than humor - because it would mean that I was giving something that would help others survive the trials of their own lives. And it would mean that Paula could take credit for that because it didn’t happen with L … Z. In fact, her disrespect for it was the last straw for her and me. If it happens from any point after Feb. 22 - and today is June 12 and I didn’t even think of sending it to the New Yorker until a few weeks ago - it happens for Paula Kratzer.
The novels, the songs or the cartoon could make me rich and famous. This isn’t just some pipe dream. This stuff all exists. I created it (along with Greg in the case of the songs because although I wrote most of them alone, it was only because Greg had created the possibility). I created it under difficult conditions, something Geoff has not experienced to this point. I never believed that you have to suffer in order to create art. I certainly didn’t believe that when I was writing those novels and not really suffering at all, although I had wiped out of my mind at that time the suffering that would eventually result from my betrayal of Paula. I didn’t believe it when I was writing those songs because it was so much fun writing them, playing them and recording them. But I might believe it now - now that the last thing to come out of me is a comic project at a time when there was nothing but pain and heartache inside of me. Robin Williams’ recent suicide suggests that comedy emanates from pain. If Therapy Dog happens, that will just be more evidence for that belief.
It’s 88 degrees out there now. That’s just another reason I’m here and not at the Cranford Hotel but perhaps the biggest reason - bigger than the fact that I like the idea of Cranford and the hotel - perhaps the biggest reason - bigger than the convenience of the Rathskeller and the fact that the food here is just as good - perhaps the biggest reason - bigger than the fact that this place is half the distance from Dewitt as the Cranford Hotel - perhaps the biggest reason is that I decided to go to that place during that last ditch Ed Elder attempt to patch up something that had never really existed. I remember waiting for L … Z there one day and thinking that I’d really like to go to the Cranford Hotel and then going there and going there with L … Z the first few times so that the Egyptian guy there got to know us - perhaps the biggest reason that I’m here and not there is because that place is associated with the real pipe dream of my life - that Luz Zelaya was some sort of goddess who was always right and that my life with her would take me to the accomplishment of my dreams. I couldn’t have been any more wrong about that and besides, that last time there during the blackout with L … Z was the final realization that this day had to come - my day of independence.
So there I was yesterday sitting next to that little bitch Marvin and Maria’s daughter, whose mother was the worst mother I had ever seen. I never could have thought that one day I’d be comparing L … Z to that evil bitch but that is where I am now. I wouldn’t say that L … Z is as bad a mother, although given the fact that she raised a son who betrayed his own father, I may have to revise that. As far as I know Raquel has never stabbed Marvin in the back, although it wouldn’t surprise me if she did. She seems one of a kind with Geoff and L … Z.
She sat right next to me but she was only sort of performing for Geoff, who was standing across from us. She had no interest in me. I was like some sort of alien being to her. Maybe they were probing me for information as aliens might probe human subjects - which is more like it. I’m not the alien. Maybe she just wanted to see the “new” me. No doubt they’ve told everyone how I’ve changed. They haven’t told anyone that they were the agents for this change and have probably just blamed it on alcohol. So Raquel just wanted to see this person. She must have known that I filed for divorce, although who knows how they’ve framed that. If I’m such an alcoholic, why isn’t L … Z divorcing me rather than vice versa? They probably just say that I’m out of my mind.
3:44 p.m. Rathskeller. G. #4.
In any case, I came here with the intention of writing some more TD lines. So far, I’ve just been talking about my hope of hitting it big now with / for Paula. Part of the reason that I’m able to withhold judgement on my entire life rather than just shoot myself is because I do have this creative body of work - not just one but three of them. I still believe in myself as an artist. Whatever else L … Z and her son have done to me, however else they have changed me, they haven’t changed that belief in myself as an artist. I know what I’ve done and what I’ve got and I know what it’s worth. It’s worth so much more than most of the crap that I see out there making lots of money for people with far less than I have to offer. I’m not blind. So I cast my fate to the wind, which has brought me down down down thus far and hope that it might take me up up up based on what I’ve done or on something else - you can’t restrict fate.
But I have to mention Andy before moving on to TD. Andy texted me this morning, asking me to give him a call. So I did at about 6 this morning. He said that he had just upgraded his phone finally but that wasn’t the point of the call. He and Antoinette are flying to Phoenix on June 28 and are coming back on July 5. They want to know if I would drive them back and forth to the Newark Airport so that they can leave their car at the house. They offered for me to house sit for them while they’re gone. I told them that I’d certainly be able to drive them on the 28th but couldn’t guarantee bringing them back on the 5th. He said we’d talk again later.
So I’ve been thinking of this. There are some possibilities. I’ll be retired for good at that time and so time itself won’t mean the same thing to me. I’ll have no obligations other than to keep working out. I am hoping for the divorce to be finalized by then although I’m still waiting to hear from Ricci after that last revision, which should be the final one. Maybe he’s now in the process of delivering it to L … Z. I don’t know how that is supposed to happen. There must be some protocol for getting that to her. If it doesn’t happen before about June 20, the 35 day limit will have run out and I’m not sure what that means either.
In any case, I’m hoping to get my name off the utilities at Dewitt and using that week to do that. I hope that L … Z will be compliant, especially if we are officially divorced at that time. I’m assuming that they intend to keep paying the utilities and that they intend to live in that house indefinitely, come what may through Denbeaux ….