The Story of Therapy Dog Tails 603
The Story of Therapy Dog Tails 603
Where Everyone Gets a Dose of Puppy Love
BACKGROUND 267: JLHS Part Two 40
Sat., Oct. 27, 2007
… P.M. I’m trying to remember what I was talking about up there. I guess I was talking about the conversation I had with Freij at the end of the day on Wednesday, just before Keely Ryan came in to talk to him and talk to me and end up going upstairs with me about the tutoring. She is very, very cool. She knows what she is doing and is just doing it. She doesn’t have the arrogance that Freij has and is willing to give them what they want. That’s important and I guess that’s what I did after Flynn flunked me that time. He told me to meet with Campbell and I did that and I was at some sort of crossroads as far as teaching was concerned. I was ready to give up and maybe that would have been the thing to do. I don’t know what would have happened or where we’ be right now if I’d done that but I’m miserable now in this personal life so maybe it would have been the thing to do. I’m more miserable now here at home than I am at Taft so that tells you, friend, how bad it is here. Because it has never been anything for me up there other than a nightmare. It’s a nightmare here now and so it’s a nightmare everywhere. I’m just trying to survive.
So let’s see now. On Wednesday Amanda came by and that was about it. Then came Thursday. This was the parent evening so we had to hang around for an evening session from 5:30 to 8 o’clock. I wasn’t expecting many people and had not made any phone calls to parents. I was scheduled to be in room 149 with Lizzie. We both teach that 11th grade class. I had spent some time that morning putting up a vocabulary wall in 145 where Nagabayashi also teaches and where the piano is. I had put this up on the back wall but it turned out that that is where Nagabayashi shows movies so he moved it to the right a bit so that it was above the closet back there. That was fine with me. I was introducing Camus’ the Stranger, which I’d spent the previous night printing out in room 131 where we have our computers. Luis and Michael had gotten it free from the internet when I’d only been able to get copies to be bought. I guess it is still under copyright. I’d gotten Kafka and R.L. Stevenson for free and figured I could get this for free, too. I couldn’t but they could and I’d gotten it down to 38 pages, which I’d stayed to print out on Wednesday night. So I had the entire novel for the kids to put into their folders on Thursday. So I was teaching that that day.
At the end of the day I was sitting as usual in 145 with Bridget when Lizzie came in with Greg. He had called me a couple of times but I had not been picking it up. Even for Greg I had not been picking up and I’m still not picking up. I mean, of course, I have a few friends including Andy above all else but I really let him down last week when I would not even pick up the phone for him so I’ve got to do something to make up for that. I think I’ll buy him a box set on Slade maybe. Andy has been a good friend even though I’m not so interested in the poker or the soccer or the billiards or most of what he is into. Andy and I came out of TRHS together and we have a similar approach to teaching and that’s enough for us. But I’ve got to be nicer to him. I mean, it’s one thing for people to be nasty to me but I can’t be like that to others. Not that Andy has been bad to me. He’s always been good with me. And I’ve always been generous with him.
But Greg showed up on Thursday (Oct. 25) afternoon. That’s something I wasn’t expecting. Maybe he wanted to see this place where I’ve been teaching for more than three years now. Maybe he couldn’t believe it himself that I’d be spending so much time in a place like that. Maybe he just wanted to find out why I wasn’t picking up or maybe he wanted to talk to me just with the two of us around. I don’t know what brought him up there but he came in through the front and ran into Lizzie who knew where I was in 145 and that’s where he found me. I was sitting there helping Bridget with something. Bridget has been around almost every day for the past couple of weeks.
Greg said he was double-parked out front so I walked out with him. I told him that I’d not been answering the phone for anyone. Then I told him that I was fed up with the way I’ve been treated at home by Luz and Geoff. It’s Geoff that has some impact on us, the Threads. He was on his way out to the house to do some recording. I knew that he had to do some overdubbing on What Do You Do. But Geoff still wanted to try another take of Sadie’s Shell with just him and Greg. I didn’t see how that was going to work since it really takes all of us to begin to get the ebb and flow of that song and it turned out that nothing came of this night with Greg. That’s about the only thing that has passed between me and Geoff. I think he mentioned it to me last night as I was headed for bed, i.e., that what they had gotten was no good. But that was not a surprise. That song cannot be done by Greg alone. He needs me and the band to keep him going. He doesn’t really record. He only jams and you can’t jam in a recording studio with just a drummer / engineer.
I walked out to the front of the building with him to where he was double parked and found a black SUV there. I started to ask whose car it was but realized that it was Sally’s. That’s when he said that it belonged to his “fiancé.” That took me by surprise a bit because I figured that he’d go on with Sally as they were for as long as it took for his kids to grow up. I didn’t see anything standing in the way of that. On the other hand, of course, how long can you go on with that sort of deception? I figured that Elizabeth had figured out that he was seeing someone else and had decided to put up with that. That wouldn’t be unprecedented. When he didn’t seem too concerned with Elizabeth’s reaction to the Bowery show, I figured that they had come to some sort of agreement. When Sally and her friends showed up and Elizabeth didn’t, I figured that Elizabeth had resigned herself to being the wife in a failed marriage. Even when she called here, I figured that she had just decided to be the wife and the fact that she was looking for Greg when she knew that he must be with someone else only meant that she was wondering about how bad it was, not about whether or not it was actually over.
But when Greg said that the car belonged to his “fiancé,” I asked if he was getting a divorce and he said that he was. This was something of a surprise to me because I figured that he had had the best of both worlds, given the way he has always talked about his kids. Greg has always said that he would never do anything to hurt his kids. Eliza is now about 14 and James is 6 or 7. That to me meant that he would never divorce Elizabeth because divorce is just about the worst thing that you can do to young kids. Then given the situation, i.e., that Sally was also married with kids, although last summer she seemed to have extricated herself from whatever marital obligations she had - given that they were both married with children, young children, and they both had spouses that didn’t seem to care what they were doing, seemed, in fact, if anything to accept if not encourage whatever it was, even Elizabeth, I figured that they would just go on as they were for the foreseeable future. Why not? I mean, with little kids, why change things?
But Greg said that he had not spent the night at home for four and a half months. That takes us back to before the Bowery Club performance. In other words, when I was worried about what he might say to Elizabeth, he was already not even spending the night in his own house. He said that he was getting up every day and stopping by to see Eliza and James and then going to work. I guess that is the best that might be done under the circumstances. I mean, I don’t blame him at all. I generally do not judge people and have never judged Greg on this. Even when he was cheating and I was completely and inalterably monogamous myself, I never blamed him. I understand the pull of sexual attraction. I can’t blame any guy for falling. Not really. I mean, I’ve always held myself to some different standard because I thought that what Luz and I had was extraordinary. I never compared us to anyone else. I never compared her to anyone else and never compared myself to anyone else. I always thought that we were different and that what we had was very rare and something that others dreamed of but rarely got. I mean, how many men can say that they married the most beautiful woman that they had ever seen? That was the case with me and that’s why it is so disappointing for me to be treated the way I’ve been treated by her. I always believed in that and in us but Luz has not taken it in the same way. She has taken me for granted, abused me and treated what we had as something ordinary. That’s why I am now so unhappy. All she does nowadays is voodoo and she expects me to go along with all of that but by now I don’t care about it. I supported that for a long time but I won’t do it anymore.
So I guess Greg and Elizabeth are getting divorced. Elizabeth sounded fairly fatalistic the last time she called her and I talked to her. I tried to make up something about how Greg and I had been together but that was probably all moot. She must have known that Greg and I were not together or that Greg had let me know whatever or wherever he was or that I knew more or less what Greg was doing. As it turned out, I didn’t really know what Greg was doing. If he has really been spending all his time with Sally, I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that he wasn’t going home, if that is indeed the case. I mean, he told me that he’s getting divorced but even that doesn’t mean that anything is for certain. I would not be surprised to hear tomorrow that that is not the case, that he and Elizabeth are working things out or something along those lines. I can’t be surprised.
He asked me why I didn’t take his calls and I told him that I wasn’t picking up for anyone. There was no reason not to take his calls. He is my music partner, for better or for worse. Nothing that he does in his personal life will change that. He had told me last Thursday out here at the house that he had dissolved his partnership with the firm that he’s been with for the past 6 or 8 years and that he had taken a job with another guy, someone he said had been a friend of his for a long time and had been telling him that he ought to join him in his practice. This is some other lawyer and I wish it was that easy. Maybe it is for Greg. He said that things are great now at this new job. I hope that’s the case. I hope he makes enough money so that he doesn’t have to worry about it and we don’t have to worry about it. The Threads, I mean. I don’t even know if I’m going to be staying with the Threads now but it would be nice to have some financial security somewhere. If Greg could supply that - and it seems highly unlikely if he is going to go through a divorce with kids to support - but if he could, that would be good for me. I’m tired of trying to make ends meet for these people out here.
