An Epiphany of Sorts for an Old Man

Beware drug- and alcohol-induced epiphanies. I've followed this aphorism for a while now.

Once, when I was in college and on an Ecstasy trip, I saw myself as the world's greatest dancer. While my friends laughed at me in the darkness of an apartment, I hallucinated that I was some superhero of dance. In an amphetamine fog, I told them I went around the world challenging despots and fascists to dance-offs. I danced against Saddam Hussein. I shook my ass versus Kim Jong Il. The outcome was like some scene out of a western. The loser leaves town. This was how I rid the world of evil.

I thought that the world's ills could be cured through dance.

I thought the same thing a couple years later while on a dance floor in London. Again, I was on E. I was in a circle of strangers whom I'd met just minutes before. It looked like a football huddle. The others knew one another. They'd come to the club together. Each took a turn telling all the others how this was the best night of his or her life. Each claimed to have love for everyone in the group. Then there was me, grinning away, an American interloper embraced, my mind full of E-inspired euphoria and care for every living creature on the planet. I thought that if we could make the world one big nightclub and pass out pills, world peace might be a real possibility.

These epiphanies, along with several others scattered through the years, turned out to be very wide of the proverbial mark.

I thought I'd learned my lesson. But last night I had something like an epiphany, after a night of drinking, and the feeling has carried through to today. I don't know if I would even call it an epiphany. I haven't hit upon some grand idea or philosophy or coda for one's life. I've been through all that before. You pick and choose from the great bowl of ideas. None of these ideas have really brought a real sense of peace to me. Last night, it felt like I'd been lost in a labyrinth, like Theseus and his Athenian companions in Greek myth, and I'd dropped the ball of thread that could lead us out. It was like we'd been wandering lost for years, and last night I finally found the thread.

I spent the hours before this at House of Blues on Sunset in Hollywood. I was with my newfound friends from Petranek Fitness: Ben, Kat, Mike, and Sherwin (of course). We are old and perpetually tired from crossfit, and so we upgraded our concert tickets (for a Maryland band called O.A.R.) to get a table in the VIP area and not have to deal with the standing plebians in front of the stage below us. We laughed in the face of the Zone diet (many crossfitters are devotees, and i just started) by munching on fried calamari and french fries. I had a very un-Zone dinner of chicken fried chicken with gravy, mashed potatoes and green beans (I'm a Texan, what can i say?). Then Sherwin and I proceeded to the hard liquor. Kat and Ben sensibly stuck to Coors Light. Mike is on hiatus from drinking and has become the greatest DD on the West coast. Sherwin's poison was JD on the rocks. Mine was Diet Coke and Captain Morgan rum. I am hardcore, bitches. The concert was fun. I got drunk and happy. I drunk texted my poor hapa friend Caryn who was kind enough to say she felt honored to receive good tidings from an inebriated Paco.

I sobered up enough to drive home.

I felt tired but pretty zen. like in some altered state. Have you ever stepped outside yourself and looked down at your life from a bird's eye view and wondered how the hell you got to where you are? I've done that a lot in the last couple of years. Ihave felt disconnected. I have felt like a man with no country. Like an explorer so long on his journey that he doesn't remember home. There was a wall that prevented me from looking at my past because the past was painful. It contained things that hurt. All those dark midnights of the soul. We've all been there.

Last night, before going to bed, I suddenly saw so many things. Like some dying man whose life is flashing before his eyes. I thought about my son Ethan. i remembered holding his 7-year old hand as we crossed a street in that urban frightscape of London. He was toting a huge yellow backpack and wearing a blue Gap baseball cap. His tiny British voice squeaked. So vulnerable amidst all this chaos. i remembered feeling the weight of responsibility. I was 23 years old. i was scared. Two children on the streets of London. Ethan is now 17, practically grown. I'm 33 and feeling it more every day.

I saw the bedroom where I lost my virginity at 16. All 70's Playboy bachelor decor (my best friend's dad's house). Two kids in love and lust. I remembered holding the hand of my 22-year-old friend Greg on his death bed as he succumbed to cancer. I remembered getting married at city hall in Camden Town, London. The way Deb laughed with embarrassment as a few family and friends looked on. At 24, I took the modest ceremony more seriously than i took the actual marriage.

I was able to look at these things again and not feel pain. I felt connected to my past. Like I finally knew the story up to this point. No mystifying plot holes. No bizarre narrative logic. Put together, all these experiences meant something.

Who knows? Maybe this feeling will pass. Maybe everything will unravel and I'll be lost in a fog again.

To be honest, I expect it to happen. It probably should happen. We're all searchers. Wanderers. Looking for some kind of truth to get us through the night.

I just have to remember to look for the thread.