You start out, just another blue-collar slug, maybe some white-trash credentials, trying to crawl out of the bucket. Then you hear that old saw: “You’re only as good as the company you keep.” Sounds like something your sainted aunt would stitch on a pillow, right? Bullshit. Or at least, not the way they mean it.
My “company,” it wasn’t your golf buddies, not Bob and Tom swapping lies about their latest conquest. No. These were sharks. Advisers, they called themselves. The kind of bastards who knew how to gut an LLC before the ink was dry, how to dance with the taxman so he didn’t pick your pockets clean. How to lease your own goddamn house back to your own goddamn corporation so you’re only bleeding five percent on the dividends. Real estate hustlers, legal eagles with no conscience – like-minded wolves, every one of ‘em. They didn’t inspire you with poetry; they inspired you to grab more, hold tighter.
And the more green I scraped together, the more of these useful sonsabitches crawled out of the woodwork. It got easier, the game. The talk wasn’t about the weather; it was about leverage, loopholes, the sweet music of a well-structured deal. And if I took a dive, if I was face down in the gutter with my teeth kicked in, they didn’t stand around wringing their hands. They hauled my ass up, dusted me off, and shoved me back towards the finish line. Not out of love, don’t kid yourself. We were all invested in the same goddamn racket.
That’s the family they don’t tell you about in church. Unconditional love? That’s a fairy tale for suckers. My grandmother, bless her, she had a flicker of it. But she was old, tired, a gentle breeze against a hurricane. She carried me as far as her brittle bones could, and maybe that’s the only reason I’m not just another stain on the sidewalk.
Now, I’m fifty-six. And these thoughts, these goddamn schemes, they’re chewing at me. I got three years’ salary stashed away, give or take. Enough to say adios to this whole damn circus and head south. Argentina. Mendoza. Three years to burn it all down and see what rises from the ashes, or if anything does.
And don’t give me that crap about who made who. It wasn’t just me pulling myself up by my bootstraps. Yeah, the Mormon Church tried to hammer some sense into me, make me a “better man,” a father who didn’t make his kids want to run screaming. Had “Leave It to Beaver” flickering on the tube, that goddamn fantasy of picket fences and pot roast, telling you how life was supposed to be. All of it, a goddamn instruction manual for a life I never quite fit into.
And look at me now. Six figures, bonuses, company truck, gas card, health plan, paid vacation. Nobody tells me shit; I’m the boss. And I want to take all that security, all that “success,” and toss it in a goddamn dumpster. For Mendoza.
Student Visa, that’s the angle. Learn the lingo, get residency. Before these looks fade completely, before the body starts to betray me in earnest. Before the diabetes takes a leg, or my prostate swells up like a rotten fruit and they gotta go in there with their goddamn tools, pumping blue dye up my pipe like they did to my old man. No. Not for me. The clock’s ticking louder every day. It’s now, or it’s never.
It’s a murky business, this wanting to bolt. Like the Mississippi turning to mud where it hits the Gulf. The longer I sit here, chained to this desk, the more that other life, that unknown, calls to me. I start drawing up plans, making lists, and for a minute, I’m that guy again: the Project Manager for the Wastewater Management Water Division of WallScrew Inc. – some bullshit title for a bullshit life. Or am I? Am I really just some gringo burnout, dreaming of a cheap villa, butchering Spanish at the local college, trying to scrape together enough passive income from some website to just… breathe? To not feel this goddamn vise around my chest?
Brothers? None that matter. Everyone’s a stranger wearing a familiar face. No real connection, not out there, not in here. My folks? Baby boomers, the original selfish pricks, washed out and wondering why the world didn’t hand them everything on a silver platter.
Friends? Mostly women, if I’m honest. They tend to stick around longer, listen to the bullshit with a bit more patience. The guys I’ve been close to? We don’t talk. No drama, no hand-holding, no forehead kisses and whispers of “it’s gonna be okay.” We just drink, grunt, and go our separate ways into the dark.
I’m guilty of it too. God knows how many old friends I’ve watched circle the drain, their eyes screaming for something I couldn’t give, and I just stood there, another dumb animal. What’s the point of it all? Beats me. Except this gnawing loneliness. Lonely for a spark, for something that feels solid under your goddamn hand.
And when I open my mouth, when I try to tell these well-fed, comfortable bastards about Argentina, about chucking it all, they look at me like I’ve got snakes crawling out of my ears. “What about your 401k? Your dental plan? Aren’t you going to buy a bigger house?” What, what, what? Like a man’s soul can be patched up with quarterly statements and a new riding mower.
When I tell them about two duffel bags and a laptop, they’re ready to commit me. Throw in the fact I’m already yanking my own chain nineteen times a day just to feel something, anything, and they probably picture me running a one-man Sodom and Gomorrah down south. Hell, I still need to look up “prostitute” in Spanish. First things first, right? Hope they got a decent massage parlor, a place for a good rub and tug to clear the head.
Look, I didn’t get here because of my wife, or any other skirt. I’m the only one who knows the real map of my own private hell and the few crooked ladders I found to climb out. I learned to stack the deck, to change the goddamn stars when they tried to screw me. And it was always because I found the right kind of company – the sharks, the survivors, the scarred ones who knew the score. From the shipyards, the Navy, even my old grandmother.
Don’t have that now. And it leaves a hole, a cold, empty goddamn space. Taking these next steps, it’s like walking into a pitch-black room with no idea where the furniture is. Never been this alone. I’m older. My kids are watching. If I fall on my face this time, I’m not just broke; I’m a damn fool, a cautionary tale for the ages.
But there’s that old line, isn’t there? If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even bother starting. Your woman will leave you, your dog will die, you’ll end up on a park bench with the pigeons using your head for a toilet and some damn monkey running off with your last cigarette. It doesn’t matter. Go all the way. Make your money, lose your money. Find your kicks in a brothel. Drink coffee strained through a goddamn sock if you have to. Hell, film a swingers’ party for fifty bucks if it keeps the wolves from the door.
The point is, you go all the way. You lose everything. And then, if you’re still breathing, if you somehow crawl out of that wreckage, maybe the gods will look down and crack a grim smile. And you can lay there under some damn apple tree, the cancer eating you from the inside out, pissing your pants, flies buzzing from every shithole in the county, and you look up at that cold, empty sky. And you’ll know. You’ll know they appreciate the effort. Maybe you’ll even hear a whisper on the wind: “Here lies a traveler. Well done, you sonofabitch. You didn’t die whimpering.” And that, my friend, will have to be enough.
