And, much to my chagrin, currently executing rotations of an old school garden hose + old school sprinkler combination, now that large portions of our recently-green grass have turned a stark, sad yellow. I’m not quite sure if the grass is technically “dead” in those places burnt by the ferocious August heat domes here in Tennessee, but they’re at least in the ICU and probably on a ventilator. It’s a Fern Hill moment rather than a Leaves of Grass one.

It rained so much here before August that I was letting myself believe we would get away with not having to use the sprinklers at all before things gradually started slowing their growth in October. Oh, how naïve I was back then…back in late July. I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.

We really need some kind of holy man or shaman or whomever to do a magical rain dance that opens up the heavens. I’m wondering if Odysseus might intercede on our behalf by asking Athena to plead with the Greek Pantheon for a few September showers. Surely the deities wouldn’t want my grass to die, right?

And there’s no way that Zeus, Poseidon, and company can still be mad at Odysseus for what happened in Troy and other islands thousands of years ago. Why should those sins be visited upon endless generations, including American Generation Xers? I might be biased, but I’m pretty sure GenX isn’t really to blame for much of what’s wrong with society.

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As I slosh water across the yellow pock marks, I wonder if I’m just wasting my time; and, more importantly, wasting water.

There’s a house up the street where I’m constantly having to dodge their endless sprinkler arcs during morning walks. I think they water the street more than their actual grass or landscaping. Our streets definitely need sidewalks and streetlights but I’m pretty sure they don’t need to be watered and our damn HOA is pretty much useless when it comes to things that can enhance the neighborhood’s quality of life and safety. Well, they do keep the neighborhood pool mostly clean during its late May to late September operation, so there’s that.

How could my efforts possibly resurrect my grass or at least improve its condition to serious or stable? Could I possibly “out-water” even a few minutes of rainfall?

Do I really have the patience and funds to water it several hours each day, waking up each morning to crawl on my hands and knees across the lawn to look for signs of growth? And is that type of movement really the best thing for my back, less than three months after surgery? Surely Athena wants my back to fully heal.

Baptizing the dead.

That phrase popped into my head this morning during my post-walk, post-swim-in-the-HOA-operated-pool, shower. Showers have been incubators of ideas for as long I can remember. I kept repeating baptizing the dead to myself so I wouldn’t forget it, and started writing this as soon as I was dry and, just for my own dignity, no longer naked. A dude, even a hunky piece of salt-n-pepper-haired eye candy like me, never looks good typing while naked. So just don’t, men; don’t type, text, post, or call if you ain’t wearing nothing at all.

What’s the point in baptizing someone who’s already dead? I know some religions would argue that it makes a difference for the departed soul, and maybe it does.

But I’ve got some knowledge in this space since I earned an M.Div. and used to be a United Methodist pastor, after all, and did my share of baptisms and I’m 100 percent certain that every baby, child, or over-zealous adult (the newly-converted are so freaking annoying and I was definitely quite annoying myself back in the 1990s) was still breathing when I sprinkled them, and you can be sure that if someone had brought a corpse to the altar for baptism I’d have drop-kicked them right out of the sanctuary and mailed wanted posters with their mug shots to every other United Methodist congregation in that hot and humid state of Florida where I used to live.

Back to my grass. But not just that.

I’m noodling more expansively. I’m thinking about our planet and the irreversible damage that’s already been done through climate change. And the significant odds of collective, substantial efforts in areas such as curbing emissions by nations across the world, first, actually taking place and, two, making a difference.

I’m not a cynical person, but I do try to be objective and to pay attention to data and events. I’ve no logical reason to not believe that the climate refugee population will continue to grow, and that the catastrophic weather events we’ve been experiencing all century are not an appetizer of the bitter pills we’ve yet to swallow.

The dead coral reefs aren’t coming back. The ice sheets aren’t going to gradually re-freeze. There’s still hope for the Amazon rainforests, according to the research I did today, but we’re likely just a few years away from affixing a massive ventilator to the so-called lungs of the earth and the permafrost systems remain at risk as well.

We’re not going to resurrect the type of climate that existed centuries before our grandparents roamed the Earth. Many of our efforts are and will probably continue to be as effective as watering a neighborhood street day over day.

But we’ve got to keep trying, don’t we? We’ve got to double and triple and quadruple our efforts, and then some, because what other choice do we have? If we can make things just a little more tolerable for the ecosystem, we should do it. With realistic expectations rather than complete surrender.

Beyond ecological collapse, I also hold no illusions that the entrenched habits of human nature that drive so much of the world’s suffering will abate any time soon. I think the gaps between the haves and have nots will continue to widen. We’re not going to fully extinguish the patriarchy, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, or homophobia.

Human nature, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost…? I think not.

But we’ve got to keep trying. Because, if you’re like me, you want a better world not just for us sometimes-mature adults but for Generations Z and Alpha and whatever generations (Beta? Bueller?) are on their heels.

I’ve solved nothing here on a large scale. I’m just one guy half-heartedly watering the grass. But while it’s iffy that I might somehow resurrect all those yellow blades, I know it’s certain that being kind to others sometimes helps them to feel more alive, to grow more hopeful.

The already-destroyed coral reefs might not be coming back, but the soil of the human spirit is always ready for new seeds and fresh water.

Thanks for reading! I’m John M. DeMarco, writer and executive coach, married GenX girl dad and cat dad, sharing stories and reflections on growth, loss, and making your own meaning.

My essays and notes are, and always will remain, free to anyone on Substack. I’m so grateful for every interaction around those.

I have added paid tiers for those who might also be interested in coaching support. Paid subscribers receive:

• Three 45-minute coaching sessions on topics of your choice across a 12-month period

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I’ve had way too much time on my hands Mondays through Thursdays for the past month. It’s been an unusually slow period for my executive coaching business, which has provided the proverbial gift of time as well as the proverbial curse of time. We could debate time’s illusory nature all day long (wait, who’s to say if “day” is anything but another arbitrary measurement of time) but let’s not.

The problem is that this lull is simultaneously occurring with a very difficult time for someone whom I love dearly, and the “dark waves” of depression have been visiting more frequently…and not just in my mind but in my body, a visceral heaviness that really sucks and makes life feel boring. And a curious, creative, lifelong learner person like me recognizes that boredom isn’t just about a situation at hand but a warning sign that I’m losing to the crest of the aforementioned dark wave.

For the past month, I’ve started each morning immediately working on the first draft of my novel. I haven’t missed a day, for which I am grateful considering the circumstances that I’ve shared above.

However, I also find that taking a long walk or lifting weights at the gym are positive ways to start my day and provide extra mental acuity and embodied motivation.

So, today I disrupted things a little. I woke up a little before 6 am, made my usual first cup of coffee, took my meds, grabbed my AirPods and drove to the gym.

And in between sets of the weight machines, I used the Wispr Flow app (thank you, Kelly Notaras, for this suggestion several months ago!) to voice-write paragraphs of my novel. By the time I was done with the workout, I had written several and knew I’d have the motivation to add some more content later this morning at a coffee shop. More on the coffee shop in a moment.

I then left the gym and drove across the street to River Park, which includes a wonderful bike/walk/jog/dog exercise path through the woods. (Yes, there’s still woods around here; not many but some, and fuck you developers that feel you need to snatch up every available yard of land and build something you can sell to the shrinking number of adults who can afford to buy a house or townhouse or condo these days.) It was still before 7 am, early enough for the weather to feel pleasant before the disgusting heat and humidity showed up to dominate the duration of the day.

I started listening to music during my walk. And then I remembered how much more I enjoy walks when I’m just embracing whatever sounds are around me or inside of me. So I put the AirPods back into their case and left my phone alone in my pocket (my other phone would have been making a peace sign if I had another phone but thank God I don’t because I don’t need a technology ménage à trois in my life).

Another change-up I’m also implementing today, for the sake of my mental health and as a boon to more writing across the day, is spending at least a couple hours somewhere outside of the house. I enjoy going to coffee shops but it’s been a while since I’ve had one that really feels like my “place.” I’m going to visit a new one today, a new one tomorrow, and possibly do the same thing on Wednesday and Thursday. Friday is the day when I usually take off from work and my wife Libby is always off, so we’re really talking about a Monday-through-Thursday disruption here.

I also want to swim more regularly, and I’m debating whether to also do that in the morning as part of the other exercise, or to save it for my usual blocked-off period of 1:00 to 3:00 pm when my brain is usually too tired to do anything really creative or taxing. I often rest my eyes during that time period as well, but I don’t need a fucking two-hour afternoon nap cause I’m not a newborn or toddler and I loooooove the mental lift I experience after a good round of laps. That may happen today at 1 pm. It’s all an ongoing experiment.

Of course, now that it’s been 12 weeks since my back surgery, I’m hoping that I can keep moving forward with what I call the “3 Ws” of fitness: walking, weights, and water. It’s a much better use of www than the internet and a better-suited ménage à trois, in my opinion. (I could be wrong; it happened once.)

Overall, I want to feel more equipped to deal with disappointment, ambiguity, and fear, in the context of whatever circumstances are taking place. I’m hoping that the combination of exercise and coffee shops makes a big difference for me.

Why should I keep living the same story inside of my brain that I’m only effective as a writer if I do it right away, when I first wake up, and make that my only writing block of the day?

There will likely still be mornings when I start that way, but why does that have to be the way? Who is setting these rules? Who is saying that I can’t write in little spurts throughout the day when I have time, especially before 1 pm and after 3 pm?

Yes, this probably goes against almost all the writing best practices, but aren’t best practices just habits waiting to be discarded or re-evaluated or transcended? Why does my brain have to keep living the same old narratives?

Why does anyone’s brain have to do so? Why does yours?

Thanks for reading! I’m John M. DeMarco, writer and executive coach, married GenX girl dad and cat dad, sharing stories and reflections on growth, loss, and making your own meaning.

My essays and notes are, and always will remain, free to anyone on Substack. I’m so grateful for every interaction around those.

I have added paid tiers for those who might also be interested in coaching support. Paid subscribers receive:

• Three 45-minute coaching sessions on topics of your choice across a 12-month period

For those who subscribe as founders, you’ll receive:

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“Hey, it seemed the best option at the time,” Shapiro said. “you were in a lot of pain, and that thing was hideous.”

“But nobody was looking at the bigger picture,” I said, glancing over at my Dad, who was preoccupied with Puzo and Pacino. “Not you, not my mother, not me. Was putting that little chemical in so it wouldn’t grow back really the best answer?”

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“Aside from getting some good-natured ribbing about it now and then, has it really held you back in life?” Shapiro asked. “Has it cost you girlfriends or jobs or kept you from traveling out of the country?”

“No,” I said, “but I’d still rather have 10 toenails than 9. Especially on my big left toe. I can’t believe the procedure can’t be undone. I’ve asked over the years.”

“Who knows, maybe it can be,” Shapiro said. “With everything going on in biotechnology and artificial intelligence, you just might get yourself a brand-new big toenail. You should Google it.”

Shapiro smiled and extended his hand again. “No hard feelings?”

“No hard toenail, but no hard feelings either,” I said. “Why don’t you go enjoy a glass of beer and get to know some of the famous artistic types who are hanging out with us, before they decide they have someplace better to be?”

“Gracious, very gracious,” the podiatrist said, and he was off to mingle. Dad walked over to me.

“Son, if I had been there that day,” he began and I nodded, cutting him off. “I know,” I said. “You might have talked some sense into all of us. Man, I was naïve. And I’m still scared about what I think I know but don’t really have a clue about.”

“You figure things out one layer at a time,” said Salinger, who had quietly sidled up to us. “You peel it back, and you see what’s there. And you just notice it without judging yourself for not knowing it before.”

“Dude, life is an adventure,” Bill said. “You know that better than anybody.”

“JD, let me ask you an honest question,” Bono said to Salinger as he approached him. “Am I missing out on a lot by insisting on fame and the spotlight? I mean, what’s it like to have quiet and solitude all the time?”

“It’s the only thing that’s kept me from losing my mind,” Salinger said. “It didn’t solve all my problems, but it kept me from inventing a lot of extra ones.”

“You fueled my natural disposition toward anti-authority-ism,” I told Salinger. “It’s good and bad. I’m this constant outsider who both wants to belong and doesn’t want to fit in.”

“Ah, the tortures,’ Salinger nodded. “The constant frustration.”

“Yes, Son,” Dad. “You’ve had an undercurrent of frustration. It hasn’t always served you well in your relationships. I think it’s getting better, though.”

I nodded. “It’s getting better. I still don’t suffer fools too easily, and I probably never will.”

“You can’t help how you look at the world,” Bono chimed in, removing his trademark sunglasses for just a moment and wiping them on his shirt. “It’s what makes each of us unique. The key is to harness the frustration and rage just enough, so you can still be happy and effective.”

“Bono, do you ever stop talking?” Neil asked, deadpan at first and then grinning.

“Never, mate,” Bono smiled. “You know, we really need to write something together. Or it least give it a shot.”

“That would be freaking awesome,” I said.

“Ah, yes, the restlessness,” said a girl’s voice, a voice I had not heard in a long, long time, longer than the time that spanned between moments of Obi-Wan Kenobi hearing someone call him by his given name. “The restlessness, combined with the frustration and rage, it all definitely imprisoned the loving person you were capable of being in your teens.”

And there was Jill, age 15 again, my first true love. “And probably beyond, but I can only speak for your teens.”

Jill approached me and we hugged for a long time. Her hair had that familiar hairspray smell, the smell that I loved.

“I’m sorry,” I said when we pulled back, grateful that she was smiling. “I wish I could have been a better first boyfriend for you.”

“It’s all good,” Jill said. “We had some good times.”

“Yes, we did. All that frozen pizza. All those movies.”

“You were a sweetie,” Dad said, giving Jill a hug. “Too bad my son spent the rest of high school moping over you.”

“Yeah, dude, you were too depressed a lot of the time,” Bill said. “We didn’t know what to do with you.”

“I could have been there more for you,” Dad added. “But I didn’t know how to reach out, and you didn’t know how to let me in.”

“Bros,” Morrison said, giving Jill his charming, twisted smile even while addressing Dad and myself, “sons don’t let their fathers into their interior worlds. Maybe their mothers for a flash, usually through exploding at them, but not their fathers. Don’t be naïve.”

“You wrote some crazy shit about that,” Lennon told him. “And he walked on down the hall. Father? Yes, Son? I want to kill you…”

“That’s enough, John,” I told Lennon, cutting him off, surprised at my boldness in doing so. “You don’t need to finish that lyric, and I never felt that way about my dad.” I looked at Morrison. “As dark as the places were when I went in my head, I never went that dark.”

Morrison shrugged. “Don’t waste energy judging others. Save it for your art.”

“I’m not trying to judge you,” I told him.

“But you are,” he said. “It’s out of your own fear. You saw that I lived a life without caring what others thought, without giving a fuck about the consequences. And you’re envious, and mad at yourself, that you’ve never embraced such freedom.”

“There’s a balance there, man,” Bono told Morrison. “You drank yourself to death. The world has missed out on decades of what you never got to create.”

“Unless he was going to get shot,” Lennon quipped, and the whole group of us laughed in spite of ourselves. “But you were more likely to get shot by a cop than a lunatic fan.”

I turned back toward Jill. “Well, I hope that your life turned out well. I hope that you’re happy.”

She smiled. “Thanks. I’m happy. It hasn’t been easy, but I’m happy. Are you? Now, that is?”

“Yes,” I said. “I am very happy now. Especially at his moment, here in the middle of this big can of crazy.”

“This is pretty crazy,” she said, looking around. “I’m going to go meet some of the other people, if you don’t mind.”

“You know I won’t hold you back now,” I told her.

She laughed. “Did you just quote a Toto song?”

“I did,” I said. “That song captures a lot of what I felt in the latter 1980s, and some of

the resolve and perspective I wish I’d had.”

“I appreciate that,” Jill said, and hugged me once more before heading off to say hello to McCartney.

“Hey, Son,” Dad said, tapping my arm. “Who are those two guys who just walked in?”

I turned and saw a dark-haired man in his 20s, wearing 1960s hippie clothing, and a guitar player with long blond hair and several days of stubble on his face. The hippie waved to me and the guitarist started tuning his guitar. I walked over to them, and the hippie extended his hand.

“Bob Murphy,” he said, and gestured to the guitarist. “I don’t know this guy’s name, and he doesn’t seem to remember either.”

“I don’t know it either,” I said. I stared at Murphy and remembered that Dan LaStan and a couple of other imaginary friends had shown up in Times Square. Murphy was different, though; he was the main character of the longest novel I wrote when I was a teenager, the longest among 15 or so different books. And I wrote it fast, as in a manner of a few weeks during that prolific summer of 1983 that bridged junior high and high school.

Bob Murphy was Jill’s favorite book of mine. Murphy captured all that anti-authority-ism, going to Vietnam and then becoming one of the most famous anti-war demonstrators, shot and killed at the height of his fame on February17, 1968; which, non-coincidentally, is the day I was born.

I looked back at the guitarist. “So can you tell me your name? I’m sorry that I can’t remember.”

“There’s nothing to remember, since you never created me,” the guitarist said. “But you could have. You could have done something with all those song lyrics you wrote. Hundreds, man. And some of them were really good. At least Murphy here got to star in a book.”

“I don’t have an ear for music and I can’t sing,” I said. “Did you see me up there at the Mr. Mainland show, attempting to be Eddie’s backup singer on ‘Southern Man?’ It was a complete embarrassment, and I wasn’t even singing actual lyrics.”

“Bernie Taupin doesn’t sing either,” Murphy said. “But look at what he’s done with Elton.”

“I can’t change the past,” I said. “Even if I understand it a lot more than I did when it was going on.”

“Do something with the understanding, then,” the guitarist said. “Show up. Create. Contribute. Don’t worry about whether it’s any good. Just keep showing up.”

Thanks for reading! I’m John M. DeMarco, writer and executive coach, married GenX girl dad and cat dad, sharing stories and reflections on growth, loss, and making your own meaning.

My essays and notes are, and always will remain, free to anyone on Substack. I’m so grateful for every interaction around those.

I have added paid tiers for those who might also be interested in coaching support. Paid subscribers receive:

• Three 45-minute coaching sessions on topics of your choice across a 12-month period

For those who subscribe as founders, you’ll receive:

• Six 45-minute coaching sessions on topics of your choice across a 12-month period

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As I described in my essay Asheville and searching for a place called “home,” I don’t really have a specific city that I’d call my “hometown.” North Carolina, especially the western, Blue Ridge Mountains corridor, has been summoning my wife Libby and me for going on eight years.

We’ve especially focused on Asheville, a hip city with lots of creative types, great restaurants, and high quality craft beer, and that might very well be the place we land when we move (hopefully) by Summer 2028. A city where it’s about 10 degrees cooler than our current digs, Nashville; a big plus for me because I’m so tired of Tennessee’s heat and humidity. I moved from Florida to Tennessee almost 20 years ago because I wanted four genuine seasons and my favorite season, autumn, has been shrinking ever since then to yield territory to expansive summers.

And then…I was this past weekend years old when I realized that the “High Country,” including Watauga County, NC, and the towns Boone and Blowing Rock, was like 20 to 30 degrees cooler than Nashville. An extra 1,000 to 1,500 feet of elevation can really make a difference.

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We made the seven-hour, last-minute drive to the area this past Thursday, cruising through a portion of East Tennessee I hadn’t seen before and discovering the gorgeous, 6,430-acre Watauga Lake that’s part of the Cherokee National Forest. The only thing I really knew about Boone was that it was the home of Appalachian State University and was supposed to have lovely mountain views. I knew in advance that the population was small and that at least half of it was university students. And I knew absolutely nothing about Blowing Rock or the High Country in general.

By the time we called it a night on Thursday, we discussed how Boone was charming and the weather was lovely but it didn’t seem to have enough going on for us.

We did enjoy our dinner at a busy pub, especially a giant, soft pretzel of an appetizer that was one of the best soft pretzels I’ve ever consumed in my GenX life. We strolled all of the small downtown, where a lot of shops were already closed by 5 pm.

And then, we walked up the driveway to a charming venue that was supposed to have live music on the lawn...except there were no musicians on the lawn or even the porch, and when we opened the door to go inside all we heard was what I can best describe as a mediocre church praise band doing their Thursday night rehearsal. Less than 30 seconds later we were outside again, laughing, took the selfie just below, and headed across the street to a rooftop bar…

…where the margaritas were yummy, the breeze was even cooler, and we had a nice view of the sun setting over the mountains.

But then, despite the early Friday morning thunderstorms that forced us to cancel our planned hike, Day 2 got us slowly but significantly very high on the idea of living in the very high High Country.

Unsure what the rain would be doing for the duration of the day, we first went to the Cone Manor, built by a person we’d never heard of and offering one of the best front porch views in the world. And then we hopped over to Blowing Rock, where the downtown bustles with restaurants, shops, and a free museum. I had a yummy club sandwich for lunch and the aforementioned free museum offered fresh insights on the sufferings of the Cherokee People in the region. We attempted to go visit the Blowing Rock itself, but the honest attraction manager told us the view wasn’t very good that day and to save our $20.

On the way back to the hotel later that afternoon, we passed the regional hospital within the Boone city limits and were impressed by how modern it looked. And we drove around ASU a bit more, realizing that the campus was much bigger than we expected with many newer buildings and just an overall energy and vibe that excited us.

I always insist on going to at least one local bookstore when we visit someplace new, and I’m still sad that we only had 20 precious minutes in Huzzah Books! before we had to leave for our dinner reservation. A quick survey of the shelves revealed an amazing collection of my favorite kinds of books: 20th century fiction, eastern philosophy, and books about famous creative types. I could have spent hours in there and will prioritize it next time we visit.

Our Italian dinner at Casa Rustica was spectacular. Yummy garlic bread, Caesar salad that didn’t poison us, and tricolor tortellini with Italian sausage. I think Libby ate even more bread than I did, which is almost always the opposite. Our server was an ASU college senior named Jonathan who was from Charlotte, NC, already had a job lined up with Wells Fargo for after graduation, and was one of the friendliest and helpful servers we’ve experienced in any restaurant, anywhere.

The end of Day 2’s conclusion: We could most definitely see ourselves living here. The combination of both towns surrounded by mountains and all the places to eat and the university and those temperatures...be still my high-beating heart.

Before leaving the region on Saturday morning we popped into Stick Boy, a highly recommended bakery, for some delicious mocha coffee and a large, flaky chocolate croissant, which was not as good as the ones I wrote about here but still better than the ones you’ll find at chains such as normal Starbucks stores and Panera. Once again the service was ridiculously friendly, and we chit-chatted with a young father who’d lived in the area his entire life and loved it.

After that, we took the hike we’d postponed from the day before. It was my first time hiking since my June 9 back surgery and it was a success. The only downside was a particularly cloudy morning and a touch of fog, so we couldn’t see much from the mountains.

After that, it was time to head toward Asheville for our final evening in WNC. We stopped first in one of my favorite towns in the world, Black Mountain, located 20 minutes east of Asheville. There’s a downtown restaurant called Cousins Cuban Cafe that has the best Cuban sandwich anywhere outside of South Florida and Key West (and, I’m assuming, Cuba?).

But as soon as we parked and got out of the car, we both noticed something. Ten degrees hotter than the High Country. Still cooler than Nashville, but damn…who knew there were more moderate portions of North Carolina just waiting for us to visit?

We drove into Asheville to the Hampton Inn we’ve stayed at several times, both of us exhausted and ready for a nap. During our down time at the hotel, it was clear that we weren’t as excited to be in Asheville as we normally are. But we still dragged ourselves to downtown, trying out a rooftop bar we hadn’t been to before and then walking to one of our two favorite Asheville restaurants, Suwana’s Thai Orchid, where the Thai Fried Rice is unforgettable.

The five-hour drive home on Sunday was filled with discussions about Boone and Blowing Rock and ski resorts and the people and all the questions that were bubbling up inside of us. Libby did research on different neighborhoods and healthcare services while I drove. I began researching a LinkedIn outreach strategy while she drove. And yesterday, back in my home office and still very tired, I went from zero LinkedIn connections based in Boone to at least 10, several of which I’ll be talking to in the coming weeks.

We were already planning to visit Wilmington, NC, and stay at Carolina Beach in the latter half of September. We were going to spend one night in Asheville going there and another on the way back.

By the time we got home to Nashville, we’d changed our itinerary to spend one night in Boone on the way to the coast and another on the way home. We know Asheville well at this point, but Boone is a shiny new object that very well could become our future residence.

The reconnaissance work has just begun, so time will tell where we land. And whether I finally have a newfound sense of home.

Thanks for reading! I’m John M. DeMarco, writer and executive coach, married GenX girl dad and cat dad, sharing stories and reflections on growth, loss, and making your own meaning.

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And then we saw it, lying on its side on the pavement of the street onto which I was about to turn.

A medium-sized dog. Very still. Apparently hit by a car.

And left there.

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We struggled to come up with the words for what we were seeing and processing. Had I been alone, I would have turned left as planned, parked my car in the driveway closest to the dog, and scrambled over to see if they were still breathing. Depending on that outcome, I would have frantically started ringing doorbells and knocking on doors, trying to find the dog’s owner and deliver the terrible news and get them or someone to call the animal equivalent of 911.

Except Libby was with me, and before she could speak I turned right instead of left and took a couple of streets that circled us back to our house. I knew there was no way that she was going to be able to see that poor animal up close, and Libby was grateful for my split second decision.

I parked in our driveway and Libby went inside the house while I ran in the direction of the dog, feeling a cascade of emotions; among them, sadness, shock, and rage.

But I wasn’t going to get there first.

There was a woman power walking on the adjacent street and she was about to reach the dog. I kept running…and was shocked to see her walk right past the poor thing.

WTF? What-the-even-peter-paul-and-mary-and-joseph-and-baby-jesus-on-a-fucking-popsicle-stick-melting-in-the-dog-days-of-summer-and-climate-change-is-real fuck?

I kept up my pace and got closer and closer. My thoughts were racing. How could this woman just walk past the dog? Was her husband the driver who ran over the dog? Should I start yelling after her? And how many cars had already driven by in apparent indifference? What the fuck is wrong with this world, with my neighborhood, with…

I was really close to reaching the dog. And then…

…I realized it wasn’t a victimized dog at all, but a large cardboard box that had been run over and crushed by someone’s vehicle.

My heart was racing. I was flooded with relief, gratitude, and…astonishment at yet another example of my long-suffering ability to think I know what I’m seeing or hearing or perceiving or understanding or anticipating when, in fact, I don’t have the complete story or even a small chapter short sentence of the story, period. Moments when, like Rick Grimes facing off with the evil baseball bat-wielding Negan during the finale of The Walking Dead, Season 7, I think I know what’s going on but don’t know shit.

For some reason I felt compelled to pick up the crushed cardboard and walk back to my house with it. (Not sure why the aforementioned lady couldn’t have done the same thing but maybe I’m kind of weird anyway so I stopped dwelling on her cardboard apathy.) I plopped it into our outside trash can and would separate it out with the other cardboard recyclables before pickup day.

When I went inside the house, Libby was already telling my stepdaughter Marissa about seeing the dog in the road and how horrible it was that someone had apparently hit the dog and sped off. They jumped as I returned much sooner than they expected.

“What happened?”

“It wasn’t a dog,” I said, still trying to catch my breath. “It was a big cardboard box.”

Cue incredulous, somewhat disbelieving looks from the two wonderful women who currently reside full-time in our home.

“A cardboard box?!”

“Really,” I said, and managed a chuckle. “But damn. It sure looked like a dog!”

“I thought for sure it was a dog!” Libby said, as Marissa breathed a sigh of relief and started laughing as well.

My faith in humanity wasn’t fully restored that morning by any means, but I was relieved that one of the worst behaviors a human driver could demonstrate had not, in fact, taken place within full view of my driveway.

As we initiated Driving to the Gym, Take Two, and cruised past the scene of the non-crime, I remarked to Libby that it was yet another example of me seeing one thing and reality being something entirely different. And how, thankfully, this ended up being a pretty innocuous thing.

Except that, (mostly) behind closed doors of the streets of my upper middle class, Middle Tennessee, red state neighborhood, there were human beings who were seeing people and situations and differing values systems through the lenses of (sometimes, but not always unconscious) biases.

Biases that often are not so innocuous. Biases that allow despicable acts to happen, biases that support or do nothing to stop racist, misogynistic, or theocratic policies.

Biases that can tear families apart. Biases that can kill.

Especially Black and brown people. And trans kids. And a person of any race or background who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time during a fucking ICE arrest.

Biases that have been enabled and even encouraged by the orange cardboard caricature currently farting in the chair behind the Oval Office.

I know without a doubt that I have biases. But I like to think I’m not one of those more dangerous bias holders. Maybe. Maybe not.

But such hypothetical comparisons really didn’t matter at the moment.

What mattered that morning, what matters right now, is what I would do the next time, when the stakes were a little higher than going to the gym, I let my eyes or ears draw an immediate conclusion regarding some person or group of persons who appeared to be different from me. Who seamlessly checked my mental category of other.

Dogs aren’t cardboard. They bleed and break and die when someone runs over them. A family’s heart breaks as soon as they get the news.

The same is true for human beings. And lots of families’ hearts are breaking into shards every hour of every day that our collective societal madness continues.

Thanks for reading! I’m John M. DeMarco, writer and executive coach, married GenX girl dad and cat dad, sharing stories and reflections on growth, loss, and making your own meaning.

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Sure, there’s been epiphanies. Most of which I’ve captured and saved.

Research? We’re talking about nearly 2 million words across a few documents, and that was all without one of those irritating generative AI fuckboys.

Character biographies, including supporting characters such as the relatives, besties, and sworn enemies orbiting around four main characters? Yep. I know their MBTI and Enneagram types. I know their strengths and weaknesses.

I know what they like to eat, where their great-grandparents are from, and what types of micro-aggressions they detest. I haven’t fleshed out the facial expressions they make when they take a shit, but some things are best left to mystery so the reader can fill in the blanks and, anyway, eww. I can’t believe you would even suggest that.

Entire poster boards filled with ideas, scene diagrams, themes, and motifs? All 30 or so are in a big portfolio case in my office closet, probably under the ties I don’t wear.

And then there’s the outlines.

Iterations of countless outlines. Oh, so many hopeful, virginal outlines. He came, he saw, he outlined. Remind me to mention the outlines.

Everything, everywhere, all at once…except for actually writing a fucking first draft or even a first chapter.

Drought, drought, drought.

Because I couldn’t seem to land on an actual storyline and story structure. It was like preparing a banquet feast but never taking the chance of inviting someone to dine and drink at the table. My characters were all Enneagram-ed up with no place to go and nothing to quench their thirst.

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It’s been an era of novel-writing resistance, as Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art, might say; and the reasons behind said resistance are as numerous as the planet’s proliferations of shy tributaries snaking their wet paths across various landscapes, evading their own geographical droughts and feeding into large rivers that, at some point, reunite with the sea while singing I know now that I love you ‘cause I need your touch, hey, hey.

During the past 15 years I’ve published three of my books on Amazon, the first two being works of fiction: The Book Club Widowers; Narcissus Blinked: Three Novellas; and The 4 Spheres of Intentional Living. But the last time I updated any of those volumes was late 2018. Since then, I’ve avoided the proverbial blank fiction page like Pig Pen of Peanuts lore running scared from a bottle of men’s body wash. Drought.

But this morning, I let it rain.

No more wishing it would rain like Phil Collins. No more blame it on the rain excuses like those lip-syncing Milli Vanilli dudes, and their name sucked anyway but it really was a tragedy for me to see the dream was over because I liked their music. And holy shit…Blame it on the Rain literally showed up on my Spotify right now as I’m typing this! Chills…or is it just surveillance capitalism?

(Suddenly it’s 1989 again and I’m about to head back to college for my senior year and I was hanging near a girl I liked and that Milli Vanilli fake song Girl, I’m Gonna Miss You was playing, and damn I knew I was going to miss her and I did; but a year later I kissed her and that was the only kiss because she was one of them there holy rollers and “God” told her not to see me anymore and don’t get me started on God.)

No. This morning was more like Roger Daltrey screaming, Love, reign o’er me as I knocked out about 1,500 words of that long-elusive first chapter.

Yeah, I know that rain and reign aren’t the same word and I’m mixing metaphors here, but they’re phonetic twins and I was today years old when I realized the Who song actually used reign and not rain…but it’s my Substack and I’ll mix as I wanna, bitch, so go write your own damned first chapter instead of scrolling notes that oughta be on Insta or FB, and maybe one day you’ll reign over writer’s block like I’m doing right now.

There. I did it.

I’ve told you, my Substack community, that I’ve started writing a novel.

I’ve never had a supportive writing community like this, and I’m really hoping that some of you will organically hold me accountable because dammit I am determined to finish this volume and nurture it across some eventual finish line where I land the publishing deal or find a way to publish it myself.

I’m probably not going to talk about it a lot, at least for now, in essays like this after today. And, even less likely, in Notes…with one splendid exception that you’ll learn about before long. You won’t see me dropping ongoing word count updates, although I celebrate those of you who do that if it energizes you and galvanizes support.

However, I’ve been sharing some things with a few of you behind the scenes (you know who you are, you lucky bastards) and that will most definitely continue, unless you eventually find it insufferable and tell me to sit the hell down.

So, after such an extended fiction drought, after all those years of research, outlines, and character biographies without ever finding the right storyline and story structure, how did I end up getting said storyline and story structure?

My recent two-day trip to downtown Chicago to meet up with my oldest friend Bill and see our favorite band, Rush, gave my four alter ego-ish characters a place to go. In my novel, two longtime friends really do meet up in Chicago to see their all-time favorite band. They go to some of the same places that Bill and I literally went to last month. (Note: None of the characters are based directly or even indirectly on Bill or the important people in his life or in my life. This ain’t no Look Homeward, Angel.)

And here’s something that has me unapologetically geeking out. Instead of putting Rush into the story, I’ve fully invented my own fictional progressive rock band.

I’ve already come up with the band name, the band members’ names, their origin story, album themes, song titles, and even a few song lyrics. I’m having so much fun tapping into the high school and college versions of me who scribbled out song lyrics week after week. It’s like a resurrection of one of my early types of writing and I feel born again for sure.

What else happens in the story? I can’t tell you because I don’t fully know, but I can tell you there’s an emerging golden thread across things my characters are unwilling to feel.

Does that sound familiar? If you’ve followed my essays the past several months, it should. If not, check out Things we are unwilling to feel, part 1, and part 2.

You know who else still has stuff they’re unwilling to feel?

Me.

For years, I’ve been unwilling to feel the potential of staring at that blank screen and feeling like I have nothing to say. I’ve been unwilling to feel the reality that my first draft will probably suck, despite that being rather normal.

But beyond fiction writing or any kind of writing, I’m asking myself more and more each day, during little moments, what am I unwilling to feel right now?

As I discover things about my four characters along the first draft journey, as I nurture them and help them grow, I’m counting on growing a little more myself.

Just like I want my writing to touch and transform readers, I want to keep transforming myself; transcending states of avoidance and pushing myself deeper into life’s messy ambiguities and joys and sufferings and all the nuances you can’t curate but can lean into and, as a result, possibly make some fleeting semblance of meaning regarding this temporary existential crisis we call the human experience.

Hello! I’m John DeMarco, a Nashville, Tennessee-based, married GenXer dad of amazing daughters, sharing stories and reflections on growth, loss, and making your own meaning. I’ve been writing since around age 11.

My Substack is reader-supported. While all of my articles and Notes are free to access, those choosing to upgrade to paid subscriptions enable me to dedicate more and more time for writing, reading, commenting on, and restacking other writers’ work. I’d love for Substack to eventually become the only thing I do for a living along with writing books and, perhaps, movies and TV shows.

Thank you so much for your time, attention, and interaction!

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Neil looked at me for a moment, all 6’4” of him, and I could tell that he could tell I was geeking out over his presence and on the verge of fawning adulation. He grinned (was he about to tell me, “I can’t pretend a stranger is a long-forgotten friend?”) and then shook hands with Jim.

“Always wanted to meet you,” Neil said. “You were a little before my time.”

“You were a little after mine,” Jim said. “We should write some stuff together. Maybe even do a gig at some point.”

Jim started to pour some beer into his mug, but then changed his mind and took another big swig from the pitcher.

“Dude,” Neil said, “that’s gross.”

“I know,” Jim said. “But I gotta keep things real. Do you know who else is coming?”

Neil shook his head. “I didn’t know I was coming.” He looked at me. “Are they bringing us some pizza?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s called the Alph Pie.” Neil raised an eyebrow upon hearing this, but didn’t say anything and I wondered if he thought the pizza was inspired by lyrics from Rush’s Xanadu which, of course, he wrote.

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“Well, look who else is here,” Dad said, pointing, and the four of us simultaneously bowed, as if showing proper respect to royalty, as John Lennon and Paul McCartney strolled over to the table.

“At bloody ease,” John said, and Paul laughed.

“Really,” Paul said. “We’re not worth the effort.”

“You’re selling yourselves short,” Neil said. “This party just keeps getting better.”

John smiled at Jim and shook his head. “Dude, you were a train wreck. But you wrote some amazing shit.”

“Neil and I were just talking about doing some writing and performing together,” Jim said.

“I’ll sing with you, Jim,” Paul said. “Imagine the scandal: Let it Be meets The End.”

“Yes!” I said. “That would be freakin’ awesome.”

“Don’t leave me out of this party!” yelled a distinct Irish voice, and we all applauded as U2’s Bono joined our table.

“Jesus Christ, in the flesh,” John said. “Are you taking a day off from saving the world, Paul?”

Paul McCartney frowned. “He doesn’t ever go by Paul. And don’t confuse everyone here. There’s one Paul, and only one Paul, and that’s me. And despite rumors to the contrary I, unlike everyone here except Bono and John DeMarco, am not dead yet.”

“The Walrus himself,” Neil said.

“Can a man get some pizza around here?’ Bono asked, and took off his sunglasses as he gazed at the white ceiling. “What’s that all about up there?”

“I’m not sure,” I said.

“Hey, the table is getting larger,” Paul said. “What the even hell?”

John looked at Paul with utter contempt. “What the EVEN hell? Where did that ridiculousness come from?”

“Where all of our stuff comes from. The deep, dark, beyond, my friend,” Paul said and John rolled his eyes.

“Whoa look at it now,” Jim said, pointing to the ceiling, where the digital whiteboard was no longer just white but was unveiling a dark center, a mass of swirling blues, violets, purples, blacks, and grays, coalescing and then pulling apart before coalescing again. I was too caught up in staring at the ceiling to notice that not only was the table enlarging but more chairs were being added by a trio of bus boys and as more guests were arriving.

“Well, it’s the Godfather himself,” Neil said as Al Pacino greeted everyone with a hearty handshake. Al was dressed in his younger Michael Corleone exiled to Sicily attire, no less than the tuxedo he wore during his wedding to the young Apollonia, sporting a black eye and swollen jaw.

When my father shook his hand Dad whispered something in Al’s ear, and Al smiled.

“What do you say to him?” I whispered as well to Dad as Al sat down and poured himself a glass of the beer.

“I told him that you’ve watched the Godfather movies more than any other movies that you’ve obsessed over.”

I nodded. “That’s probably right.”

“I’m trying not to be hurt by that,” a new voice whispered, startling me. The voice came from a 60-something man crouching behind me, wearing all black and sporting long, gray locks and shaggy facial hair. “But you seem more into me the past few years, now that I’m this wise old recluse. That’s what you’ve longed to be at times yourself, right? A wise recluse?”

I laughed, and stood as Mark Hamill stood, and we embraced. “I must have liked your younger self a lot as well, since I saw Star Wars six times when it came out. And all the stuff I drew and talked about. You solidified my early nerd-dom.”

“I’m still bitter that I didn’t get to stick around for Return of the Jedi,” John said. “Hamill, you look like you could have been one of the Beatles.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” Mark said, and then looked at Jim. “Morrison, you would have made a great older recluse yourself. Maybe even a poet laureate.”

“Or just a pathetic soul who didn’t drink enough to die in time to be mythologized,” Jim said. “That’s where John and I are lucky. We didn’t live long enough to become clichés, to descend into mediocrity.”

“Mediocrity doesn’t have to be the destiny of growing older,” Dad said.

“Yeah, my father here was never mediocre,” I said, and wrapped my arm around him. “He was never famous like all of you, but he made his mark.”

Mark lifted his own glass of beer, which Neil had poured for him as soon as the Jedi Master sat down. “Here’s to Frank DeMarco,” Mark said, and the other luminaries joined in the toast. “Here’s to always asking, Would Frank DeMarco Do It that Way?”

“Cheers, indeed,” Al said. “Frank, you sure loved being Italian. And who can blame you?”

“I don’t understand why people wake up each day and choose not to be Italian,” Dad said.

“I don’t understand why people wake up each day and choose not to be Canadian,” Neil interjected. “Just look at the way you Americans are always tearing each other apart. And you’ve elected Trump twice.”

“I’ve have no art to create without the paradoxical beauty and ugliness that is America,” Jim said. He glanced over at Bono. “Fuck, man, you haven’t said shit since before Pacino arrived.”

“I’ve never been accused of being reticent,” Bono said. “But I’ve been distracted, waiting to see who else is going to show up. This table keeps growing, and the ceiling keeps changing. You guys are interesting, but so is this place.’

The spherical color swirl on the ceiling had morphed into smaller blobs of color now, spread across all directions of the ceiling. Symbols were emerging from each of the circles, but I couldn’t identify the symbols just yet. I looked back at the group just as Little Paisano returned with what looked like an unhoused guy in his mid-to-late 30s, wearing an Army uniform that hadn’t been washed in months and an equally filthy shirt or rag or bandana or something like that tied around his forehead.

“Are you ever going to bring us pizza,” Bono asked Little Paisano, “or are we supposed to eat Martin Sheen?”

I stared at the newcomer and, indeed, it was Sheen as Capt. Willard from Apocalypse Now, looking like he’d been plucked by helicopter out of the jungles of Vietnam and denied his chance to continue traveling to the lair of Col. Kurtz and all the horror, the horror that surrounded that particular recluse.

Martin looked over at Al as he sat down. “You know, I’m glad you’re here, Pacino, but it would have been more convenient if Brando had come instead. Then I wouldn’t have to go back to that godforsaken movie set in the Philippines.”

“What did you do to Francis?” Al asked him. “He almost lost his mind during that production. He wasn’t like that during the first two Godfather films.”

“Francis!” Martin said. “Forget Francis. Did you see what happened to me? Did you see the miles-long walk to the hospital after the heart attack?”

“Best opening movie soundtrack ever,” Jim said, lifting his glass of beer and waiting for others to do the same. Neil and Mark obliged.

Then several of the dinner guests yelled at once, and a second later I saw the reason as a vicious-looking St. Bernard raced around the table, baring its teeth but not barking. Then Al and Neil started laughing, and as I looked closer I could tell the dog was merely a hologram-like augmented reality creation. More laughter ensued, and I turned and saw a trio of men approaching the table, led by a very familiar bespectacled face.

“Bad Cujo!” Stephen King said, unable to conceal his sheer delight in the prank. “I doubt even Randall Flagg or Greg Stillson would be as frightening at first glance.”

“Good one,” I said, rising to greet the fiction author who has shaped me more than any other. I looked at Stephen’s friends. One was a pudgy, Italian-looking guy and the other a reserved fellow with short hair and very old-fashioned clothes.

‘I,” said the pudgy Italian, shaking my hand, “wrote the book that you’ve read more times than any other, including any of Mr. King’s pop fiction tomes.”

“And a brilliant book it is,” Al said. “I still don’t think my portrayal of Michael lived up to what you created, Mario.” My eyes widened as I felt embarrassed for not immediately recognizing the late Mario Puzo, and my Dad was at my side and introducing himself to Mario as well.

“I didn’t read a lot of fiction in my lifetime, but I read your book for sure,” Dad told him.

“You’re a great guy, Frank,” Mario said. “I’m still amazed that novel has been so popular. I guess that was my goal, to write something that would make a lot of money so I could get out of debt.”

“Francis didn’t want to direct it, and you didn’t want to write it,” Al said, “and the studio didn’t want to cast me. It’s amazing any of it happened at all.”

“It’s amazing that art can even happen in this world, period,” said the third newcomer, his first words since arriving. He looked at me, hesitated and then shook my hand. “Look, I don’t usually give a damn whether anyone reads or likes my work at all, but I respect that you chose Catcher for both your 10th and 11th grade English papers.”

I took a deep breath. “Mr. Salinger, it’s an incredible book. I related to it so much as a 15-year-old, and I still do.”

“Thankfully, no one’s made a movie of it yet,” Bono said, giving Salinger a hug. “That would be pretty ironic, wouldn’t it? You hate the fucking movies.”

“Hate ‘em for sure. Would hate ‘em even more, now. How many times can Hollywood reboot the same franchise? What the fuck was wrong with the first Footloose movie?”

“As many times as necessary if the millions keep flowing,” Stephen said. “I mean, The Stand is on its third television iteration. It’s hard to complain when I see my bank account, but I try not to get caught up in it all. There’s too much fresh writing to do.”

“They’re never going to reboot Star Wars,” Mark said. ‘There’s no many new stories to tell. But they will keep ripping us off and copying us, like they’ve done for almost 50 years.”

“Stop bitching, Hamill, and go tweet another anti-Trump missive,” Jim said. “Maybe something along the lines of my favorite rant, that everyone’s a bunch of fucking slaves.”

“Loved that rant,” Stephen said.

Dad looked at me and shook his head. “How do you get anything done, with all of these people still in your head?”

“It’s not easy, Dad,” I said.

“And Son, have you noticed there’s not a single female here? Didn’t any female writers or actors or musicians influence you as a teenager?”

I had to admit he was right. “I guess not,” I said. “My world was pretty small. Men, and white men at that. I was pretty ignorant.”

“But you were curious,” Neil said, patting me on the shoulder. “And that’s what counts for everything. You’ve stayed curious. Your circle of influence is much broader now. I mean, you’re even a fucking Swiftie.”

“But you guys, all of you,” I began, and was surprised to notice that everyone seemed to be giving me their full attention, “have stuck with me the most. You’re the creative foundation. I’m grateful to you all.”

“Don’t get all sentimental,” John said. “Keep your head in the present and make worthwhile art. It’s amazing how fast the years go by.”

“I told him that, when he was 15,” a familiar voice said, and I turned and saw Denny Bowden, my 10th grade English teacher, enter the room. “And John, I heard about you writing about Catcher again in 11th grade. Don’t you think us English teachers talked about you guys in the staff room?”

I shook Mr. Bowden’s hand. “I’ve thought about your wise words many times. Unfortunately, they haven’t always protected me from self-doubt and procrastination.”

“You always got in your own way,” said the first female voice of the evening and Betsy Carlin, my 12th grade creative writing teacher, joined the motley crew. “So much talent, but so much naivete. I’m glad you haven’t given up, John.”

I gave Mrs. Carlin a hug. “I heard you passed away,” I said. “I’m sorry that we never got to talk again after high school.”

“Don’t have regrets,” Mrs. Carlin said. “Just write. Don’t stop. Don’t worry about whether it’s any good at first. Show up.”

“Yeah, she’s very wise,” Stephen said, and then winked at Mrs. Carlin. “Even if she didn’t think I was worth emulating.”

“Oh, what do you care, Stephen, about what some nobody English teacher in Daytona Beach, Florida, thinks about you? But I probably was a little too harsh,” Mrs. Carlin said, winking.

“No worries,” Stephen said.

“You’re very direct,” a new but familiar voice said. “And that’s a good quality to have. Too many people beat around the bush.”

And I looked upon my tall and lanky friend Dave, with whom I’d had lots of introspective conversations my last year of high school and during college but with

whom I hadn’t stayed in touch with in recent years.

“Thank you, David,” Mrs. Carlin told him. “Someone has to tell the truth in this world.”

“Good to see you, Beanstalk,” I said as Dave and I embraced. “We’ve needed to catch up.”

“Getcha note!” another voice chimed in, and there was my second-best buddy from middle school, Steve, with whom I’d had zero contact the past 15-20 years or so. We embraced as well.

“What’s ‘getcha note?’” asked Salinger, who was lingering nearby and not noticing that Mrs. Carlin was staring at him with awe.

“It’s one of the things our eighth-grade science teacher, Mr. Fernandez, used to say,” Steve said. “Making fun of that poor guy was our favorite pastime.”

“Yeah, we’d draw comics of him and stuff like that,” I said. “We only had him for a single school year, but his mythology has endured. I wonder what he’s up to today. I hope he’s still alive.”

“Is he going to join the party?” Dave asked, looking around and smiling. “It seems like everyone else who ever mattered to you is here. I’m going to go over and chat with Morrison.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, “I need to go meet John Lennon.”

“DUDE!” a most familiar voice bellowed, and my friend Bill—my closest friend in junior high and high school and someone with whom I still text and talk regularly, in addition to our recent downtown Chicago adventure to see the Peart-less Rush perform—came striding in, giving me the usual bear hug. “This is freakin’ amazing! Shit, is that Neil Peart?”

Neil, who was in the middle of an in-depth conversation with Martin Sheen, looked over and scowled.

“Remember, he doesn’t like people gushing over him,” I whispered to Bill.

“Yeah, I’ll play it cool with The Professor,” Bill said. “I’ll see if a conversation happens organically.”

“No autographs.”

“That sucks, but no autographs,” Bill said. “And I damned well better not pull an I Love You, Man moment and eat his sandwich.”

I gestured to the high-end camera he had hanging by a shoulder strap. Bill had really gotten into photography and did nice work, which I vicariously experienced through his Instagram posts. “And no photographs.”

“Now, that really sucks, and I’m sure if I can oblige,” he said. “No promises, but I’ll try.”

“Johnny D and Billy Clyde, the two baddest boys alive!” yelled a voice I’d not heard in more than 40. Bill and I turned, both of us wide-eyed, as Larry (what the hell was his last name?), the Black cashier from the Kroger store where he, Bill, and me had worked entered the room. “I’m ready for some pizza!”

Larry embraced us both, and looked about the room for a second. “Damn, am I the only brother here? Did you have any black friends when you were growing up?”

“Not really,” I said. “I’m not proud of it. A big miss on my part.”

“Hey, man, it’s all good,” Larry said, then pointed at Mrs. Carlin. “I don’t see any ladies here either, except for that old bitch over there.”

“Dude, your voice carries,” Bill said. “And how many times do I have to tell you not to call me Billy Clyde?”

Just then a 60-ish man I didn’t recognize entered the room. I wasn’t sure if he was part of the restaurant staff or another important influence from my teenage years. He was wearing a white jacket, the kind that doctors wear; and sure enough, as he got closer, I realized it was Dr. Shapiro.

The Dr. Shapiro whose advice and subsequent actions changed part of me forever. And not for the better.

(To be continued.)

Hello! I’m John DeMarco, a Nashville, Tennessee-based, married GenXer dad of amazing daughters, sharing stories and reflections on growth, loss, and making your own meaning. I’ve been writing since around age 11.

My Substack is reader-supported. While all of my articles and Notes are free to access, those choosing to upgrade to paid subscriptions enable me to dedicate more and more time for writing, reading, commenting on, and restacking other writers’ work. I’d love for Substack to eventually become the only thing I do for a living along with writing books and, perhaps, movies and TV shows.

Thank you so much for your time, attention, and interaction!

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Across 19 years, approximately 98% of the overhead announcements I’ve heard while slumming it at Nashville International Airport (BNA) have been typical and not memorable. But last Sunday morning, waiting to board my flight to Chicago, I found myself people-watching just to catch a glimpse of some hungover honky-tonked “bride tribe” woman shuffling along with just a single high-rise boot, telling her fully-booted friend or friends, “I knew something was off! Helllll, yeah!”

I didn’t see anyone who fit the profile but I did, unfortunately, observe at least a couple of men committing the air travel faux paus I’ve complained about for decades: wearing a tank top or sporting crocs with socks and shorts. Just stop, my fellow mister sirs. Stop dressing like that when you fly…

…and, just for good measure, cease and desist being the first person to laugh at your own jokes because I’ll bet my best pair of nonexistent boots that no one else thinks what you said was funny in those moments, and since we’re already in dialogue please resist trying to chat up the young woman in the airplane seat next to you cause she’s wearing her AirPods and reading a book and clearly isn’t hoping that you’re “the one.”

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I was feeling extra freedom during this BNA visit because, just six weeks post-back surgery, I didn’t want to lift anything too heavy over my head and made the rare decision to check my bag. All I had with me, then, in the terminal was my under-stuffed backpack and I was channeling Jessie J (I’m feeling sexy and free/Like glitter’s raining on me) while knowing I wouldn’t have to worry about finding an available overhead compartment for my roller bag and CPAP machine.

I was wearing my own AirPods (cause I also don’t want no tank-top wearing, crocs-in-socks, first-laugh-motherfucker making boring-ass conversation with me, no offense), listening to the Spotify playlist I’d built for the following evening’s Rush concert at Chicago’s United Center. Yes, nine months after buying concert tickets, it was finally time to see my all-time favorite progressive rock band and, to my delight, my fellow lifelong Rush fan and almost lifelong best friend Bill was meeting up with me in the Windy City.

Bill and me saw Rush together a few times back in the 1980s and 90s, when we were immortal for a limited time. Since then we’d each seen the band at least once, independent of each other given that we’ve lived in separate states for 19 years, and didn’t think we’d get another chance when legendary drummer and lyricist Neil Peart died of brain cancer in 2020.

Each previous Rush concert anchored a distinct season my life:

Wrapping up a very difficult junior year of high school, contending with depression and isolation. Finishing my sophomore year at a junior college and getting ready to transfer to Florida State University. A newlywed working as a newspaper reporter. Having dinner at a downtown Nashville honkytonk with a group of friends before heading into Bridgestone Arena, one year before my life and family would change forever through marital separation and divorce.

And my current era of life is also unique compared to those years of Rush Concert Past. Both of my parents and my older brother have died. I’m remarried and all three of our daughters are in their 20s. I no longer work for a corporation but run my own executive coaching and writing business. Different parts of my body have failed me during my 50s and I’ve got a couple scars to prove it.

I landed at Midway Airport, grabbed an Uber, and checked into our downtown Chicago hotel while waiting for Bill to arrive. The World Cup finale was still up for grabs at 0-0 and I tried watching on the hotel television but it was being broadcast by Fox News and those dipshits were talking too much and so I kept refreshing my phone screen to see when and if the score changed. I didn’t really care about the match but wanted to know who won. Viva Spain, by the way, and I’m sure Argentina’s fans are still crying for someone.

Bill arrived and, for the first time in four decades, we had nearly 48 hours of one-on-one time together. We kick-started it by devouring a deep dish pizza with sausage delivered to the hotel from local favorite Lou Malnati’s. I’d been daydreaming about said pizza, trying but failing to eat it slowly as Bill and I caught up on what was happening with our careers, our families, our health, and so forth.

(Late Sunday night observations: Bill can fall asleep immediately and I’m a little jealous. More to come on this inequity.)

The next morning (concert day!) we blew off the Hampton Inn continental breakfast (I wonder what an oceanic breakfast would taste like?) and walked several blocks to a five-story mug of goodness that I didn’t know existed: The Starbucks Reserve Chicago Roastery, one of only five in the world. The others are in NYC, Shanghai, Milan, and Tokyo.

This is the ultimate coffee and pastry experience in the U.S. Each floor offered different selections of Starbucks’ finest brews, foods, and cocktails, with shiny, elaborate machinery in all directions that enabled you to literally watch the products being made in real time. Man, it smelled great in there! Souvenirs came in dozens of different categories and I wanted to buy all of them. The staff also seemed to be the cream of the crop, absolutely no pun intended. Starbucks employees are usually pretty friendly but these individuals were…professionals. Like, café in France kind of employees who took obvious pride in their skills and hospitality.

We drank Whiskey Barrel-Aged Cold Brews that included a big block of ice, and Bill and I both marveled at the presentation. (Remember, it’s an experience store.) I ate the best chocolate croissant I’ve had since visiting Rome in 2019. Damn, so fucking good I can’t even.

It was like being born again through baptism in the River Cacao. I didn’t want to finish it. I knew I’d never get over it, and I fell headlong into a full-fledged existential croissant-is. Bill had some kind of sandwich with eggs and I don’t like eggs but I also ate a yummy Caprese sandwich with roasted tomato, fresh mozzarella, and arugula, and mozzarella has protein so balance, bitches.

Starbucks Reserve landed on and was checked off of my proverbial bucket list, all in the same closed-loop of a morning. And then it was time for a longstanding list entry: A 45-minute architectural cruise along the Chicago River, which brought together two of my longtime fascinations…spoiler alert…architecture and rivers.

We cruised under the Chicago Riverwalk and caught magnificent views of 50 different structures, including the Tribune Tower, Wrigley building, and the Willis (formerly Sears) Tower, the second-tallest building in the U.S. The only annoying part of the tour was that we kept seeing the giant phallic symbol known as Trump Tower. I had some fun with Canva, decorating a photo of that gross man child’s edifice with little piles of anthropomorphic shit.

And something else wonderful and unexpected happened after the boat tour. We walked by the American Writers Museum, which I also didn’t know existed, and Bill was kind enough to spend an hour there with me while I geeked out.

The museum opened in April 2017, about two months after my last visit to Downtown Chicago, and the non-profit’s mission is to excite audiences about the impact of American writers—past, present, and future—in shaping our collective histories, cultures, identities, and daily lives. (And if that doesn’t make you swoon and clutch your heart then I really can’t help you.)

All of my favorite 20th century American writers had little displays dedicated to them, and a long hallway wall depicted a full chronology of American writers from around the time of the declaration of independence through the end of the 20th Century.

Both of us knew we needed some downtime in our hotel before resuming our activities. Bill literally took a five-minute power nap, making me jealous once again, but he made up for it by showing me several recent clips of the Rush band members being interviewed. It was such a great way to get even more psyched out for the concert.

And then we might have headed back to that ginormous Starbucks and had Espresso Martini flights teeming with Orange Cacao, Molé Spice and Cherry Limone. Plus more chocolate croissants! I was on the second floor getting the croissants and Bill was on the third level buying our cocktails, and they needed to see both of our IDs so Bill FaceTimed me and it was the first time I’d ever been carded via video call.

We got nice and buzzed and started talking about crazy and funny things that we did in high school and it’s exhilarating how something that was hilarious 40 years ago can still be viscerally hilarious in real-time. At some point in the middle of it all I randomly FaceTimed a mutual high school friend named Tim that neither of us have seen in more than 20 years. I loved the surprised smile and delight on Tim’s face when he saw not just me but Bill.

When we hopped into the elevator to head out from Starbucks, I started telling Bill about my disdain for grown men wearing tank tops during air travel. A couple of young women were also in the elevator and they obviously couldn’t help but overhear us and one of them said that her boyfriend (bless his heart) looked great in tank tops, which got us roaring with laughter again.

It was almost time to head to the United Center for the Rush concert but we had a yummy pitstop to make first for another Chicago bucket list item: the Italian Beef sandwich. We managed to avoid getting hit by cars, buses, bicyclists, birds, and other buzzed pedestrians as we trekked to Al’s #1 Italian Beef, which opened in 1938 and markets itself as the beef stand that launched the national sandwich of Chicago. We coupled the greasy, dripping, sodium-overload deliciousness of our sandwiches with an order of loaded fries, and I think the combined meal featured more saturated fat than I’d consumed in all of my previous Chicago visits combined.

Our stomachs full, harbingers of flatulence conspiring against all whom would cross our paths, and our buzzes wearing off a little (or, at least, mine) we caught an Uber to the United Center. As we neared the venue there were Rush t-shirts in all directions, most of them on people walking excitedly toward said venue. Massive, sprawling entry lines had already formed outside of the different entry gates.

Once inside we headed straight to one of the crowded t-shirt booths and joined a line that moved faster than we expected. When it was our turn to order neither of us had 100 percent made up our minds on which souvenir shirt was most worthy of our $50 plus tax.

Unfortunately, a veteran of NYC pizza joints was taking orders and she was impatient, demanding, and, well, kind of mean. I selected the shirt I really wanted, thankfully, and Bill kind of got one he wanted, and as we strolled away with our purchases we were both laughing about how much pizza t-shirt lady scared us.

It’s wild how little, fleeting moments can provoke the child or teenager still lodged deep inside of you somewhere, causing you to momentarily feel small again. And once again I agree with you, Paul Simon, that after changes upon changes we are more or less the same.

The concert itself was pure perfection. Yeah, I’m biased because I’ve worshipped this band for more than 40 years, but I can’t imagine that anyone attending that show could describe it as anything less than musical genius on display, complemented by videos and lasers and augmented reality at the same creative quality as Taylor’s Eras tour (which I also attended, with two of my daughters, because I am a freakin’ awesome girl dad thank you very much).

I loved the pure joy in the arena before and during the show, spread across multiple generations of kind, polite fans with more female attendees than I’d ever seen at a Rush concert. The youngest female in the house was a two-year-old girl celebrating her birthday with her parents, wearing a set of headphones that practically swallowed her tiny self. I wondered if the parents couldn’t get a babysitter but the little girl’s smiles mitigated my silent judgement.

The most badass female in the house was Rush’s new drummer, 43-year-old Anika Nilles of Germany, who was clearly having the time of her life while playing the late Neil Peart’s drum riffs to perfection and adding her own touches here and there. I wish she’d performed a solo but maybe on the next tour if, God willing, there is one.

I recorded several video clips throughout the concert but was consistently mindful of wanting to make sure I was still experiencing it and not letting the camera serve as my attention proxy. There’s the Camera Eye and then there’s the human eye, and I fused them together the best I could for nearly three hours.

It was nearly impossible to catch a rideshare after the show and we started walking in the direction of our hotel, making a pitstop at the only restaurant still open, a Raisin’ Cane, where each of us bought a single chicken finger and a soda. Scratch that; Bill had a soda and I reverted even further back to my childhood by getting some Hi-C fruit punch, which was very soothing to my tired, dry throat.

We strolled into our hotel a couple of minutes after midnight and it was Bill’s 59^th birthday. A large Indian family clutching extra pillows for their rooms joined us on the elevator ride. No one was saying anything until I, unable to resist, casually remarked, “Today is my friend’s birthday.” Bill was probably ready to kill me as the smiling cascade of HAPPY BIRTHDAYS erupted. But he’d been hanging with me for more than 24 straights hours, which would make anyone want to kill me, and he hadn’t done so yet so I guessed I would live to see my own birthday next February.

Bill, of course, quickly fell asleep. It took my overstimulated brain more than an hour to fully shut down. I tried but couldn’t tolerate my CPAP. I started feeling depressed and it was difficult to recall how joyful I’d been for most of the previous day and evening. I was just exhausted and ready to be home, which is similar to how I feel the end of any out of town trip.

I was still tired but more cheerful after sunrise as we consumed some mediocre Hampon Inn breakfast and got ready to catch our respective Ubers. I was heading back to Midway and Bill was flying out of O’Hare.

As we stood outside the hotel in the bright Chicago sun, my overriding emotion was gratitude. Gratitude for Bill, gratitude for Rush, for deep dish pizza, chocolate croissants, Italian Beefs, architecture, and writers. I didn’t know when I would see Bill again, but I felt our decades-long bond was even stronger because of the memories we’d created together.

Rush didn’t play their early tune Lakeside Park during the concert, but I think this lyric captured what I was and am still feeling several days later:

Though it’s just a memory, some memories last forever.

Hello! I’m John DeMarco, a Nashville, Tennessee-based, married GenXer dad of amazing daughters, sharing stories and reflections on growth, loss, and making your own meaning. I’ve been writing since around age 11.

My Substack is reader-supported. While all of my articles and Notes are free to access, those choosing to upgrade to paid subscriptions enable me to dedicate more and more time for writing, reading, commenting on, and restacking other writers’ work. I’d love for Substack to eventually become the only thing I do for a living along with writing books and, perhaps, movies and TV shows.

Thank you so much for your time, attention, and interaction!

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So much for the riverboat architectural tour I’ve been wanting to take for years. I couldn’t have imagined this when I planned the trip last October; but you never know what kind of weather events you’ll have to deal with, and I’m going to be masking up and by the way the pandemic was fucking real and Biden won the 2020 election.

There’s another Canadian presence in the Windy Smoky City right now; this one quite fortunate, in my humble opinion, and one that beckoned me back here to Sinatra’s kind of town in the first place.

Rush.

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The greatest progressive rock band of all time, in my very self-assured opinion, and without a doubt my favorite band, period, since I was in high school. And one of my closest and oldest friends and a fellow Rush fanatic, Bill, with whom I attended several Rush concerts during the 1980s and 1990s, flew into Chi-town as well and we’re going to hang out together and eat deep dish pizza and join the most enduring fan base in the world at Chicago Stadium tomorrow night for an evening of incomparable musicianship.

The one bittersweet thing?

My favorite Rush band member, drummer and lyricist Neil Peart, won’t be at the show; at least, not physically.

Neil died from a brain tumor a little over six years ago. And, like most Rush fans, I assumed I’d never see the band perform again. Without Peart there could be no Rush. Case closed.

A ghost of a chance

And then last fall, surviving band members Geddy Lee (bass and vocals) and Alex Lifeson (guitar) unexpectedly announced that they had found a new drummer and were going on tour in 2026. After trying out countless drummers, they selected German drummer Anika Nilles to pick up the sticks.

For a few minutes I was quite skeptical and not motivated to try and get tickets. But then I texted Bill, realized he was into it, and quickly adjusted my mindset. I started watching videos of Niles perform, including clips from her participation in one of Jeff Beck’s final tours before he died, and realized how damn good she was.

And, frankly, I was thrilled that they had chosen a woman. There’s definitely some irony here, because Rush fans universally agree that there are very few females among our ranks. It’s always interesting that while Geddy and Alex are in their early 70s, Annika is in her early 40s. Two generations, Boomers and Millennials, making great music together. Two Canadians and one German.

After several days of stalking Seat Geek and Stub Hub, Bill and I managed to score a pair of tickets. The excitement has been building ever since then and now, at last, it’s showtime. All the world’s indeed a stage and the one inside Chicago Stadium is the only one that exists right now for me.

Rush has played about a dozen North American concerts already this summer. Without exception, everything I’ve read online from those who attended a show has been ravingly positive. Niles isn’t “replacing” Peart (no one could) but honoring him while bringing her own vibe and nuances in harmony with Lee, Lifeson, and keyboardist Loren Gold, who’s worked with The Who and, funny enough, Chicago the band.

My writing mentor

Peart didn’t just blow me away with his drumming during live Rush shows of earlier decades or through the thousands of times I’ve listened to my favorite songs.

It was the songwriting. His songwriting. Did I mention the songwriting?

If any creative type has had an oversized impact on my writing voice and style and, to be honest, how I see the world and human nature, it’s Neil Peart.

Even before I started listening to Rush albums around the start of high school, I was already gravitating toward musicians with deep stuff to say through their own lyrics. Paul Simon. The Doors. Led Zeppelin. Pink Floyd. The Beatles, especially during their final few years when they were taking psychedelic drugs and writing some freaky, brilliant shit.

Peart’s nickname was The Professor. Beginning with Rush’s second album, he penned some of the most intelligent lyrics in the history of not just progressive rock but rock music in general.

The late, great Neil was fascinated by different mythologies and ideologies, often weaving them into his songs. He was also a thematic visionary, as evidenced in albums such as 2112, A Farewell to Kings, and Rush’s final studio album Clockwork Angels, as well as multi-part songs spread across several LPs.

Peart saw the world through a powerful lens of critical thinking and even before I could define critical thinking itself he was nudging me to dig deeper and dream bigger. He had a tremendous respect for the autonomy and power of the individual, especially the ones constantly at odds (like me?) with society and conventional thinking.

He wrote the songs that made the young girls boys cry

Just below are excerpts from my favorite Rush tunes. Their echoes have haunted me for decades.

It doesn’t matter what I’m doing or where I am or what’s currently occupying my mind; suddenly I’m humming one of them. I have no choice; I vibe Neil’s (lyrical) voice:

2112 Overture/The Temples of Syrinx

I can’t believe you’re saying

These things just can’t be true

Our world could use this beauty

Just think what we might do

Listen to my music

And hear what it can do

There’s something here that’s as strong as life

I know that it will reach you

A Farewell to Kings

When they turn the pages of history

When these days have passed long ago

Will they read of us with sadness

For the seeds that we let grow?

Between the Wheels

Wheels can take you around

Wheels can cut you down

From rockets’ red glare

Down to “Brother can you spare...”

Another war

Another wasteland

Another lost generation

Cold Fire

(Don’t go too far)

A phosphorescent wave on a tropical sea is a cold fire

(Don’t cross the line)

The pattern of moonlight on the bedroom floor is a cold fire

(Don’t let me down)

The flame at the heart of a pawnbroker’s diamond is a cold fire

(Don’t break the spell)

The look in your eyes as you head for the door is a cold fire

Cygnus X-1, Books I and II

Through the void

To be destroyed

Or is there something more?

Atomized...at the core?

Or through the astral door?

To soar…

I have memory and awareness

But I have no shape or form

As a disembodied spirit

I am dead and yet unborn

I have passed into Olympus

As was told in tales of old

To the city of Immortals

Marble white and purest gold.

Different Strings

What happened to our innocence?

Did it go out of style?

Along with our naivete

No longer a child

Ghost of a Chance

I don’t believe in destiny

Or the guiding hand of fate

I don’t believe in forever

Or love as a mystical state

I don’t believe in the stars or the planets

Or angels watching from above

But I believe there’s a ghost of a chance we can find someone to love

And make it last...

La Villa Strangiato

(Instrumental, but Lifeson’s guitar riffs are etched into the caves of my consciousness like some a priori hieroglyphs.)

Losing It

Some are born to move the world, to live their fantasies

But most of us just dream about the things we’d like to be

Sadder still to watch it die than never to have known it

For you, the blind who once could see

The bell tolls for thee

Manhattan Project

Imagine a man when it all began

The pilot of “Enola Gay”

Flying out of the shockwave

On that August day

All the powers that be

And the course of history

Would be changed forevermore

Mystic Rhythms

So many things I think about

When I look far away

Things I know, things I wonder

Things I’d like to say

The more we think we know about

The greater the unknown

We suspend our disbelief

And we are not alone...

Mystic rhythms

Capture my thoughts

Carry them away

Mysteries of night escape the light of day

Mystic rhythms

Under northern lights

Or the African sun

Primitive things stir

The hearts of everyone

Natural Science

Science, like nature

Must also be tamed

With a view towards its preservation

Given the same

State of integrity

It will surely serve us well

Art as expression

Not as market campaigns

Will still capture our imaginations

Given the same

State of integrity

It will surely help us along

The most endangered species

The honest man

Will still survive annihilation

Forming a world

State of integrity

Sensitive, open and strong

Red Barchetta

Drive like the wind

Straining the limits of machine and man

Laughing out loud with fear and hope

I’ve got a desperate plan

At the one-lane bridge

I leave the giants stranded at the riverside

Race back to the farm

To dream with my uncle at the fireside

Red Tide

Now’s the time to turn the tide

Now’s the time to fight

Let us not go gently

To the endless winter night

Now’s the time to make the time

While hope is still in sight

Let us not go gently

To the endless winter night

Let us not go gently

To the endless winter night

Subdivisions (I couldn’t leave out a single lyric, yo.)

Sprawling on the fringes of the city

In geometric order

An insulated border

In between the bright lights

And the far unlit unknown

Growing up, it all seems so one-sided

Opinions all provided

The future pre-decided

Detached and subdivided

In the mass production zone

Nowhere is the dreamer or the misfit so alone

(Subdivisions)—

In the high school halls

In the shopping malls

Conform or be cast out

(Subdivisions)—

In the basement bars

In the backs of cars

Be cool or be cast out

Any escape might help to smooth

The unattractive truth

But the suburbs have no charms to soothe

The restless dreams of youth

Drawn like moths, we drift into the city

The timeless old attraction

Cruising for the action

Lit up like a firefly

Just to feel the living night

Some will sell their dreams for small desires

Or lose the race to rats

Get caught in ticking traps

And start to dream of somewhere

To relax their restless flight

Somewhere out of a memory

Of lighted streets on quiet nights

(Subdivisions)—

In the high school halls

In the shopping malls

Conform or be cast out

(Subdivisions)—

In the basement bars

In the backs of cars

Be cool or be cast out

Any escape might help to smooth

The unattractive truth

But the suburbs have no charms to soothe

The restless dreams of youth

Territories

The whole wide world

An endless universe

Yet we keep looking through

The eyeglass in reverse

Don’t feed the people

But we feed the machines

Can’t really feel

What international means

In different circles, we keep holding our ground

Indifferent circles, we keep spinning ‘round and ‘round and ‘round

They shoot without shame

In the name of a piece of dirt

For a change of accent

Or the color of your shirt

Better the pride that resides

In a citizen of the world

Than the pride that divides

When a colorful rag is unfurled

The Analog Kid

The fawn-eyed girl with sun-browned legs

Dances on the edge of his dream

And her voice rings in his ears

Like the music of the spheres

The Spirit of Radio

Invisible airwaves crackle with life

Bright antennae bristle with the energy

Emotional feedback on timeless wavelength

Bearing a gift beyond price, almost free

Time Stand Still

Summer’s going fast, nights growing colder

Children growing up, old friends growing older

Freeze this moment a little bit longer

Make each sensation a little bit stronger

Experience slips away

Experience slips away

The innocence slips away

Tom Sawyer

No, his mind is not for rent

To any god or government

Always hopeful, yet discontent

He knows changes aren’t permanent

But change is

The Trees

So the maples formed a union

And demanded equal rights

‘The oaks are just too greedy

We will make them give us light’

Now there’s no more oak oppression

For they passed a noble law

And the trees are all kept equal

By hatchet, axe and saw

YYZ

(Also instrumental, also part of my John DNA.)

Xanadu

‘To seek the sacred river Alph

To walk the caves of ice

To break my fast on honeydew

And drink the milk of Paradise...’

I don’t know who I am without these songs.

This isn’t just rank-and-file loyal fan stuff. This is identity. This is world view.

This is tomorrow tonight in Chicago, my kind of town. Especially because of the deep dish pizza.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And Rush is once again lighting the stage.

Hello! I’m John DeMarco, a Nashville, Tennessee-based, married GenXer dad of amazing daughters, sharing stories and reflections on growth, loss, and making your own meaning. I’ve been writing since around age 11.

My Substack is reader-supported. While all of my articles and Notes are free to access, those choosing to upgrade to paid subscriptions enable me to dedicate more and more time for writing, reading, commenting on, and restacking other writers’ work. I’d love for Substack to eventually become the only thing I do for a living along with writing books and, perhaps, movies and TV shows.

Thank you so much for your time, attention, and interaction!

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I was hired to deliver a half-day workshop for a large group in August. And then I was unhired because, apparently, the group point of contact was looking for a “different kind of energy.”

That was the feedback, which I received through an intermediary. That was all.

And I’m no longer at a place in my life or career where I’m going to beg for more details. Or, especially, for reconsideration. As my wife Libby said, fuck them.

I’m both disappointed and relieved. Yeah, it’s possible to be both at once. Big time possible. I bet you have some of your own personal examples.

Disappointed because it was going to be a nice payday. Relieved because it was going to require a lot of preparation time in the coming weeks followed by an intense round-trip flight across less than 48 hours.

Relieved because pretty much every time I commit to a public speaking gig, I regret it as it gets closer. My anxiety ramps up. I worry that as I step onto the stage (or into the classroom or hotel meeting room) that people whom I’ve never met will see me as an imposter or judge me in some capacity.

This is despite the fact that I’ve made a big portion of my living doing public speaking for the past 26 years; and, until now, no one had ever invited me to speak and then uninvited me.

That’s not the same as the event itself being canceled or postponed, which has happened on a few occasions.

This time I was canceled. And that kind of sucks.

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This is the kind of thing that would’ve bothered me a lot more five or 10 years ago. But it still hurts because it yanks on the invisible scab of an old wound that seems unlikely to ever fully heal. It’s different from other “unhealable” wounds, such as the big floater in my right eye caused by a torn retina five years ago; the removal of my left big toe nail when I was 17 (don’t ask); and the loss of people I love such as my brother and my parents.

As I wrote about in this article, sometime in my pre-teen years I started struggling with words getting “stuck” on the way out of my mouth and sounding mumbled, nervous, or too soft; if I dared to even try to speak in the first place. Trust me, I seldom volunteered.

It was especially frustrating when people would tell me to speak louder or slow down, or when my own so-called friends would make fun of me or imitate me. Even after I became a well-trained public speaker, members of the United Methodist Church where I pastored frequently told me on their way out to the parking lot that I was talking too fast or too soft when delivering a sermon, or that my content was too long. There were a handful of occasions during my 16 years at T-Mobile when I had similar feedback.

On the flip side, I’ve lost track of the number of people who’ve told me that they’re shocked I could have ever struggled with speech disfluency. I usually smile and tell them how much that means to me and that “I never get tired of hearing that.” I guess I’ve gotten pretty good at hiding what I’m feeling on the inside.

And there’s been so many wonderful moments when I’ve gotten into the zone or a flow state while speaking, noticing myself growing increasingly articulate, creative, or witty in real time. Feeling unstoppable.

Sometimes, after those treasured moments, I almost forget that the deep, invisible, not fully healed wound is even there. Almost.

And then something like the other day happens.

I’ve got to level with you. Just between us, ok?

I really don’t care if I ever facilitate another workshop, give another keynote, get interviewed on another podcast, and so forth again. I’m proud of putting myself out there for more than 25 years, doing the thing that has consistently terrified me more than anything else. I’ve progressed more than I could have imagined in my wildest dreams.

But I think I’m done.

I’m not finished with executive coaching by any means, which is usually done in a one-on-one context where I especially thrive. I love deep conversations with one person and a handful of persons is okay as well. And executive coaching is most of my business revenue these days.

And (obviously?) I’ll never be done with writing. Which seldom requires public speaking. Maybe one day if I’m lucky enough for my books to gain sales traction I’ll be invited to do some author readings and that would be just exciting enough to get me in front of a microphone again.

In general, I want more downtime and more quiet and more space and more solitude. I want and need less attention.

And frankly, I’d like to be done with even the most infrequent, random, direct or indirect criticism of how I talk, even with proxy words like energy, because I’ve had more than a lifetime of those gifts.

How I talk is how I talk. My energy which, frankly, is pretty high and often (so I’m told) contagious, is my energy.

End of story. Here’s where the story ends.

Or, as Libby said, fuck them.

Hello! I’m John DeMarco, a Nashville, Tennessee-based, married GenXer dad of amazing daughters, sharing stories and reflections on growth, loss, and making your own meaning. I’ve been writing since around age 11.

My Substack is reader-supported. While all of my articles and Notes are free to access, those choosing to upgrade to paid subscriptions enable me to dedicate more and more time for writing, reading, commenting on, and restacking other writers’ work. I’d love for Substack to eventually become the only thing I do for a living along with writing books and, perhaps, movies and TV shows.

Thank you so much for your time, attention, and interaction!

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Gina and her family lived on a farm (well, it might have actually just been a large parcel of land in a more rural area) in nearby Oberlin. I remember traveling to her house where they had a big sandbox in the yard and we played in that sandbox for hours at a time, digging trenches and building castles and houses and walls.

She might have been my best friend as a young child, as much as I could muster up the responsibilities of friendship. Our carefree times together still linger with me as the high epitome of childhood innocence: playing for the sake of playing, a privilege we gradually learn to give away as adults for the illusion of greater “responsibility.”

Behind the scenes a major change was in the works. It interrupted the life I knew and jump-started a string of goodbyes that slowly unraveled the perception of that innocence.

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My parents decided to move us to Florida, which I have often quipped is mandatory if you happen to reside in Ohio, New York, or New Jersey. I was in the middle of kindergarten and didn’t finish out the school in Florida because apparently some school staffer told my mother “there wasn’t room for me.” Whatevs. My oldest sister Francine was pregnant with her first child and they left her behind in Ohio. Whatevs, indeed!

I didn’t see much of my cousin Gina after the move to Florida. She and her family visited once or twice during the 1980s. They were there for a few days in the summer of 1988 and I had fun driving her around Daytona Beach.

I saw her again at Christmas 1989 when we gathered at Francine’s house in Strongsville. The earth was blanketed with thick snow and the wind chill might have been below zero and there were icicles decorating the outside of Francine’s house, and I remember hanging outside with my sister Jeanne and breaking off an icicle and pretending I was Anthony Perkins from that murderous shower scene in Hitchcock’s Psycho. (I didn’t actually stab her, by the way; you can ask her if you don’t believe me.)

My niece bought me one of those classic felt hats that gangsters wear in movies. I was quite delighted it and wore it one evening when my sibs and I, along with Francine’s husband Jim, went to a nightclub with live music. The band’s singer approached us before the show and asked if he could borrow my hat. I was so caught off guard that I immediately said “yes” and my sisters were immediately terrified that I would never see that hat again.

The band started playing and there was no sign of said hat on the singer’s head or anyone else’s head. Song after song, no hat. My sisters started chanting hat, hat, hat! And then, finally, the hat made its appearance and I didn’t take my eyes off of it until their set ended and, surrounded by my posse of sibs and Jim, I went up near the stage and retrieved it and I kept it for many years and why the hell did I eventually get rid of that hat (and my original Star Wars figures collection)?

We headed toward Jim’s car in the parking lot and were startled by the sound of broken glass, a few of the shards nearly landing on us. Jim spotted the offender, a rather inebriated middle-aged man who’d thrown his beer bottle to the ground, and cussed him out for breaking the bottle so close to us. They were nearly face-to-face and, as a muscular 21-year-old with an oversized helping of hubris, I was ready to intervene if Jim needed some help.

“I’VE HAD A REALLY BAD MONTH!” the man screamed at us. He turned and started walking away. “I’VE HAD A REALLY BAD MONTH! I’VE HAD…” Our guy was likely having a really bad life. We got in the car and left his drunk, sad ass behind.

Obviously, that evening became folklore, a crucial entry into the DeMarco family mythology. You couldn’t predict when one of us would suddenly scream the “bad month” justification.

I didn’t know it at the time but this would be the last Christmas that my parents and siblings would spend together while my father was still alive. Someone took a photo of the six of us, the last one I know of from that pre-pre-pre cell phone camera era, and I keep it close by.

By then, Gina was a beautiful 20-year-old with big brown eyes, attending college. We had a lot of fun catching up when they visited my sister’s house one evening.

After flying home from Ohio to Florida, catching a cold on the airplane and finishing what was left of my last Christmas break of my last year in college, I packed up my stuff on the first Sunday of January 1990 and made the four-hour drive back to school in Tallahassee.

Shortly after arriving, a phone call from my brother informed me that Gina had died in an icy car crash that weekend in Ohio.

And just like that the last grains of imagined childhood innocence slipped through my fingers like fine sand, as quickly as Gina had slipped from life to death.

I spent that final semester of college haunted by the photos we had taken of Gina just 10 days or so before her death; hanging out in my sister’s living room, happy, perfectly healthy, well-adjusted to life. My late brother Frank is in those photos too, making them even more meaningful.

I clung to the distant mental images of the two of us playing in the sandbox, hanging out, happy, perfectly healthy, trying to adjust to childhood.

Had it all been a dream?

While passing co-eds on campus—and there was no shortage of coeds at Florida State University—I would sometimes see Gina’s face. I threw my all into school that semester and earned a 4.0 in my classes to finish strong, and part of me was serving the effort as a tribute to Gina; my own private way of keeping her memory alive.

Maybe it was a larger, performance-oriented effort to once and for all overcome whatever within me remained lacking for an interrupted kindergarten, and for a childhood that could never quite wiggle out from under the weight of those thick glasses I wore or break through the barrier of the stutter I dealt with growing up.

I’ve noticed that what is most precious to me feels ever fleeting and already slipping through my fingers, even as I hold it before me; naked innocence, people, opportunities, happiness, and so forth. Every moment matters and in my constant hurry to get to the distant future that could be I often fail to appreciate the current stretch of what is.

Even as I write this my oldest daughter Alexandra is about to turn 26, has traveled through Europe alone on numerous occasions, and now lives in New England. My youngest daughter Olivia is 21 and a rising college senior. My stepdaughter Marissa, whom I’ve known since she was 11, is also 21.

How did this happen?

As Alexandra and Olivia were growing up, I didn’t want to let one grain of their precious childhood or innocence slip through my fingers. I wanted to hold all the sand in the palms of my hands, and keep eternity secured in the shelter of my passionate oversight.

I can’t come to terms with even the potential of goodbyes when it concerns my little girls or Marissa. I can’t imagine how the parents of Olivia’s recently-deceased friend Gabrielle carry on as the world dares to continue its orbit, as countries launch attacks on one another and data centers sprawl.

But even when my daughters were tiny, I knew I couldn’t retain the grains any more than I could suspend the tides or harness the winds.

I could only play hard and bring out as much joy and potential in them as possible, during whatever fleeting time we had together in the sandbox.

But time makes you bolder

Even children get older

And I’m gettin’ older, too

Hello! I’m John DeMarco, a Nashville, Tennessee-based, married GenXer dad of amazing daughters, sharing stories and reflections on growth, loss, and making your own meaning. I’ve been writing since around age 11.

My Substack is reader-supported. While all of my articles and Notes are free to access, those choosing to upgrade to paid subscriptions enable me to dedicate more and more time for writing, reading, commenting on, and restacking other writers’ work. I’d love for Substack to eventually become the only thing I do for a living along with writing books and, perhaps, movies and TV shows.

Thank you so much for your time, attention, and interaction!

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Other times upon arriving home, during that same era of early fatherhood, I would head straight to the pile of mail that had arrived that day and start going through it. Money was extremely tight and I was often dreading the latest bill that might arrive, but also had a low tolerance for envelopes and sheets of paper strewn across a counter or table.

I missed a lot of moments to simply be present with tiny Alexandra rather than being so hyper vigilant about the clutter I needed to mitigate as quickly as possible.

Here in my 50s I can tolerate physical clutter a lot more than I used to. But I definitely still notice the discomfort and try to acknowledge it rather than pretending it doesn’t bother me.

This helps me make more skillful choices in the moment, especially regarding whether it’s the right time to stop everything and de-clutter or if that can be done later. Most importantly, it helps me to be chill and kind and non-reactionary to the lovely people in my household.

It helps to jot down these observations as well. Here’s my current list of clutter-ish dynamics that still generate the most aforementioned discomfort:

• A piece of mail placed on top of my nightstand in the bedroom (I seem to really need my nightstand clutter-free in order to relax in my bed)

• Dirty dishes, glasses, and pots overflowing in the sink or on the counter (probably my biggest pet peeve in general, and one that sucks up a lot of time)

• Items left in random places, such as a kitchen utensil or screwdriver

• Items shoved into the bottom of my home office closet where I keep my nicer clothes

• Overgrown bushes or weeds along the landscaping in our front yard

• Shoes left in the upstairs bonus room where we watch TV, aka tripping hazards

It’s interesting how other types of clutter fail to gain my attention as quickly or generate as much discomfort, such as the cat leaving his various play items (long pieces of string and a wooden wand with a string of brightly-colored, soft toy fish tied to one end, especially) in very random places because, well, he’s a cat; my car being dirty on the inside and outside, which I deal with maybe twice per year; the bathroom mirror having streaks or spots that can be cleaned in two minutes; the pieces of artwork that have been leaning against the bed in my office for months despite the fact that it will take five minutes to hang them on the walls and the hammer and nails are already on my desk; and the large box containing an unassembled captain’s chair that has been in our garage since late 2021.

What’s the deal here? What isn’t everything either equally discomforting or equally indifferent?

That conundrum might never be resolved and is likely yet another apparent contradiction, paradox, and inconsistency, refusing to be shoved into an either-or relationship, infected, like so much of the human experience, with and and and and and and…

However, one thing is certain. None of those examples listed above can compete with the discomfort and frustration I feel regarding the mental clutter and debris manifesting in my head at times, weakening clarity, strengthening catastrophizing, and stressing me out in general.

The haphazard streams of thoughts.

The ruminating over regrets or choices not selected.

The fears about the future.

The inability to think of the best story or anecdote to use during an upcoming speaking gig.

The difficulty in writing a scene in a novel, especially dialogue.

The failure to spot connections between things.

The creeping dread that there’s something unknown that I need to know but don’t know if the dread is grounded in any truth, and Steinbeck titled one of his books To a God Unknown and he based that off of something the Apostle Paul purportedly said when visiting the Areopagus (Mars Hill) near Athens, Greece, but give me Steinbeck over Paul any day because Paul was a patriarchal homophobe idolized by rightwing Christianity.

And, especially, the mental clutter of too many potential careers, directions, friendships to more fully develop, ideas, places to move, possibilities, tyrannies of the urgent and urgencies of tyranny.

I want less to deal with in my physical space and more time for fitness, writing, reading, leisure, and travel. I want less congestion and urban sprawl in my mental space and more clarity regarding what to do next. I want a much smaller house and a much smaller of list of things compelling me to give a damn.

But there’s wants and then there’s needs and what I really need is to be more mindful because physical and mental clutter might decrease in population from time to time but it’s sticking around like old luggage you can’t seem to haul away to Goodwill or the local dump.

Mindfulness is an attentive, concentrated, deliberate, detached, and non-judgmental act of observation. When most effective, the core observation is the nature of change itself, how everything, everywhere, is constantly arising and passing away.

Including clutter.

When I’m at my best I’m paying less attention to clutter and disarray and more attention to my breath and its steady in-and-out rhythm that calms and centers me. I’m more tuned in to my body and its posture, movements, and those physical sensations where feelings reside before the mind tries to name them, judge them, or identify with them.

And, when I’m owning my relationship with clutter rather than the other way around, I’m watching what my mind does as I dwell in our living space with its kitchen and bedrooms and bathrooms and bonus room, dispassionately noting things like anger, anxiety, compassion, delusion, equanimity, fear, hatred, hope, joy, kindness, or love.

All of them so fleeting and temporary.

Like a child’s childhood.

Hello! I’m John DeMarco, a Nashville, Tennessee-based, married GenXer dad of amazing daughters, sharing stories and reflections on growth, loss, and making your own meaning. I’ve been writing since around age 11.

My Substack is reader-supported. While all of my articles and Notes are free to access, those choosing to upgrade to paid subscriptions enable me to dedicate more and more time for writing, reading, commenting on, and restacking other writers’ work. I’d love for Substack to eventually become the only thing I do for a living along with writing books and, perhaps, movies and TV shows.

Thank you so much for your time, attention, and interaction!

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Part 2 has things that make you go, “Who?”

Part 3 will make your head spin free

Part 4 will leave you craving for more

(Or not)

“Are you getting hungry?” Dad asked me. “I could use a slice of pizza.”

I nodded. “Yeah, we’re in Manhattan. I’m pretty sure we can find something tasty. It’s good to know that you can still eat. Being, well, dead, you know. No offense.”

“None taken,” my father said. “And I can eat whatever the hell I want. No more open heart surgeries or stents for me.”

We walked a couple of blocks and Dad stopped in front of a place called Little Paisano’s. It looked like a typical NYC pizzeria: busy, noisy, not a lot of seating, dark-haired men and women behind the counter, taking orders and serving up greasy paper plates of large, thin triangles of delicious-smelling pizza.

But instead of getting in line and placing our orders, which I was eager to do because I was suddenly starving and rather tired from the whole Times Square big fucking can of crazy, we were interrupted by a short, overweight, middle-aged Italian man who popped out of nowhere and gestured for us to follow him into the small dining area. I didn’t see any available tables or chairs, so I wondered why he was doing this. But we followed him, and he opened a door labeled EMPLOYEES ONLY, and turned back and motioned for us to keep following. I looked at Dad, who smiled and shrugged, and we followed our host through the doorway and into the kitchen…

…except it wasn’t so much a kitchen as a 360-degree opera of pizza-makers wearing white smocks and white, puffy hats, surrounding us, singing and laughing and cussing as they tossed dough high into the air, spread gallons of hearty tomato sauce across other dough that had been palmed into perfect, large circles, and sprinkled Italian sausage, olives, mushrooms (gross; no offense), onions, pepperoni, sliced peppers, shredded mozzarella cheese, minced garlic, crushed red pepper, and more across the surface before shoving them into wood fire ovens and then retrieving them when they were ready, all hot and bubbly and emitting aromas powerful enough to compel every pedestrian to rush inside and empty their wallets for just a taste and I fucking love pizza and the greatest moment in life is when a hot pizza arrives anyplace, anytime.

“I’m Little Paisano,” the short man said, grinning broadly with crooked teeth. He pointed to the pizzas. “Looks good, no? Smells good, yes?”

“No and yes, respectively,” Dad said. He looked at me. “Are those the correct answers?”

“I have too many questions to consider before I can even care about the answers,” I said.

“Good,” Dad said. “The questions are far more important. And spoiler alert: You won’t suddenly get all the answers after you die. And that whole ‘heaven and hell’ narrative is…”

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“You ready to eat?” Little Paisano interrupted, “or are you just gonna stand here and philosophize?”

“Ready!” Dad and I said together like those silly Wonder Twins.

Little Paisano pulled out his smartphone, greasy pizza hands and all, pressed an app, and laughed as a large round table with a checkered tablecloth and connected chairs rose upon a platform protruding from the floor just a few feet away from us. The platform then began to rotate, slow enough for Dad and me to sit down but fast enough to make me wonder if I was going to get nauseous just when every cell of my body was demanding to try every different type of pizza that Little Paisano’s crew could spin from dough to deliciousness.

“Don’t worry about the spin,” Little Paisano said. “You’ll get used to the spin. Can I bring you soda, water, beer, wine…?”

“Water is fine,” Dad said and I nodded in agreement.

“You’ll want to try our special home brewed beer as well,” Little Paisano said. “It complements the pizza quite nicely. I’ll bring you a pitcher, on the house. It would be a shame, no, a crime, no, a travesty, for you to leave here without trying the beer. I would consider myself a complete failure, my life would be void of all purpose and meaning, and I would wander the streets the rest of my life as a vagabond, not even as respectful as Shakespeare’s walking shadow-poor player strutting and fretting.”

“By all means, bring the beer,” Dad smiled.

“Grazie. I’ll be right back,” Little Paisano said, and disappeared into the pizza-making mayhem.

“I can tell this place as the It Factor,” Dad said.

“Ahh, the elusive It Factor. I’ve missed hearing that,” I replied.

“It still exists, even if I don’t,” Dad said.

“And yet, here you are,” I said.

Little Paisano returned, carrying a tray with two glasses of water with lemon, two frosted beer mugs, and a pitcher of the aforementioned beer. He set everything down in front of us, perfectly timing his placement with the slow rotation of the table, and then pulled out his phone again.

“It’s time to place your first order,” Little Paisano said. “We create new pizza specials each day, they are invented in real time by our fabulous chefs, all of whom are trained by our finest schools in Napoli. Anyone who eats back here always gets to try the new specials before the other patrons in the main dining and counter area. This will be a life-altering experience for you, and I suggest that you begin with what our chefs are calling the Alph Pie.”

“The elf pie?” Dad asked. (CALL ME ELF ONE MORE TIME! I thought with a smile.)

Little Paisano shook his head. “The Alph Pie. Named after the sacred river itself, because it is destined to become the most sacred of pizzas that we produce today. Until the next more-sacred pizza is produced, that is.”

“What’s on it?” I asked.

“Ahh,” Little Paisano said. “For me to tell you that would be a travesty all over again. It is more important that you taste with your mouth before you taste with your thoughts. I promise that you won’t be disappointed.”

“Okay, fair enough,” I said.

“I will be back soon,” Little Paisano said. “Oh, and the empty chairs at your table will soon be occupied by some other guests. We serve family style here. I hope that’s okay.”

I wasn’t expecting that; but, then again, I wasn’t expecting any of this. Dad raised an eyebrow at me.

“Others,” he said.

I smiled. “Others,” I repeated.

(When he was alive my Dad joked that he’d formed a secret group called We Hate Others, or WHO. My sister Francine was and remains (?) the chairwoman. None of us necessarily “hate” others but they sure can be annoying…)

I poured each of us a glass of beer and then lifted my glass toward his.

“Cheers,” I said. “Here’s to picking up where we left off.”

“Cheers, Son,” Dad said, and we clinked our glasses and sipped from the foamy richness of the beer.

“Hey, look at this,” Dad said, pointing up. I looked up and saw that the ceiling was a swirling maze of colors, more than I could count, and the designs weren’t static but were fading in and out, evolving from one color to another. It was difficult to maintain focus on any one section of the ceiling, because my peripheral vision would see another section undergoing a transformation. Then all the colors faded and the ceiling evolved into a clear, bright white, resembling one of the digital whiteboards I’d used in many training rooms during the past several years but exponentially multiplied in length and width.

“That’s pretty wild,” I said. “I wonder what that’s all about?”

“We’ll see,” Dad said.

“Hey, when’s the pizza gonna be ready?” a male voice drawled, and we both look over and saw a thin young man with long, dark, curly locks and distinguished cheekbones. He looked familiar and my mind was racing, trying to place him as he sat down at our revolving table, eyed the pitcher of beer, picked it up and took a swig.

“Hope you don’t mind,” he said, some beer drizzling down his chin.

Dad shook his head. “Not at all. But maybe the waiter can bring you a glass.”

The man shrugged. “As long as the beer keeps coming, I’m good. Are they bringing us some pizza? I’m starving.”

“Yeah, it’s on the way,” Dad said. “But we don’t know what’s on it.”

“I eat everything,” the man said. And then he fixed his gaze upon me and I, unable to look away from his intense stare, knew at last who he was. And I smiled.

“Mr. Mojo Risin’?” I asked.

Jim Morrison laughed. “Good memory.”

“I was pretty into you when I was 15,” I said. “Both your music and this one biography about your life.”

“Don’t believe everything you read,” Jim said. “Especially if I wrote it.”

“You were a great writer,” I said. “At least, your song lyrics. I have to admit I’ve not yet checked out your poetry.”

“Aww, man, that’s my favorite stuff at all,” Jim said. “Start with An American Prayer.”

“I’ll do that,” I said and looked at Dad. “Dad, do you remember Frank and I listening to the Doors?”

Dad nodded. “Yeah, I remember. Jim, you drank yourself to death, as I recall. Why? What was going on? I’m curious.”

Jim smiled and took another swig of beer from the pitcher. He stifled a burp.

“Well, you know,” he said, “the whole bummer that life is, right? The suffering, the suffering, the suffering.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

Jim continued, “And the whole unseen, interior world, that doesn’t get much value in western society. I had to grapple with all that shit inside of me, and it was too much to handle without the booze, the drugs, the women. A lot of people thought and still think I was a jerk, and I’m sure I was most of the time. But I wasn’t a jerk deep inside.”

“Poets usually aren’t jerks deep inside,” I said. “Writers in general.”

“Sometimes we’re just shy,” a new voice said, and a tall, 60-something man with thinning hair sat down in another one of the chairs. “So people assume we’re jerks, because we appear aloof.”

My jaw dropped as I recognized our latest dining companion.

(Gordon Lightfoot sang that stories always end but this one isn’t even close to being finished so stay tuned.)

Hello! I’m John DeMarco, a Nashville, Tennessee-based, married GenXer dad of amazing daughters, sharing stories and reflections on growth, loss, and making your own meaning. I’ve been writing since around age 11.

My Substack is reader-supported. While all of my articles and Notes are free to access, those choosing to upgrade to paid subscriptions enable me to dedicate more and more time for writing, reading, commenting on, and restacking other writers’ work. I’d love for Substack to eventually become the only thing I do for a living along with writing books and, perhaps, movies and TV shows.

Thank you so much for your time, attention, and interaction!

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I’ve made some of my best decisions because of my drive toward closure.

I’ve made some of my worst decisions because of my drive toward closure.

(Side note: I don’t always know where closure “ends” and OCD, depression, or naivete “begin,” because I’m afflicted with those three in heavy measure as well; there’s blurred lines, and I think you know damn well what rhymes with hug me.)

An orientation toward craving closure often reveals a general discomfort with ambiguity. It’s an urge to arrive at solid, sustainable answers or solutions as quickly as possible.

This has been my hard-wiring for as long as I can remember.

I inherited at least some of this hunger for closure from my late mother, who was definitely uncomfortable and stressed about even the smallest things being left open-ended; couldn’t tolerate the risk of being late to something; and had a frustrating need to know months and months in advance whether the kids and I were going to be at her house for Thanksgiving or Christmas and often the reality was neither and damn it I’m trying not to pressure my own kids like that, but it’s hard because I miss the magic of holidays when they were tiny and less aware of my manifold failings.

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Benefits of closure

Across my career, when I’ve skillfully executed my closure preference, I’ve been able to accomplish things such as never failing to miss article deadlines when I worked for newspapers and magazines; securing all of the funding I needed to attend three years of graduate school at Asbury Theological Seminary, plus accurately planning which courses I would take and when in order to finish my Master of Divinity within said three years; and planning out sermon series and themes months in advance when I was a United Methodist pastor.

Closure has also been my pal when strategizing about which different civic groups I would pursue for public speaking gigs when working as a financial advisor for Morgan Stanley; following up with coaching or consulting clients to check their progress, impact, and what else was needed, inspiring one business leader to call me “the king of follow-up”; and methodically creating and rolling out an entire leadership competencies framework and supporting learning resources for a 75,000-employee telecommunications company. Since late 2023 I’ve extended my reign as the follow-up king through networking and deepening relationships as a solo business owner.

Thank you, closure. What would I do without you?

Downsides of closure

During the first several years I was driving, I would try to remain in the middle lanes of interstates so I could avoid dealing with cars trying to merge onto the highway to my right and cars wanting to get around me in the fast lane to my left. Sometimes, knowing I would be exiting the interstate in just a few miles, I would stay in the slow line because I didn’t want to have to worry about getting back over to it in time for my exit. People riding with me, as well as other drivers, weren’t always thrilled with these habits of mine. (Remember that scene in Revenge of the Nerds when the dad sets the cruise control at 35 miles per hour?!)

Professionally, I changed my undergraduate major twice in a relatively short period of time. This might be viewed as something positive because it implies openness to change; but I know better, because I remember my desperation to get my major “figured out” and how little time I put into actually researching the realities, pros, and cons of a specific career in International Relations (my initial major) and Communications (my final major).

I’ve written elsewhere about how I really wanted to get into movies and television but, when things weren’t working out a year or so out of college, took a newspaper job because I was desperate to “have something.” And despite my successful approaches to earning and funding my Master of Divinity degree, I’d done little to explore what it was really like to be a pastor because I was so driven to get a master’s degree in something, anything that excited me (and film school and law school had already rejected me).

In addition, my overdrive for closure has sometimes come across to my work colleagues and leaders as impulsivity (ironically?), such as the time I spontaneously emailed my company’s CEO and invited him to speak to a group of managers I was coaching. The main problem was that he said yes…and I had to backtrack and go through all the proper channels and layers of disgruntled people who needed to be consulted before any such invitation took place. And on several occasions during my corporate era, I hit the ground running with a strategy or initiative before fully getting all the buy-in and data I needed to ensure a successful rollout and adoption by employees at all levels across all business functions.

And then there’s my love life.

Beginning with my first kiss at the (late bloomer?) age of 15 I possessed discomfort with being single despite recognizing many of its personal growth and confidence-building benefits. I would rush into relationships and want the latest woman to be “the one,” pressuring them to “define the relationship” early on. This was long before Instagram and thank goodness for that.

When a romantic partner and I would have conflicts, I demonstrated a burning drive to know exactly where I stood with her. And I would get very anxious and irritable when worrying about being late for something (movies, football games, church services, and other time-specific things that matter a lot less than the quality of a relationship), having to depend on the other person getting ready faster so we could leave on time and this frustrated them to no end.

Several of my romantic relationships had ambiguous endings, as they often do, and I usually needed one “final” conversation.

That didn’t always happen. For years I would imagine seeing a specific woman at an airport or on the streets of some big city and the person noticing and commenting on “how much I’ve grown,” so that their lasting impression of me would turn more positive even though I didn’t have the desire to get back together. Ahh, that damn need to leave a positive legacy and this often hijacks my identity as a writer as well.

Fuck you, closure. I don’t want to completely live without you and couldn’t if I tried, but I need less and less of you with each passing year.

Beyond duality and rigidity

One indication that I’ve been gradually restraining my need for closure is how I’m much less inclined toward black-and-white, either-or thinking; in fact, those kinds of mindsets bore and annoy the hell out of me, especially when they bubble up in society in the forms of theocracy, one-party rule, and general oppression of civil rights and gender rights.

I find that I thrive the most when I’m leaning into the dynamic tensions between things that at first blush appear to be opposites. I geek out on exploring complexities, contradictions, juxtapositions, nuances (obviously), and paradoxes. (See my essay And and and and and and and and and and.) There’s an endless river of fascination here and an unlimited supply of creative ideas.

I’ve become a huge advocate of iteration, seeking not to make things perfect but a little better than the day before. I’m more apt to let things play out, recognizing how there’s only a few things each day that must absolutely happen at a specific time, and this has helped to reduce my stress.

There’s been just one time during my almost decade with my wife Libby when I’ve pressured her about moving faster so that we’re not late to something. I enjoy being a person who’s more chill in that regard, learning a lot from Libby, and that’s probably one of many reasons why this is, by far, my happiest, long-term relationship.

I sense an urge to conclude this essay with a tidy from-to story, wrapping it up in a bow of victorious self-awareness and growth. I’m resisting that. In fact, I might even dare to end this piece with an incomplete sentence.

Once up a time, I was trying to

Hello! I’m John DeMarco, a Nashville, Tennessee-based, married GenXer dad of amazing daughters, sharing stories and reflections on growth, loss, and making your own meaning. I’ve been writing since around age 11.

My Substack is reader-supported. While all of my articles and Notes are free to access, those choosing to upgrade to paid subscriptions enable me to dedicate more and more time for writing, reading, commenting on, and restacking other writers’ work. I’d love for Substack to eventually become the only thing I do for a living along with writing books and, perhaps, movies and TV shows.

Thank you so much for your time, attention, and interaction!

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But someone was already using it. A woman, possibly in her 30s or early 40s.

Overweight.

And just like that I felt a spike in unconscious bias that quickly became conscious. I realized that, even though it was just for a split-second, I was privately fat-shaming this woman simply because she was in the way of what I wanted.

Yeah, that was me and quite recently. The man who can’t think of a single time I’ve said something mean to a woman regarding her weight, at least not since childhood. Me, the father of three daughters, each of whom struggle with their weight and body image in different ways and I’ll be damned if I wouldn’t smack anyone who dared to overtly fat shame them.

Sometimes it only takes a moment for me to realize how much work I still need to do on myself and to remember that I’ll never be 100 percent of the way “there.” What I demonstrate to others through word and deed, including how I curate and evolve my online identity, is never the full story of who I am.

Below the tip of the iceberg there are contradictions, multitudes, layers, nuances, complexities, paradoxes, along with a fair share of ugliness.

No one else in the gym, including the woman, knew what was happening inside of me as I shifted direction to find a different available weight machine.

But I knew. And I was ashamed. And while I’m usually a severe critic of shame, it seemed justified.

Why did I feel that, somehow, this woman had less of a right to use the machine than I did? Why wasn’t my first instinct to feel empathy and encouragement for her because there she was in a public gym trying to get stronger, leaner, healthier?

A public gym. I’ve lost track of how many females have told me that they don’t always enjoy going to the gym. They feel self-conscious about their bodies. They don’t want creepy men staring at them or trying to engage them in conversation. (Men, please fucking don’t.) My wife has certainly made it clear that she prefers going to the gym when I’m there with her.

And this nameless (to me) woman was there. And I was there too, momentarily dismissing her right to occupy the space.

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Fast forward several weeks.

I was at the gym for the first time since my June 9 back surgery. I’m not supposed to lift more than 15 pounds until July 23, which limits my options to dumbbells since all the weight machines are more than 15 pounds even at their lightest setting, and I’ve been advised by my doctor to start off with 5 pounds.

I also know that, for now, it’s better for my healing back to use one of those adjustable gym benches at a 90-degree angle for my dumbbell workouts to ensure good form and avoid straining or twisting.

So I snagged a bench, the only one currently available, grabbed those mighty 5-pound dumbbells, and began some simple biceps, triceps, and shoulder exercises.

All around me, men and women of all ages were lifting dumbbells of 20, 30, 40, even 50 pounds. A college student was using the squat rack, with two 45-pound plates on each side. Several middle aged or elderly persons were knocking out reps on the different weight machines. From what I could tell no one, regardless of age or shape, was lifting only 5 pounds.

And I noticed something new inside of me, a dynamic that had never occurred across my 40-plus years of working out in gyms in my white, trim, abled male body.

I felt like I didn’t belong. Like I was using a bench that someone else might need, someone who can lift much heavier weight and would gain a lot more benefit.

I felt like an intruder. And I wondered if people were silently thinking that and judging me.

Why is he lifting such light weights? I mean, he’s older but he looks like he could try harder. Why is he doing everything using a bench? He’s been there for like 10 or 15 minutes now. He shouldn’t be hogging the bench like that. Why can’t he just do those reps at home, instead of keeping more motivated people from using the bench? What a lack of gym etiquette. What a lack of self-awareness.

WTF? He just looked at his phone for 25 seconds.

I hoped like hell that someone wouldn’t approach me and ask if they could use the bench. And I felt like if they did I would need to justify myself in some manner. To give them reasons why I was using only 5-pound dumbbells and why I needed to be seated the entire time. To come up with a narrative that would satisfy them, elicit some of their empathy, maybe even motivate them to say an encouraging word or two.

When, truthfully, it was none of their fucking business.

I’ve now been performing my post-surgery workout routine for just under two weeks. I’ve been to the gym several times. I’m still using the bench at a 90-degree angle for every exercise and I’m still using just 5-pound dumbbells, although I’ll probably upgrade to 10 pounds this coming weekend.

And each time I’m there I still feel like an intruder.

Each time, at least for a moment, I remember the overweight woman who was using the pectoral fly machine that I wanted and how I’d silently judged her even though it was fleeting.

Now I know how she feels?

The hell I do.

She and I are not the “same.” She’s an overweight female in a patriarchal society that puts a thousand times more pressure and expectations on women compared to men.

I’m a guy, one who has maybe just 5 to 10 pounds to “lose” in order to get to an “ideal” weight, a man with a temporary condition who will, beginning in about three weeks, start lifting much heavier weights while sitting or standing and will gradually forget that he ever had 4-5 weeks in his life when he felt like he didn’t belong at the gym.

I don’t know if the woman has been at the gym anymore when I’ve been there. I didn’t bother to memorize her face and it’s likely I wouldn’t recognize her if I walked right past her.

She’s invisible to me, apparently, except for when she’s using a machine that I want to use.

And that leaves me thinking about all the different types of people I might continue to unconsciously render invisible in daily life, not just those who appear to be overweight but people with disabilities, people of color, elderly persons, and more.

Invisible until, in a certain context, I need them to de-occupy a space.

Hello! I’m John DeMarco, a Nashville, Tennessee-based, married GenXer dad of amazing daughters, sharing stories and reflections on growth, loss, identity, and mindfulness, offered with a deep respect for your capacity to make your own meaning. I’ve been writing since around age 11.

My Substack is reader-supported. While all of my articles and Notes are free to access, those choosing to upgrade to paid subscriptions enable me to dedicate more and more time for writing, reading, commenting on, and restacking other writers’ work. I’d love for Substack to eventually become the only thing I do for a living along with writing books and, perhaps, movies and TV shows.

Thank you so much for your time, attention, and interaction!

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I wish I was

Homeward bound

Home where my thought’s escapin’

Home where my music’s playin’

Home where my love lies waitin’

Silently for me

(Simon & Garfunkel)

My wife Libby and I first visited Asheville, North Carolina, in October 2018 and have been dreaming of moving there ever since.

We went to the Thomas Wolfe house and museum during that initial trip. I’m occasionally obsessed with Wolfe, who was born and raised in Asheville, inspiring generations of North Carolina-based writers as he churned out semi-autobiographical works of fiction such as Look Homeward, Angel, Of Time and the River, and You Can’t Go Home Again.

As first-time visitors we also spent a day at the sprawling Biltmore estate, which was interesting but not the kind of thing I need to do more than once, and enjoyed its adjacent petting farm with adorable goats and pigs and “free” wine tastings. We also checked out downtown Asheville’s beautiful Basilica of Saint Lawrence, a delicious bakery called Old Europe that we hit up during every return visit, and the locally-owned Malaprops bookstore which, spoiler alert, is also a venue we pop into during every subsequent visit.

One overarching observation that especially resonated with us during this initial visit was the downtime vibe. People everywhere. Foodie paradise and several pubs serving their own craft beers. Random musicians playing guitars or saxophones. Free street parking if you can find it.

The other observation? The one that sticks the landing and truly makes Asheville unique for cities of its size in the eastern half of the U.S.?

The whole city is surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains.

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Gorgeous sunsets. Limitless variety of hiking trails. Scenic drives along the Blue Ridge Parkway. Temperatures averaging about 10 degrees cooler compared to our current home of Nashville. Mountains that limit the kind of urban sprawl and congestion that characterizes Nashville and so many other American cities.

There’s a couple of other aspects of North Carolina itself that have us eager to plant ourselves in Asheville. Beautiful beaches are 4-6 hours away, depending on where you want to visit. Access to mountains and the ocean, all in the same day? Swoon.

Furthermore, the state is home to several highly-respected universities and colleges and Charlotte, just two hours from Asheville, has everything you need in a big city including an international airport. And, frankly, the fact that Asheville is part of Buncombe County, one of the most liberal counties in purple-ish North Carolina, is also quite appealing.

Barely a month after our first visit Libby and I returned to Asheville for the long Thanksgiving weekend. Holiday lights and decorations dotted the city, multiplying its magic. We hiked, enjoyed a couple of different restaurants, and took a pilgrimage to Thomas Wolfe’s gravesite in a nearby cemetery cause I’m weird and geek out on dead writers. We also visited the River Arts District (RAD) for the first time, and I’m pretty sure I want to have a small writing office there one day so I can hang out with all the on-site painters, sculptors, and blown glass artists in between my 1,000-word bursts of prose.

We went to Asheville a few more times during the years that followed, masking up during the pandemic. And by the time we moved my youngest daughter and stepdaughter into their dorms at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in August 2023, we were starting to get our house ready for sale and driving around Asheville neighborhoods to get a feel for the housing market. The paucity of affordable options was a bummer but we were determined to downsize and find a place that would work.

Some unexpected changes happened during the months following that August visit that caused us to indefinitely delay our move to Asheville, including me getting laid off after 16 years working for T-Mobile Human Resources and my stepdaughter moving back home to attend college at Middle Tennessee State University.

Ready, set, wait.

Helene, housing, and hopefulness

We didn’t visit during 2024 but a devastating hurricane named Helene certainly did, delivering the area’s first direct hit in decades and leaving behind severe flooding, hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage, and more than 100 deaths across the state.

The French Broad River crested and wiped out half of the River Arts District, along with countless, irreplaceable works of art. The loss of lives and businesses were especially severe in the Swannanoa Valley that extends between Asheville and the nearby town of Black Mountain. A big section of I-40 just before the Tennessee-North Carolina border was washed away and wouldn’t reopen for nearly a year.

During early summer 2025 we drove to Charlotte for the first time, enjoying the very walkable and organized uptown. We planned a single night in Asheville on our way home and stopped first in Black Mountain, 15 minutes to the east of Asheville, and fell in love with the town’s even more striking mountain views. The downtown is much smaller compared to Asheville but incredibly charming, with a Cuban restaurant that has the best Cuban sandwich I’ve found outside of South Florida and Key West.

Something significant had changed since our last visit to the area in August 2023. There were many more houses on the market and prices had dropped dramatically. A main (and very sad) reason, of course, was the aftermath of Helene. During three more visits across the remainder of 2025 we invested quality time exploring neighborhoods, attending open houses, and meeting with an established Realtor.

Our most recent visit was in February of this year. Eastbound on I-40, the mountains slowly rose to greet us, beckoning us to look homeward. I marveled at the steep, man-made rock bluffs bearing a few icy vestiges from the recent snow storm that had whacked the Southeast. The wide mouth of the French Broad River framed by the Smoky Mountains. Construction crews still prominent fixtures on the south side of the interstate, still rebuilding the infrastructure obliterated by Helene. The Welcome to North Carolina sign that always makes me smile.

We returned to the River Arts District for the first time since 2023, enjoying a grand re-opening atmosphere. The artists were on site and eager to chat with people and I began once more to daydream about having a writing office there. We met a Filipino painter who lost half of her finished works in the rage of Helene, which was heartbreaking. You can’t replace people, pets, or original paintings.

Our next visit was planned for early May to coincide with our eighth wedding anniversary. I was at the height of the sciatica pain in my left leg, however, so we put it off for a couple of weeks. Then, with the pain unabated and back surgery on the near horizon, we rescheduled it again to late August.

I can’t wait. And just the other day Libby and I committed to moving there by the summer of 2028, just after our 10^th anniversary. I can’t wait for that either but I will, of course.

Searching for a place called “home”

I don’t really have a specific place I’d call my hometown, the city or town that some people refer to when they say I’m coming home for a couple of weeks this summer, and I’m a little jealous of those who do. I don’t think home implies a specific geography; at least not for me.

There have been a few contenders.

I was born in Strongsville, Ohio, and I’ve occasionally referred to Strongsville as my hometown. And I might truly feel that way if my family hadn’t moved from there to Florida when I was six. My oldest sister Francine was already married by then and stayed behind in the Cleveland area, building a large, wonderful family of daughters and granddaughters and grandsons. Almost every one of them has stayed in the area, nurturing a lifetime of friendships there.

Sometimes I refer to Ormond Beach, Florida, as my hometown. I lived there from age 7 to 27, with the exception of a couple of years in Tallahassee for college and a year in Orlando right after college. My other sister, Jeanne, moved there in the 1970s as well as has stayed ever since. She’s now my only familial link to the area. The person I consider my closest friend from my youth, Bill, lives a little bit south of where we went to high school in Daytona Beach, and he’s the only other person I keep in touch with who still lives in that area.

I went to graduate school when I was 29 in a tiny place called Wilmore, Kentucky, just south of Lexington. It was very different from any other place I’ve lived, with two traffic lights at the most, surrounded by horse farms, incomparably friendly locals, and just so quiet and peaceful in general. It had four distinct seasons and I loved the fall. After three years there Wilmore certainly felt like home and it broke my heart to leave all of my friends and my professors after I graduated and headed back to Florida.

Franklin, Tennessee, just south of Nashville, was a fresh start when I moved my family there in late 2007 to take that job with T-Mobile. At first, it felt like the place I would call home for the duration of my life. I loved the fall there as well and made some wonderful friends early on, many of whom had grown up there and had those tight family and friendship ecosystems I longed for.

And then divorce happened and Franklin abruptly went from a place that felt like home to a strange land where I was the stranger. It sounds dramatic to say but I can’t think of more accurate words right now. And I moved several times across town in my early years as a single dad, trying to find that house that could feel like some semblance of home, knowing that I’d be in the area for at least another decade while my daughters grew up.

My life became much happier in July 2017 when I left Franklin and moved in with Libby in the adjacent city of Brentwood, Tennessee. I’m so grateful for many things, including being able to stay put in one house for nine years; my previous “record” as an adult was four. Neither of us has many close friends here but we have each other and our daughters and our infamous orange tabby, Mittens.

Whenever I go to Franklin for something, especially downtown Franklin or driving past one of my daughters’ old schools, a shadow version of that aforementioned stranger tags along and I really want the shadow to fuck off. The happy memories of my early, pre-divorce years in Franklin are overwhelmed by the painful ones.

Strongsville. Ormond Beach. Wilmore. Franklin. Brentwood.

I can visit these places but I can’t go home again because I’m not quite sure where to find home on Google Maps.

Libby has lived in the Nashville area since the 1990s. Both of us have felt overdue for a change of scenery. We want to get to Asheville and enjoy a quieter, simpler life in a smaller house with a dog, hiking in the mountains, enjoying great food and craft beer, visiting the Atlantic beaches several times per year.

We want to find and nurture new friendships together. To gain a sense of community.

I hope we get there in the next couple of years. And if we love living there as much as think we will, I hope we stay. I hope it becomes that geographical place we call home.

Thankfully, though, I’m increasingly home in my body, wherever it happens to be. I’m certainly home in my marriage, here in Brentwood or in that future destination in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

If I travel all my life

And I never get stop and settle down

Long as I have you by my side

There’s a roof above and good walls all around

You’re my castle, you’re my cabin

And my instant pleasure dome

I need you in my house

‘Cause you’re my home

You’re my home

(Billy Joel)

Hello! I’m John DeMarco, a Nashville, Tennessee-based, married GenXer dad of amazing daughters, sharing stories and reflections on growth, loss, identity, and mindfulness, offered with a deep respect for your capacity to make your own meaning. I’ve been writing since around age 11.

My Substack is reader-supported. While all of my articles and Notes are free to access, those choosing to upgrade to paid subscriptions enable me to dedicate more and more time for writing, reading, commenting on, and restacking other writers’ work. I’d love for Substack to eventually become the only thing I do for a living along with writing books and, perhaps, movies and TV shows.

Thank you so much for your time, attention, and interaction!

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I can’t emphasize the “desolate” descriptor enough. Unlike the coastlines I’ve engaged most of my life in the U.S., there wasn’t a hotel or any other dwelling to be found. There was no one walking along the beach. There were no boats in the water or vendors renting out overpriced umbrellas and chairs.

There was the constant crashing of the waves against the rocks, an occasional bird, and the feel of the steady winds. There were the nearby caves inside of which I could barely stand up straight.

There was nothing to do at this particular beach but to simply be there. And take selfies if that’s what you’re into.

I was so thrilled (ugh, thrilled evokes those cringy, modern-day celebratory LinkedIn posts about a new job or educational milestone or a fucking certification that took you seven minutes to complete and now you deserve a raise or a promotion) to visit another country and, with that, another continent, for the first time in several years.

And, more importantly, to do so with someone I loved deeply, someone with whom I was just beginning to explore a life. The four years that had passed since my divorce were rough and limited in joy and dominated by financial and emotional survival mode. Aruba’s motto is One Happy Island and I was one happy person.

More than nine years later my mind still plays back the scenes. The clear water. The kissing in the shallow waves for hours at a time, indifferent to whomever might have been watching and maybe even annoyed, because that’s what newer lovers do and whomever you are and wherever you are, if you have the chance to kiss someone obnoxiously you should do it because who knows when you’ll have another chance and don’t worry about what other people might think because they likely don’t care what you think.

The fun boat tour with the easy-going captain and the other tourists, getting quite buzzed while singing along with familiar 70s and 80s pop tunes and taking silly selfies together. The restaurant with outdoor seating in the sand just a few yards away from the tide. The giant sea turtle I saw, just for a moment, and Libby still being bitter because she didn’t see one as well.

The flounder sandwich at a nearby restaurant on the beach. Damn, I miss that sandwich. It was massive, its crispy, battered appendages extending out of the bun in all directions, so good that we went there twice for lunch. I’ve not come across a better flounder sandwich elsewhere. So good. So good. So good.

The unfortunate sunburn on my back, a rookie mistake for someone who grew up on the beach. Did I somehow think the sun wouldn’t notice that I was snorkeling?

The room service burger that was quite mid, undercooked and overpriced. The light blue ball cap I bought there and have worn for years.

The hammocks on the resort property. My father had a hammock in our backyard for many years and I can still visualize him lounging out there in its netting, a seashell resting on top of each eye, his tan skin that never wrinkled. He built me a pull-up bar in that same backyard, affixing tall pipes in cement, and sometimes, shirtless and damn proud of my body because back then I was immortal, I would bang out twenty or so pull-ups at once while watching him chill, my own skin tan and still not wrinkled but destined decades later to have occasional non-deadly basal carcinomas.

The beauty of the whole freaking place.

I cherish those moments when I’m blown away by beauty, such as Aruba; the Oregon coastline’s stunning combination of Pacific Ocean, cliffs, sand, and trees, compelling me to pull over every 15 minutes or so and snap photos when I was driving all the way down the Pacific Coast Highway on my way to California; the massive rainbow Libby and I stared at from our resort balcony during the May 2018 trip we took to Maui to get married; the stunning views from our many visits to the Blue Ridge Mountains; and the gorgeous, stained-glass windows and sculptures defining the architecture of Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia, completed this year after 100 years of dedicated generations of workers and currently the tallest church in the world.

The gorgeousness of the Earth’s creativity provides ongoing inspiration to the curious person with a soft heart and an open mind. I sometimes think of our planet as a giant work of art that is constantly evolving, with every living form intentionally or subconsciously contributing expressions on a daily basis.

One of the most unusual things about Aruba is that you can literally visit all parts of the country in a single day.

And, once you venture beyond the resorts, not even a mile or so away from tourist paradise, you encounter where the locals live in their small, simple, usually shack-ish, brightly painted houses and overgrown lawns, seeing them bicycling or walking, people who are always in Aruba but never on vacation, likely never saying to one another, man we sure do live on one happy fucking island am I right or am I right?

The distance between their houses and our resort might only have been a mile or so, but it just as well could have spanned oceans.

It’s easy as tourists to enjoy the beauty of a place. But when I’m there, I often struggle to notice the beauty of the locals, heading to work or going grocery shopping with their children, people of all ages, pigments, and sizes, who are lovely simply because they exist.

Maybe a big factor driving so much ugliness in this world, in our thinking, speech, and actions, evidenced by political events close to home and violent activities across the globe, is that we ourselves feel ugly or unworthy; and that drives a specific orientation toward others. When we fail to notice the beauty in another person there’s a good chance we’re undervaluing the beauty in ourselves.

Not just when we’re looking in the mirror and seeing the blemishes stamped into our skin by time but when we’re looking inside, swimming in our thoughts without sunscreen, despondent regarding the unattractiveness we perceive about ourselves and our past and any present situations we want to run away from. Aruba, Jamaica, ooh I want to take you.

Perhaps wondering, where is that one fucking happy island inside of me?

Hello! I’m John DeMarco, a Nashville, Tennessee-based, married GenXer dad of amazing daughters, sharing stories and reflections on growth, loss, identity, and mindfulness, offered with a deep respect for your capacity to make your own meaning. I’ve been writing since around age 11.

My Substack is reader-supported. While all of my articles and Notes are free to access, those choosing to upgrade to paid subscriptions enable me to dedicate more and more time for writing, reading, commenting on, and restacking other writers’ work. I’d love for Substack to eventually become the only thing I do for a living along with writing books and, perhaps, movies and TV shows.

Thank you so much for your time, attention, and interaction!

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(You don’t need to read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 to enjoy this piece but damn you’re missing some wild shit if you don’t.)

“IT’S SHOWTIME!” a voice boomed across the square and every human being, cartoon character, imaginary athlete, and imaginary movie star turned to face the main stage, where Elton John was at his piano and Gene Simmons was licking a microphone and Elvis was holding an acoustic guitar with a Hawaiian lei around his neck.

The drummer looked like Ringo Starr but I wasn’t positive, and when I glanced back over it definitely wasn’t Ringo because no one can fail to recognize the incomparable, maniacal Animal the Muppet, who was already going ballistic on the drums and chanting “ANIMAL! ANIMAL! ANIMAL!” And Schroeder replaced Elton on the piano with Lucy hovering nearby, nickels rattling in her purse and batting her eyelashes at him but receiving only his stony indifference.

Dozens of familiar faces were dancing in front of the stage as it began to hover several feet above the ground while the improbable motley crew of musicians continue to play.

There was Charlie Brown, a blanket-holding Linus, Sally, Pigpen, Peppermint Patty, Marcie (“sir?”), Franklin, Snoopy, and Woodstock; a few of the crocodiles that I didn’t seen for several minutes; both Steve Austin and Jamie Sommers, the Bionic Women herself; Janis Joplin; Flash and Saturn, my two knights from Ghost Castle; Carly Simon; Mike Milligan, the protagonist of my fictional Jaws rip-off I wrote when I was 12, The Great White; several athletes representing the sports teams that only existed in my mind; Danny and Sandy, dressed in the outfits they wore for Grease’s triumphant final musical scene and he was telling her about it, that stud; and, finally, my all-time favorite miniseries antihero Tom Jordache and his one-eyed nemesis and executioner Falconetti, who weren’t dancing so much as sparring, egging each other on, seeing who could literally get the upper hand.

“It’s a big can of crazy,” Dad said.

“The biggest,” I said.

“Naw, you ain’t seen nothing yet, son.”

“That scares me,” I said, chuckling.

“Hey, when I worry, then you worry,” Dad responded. “That’s what I always told your mother.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “But it didn’t stop her from worrying.”

“Bless her heart,” Dad smiled, and I roared with laughter because if there was any phrase I never heard my father utter when he was alive it was that one.

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“LOOKOUT!” someone shouted and I covered my head with my hands while a thick tree branch soared past me and crashed into the side of a large trash can. “Sorry about that! I wasn’t trying to hit you, I was just seeing how far I could throw it,” a tween boy said as he ran past us to retrieve the branch.

“You should’ve ducked the first time that happened,” Dad said.

“Who are you, Ronald Reagan? Yeah, I know I freaked you out when I showed up at home with a bleeding scalp,” I said. “What were you doing home in the middle of the day anyhow?”

Dad sighed. “I needed to get away from the office for a couple of hours. The boss was in one of his crummy moods, and negativity was hanging in the air like a cloud of smoke. I just never thrived in that kind of atmosphere. So I went home to make a sandwich, clear my head, and head back to work refreshed.”

“And then I showed up, bleeding,” I said.

“And then you showed up, bleeding,” Dad nodded. “And I understood the real reason I’d come back home.”

“Not exactly a great way to clear your head.”

“More like cleaning your head,” Dad said. “That’s the life of a parent. You can’t predict what’s going to happen from one day to the next; sometimes, from one hour to the next.”

“I wish I’d been more prepared when I became a father,” I said.

“No one’s ever prepared enough,” he said. “Even by the time we got to you, kid number four, I wasn’t ready. But I did the best I could with what I had, with what I knew. And you’ve done the same.”

“Hardly,” I said, and Dad patted me on the shoulder.

There were peals of laughter from the crowd and I looked over at the hovering stage and saw most of the main characters from the film version of the musical Hair: Claude, Berger, Sheila, Hud, Woof, and Jeannie, dancing and singing Let the Sunshine In from that final, powerful, and heartbreaking montage where Berger takes Claude’s place and gets on a military plane to Vietnam, destined to return home in a coffin.

Claude grabbed a microphone and declared, making one of his weird, awkward facial expressions, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” and I didn’t recall Claude quoting Bible verses during the irreverent movie but he was from Oklahoma (where cousins get to know ya) so I guess it fits.

“You watched Hair eight times that summer it was on HBO,” Dad said. “That’s more than you saw Star Wars.”

“I know, and that was all in the month of August” I said. “It was my beatnik birthing. I couldn’t get enough of it. I guess when I really love something I keep going back to it. It’s kinda weird.”

“It’s okay to love something,” Dad said. “The key is moderation, like I always said.”

“Yes, you did,” I said. “Buddhism calls it the Middle Way.”

Dad was surprised. “When did you become a Buddhist?”

Someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was Tommy Angelo, my closest friend and frenemy from elementary school. He was holding up a Frisbee. “You guys want to play?”

“Sure,” Dad and I said together, and the three of us moved apart to give enough room to make decent throws to each other. Tommy tossed the Frisbee to my Dad, who sent a perfect throw to me. I snagged it with my right hand and pivoted to throw it to Tommy but it was no longer Tommy but Chris, the kid who was a year younger than me and lived down the street from Tommy who used to play the game Operation with me and I can still hear that buzzer sounding off again and again.

Chris caught my toss and then he flung the Frisbee to Jay, another kid from the neighborhood, a native New Yorker who was short and skinny but didn’t take any crap from anyone. Jay caught the Frisbee, tossed it to Dad, who sailed it far over my head and past me. I ran after it, dodging familiar and unfamiliar faces, seeing if I could catch it before it landed or smacked someone in the back of the head.

I was stunned that the Frisbee stayed airborne as long as it did. I closed on it, and just as I stretched out my right arm to grab it in triumph I collided with someone and we both landed upon the Times Square pavement.

“Oh, man, I’m sorry!” I said as I recovered, starting to get up. I looked closely at my victim, recognizing him but unable to recall his name. I reached down and helped him to his feet. He looked to be in his fifties or sixties.

“It’s ok,” he said. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

“Neither was I, obviously,” I said. I studied the man’s face as he smiled. “I feel like we’ve met before.”

“We’ve met many times,” the man said. “But you’ve never seen my face until now.”

“O-kayy. Can you give me a hint?”

The man shrugged and drew a semi-circle in the air. “Look around you. The hints are everywhere. I need to get going now, I’m running late to a speaking engagement at the MOMA.”

And with that he rushed off, and my Dad was once again at my side.

“Dad, did you recognize that guy?”

“No,” Dad said, “but I recognized that move of yours, pursuing the Frisbee and not seeing the innocent bystander.”

“You’re forgetting all the people I didn’t run into across tens of thousands of successful catches,” I said. “And is anyone fully innocent once they’ve eaten from the proverbial apple and become conscious of their own nakedness?”

“Fair enough, Telemachus.”

(Stay tuned for Part 5 unless you’ve hit your crazy quota for the year.)

Hello! I’m John DeMarco, a Nashville, Tennessee-based, married GenXer dad of amazing daughters, sharing stories and reflections on growth, loss, identity, and mindfulness, offered with a deep respect for your capacity to make your own meaning. I’ve been writing since around age 11.

My Substack is reader-supported. While all of my articles and Notes are free to access, those choosing to upgrade to paid subscriptions enable me to dedicate more and more time for writing, reading, commenting on, and restacking other writers’ work. I’d love for Substack to eventually become the only thing I do for a living along with writing books and, perhaps, movies and TV shows.

Thank you so much for your time, attention, and interaction!

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Since I have good health insurance it would be quite arrogant of me not to discover additional co-payments. That would be such a gross lack of appreciation for my privilege.

My eyes have been the bane of my existence. I’ve written about my -11.0 prescription, wearing glasses beginning at age four and contacts since I was 13; and I actually cannot wait until I get cataracts so I can swap those defective bitches out for new, inorganic lenses that supposedly give you close to 20/20 vision. (Expectations are more dangerous than drugs.)

I’ve also written about the torn retina in my right eye that happened in September 2021, which was immediately repaired but left me with a wayward clump of collagen that presents like a lock of hair I can never fully brush out of the way. I’ve nicknamed it Harry Floater and, like Harry’s scar, it’s never going away because, well, dark magic.

A week ago I visited my eye doctor so he could get the latest data on my eye pressure and lining, which we do a couple of times per year on top of my annual examination. Although I probably didn’t need to start them for a couple more years, we decided that I would begin taking nightly eye drops to help ward off glaucoma; which is a really scary word even without fully knowing what it means.

So, roll call! Here’s the updated prescription line-up, an often-unappreciated motley crew of draft choices, free agents, and veterans united by the goal of giving me enough sound mind and body to enjoy a quality of life for as long as possible:

Sertraline (Zoloft)

Wellbutrin

Amitriptyline

Finasteride

Minoxidil

Aaaaaaaaand then there were six. May I present Latanoprost, what John Bender from The Breakfast Club would say is for better hallway vision and he would be spot on.

And isn’t it ironic that the prost in Latanoprost is just one vowel purchase away from Proust, my boy Marcel who famously said in his fifth volume of In Search of Lost Time that the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes?

Well, new eyes ain’t gonna happen, but I love not just seeking but gazing at new landscapes so let’s try to at least keep the darkness at bay.

According to articles from the Mayo Clinic and the National Institutes of Health, the early stages of glaucoma involve small, patchy blind spots developing in your peripheral or “side” vision, frequently starting in the area closest to your nose. The brain, which continues to amaze me more and more each year, automatically compensates for these early gaps, making the disease feel completely unnoticeable (thanks a lot muthafucka).

But then, as glaucoma progresses, the blind spots expand (sort of how like your ignorance expands the longer you watch Fox News). You might start bumping into side objects, which awkward me has already mastered into an art form, as well as missing doorways or experiencing a noticeable decline in night vision (mine already sucks, just ask that squirrel) and contrast sensitivity (but I do love me some contrast, paradox, and juxtaposition).

In the advanced stages, two words that hardly ever signify anything positive, the peripheral field narrows drastically, resulting in accelerated ignorance tunnel vision. Your visual field feels as though you are looking through a narrow tube or straw, leaving only a tiny island (do they serve fruity drinks cause if so that might not be too bad but am I supply-chain-fucked if I run out of sunscreen) of sharp central vision in the middle.

And the end stages…if left untreated, glaucoma damage ultimately reaches the central macular fibers, resulting in complete, permanent blindness. And it might be true that no one is blinder than those who will not see but damn, there’s still hope for those folks because who will not implies they still have some agency.

Any peripheral vision already lost to glaucoma cannot be restored. However, further vision loss can be successfully slowed or entirely halted by lowering intraocular pressure through several methods including the aforementioned eye drops and some different surgical procedures.

The immediate result my doctor is looking for is drop-driving that pressure down from last week’s 16/17 snapshot to around 10.

Since I’m still only 58 (as Dr. Dunn put it, you’re still a young guy and oh please go on you brilliant man) with potentially decades more to live, it’s worth beginning to get ahead of this now.

So just before bedtime (funny how I still call it that, as if I’m a little kid), after brushing my teeth, flossing, and squishing a lid full of mouthwash around for about 10 seconds, I pick up the tiniest plastic bottle and attempt to squeeze a single drop onto each eye.

I suck at this task. Sometimes the drop actually gets into my eye and I close my lids in an effort to keep it there. Most times it lands just outside of the target and rolls toward my cheek. But I’m sure I’ll get better with practice, especially since we’re not talking about trying to hit a golf ball or baseball.

Well, I’d better get better at this, because the stakes are pretty damn high.

I could tabulate an endless list of reasons why I don’t want to lose some of and certainly not all of my eyesight. There’s the functional absences such as writing, reading, driving, walking without getting hit by a garbage truck, and seeing, well, everyone and their subtle facial expressions and body languages and everything else, including my orange tabby when he rolls on the ground and demands I rub his soft, furry belly so he can bite me.

But then there’s the psychological and existential losses.

The abject vulnerability and helplessness. The vanishing of how wonderful I feel when I absorb beauty in all of its natural explosions of colors and forms.

The entirely unfamiliar, terrifying re-orientation to the world, forced to make meaning by relying upon only four of those main senses. As John Bender might say, it’ll be anarchy.

The upside? (Not a bright side, because this ain’t the Life of Brian and there’s gonna be a lot less illumination.)

I’ll get to be even more inside of my head, which has always been my default choice for seeking new landscapes. Poor old Johnny Ray!

But wait. Does that mean I’ll have accelerated concentration, discernment, and insight as I traverse those cerebral landscapes? There will certainly be fewer distractions and fewer doesn’t do the number justice.

I’ve heard amazing things from friends who’ve gone on silent retreats, blown away by clarity regarding truths about themselves they were able to more fully confront and process, free of idle chatter and the need to impress other people or make them laugh through spoken words. I want to participate in such a retreat sometime before I die and I won’t pretend that I’m not a little terrified of plunging even deeper into said head.

But what would a sightless retreat be like, one that I could never leave?

Would it empower me to confront myself even more holistically, to have mental breakthroughs that are currently eluding me because I’m too busy staring at and processing everything outside of me? Would the only clutter I give a damn about be the mental clutter in my noggin’?

I’m so cute, trying to rationalize yet another thing I might have to grieve.

Or is this simply hope? The promise of new possibilities? Resilience?

I don’t know. But for now…

…focus on the tiny plastic bottle, John. Hit the target with the liquid. Drop-kick glaucoma’s ass before it gets the jump on you. Glaucoma? Eat. My. Shorts.

Hello! I’m John DeMarco, a Nashville, Tennessee-based, married GenXer dad of amazing daughters, sharing stories and reflections on growth, loss, identity, and mindfulness, offered with a deep respect for your capacity to make your own meaning. I’ve been writing since around age 11.

My Substack is reader-supported. While all of my articles and Notes are free to access, those choosing to upgrade to paid subscriptions enable me to dedicate more and more time for writing, reading, commenting on, and restacking other writers’ work. I’d love for Substack to eventually become the only thing I do for a living along with writing books and, perhaps, movies and TV shows.

Thank you so much for your time, attention, and interaction!

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I sported a white turtleneck sweater and sat at my desk with my hands folded before me, my straight dark hair cut evenly in bangs, my dark brown eyes wide and hopeful and complemented with an innocent smile. With my vision already a minus-ten in my right eye and a minus-eleven in my left, I probably just imagined I was looking at the camera.

The photo was taken in the fall of 1973, when I was oblivious to national and world events such as the oil crisis, the Watergate scandal, and the Vietnam War. I was clueless, and would remain clueless for many years, regarding injustices embedded within American culture and milestone events and people who were cultural trailblazers.

The U.S. Supreme Court had just ruled on Roe v. Wade, and Billie Jean King had recently won the “battle of the sexes” tennis match against Bobby Riggs. A group of Native Americans was engaged in a stand-off with federal authorities at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. In New York, Shirley Chisholm was in her third term following her 1968 election as the first Black woman to serve in the U.S. Congress.

A year later I wore my black frames with thick lenses for my first-grade picture, setting the tone for several hideous portraits-of-the-artist-as-a-young-geek that would follow. To make the matter even more egregious, the photo was taken a day or two after I had a boil removed from my nose; the circular band-aid was an amusing companion to my glasses, my goofy, clueless grin, and my long hair that shot out on each side of my head like dark-brown bird wings.

When our family moved to a new city and school during the middle of second grade, it seemed like a big deal to others that I was the only child in the class with glasses. Classmates frequently asked me why the lenses were so thick and a couple of referred to me as “four-eyes.”

One day the kickball bounced off my face during P.E. and my frames snapped. The teacher had some masking tape handy and taped the frames back together for the rest of the day, which enabled me to see the chalkboard and my paper and pencil and the other children but made me even more self-conscious. There were several other instances when my glasses broke, and my mom or dad used duct tape until they could get them repaired.

My father tried to get me to think better about my appearance. “What a cute kid!” he would say, gazing at me. I didn’t believe him.

When my glasses broke during a scuffle with some other kids, my mother vented, “Why do they always go for the face?”

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The United States celebrated its bicentennial that summer of 1976. Georgia’s Jimmy Carter became the Democratic nominee for president. Texas’s Barbara Jordan, the first Southern Black woman to be elected to Congress, delivered the keynote address during the party’s national convention.

Our family moved again that summer before I started third grade, and I was grateful for a fresh start in a new, larger school, Holly Hill Elementary. There were other boys and girls with glasses, although none were as thick as mine. For that fall’s school picture, I wore a t-shirt branding that year’s biggest movie, Rocky, and had a Rocky poster on my bedroom door that year as well.

I made new friends in the neighborhood, friends with whom I rode the bus and played sandlot football and baseball. I discovered that I was good at throwing and catching the ball in both sports, at least with small groups of other kids.

I continued to wear my hair longer, like my older brother Frank did. My mother worked in the fabrics department at a retail store and sometimes brought me to work when I was not in school.

One day at the store, an older male co-worker approached us and remarked, “This must be your lovely daughter.”

I stood there, silent and embarrassed, while my mother chuckled and informed the co-worker that I was her son. Another time, at school, the class was divided into small groups for some project and someone in my group pointed out that we were all girls. Our teacher overheard this and corrected the student, with a touch of exasperation, “John’s a boy!”

“Get your Black hands off it!”

Holly Hill Elementary was more diverse than any previous school I’d attended. I noticed that almost all the Black students sat together during school assemblies. I found myself nervous around my Black peers, worried about saying the wrong thing to them. I feared a tall, muscular Black student named Hosey, who often scowled and criticized me. Another Black kid, Felton, was friendly with me but did things such as holding up a severed pubic hair.

One day in the school cafeteria, I was showing off some delicious chocolate treat my mother had packed in my lunch, and Felton reached over and touched it.

“Get your Black hands off it!” I said, and Felton drew his hand back. I was embarrassed at my reaction and grateful that Felton didn’t say anything in response. Frankly, I’m still horrified nearly 50 years later.

During the summer after third grade I spent a few weeks visiting my grown sister Francine in Cleveland, Ohio. One day I was walking along the sidewalk by myself, my face perspiring under my glasses, and a couple of girls my age walked past me. “Hey, kid, you’re dumb,” one of them said, and the other immediately added, “Yeah, you’re dumb.”

I said nothing in response and kept walking. Ever since that moment I’ve felt a twinge of discomfort when passing other people on the sidewalk, in shopping malls, in airports, and so forth who’ve got no reason and no ambition to ridicule me.

I started Holly Hill Junior High when I was twelve. Like what I had noticed at the elementary school, Black students sat by themselves not only during assemblies but during lunch. I met new white kids in P.E. who made fun of my glasses, which were now tinted, and I dreaded having to change clothes in the locker room before and after a session in the gym or on the sports fields.

One day in the hallway, a big Black student stopped and asked me, in a loud and happy voice, “When did you start going to this school?” I stared at him, unsure what to say, and stuttered something like, “Since the school year started.” The kid kept smiling and patted me on the back. “It’s John!” he said.

I knew the student was familiar and wondered if we had played baseball or flag football together but couldn’t think of his name. As awkward as that moment was, I felt that he had been kind to me. He had noticed me. He had remembered me. I failed to reciprocate.

I played Little League baseball during junior high, and one of my most popular teammates was a Black kid named Fred. On one occasion Fred and one of the white players stopped by my house.

Fred asked if I was uncomfortable having Black people over there. “I’m not like that!” I said, defensively, trying to laugh it off. But I was uncomfortable, even though I didn’t want to be.

And that might have been the only time a Black person came over to my house when I was growing up.

“You don’t see how much you’re prejudiced.”

My older brother Frank got contact lenses and I was desperate to be fitted with them as well. That glorious day occurred during the summer of 1981, when I was 13. I spent hours looking in the mirror, my face unmasked, my dark eyes unhindered by the thick lenses and ugly frames. I practiced my smile and noticed my dimples.

I couldn’t resist glancing at a mirror if one were available, as if to reassure myself that the glasses were still gone and that I was attractive. “Yeah, John, you’re still here,” Frank said to me one night when I popped into the bathroom for a quick glance at the mirror while he was brushing his teeth.

I was eager to show up on the first day of eighth grade as a new person with a new face. But a week before school started one of my contact lenses began to hurt my eye, and when I took it out I was horrified to see a small tear. I cried to my mother that I had to get a new lens, that I couldn’t start school with those same horrible glasses. We drove to the eye doctor and I was grateful to receive a spare pair of contacts. To this day I’ve never been without a backup pair or two.

I loved it when new kids came to the junior high who had not met me when I wore glasses, and I hoped they wouldn’t get a copy of the seventh-grade yearbook. I met a girl named Carla in science class and picked up an unfamiliar vibe, sensing that she liked me, noticing that she whispered to me during class and laughed with me. It was energizing, but I didn’t know how to talk to girls and I started acting obnoxious and she was soon turned off and stopped being friendly.

Across high school I had a succession of short-term relationships with female classmates, usually “getting too serious too quickly” for the girl’s liking, leading to her breaking up with me. I spent a lot more energy on my social life than my grades, and neither was anything but average.

I made friends with a Black girl named Wanda, who was in my 12th grade creative writing class. We had a natural rapport and joked around a lot, and Wanda would kid around with other classmates by telling them in front of me, “John and I are going to prom.”

It was unheard of then for students of different races to date each other. I never knew whether Wanda did like me as more than a friend and didn’t spend time thinking about it because I had no concept of dating someone from another race.

There was another Black girl named Cosette in my yearbook class; she was very street smart and sarcastic, and I didn’t feel as comfortable around her as I did with Wanda. I don’t remember the context of the conversation, but one afternoon during class I pointed out that I wasn’t prejudiced against Black people.

“Really?” Cosette responded, rolling her eyes. “You don’t see how much you’re prejudiced.”

I was stunned, unable to think of anything I had ever said or done in her presence that was even slightly racist but didn’t press Cosette for specifics. I’m still haunted by that moment as well, 40 years later. Why the fuck didn’t I ask?

I got along well with another Black student in yearbook class named Derrick and could have seen myself hanging out with Derrick outside of school; but Derrick was popular and polished and a top student, and I didn’t think he would be interested in deepening our friendship. Maybe it was a lack of effort on my part, an unwillingness to take risks and get uncomfortable, that Cosette had observed.

When I graduated from high school a friend named David wrote in my yearbook, “At least you don’t wear coke bottles anymore.”

I shook my head; at that point I’d had contacts lenses for nearly five years. Was there nothing else interesting about me? I wondered if the other kids who knew me in elementary school or that first year of junior high automatically viewed the awful glasses whenever they looked at me in the present.

At the time, it still didn’t occur to me that millions of Americans were “automatically viewed” in a derogatory manner because of their appearance.

Becoming the “minority”

There were a handful of Black students in my college courses and my campus dorms, and I didn’t get to know any of them beyond a surficial level. This continued during my first two professional workplaces.

Then, when I was 28, I took a job at a publishing company that was very intentional about staffing diversity, and I became good friend with a Black colleague named Ed. We socialized outside of work.

A few years later, while in theological seminary and spending a summer as a chaplain, my closest friend was the lone Black student chaplain, Anthony. A few years after that, during a two-year stint with a financial services firm, my favorite colleague to hang out with outside of work was a young Black man named Richard.

But those experiences paled in comparison to what happened in late 2007 when, for the first time in my life, I was the “minority” every day I went to work.

I moved my family to Tennessee and began working in coaching and leadership development for the wireless company T-Mobile, and was initially based in one of their large call centers in Nashville. Most of the population were people of color, a significant amount were part of the LGBTQ+ community, and socio-economic-educational backgrounds ran the gamut.

I’d never felt so “different,” and I wasn’t sure if I could adjust.

I adjusted. Those T-Mobile employees who were visibly and invisibly different from me in so many ways became my teachers, my clients, and, most importantly, my friends.

I began to see up close, through both my vision-correcting contact lenses and my heart, how much people of color, especially Black men and women, suffered at the overt actions or subtle indifferences of white, privileged, straight men and women. And that I had been part of this problem for a long time, and that there was nothing heroic about finally having this “light bulb moment.”

I didn’t and could never fully “understand” what it’s like to “be them,” but I care a whole fucking great deal more than I used to. I’m committed to learning and unlearning for the rest of my life.

What I do understand much better than I did growing up: Before becoming part of T-Mobile’s culture, I was one of those “good people,” as we like to call ourselves, who didn’t practice any overt racism, sexism, homophobia, or ableism…but didn’t do much to help, either.

I didn’t get to know many people who were different from me, at work or in the community. I lived in a bubble, focusing on my career and family, writing articles and prose that were generally directed at people like me.

Aside from those nine or 10 years I wore thick glasses, I’ve never had to worry about “standing out” in a crowd. I can walk down a street without arousing suspicion, get pulled over for a traffic violation without fear of losing my life, and use public restrooms without any risk of being kicked out because I’m the “wrong gender.”

People don’t stare at me when I show up in nice stores or restaurants. No one dictates what I can do with my own body and no one catcalls me. I don’t need accommodations to perform my work.

I’ve been granted, in a nutshell, an automatic “benefit of the doubt.” And because of that, I’ve realized that I possess a tremendous responsibility to advocate for those who don’t have such privileges. That’s not the same as “feeling guilty” about being white or male.

Only kindness matters

Growing up, those aforementioned thick glasses weren’t my biggest weakness. Nor were my depression, OCD, speech disfluency, naivete, and all-around awkwardness.

The thickness of my heart, the lack of softness and pliability, regarding my classmates who couldn’t simply re-launch their identities through replacing a pair of ugly glasses with invisible contact lenses?

The lack of awareness for 39 fucking years of my life regarding other peoples’ experiences, the scarcity of emotional intelligence, the feeble efforts to get to know those who differed from me?

The inability to even think about privilege as a “thing” and recognize how much of it I’d possessed since my first breath on Feb. 17, 1968?

Those were my biggest weaknesses because, together, they alchemized into a daily deficit of kindness toward those “other” people.

And even though I think I’m a lot kinder to people in general here at age 58 compared to my youth and early adulthood, I shatter inside when I screw up and hurt someone else’s feelings or, intentionally or not, cause them to feel unseen or unheard.

Lack of kindness is my Kryptonite, mitigating any super powers I might possess. Jewel is a trillion percent fucking spot-on when she sings that in the end, only kindness matters.

No one ultimately gives a shit regarding how talented or accomplished you are if you don’t give a shit about them.

Hello! I’m John DeMarco, a Nashville, Tennessee-based, married GenXer dad of amazing daughters, sharing stories and reflections on growth, loss, identity, and mindfulness, offered with a deep respect for your capacity to make your own meaning. I’ve been writing since around age 11.

My Substack is reader-supported. While all of my articles and Notes are free to access, those choosing to upgrade to paid subscriptions enable me to dedicate more and more time for writing, reading, commenting on, and restacking other writers’ work. I’d love for Substack to eventually become the only thing I do for a living along with writing books and, perhaps, movies and TV shows.

Thank you so much for your time, attention, and interaction!

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