REFLECTIONS OF A RECOVERING AUTHOR - PART II
or HOW I LOST A SATURDAY

The check was for $2990 and it was all the money I had in the world. Every bit of it. I had cashed in my Individual Retirement Fund. Years ago, I’d invested into a mutual fund, while still gainfully employed. By cashing out early, I had to pay a 10% penalty to Uncle Sam, in spite of the fact it was my only income for the year.

I had been living off savings, but they were gone and gone too was my apartment and most of my possessions. I might have considered selling my body, but wouldn’t have gotten much for it, unless I could figure out a way to sell it by the pound.

I had left New York City on July 12, 2002 and arrived in East Peoria, Illinois on July 13. The plan was to stay with my friend Al for a couple of weeks, while a situation that had been brewing in Alabama resolved itself, one way or another.

I had met an Alabama girl online, but the excuses for the delays that prevented our real life meeting, became more and more improbable as the weeks drifted by. It finally got so silly eventually even I, deluded as I was, knew it was not going to happen.

My two week stay in Illinois became a three month endurance test. How long could Al and his wife Phyllis tolerate my sullen, heartbroken presence in their quickly converted basement?

By the time I left on October 27, patience was wearing thin all the way around, but I had to be realistic. The girl in Alabama had been toying with me, and all of the people who told me so, had been right.

Yet without that incentive, I most assuredly would never have left my job or New York City. I would never have been in the horrible situation I found myself and as a result, I would not have found any sort of real happiness in my life. Call it a twist of fate, but the Alabama girl had, unwittingly, done me a favor.

The truth is, I had been stupid to believe her in the first place. I was old enough and experienced enough to know better. Why did I allow it to go on as long as I had? I’m not entirely sure.

I was so burned out from so many years in retail, from so many hours working, from so many failed relationships, I needed something to believe in. I suppose weakness made me an easy target. Maybe I give away my heart too readily. Maybe I was just going through a good, old-fashioned mid-life crisis. Or, if you want to look at the larger picture, maybe the Universe had conspired to propel me from my old life, so I could build a new one.

The Tower, the sixteenth major arcana card of the tarot, comes to mind. The destruction of the foundation of one’s being. And I was destroyed, utterly and completely. The ruins of Steve are familiar to all who sat with me through those long days of waiting for something that would never happen.

Is the new existence, built upon those crumbling stone blocks, stronger somehow or better defended? The foundation might be more solid, but I sincerely hope the experience didn’t close me off from the rest of the world. I hope I am still as open to the forces of the Universe as ever, for in the end, they did me no harm.

It was a lesson I needed to learn, and I learned it, cursing and aching the whole time. Was I a fool to leave it all behind? Some would say yes, but I do not believe so. I had managed to escape a life that held no fulfillment for me. A life in which I had been horribly unhappy. I traded that life for a chance at a new one, but I’m getting ahead of myself. I now return you to October 27, 2002, the day I left Illinois behind, coincidentally, my friend Paul’s birthday. Paul was the one that rented the Ryder truck and drove me to Illinois. He knew I wouldn’t be able to pay him back for a long time, if ever. I have some very good friends.

On that particular October 27, I took a short train ride, from Normal, Illinois to Chicago, then a loooooooong train ride out west to Reno. Two days on two trains brought me to October 29. I spent the night in Reno and made Fresno, California on October 30, just in time for Halloween.

In New York City, at least where I lived, Halloween had all but died. I received almost no trick or treaters at my apartment door. I wasn’t sure if Halloween owed its slow death to the danger factor or the influx of foreigners, who didn’t understand it. Regardless, in Fresno, the tradition was alive and well, and I got quite a kick out of answering the door and handing out candy.

This brought to mind Halloweens past. Parties and parades. I love Halloween. Usually I’d go into work in costume. I had owned, in fact, quite a large collection of masks, a pair of bony hands, a pair of distorted clawed hands and latex monster feet I could pull on over my shoes. I inadvertently left the entire collection sitting in a box in my coat closet back in Brooklyn, one of the few possessions I still occasionally miss. I suppose as a fantasy writer, I am almost obligated to call Halloween my favorite holiday. Surely I have had, by percentage, more fun on Halloween than any other day of the year, including my birthday. I had no idea I would be spending my last United States Halloween in Fresno.

I was also in Fresno when I received the check. At one point, my account had been worth almost $3500, but due to fluctuations in the market, it dropped down to ten dollars below my original $3000 investment. There must be some cosmic law at work here, but I was absent the day we studied cosmic law in high school, so I suppose I’ll never know which law, or why it decided to pick on me.

Due to recent events, my credit rating had suffered and the bank in Fresno wouldn’t let me open an account. I didn’t know that could happen, but it did, so I had to pay a ridiculous amount of money to cash the check at a check cashing place. It cost me $70.

When I later found out there was a coupon in the Fresno telephone directory and I could have cashed it for free, I was a bit nonplused. Of course I should have looked in the telephone book for a coupon for a check cashing place. Most natural thing in the world. Okay, Fresno’s a weird place, I’ll admit it. But I wasn’t staying and I’ve cried enough over spilled milk in my lifetime. I have to laugh about it.

Something I couldn’t quite bring myself to laugh about was the price of a one way ticket to Tasmania -- $1712. The fare cut deeply into my check, but of course, if I didn’t spend it, I might never find that new life I so craved. And what risk, you ask, was worth so large a percentage of my savings?

I had, once again, met a woman online. A woman who said she wanted to be with me. A woman who wanted to share my life with me. A woman who said she’d be supportive of my writing.

In fact, she’d been around all along, supporting me during the dark times, while the girl in Alabama played mind games. As the weeks passed and it became more and more clear I didn’t actually have a girl in Alabama, it became more and more clear I did have one in Tasmania. Funny thing that.

I’d gambled just about everything on Miss Alabama (as my ex-girlfriend Kara calls her) and lost. Was I like the compulsive gambler who didn’t know when to go home? Should I have used that check as a seed to plant myself somewhere locally and begin my life again? Or should I put it down on a single number and spin the roulette wheel? If experience was any indication, I should have taken my money and gone home.

I once lost $90 in about three minutes, playing roulette in The Crystal Palace on Grand Bahama Island, Bahamas. I was there with my first wife, after having won an eight day vacation from my employer Crazy Eddie, for being named Manager of the Year for my region. They also gave me a trophy and a cool Crazy Eddie MVP jacket. It was quite a night. And I was given a vacation.

Eight days and seven nights. I have to say seven nights, because years later when I booked a vacation to England with my second wife, I managed to somehow book a trip for five days and three nights and it caused me no end to trouble.

The initial package offered was supposed to be four days and three nights and I paid extra to upgrade my stay to five days. As it was a package, I’d assumed the travel agent would also take care of the hotel for the extra night. They were supposed to, of course, but they didn’t and I had neglected to check the hotel voucher carefully enough. The $300 for the last night really pissed me off, but since the travel company eventually refunded it, I can’t much complain, though at the time, I was beside myself. More spilled milk, I suppose.

Anyway, it was time to gamble or go home and I decided to gamble. Actually, this was more easily said than done, since I had managed to lose my passport just before my trip to Illinois. So I needed a new passport, which cost me another $160. What was left of my money was going fast.

I did look halfheartedly for a job in Fresno, but when even the local Video store didn’t call me back, I grew disheartened. I turned my energy to writing instead and finished off, among other things, an old project.

The other things were a bit of new material in the third book of my oldest trilogy, The Chronicles of Kerienore, which I might now someday finish. I also wrote a short story called "The Punniest Story Ever Written" which is absolutely god awful, but still sold to Planet Relish, probably because it was so bad. I wanted to put as many bad puns and double entendres as possible into a story, so I had them out of my system before I reached Tasmania.

Tasmania, by the way, is one of the six Australian states. It’s the least populous, the smallest in area and the only one not on the mainland. Tasmania is not to be confused with Tanzania, which is in Africa. As much as I’d like to see Africa before I die, Australia was my destination.

Still, even Australians consider Tasmania out of the way. In fact, it’s so out of the way, sometimes poor Tasmania gets left off Australian maps. I suppose even if the populous of 458,000 shouted about it, the sound would be drowned out by the waters of the Bass Strait and those on the mainland would never hear the complaint. In fact, I’m not sure this hasn’t happened, since Tasmanians tend to be vocal.

Anyway, the aforementioned project I finished was once called Doublestar, but is now called Odd is Ze Qwest (yes, another pun), which is a manual for a fantasy role-playing game. I had written Doublestar many years earlier, when I had lost my job at Crazy Eddie. The company was going downhill and firing highly paid managers at a rate of about one a week.

One day my friend Perry was gone (and a few years later truly gone when he died from injuries sustained as a result of a motorcycle accident). A week later, Jonathan, who ran the 57th Street Store with me, was laid off. And then it was my turn.

So I took my two measly weeks severance pay, got another job immediately and wrote Doublestar, or at least the Doublestar Player’s Handbook. Doublestar is a pen and paper based fantasy role-playing game my friends and I played almost up until the time I left New York City.

OQ, as I call it, is the long awaited rewrite of the Doublestar Player’s handbook. I even started the sequel, The Book of Magic, which is not yet done. If you play RPGs, this is one of the best game systems out there and I’m not just saying it because I wrote it. Well, maybe I am, but damn it’s good.

But we were talking about Fresno, which was merely a pit stop for me to prepare for my assault on Tasmania. I had to wait for the bank to send my check, the US Department of Immigration to send my passport, and then I had the problem of the visa.

In order to get an Australian visa, you need to have in your possession a round trip ticket. In fact, the price of the visa is built into round trip tickets, but they were considerably more expensive and out of my price range. As I was not planning on leaving, this seemed a huge waste of money. Enter the ETA.

ETA usually stands for estimated time of arrival, but in Australia it means Electronic Travel Authority, an electronic visa you can apply for over the Internet. It cost a mere $12 and I had it in five minutes (after the hour or two it took me to decipher the site).

I still wasn’t sure they’d let me into the country with a one way ticket, but I was hoping once I was there, I’d figure out something. Not the best plan, but I was desperate.

I will never forget saying good-bye to Samandi at the airport (If you don’t know who she is, you didn’t read the first installment of this series, so shame on you). She had been (and still is) my trusty editor, confidante and friend. Samandi (and her husband Nick) opened their house to me when I was in need.

January 3, 2003 found me at the Fresno Airport Terminal. Samandi and I sat as if in shock, both totally aware we would likely never see each other again. Not in person anyway. We’d certainly chat online, but that’s different. If things worked out and I had every suspicion they would, I was leaving to make a new life with the woman I loved.

Yes, I do tend to fall in love easily. It’s one of my least redeeming characteristics. But once I’m in love, I tend to stay there until given more than ample reason to walk away.

dana and I had been talking online almost every day for about seven months, during which time, our online relationship had flourished. We had a great rapport and she seemed not only intelligent, but genuine, a thing not easy to find online. Trust me, I know.

Not to say there aren’t genuine people out there, but I was still reeling from The Alabama Affair (if you’re listening Robert Ludlum, you can use the name for your next novel) and as such, the decision to risk it all was even more difficult at this time in my life. Yet strangely, I wasn’t scared. Against my better judgment, I trusted dana and knew she wasn’t lying to me or leading me on. How I knew this, I couldn’t explain, especially since I had been just as certain of Miss Alabama. I suppose the old expression once bitten, twice shy doesn’t apply to insane fantasy writers. At least it didn’t seem to apply to me. No, I had made up my mind and once that happens, nothing short of divine intervention can stay my hand.

Yet the gods seemed to be working with me this time, for my check, my passport and the visa all fell into place so fast, it made even my head spin. I am such a fan of irony, I half expected my plane to go down over the Pacific Ocean. But it didn’t, and I thank whatever gods are listening that I wasn’t the one authoring my story.

So I was expecting to go for the long haul and both Samandi and I knew it. When she walked away from me in the Fresno Airport, I was truly alone for the first time in as long as I can remember.

I would be traveling another 8300 miles to meet a woman I had never met in real life. A woman with two children, either of whom might hate me. A woman with a dog that might decide my right ankle tasted better than her dog food.

And I was going to a place where they drive on the left side of the street, where they celebrate the Queen’s Birthday instead of Presidents Day, and where the Fourth of July is just the day after the third of July and has no other special significance.

In short, I was gambling most of my money on a long shot and if it didn’t work out, I hadn’t left myself an avenue of escape. They say necessity makes strange bedfellows. I don’t know what it means, but they say it. In truth, it wasn’t like that at all.

I was traveling to Australia, because I was in love. And dana claimed to be in love with me. And I believed her. And I was willing to risk most of what I had left to see if I was right or wrong. You have to love confidence.

But there’s more. It costs $1745 to file a residency application in Australia. That’s $1745 Australian, which is about $900 American. But you’re not done then either. Once you pay to file the residency application, you still need to take a blood test, get a chest x-ray and have a medical examination, all of which you have to pay for out of pocket. And then there was the matter of my taxes.

I owed a $300 penalty for taking my IRA early and remember that’s $600 Australian. Plus, there was a fee to change over my money to Australian dollars. And of course, the moment I stepped onto Australian soil, the dollar sank and my exchange rate was less than I expected.

Suffice to say, by the time I was done, if I did indeed decide to file for residency, I would be penniless. Not just penniless. I would be penniless and unable to work legally for at least two years.

This meant I would be at the mercy of a complete stranger. If it didn’t work out, what then? Suppose it worked out for a month or two, then suddenly didn’t? What would happen to me?

I once read an article that rated the most stressful of life’s events. Moving is one of them. Having a child is another. Unemployment is up there. I suddenly realized I’d have to deal with all three in a very short span of time.

In fact, it was very likely I’d have to marry her to stay in the country. I wasn’t sure about that yet, but it had been discussed. And of course, getting married was yet another stress on that same list.

Imagine moving to a foreign country, halfway around the world, to live with a woman you’ve never met and her two teenage sons, in a place you will not legally be allowed to work. And imagine it will cost you every last cent of your savings to get and stay there. Not to mention the fact you could only take a large suitcase, a small suitcase and a carry-on bag with you. Could you imagine what your life would be like?

But I’m not there yet. I’m sitting in Fresno, waiting for the boarding announcement. If this seems like a long, rambling digression, it is, but it does give an accurate portrayal of my thoughts while waiting for the plane that would finally take me to Los Angeles.

Actually the word plane might be misleading here. The first aircraft was more akin to a shoe box with wings than anything I’d flown in before. The train out to Reno (and even the first train to Chicago, which was considerably smaller) was positively spacious by comparison. It was the least comfortable flight I’d ever been on, and it filled me with dread, for I would soon be on the second plane for almost 15 hours. For the hour and a half I spent on that plane, I was not a happy camper.

Fortunately, my bags had been checked all the way through to Tasmania. I made sure this was the case, since picking up the bags and rechecking them at each location would have been problematic as the connection times were so close.

In Los Angeles, I found myself running to get to the Qantas flight, only to find out I had to wait to board it, but better early than late. In short order, I was sitting on a much larger, much more comfortable jet, with an empty seat beside me.

I was about to travel from the Northern hemisphere to the Southern. I would be leaving in the winter and arriving in the summer. Not a bad trade if you can get it. I was not only going to be crossing the Pacific Ocean, but I would be jumping forward a day. I had left Fresno on Friday, but would not reach Australia until Sunday morning. I was going to lose an entire day, a Saturday at that. Why couldn’t it have been a Monday? I’ve had far too many of those in my life.

My least favorite part of the flight was the food, which was okay, but it was, after all, airline food. My favorite part of the flight was the tiny television screen imbedded into the back of the seat in front of me. Not only could I watch TV and movies, but also, I could play games. There was a pop out game pad contained in the arm of the seat. I got to play trivia, Tetris, a platform game and some sort of shoot ‘em up. I didn’t even have to waste my laptop battery.

Yes, I did manage to preserve my trusty notebook computer. I had lost just about everything else, but since everything I had ever written was stored on its hard drive, I could hardly have been persuaded to part with it. My writing was the one part of my life that wouldn’t end.

We deplaned in Melbourne, Australia. That’s what they call it... deplaning. Essentially, I got off de plane. Actually, that’s what its called in America, but no one in Australia has ever heard the word. This was one of the myriad differences in language I would have to learn to get used to, if I were going to stay down under.

I had only a short time before I had to catch my connection from Melbourne to Hobart, Tasmania. Just enough time to give dana a quick call and let her know I’d arrived. I was so busy thinking about myself on the flight, it was hard to imagine what she must be going through.

Here was a woman opening her house to a man she’d never met, exposing her kids to possible danger. She didn’t know me any better than I knew her. It was a desperate gamble on both our parts and we knew it. But if it didn’t work out, she still had an income and a house. I was the one that would be stuck.

Of course, we both expected it to work out, but life has a way of throwing a monkey wrench into things. For example, you might be told your bags were checked all the way through to Tasmania and might even expect it to be true, but in reality, it’s impossible. You see, Melbourne and Tasmania are both in Australia and so, when you land in Melbourne, you have to take your bags through customs. They might have told me that before I took the time to make that phone call.

With my connection time looming over me, I had to retrieve my bags, get on a too long line, make it through customs, check my suitcases again and get to the gate, all before my plane to Tasmania took off. This would have been hard enough, if I hadn’t been stopped by customs on the way. Apparently, they thought I was trying to smuggle fruit into the country.

Now, I’m not much of a fruit eater to begin with and I’m surely not about to carry fruit in my luggage. Yet the x-ray of my bags showed something that was certainly fruit-like, if not actually fruit. Argggggggggh! I don’t have time for this.

They made me open my suitcase and reveal the nature of the suspicious items. It was not, needless to say (or should I say seedless to say), fruit. It was the juggling balls I’d brought with me to break the ice with the kids. Worked like a charm it did. But at that moment, the customs official wanted to know what they were.

Without wasting time, I picked them up and started juggling. Several customs agents gathered around to watch, while precious seconds ticked by. I finished by tossing the balls into my suitcase and closing it.

"Thanks a lot folks, I’ll be here all week. Particularly if I don’t catch my connecting flight."

I ran from that place, checked my bags and made it to the gate JUST IN TIME... to wait. The plane wasn’t boarding yet.

The third plane in this sordid tale of travel woes was a small prop plane. Just looking at it, after my hours on other planes, was enough to send a shiver down my spine. But when I got inside, I was in for a pleasant surprise. There was actually room for both me AND my legs. I was relieved to say the least.

The gentleman sitting next to me decided to start a conversation. He was an amiable sort, but the problem was, he was an Australian from Darwin in the Northern Territory and I didn’t understand a word he said. I spent the entire hour flight nodding and wondering what was I doing here.

The Northern Territory, by the way, is not a state. In addition to the aforementioned six states, Australia has two territories, The Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory, more commonly known as ACT. I didn’t know any of this at the time, but I have since learned. And one day, I may even get a handle on Australian accents.

I had, of course, spoken to dana on the phone and usually I did understand her. But suddenly, I was thinking I might have to take an ‘Australian as a Second Language’ course. It was a sobering thought.

Another sobering thought occurred shortly after the plane landed in Hobart and I disembarked (I insist you can’t deplane anything that small).

While I was waiting for my luggage and watching people greet their loved ones, I began to wonder if dana might not turn up at all. What would I do then?

I watched and waited as gradually the crowd began to disperse. There were fewer and fewer people and me and my luggage were beginning to feel awfully exposed and just a bit scared. Actually, the luggage was more scared than I, but I kept reassuring it. Luggage can be so insecure.

I will never forget that wait for as long as I live. I scanned the surrounding crowd, trying to pick her out from the sea of faces. Okay, it was Hobart... so more like a pond of faces.

I saw a couple of women, who didn’t appeal to me at all, apparently engaged in the same sort of search in which I was involved. Was one of them dana? I hoped not. I was in the market for something a bit easier on the eyes.

I kept thinking about stories I’d heard over the years. People on the Internet lying about their age, their weight, their gender, in some cases their very existence. Considering my recent luck, I’d probably fallen in love with a bot (an automated chat program designed to seem like a real person, for those of you who don’t know). My luggage was really scared now and beginning to shake. Or maybe it was my own trembling that made it seem like it was moving.

The wait might have seemed like forever, but it was only a few minutes before dana showed up.

dana is not her real name, by the way. Her real name is Angeline, but we call her Debbie. Go figure. Her online name, however, is dana with a lower case d, so that is what I call her. There are reasons for this, but I won’t reveal them here. I’d rather leave you to wonder about it.

At any rate, dana showed up and my first emotion was, not surprisingly, one of relief. She was a woman. She was fully functional. She was prettier than she told me she was. And she gave a great hug. I was on my way. Actually we were both on the way. On the way to her car.

I walked to the passenger side door and waited. She looked at me.

"You’re not going to drive, are you?"

I looked down at a steering wheel, where none should be. Then I remembered my single excursion to England, looked embarrassed and walked around the car to the left door, where there had always been a steering wheel before. This was going to be a long life.

We drove to her house. I looked around like a kid at Disney World. I was in Australia. We had to drive across the Derwent river over the Tasman Bridge. To a Tasmanian it might have been a common enough sight, but to me, I was on another planet. And on that planet, they drove on the left side of the street and spoke that strange weird sounding language. And the surprises were just beginning.

It wasn’t long before dana’s house was in sight. Well, our house, actually. Naturally, just off the plane, it was hard to think in those terms. The kids weren’t home. They were staying with a friend to give me a moment to settle after my long trip. I needed more than a moment, but that couldn’t be helped.

The house was a house. From dana’s point of view it was an old, rundown house, but since I was a New Yorker and had spent much of my life living in apartments, it was a house with a front yard, a back yard, ten foot high ceilings, a fire place and SPACE. Lots of space. Well, it probably seemed like more than it was after those plane trips.

But this story is not yet over. If you want to know what happened next (and how long it took us to fall into bed together), stay tuned for the next exciting installment of Reflections of a Recovering Author, subtitled "Life Down-Under."

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