The Quitter
by Bill Ketzer
Don't look for answers
to your disasters.
-The Supersuckers
I started smoking again last fall. It just sort of happened, really. I attended
a wedding at the request of my two favorite colleagues, one who owns a bike
that I must summon fat heaps of self-restraint to refrain from stealing -- a
very old steel GT with a full Suntour XC component group. Despite this very
obvious and unnerving obsession, they found me decent enough to invite to the
affair, which was a kind of small, government wedding -- the Assembly Education
Committee Program Analyst was marrying the Assembly Communications Director
for Regional Services. An eloquently-dressed lad and I, newly introduced, kept
this in mind as we bickered about the benefits of Shimano components over anything
made anywhere else. He felt jokingly compelled to assume the standard house
vernacular, and I was happy to comply.
"My dear colleague, it's a proven fact that the idea behind this Japanese
engineering is, pardon the pun, rather shifty," he said, stirring his drink.
"Every year they refine their componentry to not only render the new line
incompatible with other manufacturer's products, but with their own previous
lines as well!"
"You bring up a thoughtful and well-considered point," I replied.
"But what you must remember is that scheduled incompatibility is an absolute
given, not something that can be readily or reluctantly resolved within the
Capitalist infrastructure. This is where conservation, innovation and a bit
of good fortune must inevitably come into play."
My new friend frowned. "So you mean to advise that I stock up on 8-speed
cassettes in hopes I may never, ever convert to 9-speed or higher?"
"Indeed I am," I said. "Why stress your fine intellect with something
you cannot change when it can be applied to better, more constructive means,
like accessing discretionary funding for economic development initiatives in
your member's district? And besides, Shimano still makes the most efficient,
reliable and durable gadgetry in the history of cycling. Not to mention Mothra.
You can't deny it."
He made a face like a thirsty mule stunned with an electric phaser. "Yes,
but --"
"DON'T MESS WITH HISTORY, SON," I said, pointing an emphatic pinky
in his left nostril. I was certainly taking liberties. I hardly knew the guy.
It was then I that my badly drunken date, best friend of the bride, teetered
toward us on very expensive heels, puffing a Marlboro and squinting like someone
had aced her with pepper spray.
"And here's a prime example," I continued.
Lynn, eyebrow raised in Dudley Moore bravado, performed an acrobatic obscenity
which sent her flailing into several concerned well-wishers. Looking mad and
hurt (she's pretty good at this), she huffed away, saying nothing, unaware that
her pack of smokes had fallen out of her purse during her applaudable efforts.
I scooped them up, pocketed them and forgot about it for a while.
"I give it a nine and-a-half," my cohort said.
"German-American judge needs time to think," I replied, which was
untrue. I think too much already. I love Lynn dearly, too, but every once in
a while she gets it in her head she can slup down the whiskey like Bukowski,
and then all the awful inevitabilities apply, which is very unfortunate and
sometimes even dangerous. For me, that is.
Now, I'm not a big commuter, at least not when I'm wearing my good suit, and
believe me, the singular form of that noun is there for a reason. Normally,
I drive to these events, but the day was so intensely beautiful, the pink sun
walloping me like a file cabinet full of honey from the 15th floor, and the
bride so absolutely radiant and unassuming and genuinely happy at the church
with her new family, and the bespectacled groom wore such expressions of dedication
and heartfelt sweetness that I drove home after the service and fetched my Litespeed.
Seeing these attributes in others makes one want to match them in soul-currency,
so I tied my one pant leg up with reflector bands and threw the charcoal Jos.
A. Bank coat in my messenger bag with a few disposable cameras and it was off
to the reception, a nice 35-minute hustle into the foothills of the Helderbergs,
the impending autumn air a rich pulp in my chest, a thousand shades of green
blurred into a mosaic of worship and praise.
Almost immediately, the egocentric bastard who would soon good-naturedly attempt
to blast my affinity for the great-hated-but-nonetheless-revered Japanese Giant
accosted me, flushed and soaking from the jaunt (completely uphill), by the
fruit-stand entrance of the Apple Inn, a rustic palace more than adequate for
such a celebration. He wore a double-breasted olive suit, his long hair in a
French-braid, and a pair of black converse Chuck Taylors. I knew right then
we'd hit it off.
"A Litespeed,"
he said, picking off an imaginary piece of lint from his tie. "How painfully
modest of you."
"It really depended upon how painfully modest my school loans were,"
I said. "Built it from the frame up and never did the math."
"Oh, and an artiste!" he cried. I didn't know whether to laugh or
punch him in the neck.
"Hey now, mister."
"Are you a drinker, by chance?"
"There isn't much that happens by chance."
"You look like you can hold your own."
"Don't I know it."
And so on. I'm used to it.
I was real surprised to find that he too had rode his bicycle to the reception
(he skipped the service, claiming vehement agnosticism and narcolepsy), an old
brown Schwinn Town and Country -- get this -- TRI-WHEELER, with a real nice
1971 S3C Sturmey Archer 3-speed coaster hub. Saw it with my own two eyes, watching
as he navigated it home in total darkness, down Route 146 in a total state of
bliss, stupid little tail light blinking, reciting some Shakespearean soliloquy
I didn't recognize. Ridiculous. But very inspiring.
I was glad to have met him. I killed a huge chunk of time that night with that
guy, debating public policy and all things two-wheeled, which took my mind off
sobriety. Life without the drink, at that point, was a tremendous impediment
to even my most basic functions as a human being. Awww, sad, right? Yes, yes,
all the "I thought we’d be together for ever" sentiments and memories
of days spent browsing in Woodstock and evenings eating sushi and antiquing
in Saratoga, all the nostalgia and glass-lifting camaraderie, heart-wrenching
items and tokens, the seemingly contradictory wake of destruction, betrayal,
broken windows, wrecked friendships, my dead father's onyx ring cracked open
on a skinhead's jaw, waking up in rural Pennsylvania with no wallet and a bad
haircut and on and on.
After my new pal left the reception, however, there was precious little to divert
my attention from the treacherous but horribly romantic and eternal buzz I spent
half my life trying to catch and the other half trying to toss back into the
water after it swallowed the hook. You go to these functions and after a while,
it seems like there's not a single sober person on the freaking planet. Lynn,
God bless her, was of absolutely no help whatsoever, flopping around kissing
strangers in her uncomfortable dress. At around dusk, I noticed she stopped
forming syllables and reverted to using hand-signals. She'll never realize how
this affects me, but it's not really her problem -- it's mine.
Anyway, sometime after the newly-wedded couple cut their cake, I wandered off
into the luxurious darkness, beyond the reach of the yawning shadows cut by
sodium halide gazebo lamps, past the parking lot and down to a small pond. Heavy
rains had caused patches of flooding here and there, one of which I promptly
stood in. It happens at events of this nature -- if I stay long enough, I start
thinking too much and standing in puddles. Loneliness and feelings of resentment
and sadness set in. My 'retirement,' as it were, brings me down, especially
at events where it seems the whole world can drink merrily, without making sure
they have enough cash for bail before they hit the town.
The reader has deduced, by now, that I am not by any stretch of the imagination
a responsible boozer. As anyone will tell you, I never stopped until I passed
out, got knocked out or locked up. It was a bitch to quit, or more accurately,
to actually ask for help to stop. The pride, the pride, you know, but the point
is it's very easy for me to set about doing other compulsive things to offset
the misery like... well, like smoking. In fact, I have a tendency to burn down
every vice -- I indulge so much that moderation is an impossible dream, like
the Seattle Seahawks winning the Super Bowl. Thus, I quit completely if I can,
but one often needs to check the impediments of withdrawal with some other fruitless
thing. It's a running joke -- my friends call me the quitter. I've quit everything
at least once: smoking, chocolate, pot, coffee (to this day, I still can't talk
about that empty, scooped-out experience), legumes, angel-hair pasta, unprotected
sex, fist-fighting and bike collecting, the latter because I simply ran out
of room. My roommate was ripping decent flesh on chain rings in the dark on
the way to the bathroom at 3 a.m... but I digress.
I simply stood there by that pond, vacant in the late haze, DJ music still blasting
but crowd thinning out, watching fireflies. The air carried the curious combination
of a clean public bath and apple blossoms, and for no reason at all this article
I read once in Time Out New York (easily the worst acronym out there but regardless
a formidable NYC arts & entertainment guide) popped into my head. It decried
and bemoaned the recent trend in many state legislatures to propose a ban on
smoking in restaurants. The columnist provided a strange quote from an obviously
nicotine-addicted literary theorist. I had no idea that the drug had permeated
intellectual circles as a confounding energy for discussion and extrapolation.
I'll spare the reader his lofty language (essentially because I can't find the
damn article and TONY doesn't see fit to return phone calls or answer E-mail),
but the bit basically said that there is a definite conciliatory aspect to how
something so self-destructive can be so romantic and appealing. Something in
the timed process of the inhale and exhale, unique to each celebrant, that only
enhances the nature of physical addiction.
Well, shit.
I remembered my girlfriend's pack, felt for it in my trousers, pulled one out
and lit it, inhaling and exhaling deeply. It is a testament to the addictive
personality that one knows intuitively the little aesthetic eccentricities of
the motion of the habit. I knew how to smoke the minute one touched my lips
at 10 years old. At 12, I knew that one Budweiser just wasn't gonna do it. I
hadn't smoked in years, yet I drew deeply, the swollen cylinder bathing the
tip of my nose in candy orange light. I felt the relaxation one feels directly
before the jolt, before the chemicals network. The smell of tobacco and history
burning in my pharynx. Maybe that TONY fella was all right.
I smoked whatever was left in Lynn's pack, and smoked quite a bit thereafter,
first bumming them from her and then covertly purchasing my own. It isn't difficult
to understand. While cigarettes played a somewhat trite, auxiliary role in my
self-destruction in this sordid and not so extraordinary past, it filled the
gap nicely as I ran out of things to quit putting into my body. Even though
I drank for devastating results -- prodigious, caustic results -- and this idiot
weed did nothing to convince me that such results were imminent, still, I lit
up and huffed with zeal and a working-class ethic that frightens old women and
young children to this day.
I hated it. I did it anyway.
The big industry angle pissed me off. Once I began working for the state government,
my disdain for the tobacco industry busted through the crappy tenement sheetrock
of my ignorance and out into the reckless, mercenary spectrum of advocacy. But
it was not enough to keep me from smoking. In fact, I began to smoke more and
more -- after meals, before bed, after completing any menial task, and so on.
I fought it, of course, but horribly. The act of living is, in itself, a catalyst
for many things, if that's how you learned it (and boy, did I ever). Any stress,
any accomplishment, any hour can rectify the gap between the urge and the act.
In the moment, it seems like the most logical thing in the world, like Shimano.
Like food.
"Rationality is the product of fear and a blemish on the ass of any American,"
some cantankerous politician should have said, but I say it here and now. I
would invent convenient little aphorisms like this in my mind as I rode my bike,
telling myself that, indeed, many a recreational rider has been known to indulge
in a little puff now and again, or better, were engaged in horrific, full-on
nicotine emulsion experiments.
I drew inspiration from Delaney Vanamerogen, who smoked two packs of Marlboro
Reds a day, yet exhibited dynamic trials skills and was a remarkable climber.
One year we sneaked on to the Pro course just prior to the men's race at Mount
Snow when it still hosted a World Cup. The previous night, Delaney had just
about sucked down every bit of booze he brought (and he brought a lot), in addition
to this treacherous grain-fizz-lightning crap he burgled from a hillbilly in
Bennington. Despite protests from his lungs, liver and several forest rangers,
he mounts his Zaskar at 9 a.m. the next morning, hairy tongue and reeking like
sour milk, and climbs those freaking monster walls that Snow has (if you've
raced the course, you know what I mean), and here's the kicker -- he's smoking
his little fanny off the whole way through!
"Mmman, rseeum demnew Michelinsrrr sick, man, ya seeum digina rightinrrrmphh,"
he'd say. "Gotta schwingin cornerrrs a bitta carvemup, man."
Here is a guy who put vodka in his camelback, kept two packs of cigs rolled
tight in his short sleeves and sometimes made no sense. But he kicked serious
ass! No doubt about it. In a sick fashion, it was a beautiful experience to
see him -- tiny guy, flat nose, cleft lip, mumbling, drinking, legs furiously
pumping, the ash at the tip of his cigarette just brushing his stem cap as he
surmounts a sometimes impenetrable mountain with ludicrous elan. Strong gene
pool in that family.
"Rowemm, man, rowemm barzupdethill, man."
There is beauty in this, and in the expressions on the serious racer's face
as he dutifully hammers by, like a hamster in its wheel. This is where my mind
goes for justification.
I am not of his breed. My rides only suffered, and how. I noticed it not so
much in my lungs at first -- increased heavy breathing or heart rate -- but
in how quickly I would tire. I could still climb well, carve sick lines, but
I was only good for about two hours, if not less. I noticed that I crashed a
lot more than normal, and my balance actually became a bit unstable. Inevitably,
the morning cough returned, slowly at first, soon evolving into dedicated efforts
that sent house pets and family members scrambling.
No one said anything. Shamed, I hid my dirty habit from my pals, but when the
sound of what was obviously an ashtray lodged in my windpipe eventually became
more and more prominent, more than a few became skeptical, I'm sure. Only Papa
H. -- the guy who taught me how to ride a bike fearlessly, like a missionary
-- caught me smoking. We were at a hardcore show, I think it was S.O.D. or some
outfit equally as crushing. He is too laid back to admonish, very Zen in those
areas (not so Zen in others). He tried, of course, in his own way, but his attempts
at being harsh and firm only transferred his dismay and hurt. He couldn't look
me in the eye.
"Stop it, what the hell are you doing?" he said when he caught me
on the exhale, lurking back by the T-shirt booth with a cig cupped behind me.
"Shut it"
"I'll kick you in the balls, ya-"
"Don't worry about it."
"Cut it out, would ya? Tell you what, I'll go cross the lungs off your
organ donor card."
"I'm not a smoker," I replied, too obviously on the defensive. "I
just felt like one is all. It's nothing."
He snatched his Anchor Steam from the bar with long fingers and jerked his military
haircut in the opposite direction. "You look like one too, Jimmy,"
he said, tight lipped. He always called me Jimmy for some reason. "Nice
kid, real nice..."
Here was a guy who could clean Plattekill in Roxbury on a hardtail with totally
shitty cantilevers, wearing a unique look somewhere between perversion and stoicism,
and he couldn't look me in the eye. That said something, all right.
The guilt was pervasive. During that stretch, I couldn't even pick up a cycling
magazine (and the mail order rags came almost every day, mocking my dick-headedness)
without my brain bulging with agitation and interference, but I kept reading,
kept ordering needed parts, kept wrenching bikes despite this very real soul-sickness.
This turned out to be a significant act, this continuous defiance of the urge
I felt to do nothing, to forego riding and all the proper and necessary beauty
contained in this simple act. I kept riding in spite of the laziness, the ennui,
the warmed over excuse-making that comes as a free gift for enrolling in the
Corporate Cancer Experiment. After all, I figured if you keep trying to pee
with a clothespin on your equipment, you'll eventually just take the damn clothespin
off.
However, as I argued with the wedding guest above, you can't rely on how things
should be, which in this case is the assumption that human beings, like any
explosive energy, will always take the path of least resistance. This is, of
course, pure drivel. Most people are all too willing to spend quality time,
energy and serious cash to force change on something that can absolutely not
be changed under any circumstances. Murphy's Law clearly states that any system
which relies on human nature is, by nature, unreliable (and hey, I think you
can find that in any state's environmental conservation law as well). No, something
more formidable would need to surface to reinforce any clothespin removal to
ensure that things continued to, er... flow freely.
There is a tendency in tales of this ilk to profess that some vital, life-changing
experience occurred at the foot of some trailhead, a divine intervention, some
blah blaah blaaaaaaah to rid me of my troubles with my thinking and sorrow and
addiction calisthenics, but what did happen was actually something like that.
I am fortunate to have a number of friends who have decided that drugs and alcohol
no longer suited them, for whatever reasons. We are of the unfortunate persuasion
that -- despite a deep and unhealthy love for the beer, the whiskey, the dope
and everything else -- could no longer process it in a responsible manner. They
didn't kill us outright like we thought they would. As the poet Jim Carroll
once said, not dying young can be a dilemma. Instead, the sickness got right
inside the heart and kind of swooned there like a bunny-boiling stalker at your
bedroom window. So yeah, yeah, I went and got some help (imagine that!) and
that's when the people
who lent a hand or ear recommended prayer as a daily practice, which promptly
scared the shit out of me. I never was, nor ever will be a proponent for organized
religion. Yet I was told to find a way to do it, any way, that my recovery depended
on it.
I figured what the hell. Absolutely nothing at all to lose. I was game for anything,
but how frustrating to not know how to pray! What an awkward, humiliating realization.
The prayers had no purpose, no frame, no lilt. The idea of its formality is
sickening to a career felon. Then one day I headed up to Grafton State Park
with Papa H. and a perseverant fellow named Jim MacNaughton. Jim deserves a
damn serious amount of credit, along with the Mohawk Hudson Cycling Club, for
advocating to expand this awesome network of trails and, more importantly, preserve
the existing loops, loops that saved my life time and time again, especially
this spring.
It was early May, about 45 degrees. It had pissed down rain for two solid months,
but we needed to train for the 24 Hours of Snowshoe in West Virginia. If ever
there were a reason to quit smoking besides cancer, yellow teeth and total loss
of taste and smell, that would be the one. Anyway, Jim, -- who dresses his Haro
hardtail up like a shameless hussy, what with a chain tensioner, a Marzocchi
with like 107 inches of travel, Shimano 636 platform cleats and a riser bar
with the chi-chi cross brace -- takes us on a killer ride through the state
park's lush and muddy moss-strewn outcrops and well-groomed singletrack switchbacks,
through patches of pine and down the breathtaking west side of the mountain.
From there we venture past a small village and into the freshly cut stuff, brandy-new,
soft and steep. Huge uphill log hops. All you can hear are the voices in your
head, and mine kept saying, "Must... never... smoke... again..."
I was, as they say, feeling it.
In the village, we had spotted an old Labrador Retriever, easily 10 years old,
in front of a very small, plain white house. By his frown I gathered Jim wasn't
too keen on dogs, and as Papa fawned over it like a Chris King headset, I could
see he was eager to continue the ride. The dog followed us for a bit, interested,
but cruised on back to his shady lawn and plopped his nappy arse down beneath
a huge maple by the road.
"Old timer," Papa said.
"A good old kid," I noted.
"He's definitely not stupid," Papa continued. "Only thieves and
mountain bikers survive up there."
"Probably went up back in his day," I offered.
"This trail will be thick with mud at first, but after the log-hop, which
is about 14 inches in diameter, it opens up into some really tight, but rideable
slickrock," said Jim, blatantly ignoring us. "After that we can traverse
the off-camber descent out onto that old county route and tackle that monster
too before coming back to climb up the western wall." He's
the man with the plan, and it didn't include rover back there. I was starting
to think it didn't include earthlings, either. Jim is famous for nonchalantly
tacking 4 hours to your group ride if you don't watch him closely.
Anyway, as we made the second summit, the sky opened up and the rain beat down
on us like a prison blanket party. Soaking, we gave up on going out to the old
county route and barreled back down the way we came, crashing and getting cold.
You could really smell the earth now, the old swamp in your wet gloves, and
we still had that western wall. It was the only way back that didn't resemble
a stage in the Tour de France. Papa H., unfettered as usual, smiled as we sped
back into the village, his KHS creaking and whistling like a big old bird. Our
tires were nests of grass and dirty butter, and there was the dog, ready and
waiting. He must have thought it over.
"There he is," he cried. "C'mon boy!!"
"Ugh," Jim said, the rain dripping from the tip of his nose.
Without hesitating, Papa blasted by the pooch and straight up into the intimidating
death march, and doesn't the fella bounce up on our heels with a yelp and join
the chase!
"A good old kid!"
We spun up the damn hill, bombed out through and through with boulders and fallen
saplings, satanic and rutted from heavy ATV use, dog beatific and pumped beside
us, its 17-inch tongue dangling to about the middle of his back. Loads of fun
going down, but now we wept like infants, hydration systems emptied, Powerbarless,
spitting in the diagonal drizzle. Papa bottomed and spun out on a slippery log.
Too weary for consonants, I heard him say, "Uuuuuuuuuuuuck...." and
that's the last time I looked back.
If I had to guess, the grade of that ascent is around a Category 2 by UCI standards,
but with a chaffing crotch, the D-Day debris and of course my now crusty lungs,
it seemed off the chart. I knew Jim was a slow but powerful climber, and Papa
would recover and persevere in his avocado polyester shirt, but I was bumming
hard, despite my lead position. The salt of my entire body was in my eyes, burning.
My vision swam. The legs, deprived of proper fuel, threatened to cramp.
"I should stop," I told myself. "I'll never make it." My
mouth flapped in the haze, drawing insects. My helmet slipped down over my brow.
Then two things happened concurrently. First, I snapped emotionally. I got ridiculously
angry with myself -- how many times had I almost effortlessly bounced up this
thing in the past, and now the stress of it was practically squeezing my eyes
shut and putting my limbs to sleep. All because I am a victim, and enjoyed it
most of my life. All the fear, the lies and the weak-fisted bravado that nullified
my relationships, butchered my leisure and whisked me into a gray pool of confusion
and hurt. Everything I ever tried to control had abandoned me, and now I was
abandoning myself, my love, my passion....
And then the old canine hobbled up past me gleefully.
"The dog is picking the lines," I said aloud. "I will follow
the dog."
I remembered what an old drunk told me once. "Do the opposite of what you
want to do," he said. "Then you'll be doing God's will. You'll only
screw it up inside your head. Get out of your head."
It was true.
"I will follow the dog."
He was older than I thought. The old kid's hind legs were shaky now, slipping,
but he threw himself up the mountain happily, mindlessly. An angel sent to make
the connection for me, because I could not do it for myself.
"I will follow the dog."
We danced and I swore, hovering between consciousness and some new state. The
crunch of the leaves was acute, unbearable to every membrane. I drooled and
didn't care.
Legs.
Line.
Legs.
Line.
I wanted to throw my arms around him at the top, my head humming, endorphin
swoon, collapsible and quite unable to unclip from my pedals, but when we got
there the Lab turned around and shot back down and was gone, his work finished,
and that's how I learned to pray. You put your trust in something -- anything,
beside yourself. Now all my rides are prayers. Whether I'm in the woods or on
a cool stretch of tarmac, I remove myself from myself, let God in, and let me
tell you something: God is not a guy in the sky. God is that force which avails
you the physical, mental and emotional sensation of selflessness that can occur
only through willingness and a significant medium. It is the culmination of
that force within you that has absolutely nothing to do with you. It is giving
back what has been freely and selflessly given, like the ability to ride no
matter what the weather. When you can do this, you can do anything, and sometimes
that includes....
Quitting. I gave it away so I could get it, if you know what I mean. I kicked
the cigarette habit, three weeks before Snowshoe and never looked back. We did
11 laps. I felt like Patton. You needed to on that course. A splendid celebration
and a full jar of bag balm, all for the magnificent ride, almost culinary in
its appeal.
"A good old kid...."
There are some who will ride as long as God or whomever will let them. I am
such a person, as is Papa H., who will ride his Viking funeral chariot down
Killington in an incendiary blaze of faith and madness. Delaney will be hopping
picnic benches for badly drunken spectators at poorly-planned public events
from his trick wheelchair, should the Marlboros not strike him with some awful
fate before he's old enough to get there.
There are others, however, who will not. They are an unfortunate category that
will multiply as you age, my friends. At 32, most in my circles have pushed
it aside, buried beneath a heavy workload, binding commitments or some malady
beyond their recognition or control. Whether it be a sickness or a deliberate
decision, the ride has left them. I miss them all. While this is irksome, it
is of no matter, so long as they live well, and let me tell you something else.
What good living seems to be for me is checking the natural urges and addictions
-- however heinously learned or inherited -- with a healthier yet no less painful
alternative. To this rider, climbing Mt. Snow on a bicycle (ANY bicycle) is
painful. Along with the prayer, I need the stark, glaring reality of self-inflicted
agony to satisfy and offset whatever arcane, seemingly redundant desire to do
real harm to myself might arise any given hour of the day. It becomes the prayer.
Such is the nature of the addict, converted into liturgy. That is the way it
has always been, only now I use it like a torch instead of a shovel.
Don't mess with history.
And may all our rides be prayers.
© Bill Ketzer
Dirt Rag issue 81