Act 4, Scene 16: “Your True Quest for Zen Starts Here”

In search of ultimate self knowledge? Pure peace and being? Stillness in a fast-moving world, patience in the middle of insanity? Forget a trek to the Dali Lama. Leave behind the notion of Japanese Zen monasteries. Bypass Shangri-La, and instead come to TRL’s house. Here, if you devote yourself to pure being with a pure heart, you will find the path to peace, your very own Himalaya Hilton in the very heart of a major metropolitan area easily reached by all transportation hubs. And close to a McDonalds and a Walmart.

C and E will throw obstacles of all kinds into your quest for peace. Don’t let them destroy your will in your journey to true balance.

Need to leave the house early? C will crap his pants, E will have a meltdown because his “chocolate” shirt is in the laundry, C will insist that it is not Cheerios that he has been eating every morning for the past year but in fact Rice Krispies, which TRL happens to be out of. It is now Rice Krispies, in fact, that are C’s life’s work, not unlike your quest for peace. His soul nourisher, the only thing on the planet that will appease him. Surround sound screaming will test your nerves, fire volleys of pain into your being and soul. But stay strong and focused, keep your eye on that nirvana prize of peace and understanding, equanimity in the face of hideous mental and emotional assault.

Need to do some domestic chores around the house, catch up on some work, and get to bed early after the boys are tucked in for the night? E will scream, and scream, and scream. Why? Because he wants the night light off. And then C will scream, and scream, and scream. Why? Because he wants the night light on. And once that discussion has played itself out, and has miraculously been dispersed with via logical contortions, appeals to pure emotion, and lots of deep breaths on your part, the boys will discover a thirst for cold water like no other, two parched desert wanders who need water, must have it from the orange cup sitting dirty at the bottom of the kitchen sink. And they NEED IT NOW. And once their whistles are wet, their throats moisturized, why they are not tired anymore. A book, a book, one more book before bed!

You see, India is for pussies. You want true Zen, come on over to TRL’s house. And if you make it through, peace will be yours. And if you don’t, you will be a destroyed shell that previous had cradled your hopes and ambitions, a mere husk now devoid of any balance or self worth, waiting to dry up, blow away and disappear for ever.

Call for reservations. TRL will pick you up at the airport.

Act 4, Scene 15: “Poo Are You?”

TRL’s dad begins to report his “BMs” to TRL. Granted, it is a big deal for TRL Senior because he just had surgery and a first crap is a milestone indicating that the body is getting back to normal. But somehow, hearing the word “BM” out of his dad’s mouth both catapulted TRL back to his youth, making him feel uncomfortably like a little boy again, and also sending him forward when he would be taking care of his old dad. The timing seemed cosmically inauspicious: the boys had just emerged from diapers and could take their own craps in the toilet. Why couldn’t TRL Senior have said “Just took a crap, all systems go,” or even “Pinched one off, no stopping me now.” But “BM” – gross. And not even acknowledging the nature of the event, assuming it was known that it was a big deal after the operation. Not couching it as an after effect of the surgery made it even more intimate. TRL felt both very young and very old. And, well, gross.

Act 4, Scene 14: “Thought Possession”

TRL struggles to clean up the yogurt spilled on the kitchen counter, scrap up the soggy Cheerios dispersed like minilife preservers under the kitchen table, dump laundry detergent over C’s underwear where he slid back into pretoilet-training days, get iron supplements and the follow-up prune (to kill the taste of the nasty iron supplement) into C and E’s mouths, brush his own teeth, and then get C and E cleaned up, in jackets and in the car to daycare. But there is screaming at the train table. Horrible, anguished, banshee yelling alerting TRL that though his headache, irregular breathing through his clogged nose, exhaustion from staying up late watching the pretty bad (but evidently not bad enough) movie Let’s Go to Prison while cleaning up his office, and his general disdain for life right now would indicate ignoring the issue, he just can’t. Making the noise stop is an imperative for calming his jangled nerves.

“What is going on,” TRL pronounces clearly and steadily.

All at once, C and E respond on their separate voice tracks. Track 1:

“E took my train.”

Track 2:

“My train. My train.”

Justice isn’t about truth, TRL knows by this time in his life. It is about making the noise go away.

TRL sees that C has the train car in question. “Did you have this?” he asks. C stops crying and nods.

“What’s your story?” TRL says, turning to E. “Did you have the car?”

There is a pause, and in that pause TRL knows the answer.

“I wanted the car,” E finally answers.

TRL is amused to recognize a new way of thinking about an old situation: in kiddie justice, thinking about possession is 9/10ths of the law.

“It’s nice that you want it,” says TRL, “but C was playing with it. You can have it later on.”

He levels a severe stare at E, who seems to have intellectually moved on to greener pastures. E picks up the trains in front of him, C inserts the train car in question into his train line-up, and TRL goes upstairs for his morning cocktail: three rust-colored Advils with a white Tylenol chaser. The aspirin will be a little something for later on.

Act 4, Scene 13: “Gravity’s Rainbow, of Pain”

TRL wants to abolish stairs. TRL needs to abolish stairs.

His knees hurt from going up the stairs because he is getting old.

He is bored by the stairs. Up/down, up/down, ten, fifteen times a day. With nothing to look at or engage him, only his brain generally remembering to signal his neck to bend least it crack the head against the ceiling on the descent. Otherwise, there is no stimulation going on in the stairwell. Nothing to look at, a passage too vertical for any meaningful interaction with anything that might be on the walls. No chance of bumping into anyone. The staircase is boring.

And the usual is not helped by C and E’s increasingly urgent need to transport their gaggle of animals, their very own roadies and hangers-on, from their upstairs bedroom to the kitchen/dining room/living room downstairs, and vice versa. C and E can’t do it alone, won’t do it alone. Which leaves TRL going up and down to avoid their increasingly shrill declarations of desire.

“I need minipuppy down here,” insists E.

“Moo Cow has to be on the chair,” bellows C.

Or Strawberry Doggie, Gussy the doll baby, Saul the (slightly older) doll baby, Hippo Puppet, Elephant Puppet, Monkey Puppet, Big Snoopy, Girl (aka Mommy’s) Snoopy, Muffy (the dog), Bunny Rabbit, Pigbear … TRL knows what he really needs is a shuttle service for these stuffed animals, and he also knows he is the shuttle service.

Other solutions would be impractical. A fire pole would be an accident waiting to happen. A gravity gun would wake the neighbors. A dumbwaiter too small and prone to breakdowns. An escalator with jazzy color fluorescent underlights an indulgence S would never permit.

So TRL dreams of an apartment. All horizontal, no stairs. The urban presenting a different interaction with gravity.

He also dreams of making all of C and E’s animals disappear.

Act 4, Scene 12: “Lose Weight, No Exercise, Guaranteed”

TRL has discovered the ultimate weight loss program for busy parents. Begin with twin three-year-olds (or substitute any combination of young children). Add the usual life pressures over money, work, home management. Now ratchet up the activity of the kids. Add a combination cold/flu you caught from your wife via your kids. And now the killer app (or more appropriately, app killer): a sinus infection.

You are smacking yourself on the head thinking “why didn’t I think of that?” Well, you didn’t. TRL did, when he realizes he lost three pounds over three days as he contemplates sawing his head off as the adorable and musically-inclined E insists on blow-screaming into his lovely plastic flute. And C, not to be outdone, keeps perfect beat with his plastic drum stick on the wood floor while shaking his big green maraca (special note to the in-laws: thanks for the musical instuments).

TRL croaks a “please stop” from his perch on the big chair. But S is making dinner and doesn’t hear. And to C and E, that is just audience appreciation.

TRL moans and holds his head in his arms. Tylenol, azithromycin, Afrin, and pseudoephedrine onboard. And still the pain. But, he realizes, he has eaten nothing but a saltine or two and a few scoops of Jell-O over the previous few days. And has lost weight. No exercise, no appetite, no effort, no problem.

He is calling his new diet book the South Beach Sinus Infection Diet. If you don’t have a sinus infection, he will send you one. And if you don’t have kids of your own, he will send you two.

Call now for your copy. Operators are standing by.

Act 4, Scene 11: “The American Dream Updated: A Chicken in Every Pot, a Sweatpant for Every Occasion”

TRL has fully integrated into suburbia. It’s not that he wears sweatpants everywhere, it’s that he now has different sweatpants for different occasions. Like Mister Rogers changing his shoes, TRL wakes up and takes off his sleeping sweatpants to put on his ‘driving the kids to daycare’ sweatpants: A subtle but important change from basic blue gym sweats to white-stripped adidas work-out pants. And later, he just may change into his black REI ‘working at the computer and about the house’ mid-weight fleece pants. These are his favorites, and S has banned them from her sight.

“I am so sick of these,” she exclaims. “I’m taking you shopping for a different pair.”

Which may be the most disturbing part. S is TRL’s enabler. The suburbs, he knows, are killing them both.

Act 4, Scene 10: “Desperately Clichéd”

TRL is feeling like he is living Icarus and Daedalus. Only he is the one that is falling. For C and E have clear open skies ahead. TRL, however, has tried to touch the sun, and at 40, feels like a failure. And utlimately, in doing so, he has also failed his sons.

TRL is stunned about what is happening to him, that his life is subject to the same clichés as everyone else’s. Stunned like the first bad break up with a girlfriend that left him an emotional cripple; this was supposed to happen to other people, but not him. Stunned that after working so hard, he still hasn’t achieved his goals, like his parents promised him he would. He was the Sun Prince in their eyes, and he is now suffering from a bad burn. For TRL has flown towards his dreams but forgot to put on life’s sunblock: a steady job, a growing 401K, a grip on finances and concern for the future, and some semblance of measuring career success and happiness that he can emotionally invest in.

In a word, TRL is suffering a mid-life crisis. And sadly, a red Miata, an affair, or a hair transplant hold no attraction for him, no balm for his life burn. What is frustrating, perhaps even more than the crisis itself, is that there is no clear path out. Which probably defines a mid-life crisis, and thus makes him even more clichéd than he realizes. He needs something radical. A neuticle implant to give him balls the size of beach balls to hypermasculinize his torn and wounded self. Or an investment in a condo high atop Miami Beach, a hot tub perched on the balcony, bimbos and beer littered about, a flunky to yell at. Or maybe he needs a trek to the Himalayas to seek enlightenment, to do good deeds. A rest cure with Richard Gere.

TRL toys with pressing the reset button, to start working in a pizzeria, be a park ranger, or doing something where he gets to shoot alligators. He needs a change.

Act 4, Scene 9: “200 Baht”

TRL is wrestling with E, trying to get him into his socks and pants at 7:30 a.m. as E’s elephant puppet Ely bites at TRL’s legs.

“You know guys, I had a very big elephant try and eat me when I was riding him in Thailand.”

C pauses climbing up TRL’s back and Ely stops nipping for a moment.

“I was in the jungle of Thailand, riding on the neck of an elephant.”

“Why you ride on an elephant?” asks C.

“Well, because we were traveling through the jungle, and the elephants provided our transportation. And this one elephant kept thinking my legs were bamboo, which was his favorite food. He would grab a bamboo stick on the trail with his trunk, curl it into his mouth, and crack it in two while chewing it.”

TRL grabs E’s leg. “Like this.” E screams.

“He thought my leg was his food, and I kept having to pull my leg out of his trunk before he shoved it into his mouth.”

TRL grabs at C and E’s legs and they squeal with laughter.

“When you guys are older, I’ll tell you about other things Daddy rode in Thailand.”

Act 4, Scene 8: “I Slept with Sarah Silverman”

S goes to New York City for the week to frolic with friends, leaving TRL alone with C and E. Or, perhaps more frighteningly, C and E alone with TRL.

“No baths, no making beds, no crying, no fighting,” TRL announces to C and E after S has left. “Pizza, Steak-Ums and French fries, boys, every night for dinner.” TRL rubs his hands together. “OK, let’s party.”

S needs a vacation. She was between jobs, had been running at 110 percent working her job, looking for a new job, and keeping the household purring along. And now, before she starts her new job, she needs a release. And for TRL, S being away meant a reversion back to Lord of the Flies. Mommy had left, and he was in charge.

Well, one thing led to another, and he ended up in bed with Sarah Silverman.

Who, to TRL’s annoyance, S says looks like a monkey.

“Well, maybe, but a hot, nasty-talking, cute, horny, Jewish girl monkey,” says TRL. But TRL knew he would not be able to get S to understand Sarah’s draw on men. Basically, she was a guy. Crude-talking, annoying, focused on poo and piss and sex, but in the body of a hot chick. Which made her perfect.

TRL gets the boys in their pajamas – the same pajamas they have been wearing all week. S insists on giving them new pajamas every two days, if not daily. That just meant more laundry, knows TRL. But he was in charge now.

They also had the same socks. It wasn’t like a little smell was going to rot their feet. And they didn’t mind.

And having their beds unmade just made it ready for the boys to climb right back in and resume sleep. Which was how TRL felt about his own bed: an unmade bed was an invitation. An acknowledgement that life – the work and drudgery – was merely a pause in climbing back under the sheets, sighing and relaxing. Plus not making the bed meant less work.

The boys were asleep, some of the dishes were clean, and TRL is ready. He grabs his iPod, jumps into bed, pulls the covers over his body, wiggles his neck and head around the pillow to get comfortable, and props the iPod onto another pillow sitting on his chest. He hits “play” and there is Sarah Silverman, the horny little Jewish monkey, dancing around on his chest, introducing her big gay friends, her tasty cute sister, the dumb mustached boyfriend cop. Sarah in all her tasty-thigh, swaying breasts, ultra cute relaxed-look boy clothes, vagina and poo words spewing from her adorable simian mouth. Life is good.

Act 4, Scene 7: “Daddy of the Year”

TRL is looking to cut costs because he quit his staff job and now money is tight. So finally, after S has been urging him for months, he gets a gmail account so he can cancel his old email which comes attached to a service provider charging a monthly fee. But TRL has been reluctant: the email address fits like an old slipper. But faced with the prospect of needing to save money as he does freelance writing, he makes the move.

“Why give $12 a month to pay for an email address when the money could be going in my pocket for tequila and pills,” he says to his friend G.

He pauses.

“Oh yeah, and milk for the kids,” he adds.

“Father of the Year,” says G. “And you already have a slogan for your campaign.”

Act 4, Scene 6: “An Old Friend”

The boys are watching Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas. And suddenly TRL sees someone he knows. Or at least he thinks he knows. He hits pause and walks closer to the screen.

“Can’t see,” scream the boys.

“In a minute,” says TRL, who is studying the picture. “It is her,” he mutters. Younger than when he knew her, a mere girl, but there’s no mistaking it. It’s Cindy Louwho. Or Cindy Louhot, as the guys called her. Funny he never made the connection, although he had known she came from a far-away town, Whosville or something. TRL had gone out with her for a month in college. She was a heroin addict and coke whore. She was very fun, recalls TRL, but messed up. Into bondage, had a goth phase. Smart and wild, but emotionally fucked up.

“Can’t see, daddy,” the boys scream again. TRL hits play.

A little digging from friends and TRL finds Cindy has cleaned herself up, is an editor with a small avant-garde Soho publisher. Or possibly married, two kids, living in San Francisco. Who knew?