Editor’s Note: What follows is the first in a series written specially for Satire on the Rocks by independent Milwaukee-based journalist Todd Lazarski. Recently laid off from his steady job, Todd is embarking on a search for his own American dream, as well as another steady paying job. His series, Make the Road by Walking, will appear semi-regularly in this space, whenever he has some more (dare I say?) genius to share with us. He is currently in New Orleans for Jazz Fest and is frequently mellow.  One would be amazed how late he can stay up when No Direction Home or Pizza Shuttle demands it.

Make the Road by Walking, Part One

by Todd Lazarski

Being laid-off is a bit like a drive to the airport when you’re afraid of flying. Every aspect of your life suddenly starts going through that indefinable cataloging process: shit that I took care of and can be proud of, mountains climbed, lessons learned, jump shots made, women laid, beers tried, happy moments that would slide nicely into a Woody Allen, end-of-movie montage a la Annie Hall.

And then there’s the tumult of everything else. All that I meant to do, all that promise, all that I loved here, now, tragically and certainly down the drain because I’m leaving, and, without doubt, not returning.

What it boils down to is that everything looks that much more important. As if this journey your about to take is on par with Magellan, Kerouac, that crazy French bastard from Man on Wire, or even Lloyd and Harry on the moped. A dangerous, risky, and pit-fall laden trip. Few things are nobler than getting into the back of a cab, sighing, and exhaustedly stating, “airport”…

As if this didn’t take place all around the world, everyday, on a massive scale; as if there weren’t 4,000 fu*king domestic flights in the air at this very moment.

Anyways, numbers lie, and your sense of importance from the wounding news is, to say the least, a bit inflated.

And why shouldn’t it be?

Co-workers look at you with that face (Michelle Tanner might describe it as ‘puppy-dog’, but whenever she made it, I always just kind of wanted to punch her in the head). They buy you drinks, take you out to lunch. Your boss even looks at you with something approaching acknowledgment.

Respect? Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

But few things are better than the chance to play the brave, unaffected martyr. In the vain of Jerry Maguire, I found myself using the lines “It’ll be for the best” and “I’m not too worried.”

And I wasn’t. Ninety percent of all the blues and rock that I ingest on a daily basis is about this exact thing – hitting the road with little regard to how or if I might make it home. Hank Williams made a legendary career out of this very sentiment and 3 chords: this too was my chance to live the dream. To experience the rush of the wind. To throw back the warm covers. To live the life of aimful wandering, of creative loafing. To write, and to play my guitar. As all those fortunate enough to have imbibed from-the-source Guinness and Chianti on their parents’ dime for a semester abroad always refer to it as, to “find myself.”

And my now former co-workers, they think:

What courage.

What spirit.

Let’s take him out, this man, the greatest shipper/receiver I’ve seen in my three years here, and let’s get him good and piss drunk.

It was as if I was joining the army: oh, there would be tearful goodbyes, a what-will-you-do, concerned-eyes probing, arms around my shoulders, excuses made to wives on my behalf, shots all around, Pale Ales by the baleful. And me, lapping it all up. The brews, for sure. But the vibes more than anything – soon getting as drunk as a nascent sailor, bleary-eyed and ready, leaning toward adventure and new lands. Enjoying the birthday-esque negligence of even for a second thinking about paying for a drink. Or the cab home. Or the pizza delivery guy once I had stumbled back into my apartment shortly after bar time.

Going to bed, I instinctively remember to set the alarm, turn over, pick up my book, turn back over, and flip the alarm switch to ‘off’…

And then, suddenly and head-achingly, it is the next day. 3:33 PM… The sun shining through the blinds the same as any other day, the cars on the street similar if not just a bit more distant, and now sporadic for the afternoon hour. Dead-spider splotches the same brownish hue on my ceiling as they were when I was employed…

Nowhere to be and nothing to do, my ill-conceived pseudo-vacation started on a more melancholic tone than anticipated: no missed calls on my cell, nobody wondering as to my whereabouts, no schedules interrupted by my absence. For the first time since college I slept away an afternoon, and awoke quite certain that not one utterance around the city resembled, “Where the fu*k is Todd?”

Not one thing had gone awry from my temporary bed-residency. Of course, this is the retreat from the everyday that is nearly definitive of my most reoccurring fantasies. This is the kind of guy who close friends describe as having two speeds: slow, and stop. The kind of guy who openly covets those Discovery Channel rare affliction sufferers that become ‘bedridden.’ Once in grade school, when asked to pen an essay describing, ‘What You Can’t Wait To Do’, I strayed from my classmates that yearned to drive, buy a house, have a family – I couldn’t wait to retire.

Yet, a gnawing sense that something is amiss, that my long daydreamed about desert island isn’t, in fact, on the ocean at all. The feeling began to creep in then, a sound in my mind that I would soon become all too familiar with: that of the world going on without me…

And thus, the pen to the paper (it just sounds more romantic than the modern day ‘knuckle-dragging on keys’): the search this time amplified, provided a solid sense of urgency, for validation in a meaningless world and too-short life. After all, at least something had to be done in response to that incessant, heel nipping of barreling, tumbling inconsequence.

Of course, I always pictured myself one of those writers with that perfect, albeit esoteric quote to start a piece of work. A good one says so much about the author: I’m well-read, philosophical, have a point to this pontificating, and can remember stuff. And my sudden lack of a job allowed the stumble-upon of just such a passage. Who would have time for Faulkner if gainfully employed?

“I notice how it takes a lazy man, a man that hates moving, to get set on moving once he does get started off, the same as he was set on staying still, like it ain’t the moving he hates so much as the starting and the stopping. And like he would be kind of proud of whatever come up to make the moving or the setting still look hard. He set there on the wagon, hunched up, blinking, listening to us tell about how quick the bridge went and how high the water was, and I be durn if he didn’t act like he was proud of it, like he had made the river rise himself.”

The lazy man being myself, perhaps this is merely a woe-begotten proclamation to defy the odds stacked in the world’s corner. To point out one man’s misfortunes and bask gloriously in them as I milk another round of drinks…

But progress is fleeting and rarely achieved from bed. So here begins an effort to get and stay moving, to keep my unemployed laziness purposeful, and a stride to make this road by walking. It’s more or less a hope that I’ll continue to get into that cab, have a reason to be so exhausted, so utterly tried when I direct the driver, bravely, “airport, please.”

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