Nick’s Autobio

Introduction:
This is intended as a mnemonic device, before alcohol or alzheimer’s rot my brain. I am fifty-five after all, and this seems a good time for a memoir. I have no idea how detailed or accurate it will end up being, or to whom it may be of value. I hope and trust it doesn’t offend anybody. I started it while walking the Appalachian Trail when I was fifty, so who knows if it will ever be finished.

Early Years I: Northampton, England (1965-69)

I have no veridical memories of my life here, though unreliable memories include a single-family brick house in a development. My father, Nicholas G., was learning his craft in cobbling–Northampton has been a source for shoes since the Medieval times–while my mother, Ann, was mostly a home-maker during this time. My brother Peter had been born in West Ham, London, some 2.5 years earlier, and Glen was to be born some five years hence, back in Kilkenny, Ireland.

I vividly remember sledding into a wall of snow and ice with Pete, only to be told that it never snowed that much during the years we spent there, so there you go: a foreshadowing of my memory’s fallibilism.

My father grabbed the opportunity to get out of Kilkenny and work abroad, eventually attending a shoe-design course in Northampton, having gained experience in the small shoe factory on Wolfe Tone Street in Kilkenny where he and my mom, Ann, had worked. Ann–no middle name, as her parents ran out, or so the legend tells–along with her five sisters and three brothers lived across the street at # 33. Neither of my parents had any post-secondary schooling, but the drafting skills dad learned at technical school along with later night classes in England would enable him to rise up the ranks of shoe designers at Street Shoes, and later at Clarks of America. Mom worked on the factory floor and upon meeting, dad apparently told her that he would marry her some day! He had a brother, Dominic, working as a cop in England, and she had a sister, Maura, already pregnant in London, so going to England to work was a natural next step, as it was for many Irish. Ann apparently wrote him a letter saying how much she enjoyed London and that she may not return to Kilkenny. He followed her there shortly, though they both later returned to Ireland.

When Ann was pregnant with Pete, they moved to Northampton. The young couple moved to the house I was born in using a pram, or baby-carriage, though these were apparently very happy years.

Early Years II: Kilkenny, Ireland (1969-78)

I still consider this my home, and have the fondest memories of an ideal childhood. My friends and I had the run of the town/city, and my extended family on my mom’s side (the Fahy’s) was everywhere: “you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Fahy in Kilkenny” (or a Power in Waterford, for that matter.)

My earliest memories are of my bearded grandfather showing me his huge greenhouse–he was a gardener at the Kilkenny Castle when it was privately owned–and his blowing into an accordion while the family terrier, Snoopy, howled in apparent pain. Grandpa Fahy died shortly after we moved home and so I have more memories of Grandma. (My father’s dad died when he was a teenager, but I have many fond memories of his mother, who lived across town and would watch us when my parents needed a break.) I remember sharing an attic bedroom with Grandma Fahy and being awestruck by the corset she would strip down to before getting into bed.

I vividly remember walking down “the backs” on a warm summer day and looking down from the garden to my g-parents’ backyard where my G-ma was digging. Lying on her side nearby was Snoopy, who had developed the unfortunate habit of biting at the tires of cars as they rolled down Wolfe Tone street. I went to wake up Snoopy only to find out the obvious: that everything you love will die. Not to be too dramatic, I also remember kissing a cute redhead whose name escapes me under a wheelbarrow.

My brother Glen was born around 1970 (lol) in Aut Even Hospital outside of town, and I recall sitting in the car with Pete waiting on word from Dad on his arrival. (My poor mum wanted a girl; my Hannah seemed to assuage this much later.)

Kilkenny is a major-minor city, situated in beautiful southeast Ireland, with Medieval and Norman roots. I remember exploring the woods along the Nore River and the crumbling walls of Kells and Jerpoint, the deer-farm and estates close to Dunmore Caves, and the haunted Alms house, the Black Abbey. We would build forts and commence rock fights with other neighborhoods, or compete with them in hurley or soccer on some tilted and weedy lot.
I attended three schools there: The Lake School on Michael’s street, where one teacher tagged me “Chatterbox”; St John de la Salle’s primary over near the Barracks, where the headmaster Brother Norbert once chased Brother Edward out of the building for having been caught fondling the boys in his class–it was I who told a friend, Philip L, to tell his parents what he did, though Philip conceded that he “liked it”–and my “secondary” school was Kilkenny College, a boarding school and seminary for some, and where I took classes in Gaelic, French (with Mrs. Thunder Thighs”) Latin and English all at the same time. I was an average student in above average schools, and when I came to America, I definitely felt over-prepared.

I recently unearthed an original source document of this period. My mom wrote her niece, my cousin, Rosemary Lynch, though she spells it “RoseMarie” upon the birth of her first daughter. It’s dated Thursday, July 7th, 1977 with her address being 14 Loretto Ave, Kilkenny. Rosemary found it recently and passed on a copy. It’s funny, so here is a transcript of part:

“Dear RoseMarie,
Delighted to know your little girl came at last, you had a long wait and a hard time having her I believe. Its a terrible experience really but its amazing how quick you forget the pain. With the first you dont know what to expect so you accept everything as it happens. Its only when I had Nicholas I realized the hard time I had with Peter. With Nicholas and Glen, a few pains, and a good push and they were there, with Peter I was labour for hours I pushed my heart out and he just wouldn’t come, he was breech. I passed out before the afterbirth came so they had to take that, when I came round I was having a blood transfusion, I didn’t really come round untill the next day so Peter was a day old before I saw him. I nearly passed out again he was so ugly. He had jaundice so he was an orange colour and he had no chin, his little face looked like a chewed up orange, but it improved a little each day and by the time I left the hospital he looked normal…
It’s lovely you have a girl, it must be a year for girls, you wouldn’t like to do a swop I suppose. I wouldn’t give you Glen because he’s a pissmire no one would put up with him only myself, you could have Nicholas for nothing. I bought him a pair of sandals on Monday, paid 4 pounds for them, when I brought them home he tried them on and left them on, he put them on the next morning when he came it at dinner time he says cooly, these sandals aren’t much good, he handed me one of the sandals in flitters, I bet him around the kitchen with the sandal, it was in bits. Nick said there must be a fault in leather to bring them back. I bought them on Monday and had them back in the shop in flitters on Tuesday. I really felt embarrassed. I’d say it had broken all records. The girl was nice she remembered me only getting them the day before but she had to go to the manager. I could see him looking at me so much as to say what kind of monster is she rearing. Anyway, they gave me another pair, Nicholas hasn’t put them on yet. I think he’s afraid. He decided lately he wants to be a priest, a missioner called to the school a while ago, he made a great impression on Nicholas, he thinks he wants to do that work. After walloping him with the sandal the other day, when I calmed meself I thought maybe I’m belting a Bishop. Next time he comes in in flitters I’ll just say a few prayers, that when he goes to Kieran’s Colledge in September they will keep him there. I suppose he can’t help it, everything he puts on falls to bits, he never knows how it happened.”

She ends the letter with: “We got no word from U.S.A yet.” so the BIG move was already in the works. I have only got to take my kids to Kilkenny twice, and while we visited Woodstock estate in Inistioge (one of the most picturesque villages in Ireland) as well as Kells monestary, St Canice’s tower, built to resist Norse invaders a millennium ago, and many other sites form my childhood, I hope we get back.

Teenage Years: Hazlet, New Jersey, Marlboro, Massachusetts, and Monroe, Connecticut (1978-1983)

My aunt Bridget, or “Biddy,” sponsored our immigration to the States and we lived at her crowded ranch home in northern NJ for some months, much to the chagrin of my mom. My cousins Gary, Theresa, and Lisa showed us the ropes, and it wasn’t long before Pete and I were sharing a couch with the Gambino twins, an adorable pair who were drawn to our accents. Gary was Golden Gloves champion of NJ, and was a tough guy, and so I remember witnessing a few nasty gang-related fights and hanging out with a fairly macho shithead crowd. The Bee Gees owned the radio and the disco aesthetic seem to have been spawned in suburban sprawl such as Hazlet.

A lot could be said of my teenage transition to life in America, and I suppose that some of my later personality traits could be attributed to this disruption, but it was overall an amazing experience for my family to go through, and an obvious “game-changer” in terms of my life prospects. The debt we owe our parents can rarely be itemized, but their brave decision to emigrate is an exception. I imagine it was harder for Pete, as he was in the midst of high school, but he had soccer and seemed to acquire friends and girlfriends with ease.

Within a year we moved to beautiful Marlboro, Mass., to a gorgeous home on the nice side of town. (We rented a dump in Hudson for a few weeks, and while my dad earned dough in Brazil, my mom dealt with our a-hole landlord.)
My friends and I would steal car parts and stereos from all around the city, sneaking out at night and walking for miles with wrenches in our pockets in search of particular bumpers, fenders or quarter-panels, I the lookout and Peter H the technician and fence; we’d lift cases of beer from the storm-shelter opening of a bar/package store, until my friend with the car got caught and had to leave town. We’d throw snowballs at passing cars, until an icy one broke a window inches from its driver’s head and he chased us off. Thug life (haha). I worked at an Italian restaurant washing dishes for my first paycheck, if you exclude newspaper delivery. I would go to discos, wearing a sky-blue satin vest I sewed in home economics.

At Marlboro High School, I tried out for JV football, and remember playing an undefeated season with Chris C, who I recently re-connected with via facebook, and attending a NE Patriot jr camp. I could never, or didn’t want to, compete with Pete in soccer and I suppose I could manage the duties of an offensive lineman, but I was at a disadvantage for never having watched a game of “American Football” and especially so when I discovered marijuana one summer while the rest of my teammates worked out.

After my sophomore year we moved to Connecticut, and owned a large newer house on a steep hill in Monroe. I took the bus to Masuk HS and fantasized about asking fellow rider Renee F out, but ended up with happily overweight Debbie J instead. I graduated a semester early, with a B- average, having done more than my fair share of drugs (alcohol, weed, and some hallucinogenics), and having decided that I couldn’t go straight on to college, as Pete had. (Maybe it was my aversion to go head-to-head with him resurfacing–he was doing well studying business at Iona–but I think I wanted to gain some real-world experience, and prove myself somehow.) I toured Europe for a month with a french punk named Paul T, turning down heron at a dance club in Chelsea. I once drank half a bottle of bourbon while walking through the woods to school; woke up ashamed in the hospital with my mom at my side. I broke the motor mounts of my dad’s car by flying off a country road into a ditch while driving home drunk from a concert in Waterboro. (The saddest part of this tale is that is was a Ratt concert.)

Speaking of which, I’ve seen some great ones in my life: Jethro Tull, Boston Garden, c. 1980, with Pete, the rents having driven us; Rush, New Haven CT, c. 1982, twice in one weekend; Santana, somewhere on his native-american themed album tour (?), c. 1984; YES, in Louisville, KY, on the 90125 tour c. 1984; The Police (with Pete at a music festival in Montreal, c. 1985); UB40, in a small venue near Media, PA, c. 1987; The Grateful Dead, some two dozen times, at venues from Maine (with Little Feat) to California (at the famous Shoreline Amphitheatre in silicon valley) all thanks to the amazing Nancy. I even saw some punk band perform at CBGB’s (OMFUG) in the Bowery of NYC, before it closed. And later I would see REM, the Flaming Lips, Bonnie Raitt, Liz Phair (or did I?), the Meat Puppets, and WILCO (with Hannah and Molly, though at different times) and Tool a few times, and I’d develop tinnitus after a Dinosaur Jr show, but that’s getting ahead of our story. There are many others but you prolly never heard of em: Big Sky Country, Woodenhorse, Jets to Brazil, Beach House (with Hope at Tipitina’s, New Orleans).

Early Manhood I: The US Army (1983-1985)

Two years as a 19D “Cavalry Scout,” in the regular army was largely spent in Fort Knox KY, in the 10th US Cavalry, assigned to the 192nd Infantry Regiment. Field training in Nevada, Virginia, Ohio, and elsewhere, was a highlight, as was funeral duty with the ceremonial and decorated unit that was founded in the “Indian” wars of the mid 1800s.
The training for such a lowly job was minimal, though map-reading and orienteering come in handy later on in life. Mainly we became skilled at breaking down and servicing weapons systems, and shooting stuff, blowing stuff up, and running over stuff in our M113s (later replaced by the Bradley fighting vehicle, which I also trained on) and M60 tanks (soon M1 Abrams) were the highlights of my job.

My failed attempt to solicit a prostitute is well known, at least to students of my Philosophy of Sex and Love course at UWF, but in case you aren’t privy, here’s the skinny: Towards the close of basic training, a DS told us, in unambiguous terms, that we were to go to Louisville and procure the services of a prostitute. My posse–Doug R. from Council Bluffs, IA, Clint W. from Snohomish, WA, and three others I can’t quite recall at present, conspired to rent a room on Mohammed Ali Drive downtown, and soon I became acquainted with an actual pimp, with the broad-brimmed hat and bling. Two black women had their sexual services pimped to us, but I recoiled in horror and then desperately hired another (white) girl but again was too scared of her blue waffle to get too close, and I literally ran away, missing formation in the morning and giving up a stripe to boot. (This is too grim to think about.)

I was seduced by a male instructor at school on base and had sex with him once, before the feeling crept over me that I was a poser, and not a legit homosexual, so there’s that.

Bottom line: I left the army almost as virginal as I entered, but gained a few friendships with guys from all over the US, and learned a lot about being a man, I guess. I earned as many Article 15s (i.e., generic reprimands) as I did stripes, and as each one cost a stripe, I got out at the rank of E2, which is quite an accomplishment in not accomplishing. Still, they paid for college and I got to school more motivated and mature than many.

I got to tour Europe, again, with Pete, and the old saw that says travel is the best teacher is proved by my case.

Early Manhood II: The College Years (1985-1989)

West Chester, PA, was the pastoral setting for university, as well as many interesting work and living situations. I studied broadly, but always across the humanities, and loved history the most. I ended up a philosophy major, but almost accidentally. I minored in art and would have loved to follow my teachers’ advice and go on for an MFA. Medievalist Paul Streveler was a major mentor there (though he once told me, mimicking Wittgenstein (?), that a true philosopher should avoid marriage). An accidental loner, I recall skulking around the outside of house-parties and drinking alone, for the most part, although a few restaurant jobs paid off socially. Joel F remains the sole friend gained in this period, and I treasure our hair-thin linkage. I met Nancy W, who I was soon to marry, in my senior year, at a keg party at her apartment, and we dated even as I moved to Philadelphia to attend graduate school.

Before Nancy, I dated the ultimate hippy chick, Lisa J., who worked at a donut shop and strangely enough had a body like a donut; she modeled in my life drawing class and was very generous with her rubenesque figure. Before Lisa I had (finally!) lost my virginity to a 36-year old “cougar” (to borrow an expression from da dirty south). Her name was Caroline F. and I believe she too was drawn to my accent. It was a rather scandalous affair, as she was twice my age and ended up stalking me; she ended up knocking on an aunt’s door in Kilkenny introducing herself as my gf…months after we had broken up. Caroline was cool, however. From her acid-dealing boyfriend to her male-to-female transsexual roommate, and from her family home in upstate Maine–she and I climbed Mt. Katahdin together some 25 years before I was to do so myself as part of an Appalachian Trail thru-hike–to her actor friend’s Manhattan apartment, she taught me a great deal. My key-chain retains a Tiffany pendant she had inscribed with this magical period: “Summer of 86.”

Nancy was also a hippy, but a more grounded one; I remember being impressed by her furniture–lol–and by the fact that she actually cared about it enough to place a bed frame on layaway. She had a really nice apartment also. (She was working in radio sales, having graduated from Penn State in Communications a few years before me, and had more expendable income than any of my friends.) Still, together we were spontaneous, and once drove straight to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and on a whim; we stayed the day and drove the 28 hours home the next day. We were deeply in love, and though she made no secret of wanting to marry and make lots of babies, I couldn’t see beyond the next break from school.

Much of my life seems to have been spent in this mode; drifting along like a cork in the ocean, without a lifeplan or goal. I don’t know how typical this is–political philosopher John Rawls claims everyone has the ability to form one–and don’t know how many people merely frame their plans to fit the contingencies ex post facto like, but I have always admired those people who have long-term goals and who are focused, as they are definitely not me.

Adulthood I: Graduate School (1989-1996)

Probably the happiest years of my life, surrounded by a vibrant intellectual and social circle and living in a major city. I earned my MA and the PhD in philosophy at Temple University, where I felt challenged and supported at the same time, though usually by different faculty. I loved the social scene and would wander home from a party or bar to my crappy apartment in North Philly. Shout out to artist Debbie Jones, wherever you are. I rented a space off of the aforementioned Paul Streveler, and was the only white guy for blocks surrounding Gerard Ave in Brewerytown. (I was robbed once and variously assaulted two other times.)

I worked part-time at a local bar, frequented by local drunks and “crack-whores,” young cops finishing up patrol (also often drunks) and a few college kids, some underage, who I would be kind to. At work, I had mace and a flapjack but luckily never needed them. Crack was urban king in the nineties, and its name could have been derived from the crunch the plastic vials it was sold in around the hood. An addict once offered to fellate me as I closed the bar; I took her around the corner to my place and gave her a beer, and not the $5 she wanted for a vial of rock.

I soaked up my classes for three years, and starting in my second year received an assistantship which paid $7000 for 9 months and required that I teach lower-level classes, first in composition and finally in philosophy and logic.
The faculty at Temple were strong in many areas of philosophy: Joseph Margolis, renowned in aesthetics, the social sciences and pragmatism, was a kindly blowhard; Jitendra Mohanty on 19th century and managed to make Hegel interesting; David Welker was terrific on Spinoza (who left a big impact on my naturalistic frame of thought) and hosted wonderful parties for a few of his favorite students, Abe W among them; Gerald Vision on the empiricists and metaphysics was terrific; and, there were others who taught me more than I can say. Michael Tye agreed to serve as my dissertation director, even though we weren’t close at this time. He was working on consciousness, but I felt I couldn’t make an impact there, and switched against he judgment to metaphysics and the debate (raging between Jerry Fodor and Daniel Dennett at the time) over realism about propositional attitudes such as belief and desire. I managed to publish a chapter from it, and hence became a candidate for hire into the profession, even though most of the 200-page dissertation was shite. I never worked in that area again.

Around 1990, Nancy and I got married, in West Chester, in a lovely chapel presided over by an old prof of mine. We borrowed Nancy’s brother’s new car and drove across the country for a month. It was a blast, and then we moved down to Philly where we rented a glorious apartment in Brewerytown and hosted great parties with Craig R–my closest friend among Temple’s grad students–and his wife Debbie, as well as with Nancy’s posse of very close friends from HS and Penn State.

I remember Craig as the coolest of cats among Temple University’s graduate students in the philosophy PhD program. I was immediately drawn to him because he wasn’t cool in the conventional way. Among a class made up mainly of sanctimonious offspring of the elite, east-coast and euro-chic upper-crusted snobbery that then populated such hackneyed humanities (aesthetics, no less) programs, Craig was mid-west bottom-land. He was the only other student who possibly shared with me the sentiment of having snuck into the academy by some back door. (On the other hand, he was better-read, had sophisticated tastes (in music at least) and had traveled half-way across the country to attend Temple, while it was in my back-yard, so I’m not suggesting he was as half-baked as I was.) He was quiet and un-assuming of airs, is what I’m trying to say.

We eventually came to share both a tiny and window-less office on Anderson Hall’s 7th floor and the maloderous assignment of teaching College Composition II to lower-division students who could care less. I remember us sharing samples of Worst-Essay-Ever-Written nominees. Case in point: Craig advised his charges to include transition sentences between the main ideas of their essay, and subsequently shared with me a submission that started each paragraph: “Here comes another idea…” We LOLed.

We shared many laughs, though he was a serious “fellow”–one of his midwestern words, as I recall–and he and Debbie became Nancy and I’s most common house-guests. (They drank a lot, truth be told, so we partied hard…until kids showed up.)

Aristotle says that the best and rarest friends embody the virtues that we see lacking in ourselves, and this was mos def tru of Craig. I’ll close this remembrance with two sad tales, though the first ends well.

All of us second year doctoral candidates were dreading the “Comprehensive Exams” required for the PhD, and team-studied the major thinkers in the history of philosophy, ad nauseam, in preparation for the four-hour written exam, when we were expected to simply recite a shit-ton of disconnected factoids about Plato, or Kant, or some such “metaphysical bird-catcher” to assure the program that we had been occasionally paying attention in the prior four semesters. A half-dozen or so of us show up to sit for the exam, and while five or so of us start writing furiously as soon as the proctor leaves the room, Craig sits across from me staring down at a blank page. After at least an hour of this, and several stares and nudges from me, he walks out. I follow him to the elevator, planning on reminding his that he has dragged his wife to Philly to complete this program, was performing admirably in it, and that the test was a mere formality. But his expression was so chill, his decision to walk away from Temple so resolute, that I was stopped in my tracks. To this day, I would never possess such self-belief, and within a short time he was working at a lab at U-Penn, albeit in a non-academic position, and had greater career prospects than I could hope for at the time. He never looked back, it seemed to me.

If memory serves me right, my last contact with Craig was over the phone, after Nancy and I separated, some ten years after Craig left Temple. He had moved on to Central Michigan, Deb had her marketing firm underway, and they had kids of their own, so we were largely estranged. I still trusted his sound judgment, however, but when I tried to explain my decision to leave Nancy, he didn’t seem to understand. I felt that they took sides with Nancy, though I realize this is too simple, and self-serving, a narrative. (With the benefit of hindsight, it might be more accurate to say that C&D took the side of common-sense practicality as opposed to that of my juvenile and romantic impulsivity, as my separation proved largely disastrous, at least in the near-term.) It was a particular comment of Craig’s, however, that hurt me the most. So, to get to my last sad tale: we’re on the phone, me espousing the virtues of my live-in girlfriend, soon to be next-ex, Sarah, who was eleven years my junior, and I made the admittedly obscure comment that “she is more mature than her age” to which he replied “but you would think that” (or words to that effect). Now listen: I can completely understand any friend’s commentary on another friend’s reckless infatuation, but if Craig had known the facts of the case–that Sarah had ran away from a dysfunctional home at 17, traveled across the country and went to college all on her own dime, etc.–perhaps he wouldn’t have been so “judgy.”

It’s all H2O under a bridge, of course, and I have the fondest memories of Craig; I blame myself for letting our friendship fade to black. (Update: in 2017, Debbie contacted me via e-mail and tried a reconciliation–apparently Craig was having a massive shindig for his 50th or something–and she sharply refuted my narrative of our dissolution. I can’t defend my version of events and can only include this note as a reminder of how partial and constructive memory is.)

My first child, Hannah Rachel, became a reality on 12/22/1992, and her birth requires ten thousand words on its own. Watching her and her sister grow has been the single greatest treat of this wonderful life. Hannah was born, after a 28-hour labor and emergency c-section, in Benjamin Franklin Hospital, one of the oldest in the country, in a bright but frigid dawn. I remember looking out of the window of the hospital, exhausted, unable to fathom the magnitude of what I had just witnessed, of Hannah’s perfectly shaped head emerging green and bloody from between Nancy’s legs, and seeing the first rays of the sun silverize the redbrick and cobblestones of old town Philly. It was as close to a spiritual experience as I have ever experienced.

Hannah had “colic”–whatever that means–and would cry for hours per day, until we swung her in her wind-up cot, or drove her around the neighborhood in our wee Toyota Tercel. Later we moved out to Manayunk, where I recall Hannah crawling and then walking around the gorgeous hardwood floors. Nancy nested, and all seemed settled for the long term.

If I had to list a favorite single period of my life, it would probably be the year my young family spent in Williamsport, PA, on a dissertation-completion grant. Watching Hannah scramble around the back yard of our humble home below Lycoming College, and me scrambling over the boulder fields above the town with Glen, were highlights, even if the thesis the grant enabled was sub-par.

I submitted, revised, and then defended the dissertation, and we lived for a while in Philly again. Nancy wrote grants and I “adjuncted” all around the region and wrote test items at Educational Testing Services in Princeton, NJ while shopping for a tenure-track teaching. I once taught four different classes at four different schools, driving from Delaware County CC in the western ‘burbs to Drexel and Temple downtown, to Franklin school of Nursing in the northeast. We were broke but happy, and I owe a debt to Nance that will never be repayed, I’m afraid. Hannah and I got robbed at knife-point while waiting for a subway, and fortunately for us it was shortly thereafter that the University of West Florida’s Toby Howe called me for a phone interview.

Adulthood II: Careerism (1996-2016)

The longest span of my life thus far has been spent in Pensacola, Florida, where I have been helping to raise my girl(s…Molly Emma was born here in 1998), teaching courses in philosophy and ethics at the University of West Florida, and getting divorced…twice, after having been married, twice, both lasting ten years. Molly’s miraculous birth needs a chapter of its own, but suffice it say that a perfectly knotted umbilical cord made for an interesting day at West Florida Hospital. Molly is the light of my life, for reasons that go beyond words.

I loved my job, or at least the one-third of it spent in the classroom. The other parts, administrative and scholarly, were typically less rewarding and less suited to my strengths. UWF is a public university and as we lacked a graduate program, my main goal was to get kids to think, and perhaps even major in philosophy. My department was small, with five full-time faculty and as many adjuncts, and while we all got along, it’s hardly a thriving or stimulating intellectual environment. I told myself that as soon as I can afford to retire, I will do so happily. I couldn’t see myself staying in Pensacola at that point. An aggressive retirement strategy allowed me to do in 2020, at the depths of the pandemic…a very strange time. I didn’t even have an exit interview, or say goodbye properly to colleagues, as the campus was deserted when I left.

Looking back, despite having not nearly enough time to properly process my departure from the profession, it was an honor and a privilege, sincerely speaking, to share my love the humaniities to so many students over the years. I could go on and on about the amazing students I’ve encountered, some of whom went on to do great things. I could also go on and on about the nutty students I’ve had, including one who saw demons all over campus. As I had to teach across a broad spectrum of courses, some 16 different ones over the years, from Logic to Ancient Philosophy, from the philosophy of science and mind to medical ethics, I have basically been paid to learn all about these areas. Fewer jobs are as chill and unpressured as mine was, and yet by the end of my time spent at U-Dub, I was under a lot of stress, and hated going to the office at the end, which is a remarkable thing to hear myself say. It wasn’t all personal, as the program-level pressures–how many phil majors graduate lately?–were becoming intolerable, but some of it definitely was.

Perhaps the most difficult part of this note concerns my failed marriages. Nancy is such an amazing mother and role-model to Hannah and Molly, that I can’t even get to what an amazing person she is. Sarah, my second wife, remains a bff, and my second divorce ranks second only to my first in terms of greatest personal failures of what must count as a failure-filled personal life. Leaving Nancy when Hannah was 8 and Molly 3 was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and its shockwaves rattle me to this day, some twenty years after the fact. I remain a rather depressive drunk, at my core. The narrative I have constructed surrounding these events can’t yet be trusted, but I will work on it. I’m sorry to all involved, obviously.

Where to begin? Nancy and I were at very different headspaces upon arrival in Pensacola. She had deep roots in the northeast, of course, and had to abandon her aging parents, three brothers, a very tight group of friends known since high-school and Penn State, and a rewarding job. She knew upon marriage, that I would have to move for a job, but still, Florida was a foreign land. On t’other hand, I was on top of the world; a job I only dreamt of in grad school, my breadwinner status affirmed, and a change of scenery.

Nancy was fairly miserable, but soon found a job, We rented a crap slab home for a year, searched for houses, and mostly for a sense of community. I had no time for nostalgia, going to conferences, and desperately trying to earn tenure. I was often in my office before daybreak, either working on lectures for classes I had never taught before, or trying to cull articles out of my dissertation and grad school papers.

Almost as often I was in bars after dark, and I remember long bouts of insomnia where I would walk to the Handlebar, Sluggo’s, or The Z, to cavort with strangers, some of them students, including one Sarah.

She was typically asleep with her head down on the desk when I’d enter class, the result of a pre-dawn running (inline-skating, actually) one of the largest paper-routes of the Pensacola News Journal, I was to soon discover, and was a fairly terrible student, though she would go on to be one of the shining stars of stats in UWF’s MA in Psych program. Objectively speaking, she was a chunky-girl with bad skin and thin hair, but for reasons only the gods know, to my eyes she was strikingly beautiful, a blond-haired, blue-eyed, California girl with a depth of sadness and melancholy that struck a key chord with me: to wit, I can fix her and fulfill a need in someone’s life, as opposed to deciding what to fix in my own. (She was Nancy’s antipode: while Nancy was salt of the earth and of New England stock, Sarah was post-modern dystopia, and the sheer novelty was irresistible.) I kept my distance, but eventually told her of a band playing at the Handlebar, and I remember whispering to her at the bar: “I can’t keep my eyes off of you.” At 22, and given her backstory, she was smitten.

Her backstory includes running away at seventeen from bitterly estranged (and independently whacky) parents in San Rafael, CA, greyhounding to Marianna, FL, (as it was near I-10 and had a community college) where she shared a house with theatre majors who decided to rob a bank, got caught in the act, and forced her to leave town. She chose UWF. Her vagabond, probably bipolar, mom soon followed as her father, a retired and distant millionaire silicon valley software early adopter, and sister, did some years later. Her dad supported none of them financially, but Sarah worked her ass off, in casinos, in aluminum-can recycling with her mom, with the paper-route, and eventually with her own flower business.

Meanwhile, Nancy and I were going through marriage counselors as long-distance hikers go through socks, and finally one advised a trial separation. Nance heard of a house-sitting gig in Pace, FL, which happened to be Sarah’s hometown, and the die was cast.

We eloped to Hawaii, and were married by some dude in a monk’s habit with a parrot on his shoulder, on the beach behind some famous tv-featured house. A week on the Big Island was spent scuba-diving–including a famous night-dive with manta rays–and hiking around the volcanoes; we rented a jeep and promptly broke off its side-view mirror.
Sarah managed some flower shops, before successfully running one of her own, and our happiest days were working our tails off around Mothers and Valentine’s days. Glen came up from Texas and stayed with us for a few weeks, only telling me later that he was getting straight from a nasty drug addiction. He then moved back to Ireland where he remains. Sarah remains a friend, though she battled her demons when we were together. Even a trip to Ireland with the girls, just before my Mum’s untimely death, see below, was largely wasted with her isolation and illness. Still, she is not only the smartest woman I’ve ever known intimately–only Sally Ferguson matches her intellect–but her resilience and phronesis is beyond compare. She has been such a great influence on Hannah, Molly and I, I believe. (My decision to retire early was largely due to a convo we had over laundry, somewhere around 2018.)

But other women eventually followed, and Kathryn, Kristie, Chassidy, and Kathy all deserve more than this mention, but what is the point in dragging anyone into this memoir? I think of them fondly, and hope they do me as well. The two years I lived with Hope are still special. Not only did she take me to Tool concerts, she challenged me in ways I’d never known. I met her while moonlighting at Pensacola State College, and she was simply captivating. I fell hard. Her lifestory up to that point was remarkable also: her Dad died of complications from Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam when she was a child, and her mom, Angela, did an amazing job raising her and her sister through trauma.

I shouldn’t give the impression of an impressario, or a Don Juan, or anything of the sort. These relationships were long-lived and mutually beneficial. They also didn’t consume my life. I volunteered many weekends for the Florida Trail Association, becoming a “Trail Master”–a term I helped to dislodge from the organization, btw–of a few miles of the trail in the Blackwater National Forest. I’m proud of that effort. I was also a high school socer referee for many years, even if that association was comprised of mostly red-necks that didn’t make me want to hang out.

Brian G. became a close friend, and though it sounds strange to say this, given my age, he was perhaps my final mentor in how to be a man. The commonplace notion that fathers supply sons with a complete and coherent picture of manhood is ridiculous, and I know that many people have contributed to mine, from Brother Pete to Cousin Gary, from Chris Combs in high school to Clint Wiedermeier in the US Army Regular, and finally to Brian G, who taught me a lot about how to just get a job done and not ruminate or reflect too much. “It’s just chores,” he’d say, when we had what I took to be a high-pressure job in front of us.

Of course I had other male friends, such as Jon W, Billy B., Rickey J, Michael B, Rusty B, and others too many to mention, but too many of them (like my female friends) were drawn from the ranks of my students, which is limiting, but still: it is what it is, as we moderns say.

My mother passed away in 2007, and I still feel her absence. She was an amazing woman, an independent entrepreneur and yet always kind and loving. She first got sick down in San Miguel del Allende, Mexico, in around 2000, where she and Dad had built a beautiful house.

It was some sort of heart infection and really weakened her, forcing her to move home to Kilkenny where she opened up a children’s clothing shop. Then either celiac disease or pancreatic cancer had the final say. We’re not sure that she got the care she needed in Ireland, but that’s water under the bridge. The weekend trip home to attend her could lovely and moving funeral deserves one-thousand words of its own.

Life rolled on, semester after semester, until I felt I could eventually afford a break and took a sabbatical to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail; I walked from Maine to Georgia for five months in 2015-16 and left a detailed record of it somewhere. I’ll post a link here soon. Beyond being an amazing physical and mental challenge–the felt accomplishment of walking across some 400 miles of Maine wods and crossing the New Hampshire line was typical–it was was the first major reflective exercise I had afforded myself since carreering so hard. Many friends came to see me on the trail, including Michelle and Frankie in NH, Abe and Sarah in PA, and John in VA, and each one was so special. It also led to my involvement in the FL Trail Association and a really rewarding social scene.

Career successes include promotion to full professor and chair, as well as the editing of two editions of a sexy textbook (i.e., The Philosophy of Sex: Contemporary Readings put out by Rowman and Littlefield in 2002 and 2007 respectively). Though it may sound like I was on top of the world, I have mixed feelings about a quarter of a century spent in the academy. It turns out I never was the intellectual type, and was never disciplined enough to meet the demands of scholarship in philosophy. I got distracted by questions outside of my field, and was unable to make a real impact, except on some students. I recall getting an unrequited note from a couple of PSC students who said that they abandoned the pentacostal ways of their parents and were raising their kids in a more naturalistic and science-based ways, crediting my introductory class in their change. (This reminds me of Kenneth Hovind, aka Dr Dino’s, comment during a debate over evolutionary theory and creationism that kids were coming to UWF and losing their faith; he wasn’t lying.)

In any case, I lived with my father in Pensacola after the AT, but that was untenable and soon I moved downtown, and rented from Nancy’s 2nd hubby, the genually amazing Clyde W. In the meantime, I had fallen in love again.

Adulthood III: The Middle Ages (2017-2021)

Though Karyssa will take center stage here, it’s important to point out, from the start, that I lack the sufficient distance on this period to write accurately about it.

Trying to turn the page, I remember first meeting Karyssa in early 2012, when she showed up all attitude in the midst of an ethics class as a major. She was at first sight definitely a jock, prolly a lesbian, and barely a major worth paying attention to. I always respect student athletes, however, so was prepared to give her some leeway. Honestly, she made a minimal impression, buried amidst her classmates–she rarely spoke and her homeworks were just slightly above average, as I recall–but at some point, she came to flummox me. She struck me as a wild deer must a hunter: as a wild animal, not fully human. Why such dramatic lingo, Nick? Is it cos you’re in the grip of love’s madness?

No doubt I am, though it’s not the same shade of lunacy as afflicted my younger self. To my utter amazement, Karyssa seems to appreciate my slightly jaded sense of love’s limits, if not my sense of humor, my fading prostrate–it is the Autumn of my libido, after all–and expanding waistline, and though she and I remain romantics at the core, she is very grounded and practical and doesn’t suffer frippery. Her mother, Sheila, and step-father, Paul, are “Southies” from solid Boston (and Irish) stock. Her “Bio-Dad”, Terrell, on the other hand is an extravagant New Orleans Cajun bon-vivant and hustler. He runs an event planning and party business in Destin. There is also Italian genes in her pool, but as we aren’t planning any offspring, I having been neutered back in my days with Sarah, my pool and hers likely won’t blend.

Phenotypically, Karyssa herself is petite, athletic, and beautiful (naturally) with huge hazel eyes, perfect American teeth, and long and lustrous hair, which she once had shortened.

She a punk, plainly, and her favored expression is “I do what I want.” (Karyssa doesn’t even care if her socks match…wtf?) She’s an immature imp, in the best sense, and part of her appeal is my looming dread of old-age irrelevance. Of course, the virtue of youth is wasted on the middle-aged, and it comes with a price: there is a gaping chasm between the two of us, in terms of … well, in terms of everything. The age gap, of course, looms over all else. She’s just over half my age, but more specifically, we think and talk very differently, and thus demand a great deal of patience from each other.

For instance, her offense at sexist language extends to the most casual use of “the B word,” as in “Ain’t that a B?” and while I have become convinced that she’s in the right, and have largely excised the word from my vocab, one can’t be attuned enough to catch all offensive uses and to pounce appropriately. I sense my friends’ apprehension about this whole affair, and have in the past shared their ambivalence regarding the deep compatibility of K&I, but of late I’ve been consoled (or sold) on her almost unthinking devotion and loyalty. (I don’t mean to flatter myself, and only mean that Karyssa is an incredibly loyal friend to those she selects to befriend.)

I am also all too aware of the odds of a marriage with such an age gap lasting–it’s less than one-in-ten, according a Univ of Colorado study I use in my Philosophy of Sex and Love lecture notes–but I think I am prepared to redefine what a successful marriage is to be with this amazing person. Mainly I feel incredibly lucky to have found her, and feel unworthy of her love most of the time.

Despite her liberal, very progressive, and earnestly idealistic political views, in more personal ways Karyssa is “small-c-conservative” and she respects order and neatness. E.g., my fiduciary profligacy bothers her, which is completely understandable, as it bothers me too.

Luckily, she loves the outdoors as much as I do, and wants us to do some long-distance hiking together. She was in her element when volunteering at Monterey Bay Aquarium and the local natural history museum–btw, when are going to realize that “natural history” is redundant, as “historia” is a transliteration of the Greek word, that Aristotle adapted from the historian Herodotus perhaps, for the “nature” of a primary substance, a living thing–while she completed training in Arabic at the Defense Languages Institute.

We were married in the woods, surrounded by friends, on May 26th 2018 at 4 o’ clock, just as a storm rolled in. It was amazing, and deserves a blog of its own. Never have I felt so much love. Karyssa’s family made it happen, and both my brother’s presence and participation topped it off. Much more needs to be said here.

Our “honeymoon” was a westward migration of Daisy and K’s personal belongings into her first real home of her own. She was eager to inform a space with her own scent. It was a great trip and I spent two months in Monterey teaching online and rebuilding my dopamine stores.

Career frustrations continue to overshadow my mood, and I often feel like I have squandered an amazing opportunity as a public intellectual in the “if-you-think-you-stink” conservative south. I see peers doing great things, and me distracted by mundanities. I feel imposter syndrome, like I never really earned my PhD, and spent the last few months employed at UWF embroiled in a horribly petty squablle with one of my closest colleagues, a to-the-manor-born elitist, who had a negative effect on our program, to my jaundiced eye. It was time to go, obviously.

Post-career Adulting: 2020-Present

Quit my job, after a deep convo with Sarah, bought and converted a van, hit the road with Karyssa, and we are currently almost a year in, four of them spent in Mexico! Retirement is still sinking in, and the lack of a semester to prepare for or a conference to submit to is completely and utterly devastating to my sense of my own telos. I still have my battles with alcohol, but not with tobacco, and it’s been a revelation to see that one can live without all of your doctor’s scrips, without complete health insurance, without an address.

How sustainable this lifestyle is is an open question, especially given the COVID pandemic, but just as surely as we can say that we wouldn’t be here and now without it, we can all agree that we can’t realistically say where we would be with it, which is exactly where we are, if that makes any sense. I miss my kids, my fam, my friends, is all I can say.

My Dad continues to live independently in NE Pensacola, and my daughters, wise beyond their years, seem to appreciate his presence. I’ve struggled mightily with our decision to travel, but he’s a grown man, and would never want to stunt our growth, after all.

Postscript:
This reflective exercise is impossibly hard, and the above is horribly incomplete, but I’d recommend it to all of you past the adulting phase of, I dunno, 55? Aristotle says that lectures in living a life are wasted on the young, and while my students rarely saw his point, I finally do: only later can you begin to judge how virtuous a life you have managed to live. I get that now, even if I wouldn’t flex my virtues too much. Marcus Aurelius used to visualize, in gruesome detail, his own death, of plague, typically, so as to familiarize his self with the inevitable, and while I am not at the point where that is necessary, I mos def see the point in the exercise.