John woke up early the next morning and got back on the road, anxious to get out of West Virginia and to be somewhere else. He had come on a very vague whim, yet somehow he was leaving feeling he had found some of what he was trying to find.
He pointed the car towards New York City and began to drive. The fall foliage in the Northeast was beautiful this time of year, and he stopped on a couple of occasions to take in the colors and stretch his legs. It had been a while since he had done this kind of driving, and for a fleeting moment he felt like a kid again on the open road. As he crossed over into Pennsylvania he heard Springsteen’s song “Hungry Heart” come on, which he quickly tuned all the way up. “Got a wife and kids in Baltimore Jack, I went out for a ride, and I never went back.” Springsteen’s words, but John couldn’t help but wonder if he was ever going back. Right now he couldn’t picture it.
He called ahead to the Plaza hotel overlooking Central Park and made a reservation. It was certainly not the kind of place that he would usually stay, but money meant very little to John at this particular moment. A part of him knew that these might be the end times for him. Although he wanted to find some possible reason to keep on going, right now he couldn’t exactly see what it might be.
After he got settled in he walked across the street to the Duck pond at the park and took a seat. He found himself thinking about Holden Caufield and the Catcher in the Rye, and the significance the park had for Holden in the book all those years ago. He had loved the book as a kid, and returned to if often over the years as a way to revisit a part of his life he now had a great fondness for. For the second time in as many days he found himself wandering into a scene from a familiar work of fiction. It was a kind of strange escapism he guessed, but right now he was content to simply survive based on some kind of odd instinct that was leading him.
He sat at the pond for some time, before he started to get cold, and realized he needed a drink. He decided to take a cab up to The White Horse Tavern, a placed that had gained infamy as the spot Dylan Thomas drank himself to death many, many years before. Dylan has written about not going gentle into that good night, and John had often thought about the poem in terms of his own life. Would people remember him when he was gone? Right now he wasn’t so sure.
Entering the White Horse, John looked around and saw a lot of people had the same idea that he had. The place was a famous watering hole for all kinds of writers over the years, and the ghosts of Kerouac and a number of others seemed to always draw a crowd. Although he wasn’t crazy about the idea of being around a lot of people, he didn’t exactly want to be alone either. He ordered a drink at the bar and sat down, feeling like another writer circling the drain as he took a long sip of his double Maker’s Mark.
As he finished his drink and then another and then another, he thought about Dylan Thomas and how he drank himself to death not far from where he himself was now sitting. Is that the way he would go too? Dying on some barstool? He had spent a number of years trying very hard to distance himself from that lifestyle and those kinds of choices, but now he felt he had fallen back down into the bottom of the rabbit hole.
John thought about what he might tell a patient of his under similar circumstances. He thought about a book he had often discussed with people called “games alcoholics play,” which specifically described something the author referred to as a “Tragic Life Script.” Essentially this described the idea that a person may begin to see their personal narratives as a tragedy, and continue to make choices that supported this kind of a story. Until a couple of weeks ago John would have described his personal journey as one of failure, resilience, and ultimately redemption. Now he wasn’t so sure the story was going to end well.
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