I Like to Watch | The Streaming Stories That Prop Me Up Through Chaos
Oh, so much hay has been made about my ludicrous third divorce. I suppose the just get over it impulse of the GenX male bristles but I'm now in that bizarre bubble of truly grappling with the past seven and a half years and the unsettling reality of figuring out what I'm going to do beyond eating, sleeping, and the act of merely surviving from day to day and that flies in the face of the simple keep on keeping on ethos.
Yes, I finally contracted COVID for about four days and, while the actual infection mostly felt like allergies or a solid head cold, the follow-up hangover has been two straight weeks (and counting) of the worst head/chest cold I've encountered. You know, stuffed up mucus-head, couching up phlegm until you feel like you been doing sit-ups non-stop for days, pretty tired most of the time. In the meantime, I'm helping my folks navigate dialysis three times a week and a father who can't hear, see, or walk most of the time (when he’s in good shape, the man has stories galore) as well as helping mom deal with her yard and basement and Halloween decorations (her joy is infectious) all while jumping through the bureaucracy of getting a Substitute Teacher's license in Kansas so I can make enough cash to pay my meager but required bills. All of which is to say, I have a lot of time on my hands.
I read an article about how breakups were like experiencing a death and that stages follow the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. I can justify that in my recent experience but my stages of grief have more to do with my desire to drown myself in the stories of others that have or are going through something similar.
I couldn't find a single documentary or program or book that deals explicitly with a husband finding out his wife of a few years embarking on a nearly three-year campaign of infidelity with a lover plus a new vocation selling herself for sex to strangers so I do my best. Interesting, I've reinvented myself half a dozen times in my life but this one is different. Those reinventions were my choice; this one is not. It's the difference between moving from Florida because of a new job prospect or a desire for snow and having to move because Hurricane Dana leveled everything you have without mercy or thought.
Here are my versions of those five stages of grief:
Disillusionment
"Is this really happening?" For a few weeks immediately following the quickie divorce and her moving only eight yards away from my place, I was in a headspace that wasn't in denial but in a great swirl of confusion. What had happened exactly? Was what she told me real and, if it wasn't, what the fuck did it all mean? The revelations handed to me like a platter of dogshit put into question everything I had experienced since coming to Vegas. It all seemed surreal and kind of unbelievable.
I leapt into two Apple TV+ shows.
Shining Girls starring the amazing Elizabeth Moss based on a novel about a time-traveling Depression-era drifter who must murder the "shining girls" in order to continue his travels and the girl who survived the assault and struggles to figure out what the fuck is going on as she connects her attack with the murders of women over the course of time.
Severance, which tells the tale of a biotechnology corporation, Lumon Industries, using a "severance" medical procedure to separate the non-work memories of some of their employees from their work memories. One severed employee, Mark, gradually uncovers a web of conspiracy from both sides of the division.
Self Recrimination
I was a dupe. The dumbest motherfucker in the history of marriage. A moron who believed in a fictional wife. The guy used to provide rent and living cash so the fake spouse could simply go off and do anything she wanted while I paid the bills. The dipshit conned.
Funny, most men in a position adjacent might decide to go postal on the ex-wife, the boyfriend, or the johns involved. I decided to prosecute myself.
TV shows came to the rescue to show me how I was not alone in my complete brainless acceptance of a sham marriage.
The Dropout, starring Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes, one of the most deceptive and oddly charismatic con artists of modern history, demonstrated that a good liar is mostly believed out of a self delusion. People believed her because they wanted to believe her despite the massive red flags in her story.
The theme of why people get hoodwinked by these scammers is extended in the excellent Inventing Anna and the tawdry The Tinder Swindler. I felt like a rube, sucked into a false reality that I accepted without challenge or interrogation. I trusted someone who was almost universally selfish and self serving even at my expense and loved her anyway.
Escape
At some point, perhaps by month two, I desperately needed something unrelated, categorically stupid mind candy. I love my reality TV but Survivor was in recess, I'd watched every Gordon Ramsey thing available, and I could not stomach any of the reality dating shows for obvious reasons. I turned to MTv and The Challenge.
Thirty-eight seasons. Four off-shoot seasons. Hundreds of hours of watching former Real World, Road Rules, and contestants from a host of other competitive reality TV shows live together, drink too much, fuck, and compete in extreme challenges involving oceans, mountains, and anything conceived of by the cracked mind of host TJ Lavin.
Spending that much time watching these kids connive, fight, compete, make up, betray, and ally with one another felt like I was living with them and not in my own sordid reality. I am now a bona fide fan of most of the more veteran Challengers and look forward to their dumbass exploits eagerly.
Comeuppance
I never felt the need to exact any sort of revenge on my ex-wife. It was what it was and no amount of anger or spite would change it. It wouldn't make me feel any better. That said watching someone exact brutal revenge against those who wronged her at the behest of a duplicitous lover and a film about a guy doing his best to erase his quirky girlfriend worked wonders.
Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2 is a perfect one-two punch. Better than all the John Wick movies combined (and I love the John Wick movies) and ending with the lying, vengeful Bill being killed using his own technique, Tarantino's homage to kung fu movies and Uma Thurman was a balm.
I feel Joel's pain in Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I did my own culling of memories. I deleted every single photo of her, of she and I, of things that reminded me of her. I shuffled off items and clothing (including a t-shirt she bought me from her boyfriend's death metal band). I couldn't (and can't) rid myself of the constant nagging sensation that any good or fun thing we did together was somehow poisoned by her duplicity. Especially almost anything we enjoyed together in Nevada. Sure, Joel falls back in love with Clementine after erasing the bad stuff but for me that's all that remains—the lies, the cheating, the prostitution. I suppose prostitution is like red onions on a sandwich—even a little bit overwhelms everything else.
Now What?
I'm now in Kansas. I'm fundamentally safe—from her, from the possibility of her falling on her ass and coming to be saved, from the pestering feeling that I am everything she saw when she tossed me away like a used snot rag. And I have all this time. So I watch stories of men my age starting over. Tales of GenX dudes whose lives just didn't add up to any standard of success. Men like Johnny Lawrence and John Nolan.
Cobra Kai is almost perfect in every way. Five seasons of pure joyful nostalgia but updated to reflect those of us who we the same age as the original Karate Kid in 1984. After decades of simply losing his way through life, Johnny Lawrence finds a new path that morphs into another new path that makes him a hero in his own story.
The Rookie is not perfect. It's not even especially good. It tells the story of John Nolan, a contractor whose marriage blows up and in a journey quest to redefine himself joins the LAPD as a rookie cop some thirty years older than everyone else in his class. I didn't intend on bingeing this show but I watched the first ten minutes when he puts his wedding ring and divorce papers in a safety deposit box and wept like a kid surprised that a bee sting hurt.
Now, I'm along for the ride of an older guy reinventing himself in the least likely scenario possible. No. I don't have any inkling to be a cop but the metaphor sticks.
The article I read rings true. A breakup does feel like a death. I'd argue that how one deals with death is an individual choice. Mine is television and film. Seems to be working as I haven't shot up a rollerskating place or eaten a pistol.
