The Life of a Peripheral Character
Who is Blake in the David Mamet film Glengarry Glen Ross? In the film, the character is played by Alec Baldwin and when you look up clips, his monologue ("Coffee is for closers.") is almost always near the top. He's only in the piece for about ten minutes but it is a pivotal ten minutes.
So who is he? We never know. He has no backstory, no character flaws exposed. He is an engine moving the plot, for inspiring or terrifying the main characters. He is the voice of the cautionary tale and the teller of the future.
Blake is a periphery character. While he isn't strictly necessary to the story, without him and his speech, the film would be lacking a certain spice, a specific flair, a lightning strike in the midst of the main characters that jump starts the story.
If you bother to read anything I've written recently, you are on the down low of my nearly unbelievable divorce and exit from Las Vegas followed by the news that I'm now smack dab in the middle of Kansas, living with my folks to both scar up from the destruction of my life as I knew it and to help with my increasingly ill pops.
Suddenly, I'm part of the family again. Instead of a twice a year visitor (usually with a wife in tow) I'm, at least in the immediate sense, a full-time son/brother/uncle. After a few days of getting me set up, making sure I'm not longing for death, and feeding me, I was struck by something I had never considered. My family loves me unconditionally and would do anything for me but they don't like me very much. Their version of me is more combative than I see myself, more prone to judging them than I do, more unlikeable than I'd like to believe I am.
That sounds worse than it is. I left Kansas in 1989 and have since been the visitor, the guest, for over forty years. My family doesn't actually know me very well but know an avatar of whom they believe they know from both my highly dramatic teenage years and highlights from my life on various Christmases and Independence Days. My presence is a disruption not because they don't want me here but because, for my family, I am a peripheral character.
When my nephew overdosed, I was the brother who flew in from Vegas, helped with the specifics of cremation and the awful logistics of the immediate death, then flew back to leave the family to grieve without him. When my mother had to get a hip replaced, I was the FaceTime calls but not the day-to-day caregiving my dad and sister fulfilled. I am the uncle you visit in the city, the son you call every week, the brother whom you love but mostly from afar.
I am both a part of my family and apart from my family.
When your life burns down like a Northern California mobile home in a wildfire, you start with some confusing soul searching. Looking for your purpose in life because what you thought was your purpose is now erased. Wondering what value you provide to the world in any fashion. The past four months have been rough, gang. I've felt equal parts duped, discarded, and like a hurricane hit my house destroying everything I owned. Given the ex-wife was the Keeper of the Copper Umbrella and refused to part with a dime out of basic fairness, I have no savings. I have no steady job. I have no wife. No kids. My entire existence can fit in a small moving cube and my Prius. I'm now in a city I left forty years ago and have no friends in my vicinity.
The burning question I've been circling around like toilet water swirling around a turd that simply won't flush is what, exactly, is the point of my continued presence on the planet? I'm not one who wants to end it all because that's just some weak ass giving up (and, yes, I judge harshly anyone who goes that route) but I'm not terribly enthused about living, either. Survival for the sake of surviving seems like a truly miserable gig—like working at a call center selling herbal weight loss cures just to pay rent on a studio apartment on the shitty side of town. I'm certain Sartre ruminated on the meaning of life far more eloquently than I am but the desired answer is the same.
Why am I still breathing and consuming pizza rolls while kids are dying in mass shootings, wars all over the world, and my nephew is gone except for the memory and grief my sister holds? What am I here to do?
I'm a peripheral character in the lives of so many other, more important stories.
I'm Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings.
I'm Little Bill in Boogie Nights.
Walter Sobchak in The Big Lewbowski.
Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet.
Ron Weasley in Harry Potter.
Alfred in Batman.
I'm that guy.
I'm that guy who founded the theater company in the 90s that introduced you to your wife.
I'm that guy who traveled to the largest metropolis in the Midwest and lived in his truck for four months.
I'm that guy who bullied you into going skydiving.
I'm that guy who was your first husband.
I'm that guy who was your teacher who taught you about the Beatles and also encouraged you to be your whole self which then much later motivated you to switch genders.
I'm also that guy who either did or didn't forge a theater license.
I'm that guy who pissed off Ira Glass enough that he tried and failed to get him fired.
I'm that guy who had that girlfriend who punched him in the face, accused him of punching her to the police, and then moved in with her.
I'm that guy who jumped on your car when you were angrily bashing into his because he illegally parked in front of you.
I'm that guy who you got a mob of idiots to cancel because he unfriended you on Facebook.
I'm that guy who had a crazy fairy tale marriage that turned out to be a Las Vegas cautionary tale.
Yeah. I'm that guy. Part inspiration, part dissuasion.
***
"Yo. You remember that guy who tricked the New York Times into reviewing the show he brought there?"
"Yeah. Whatever happened to him?"
"I heard he became the House Manager of Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me!"
***
"Hey. You remember the dude who was presenting at the NPR conference and compared the public radio funding model to drug dealing?"
"Haha! Yeah. I heard he moved to Vegas and became a casino manager."
***
"Whatever happened to that one cat who lost eighty pounds after realizing he was a giant fatass?"
"I think he ended up having a summer fling with a girl whose father was the same age as he and then he married a porn star."
***
My purpose, my value in the world is to be a peripheral character. I'm not the protagonist of anything. My story is such a mishmash of jobs and marriages, escapades and fuckups, it's hardly a story at all but a series of nutty anecdotes.
Chief in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Maybe Martini.
R2D2 in Star Wars.
Bucky Barnes in MCU's Captain America saga.
Tom Hagen in The Godfather.
Jay and Silent Bob in Clerks.
There is a wonderful feeling of freedom when I frame myself this way. It means I'm not the central focus. I don't have to be the hero or the villain. I just have to make colorful choices and keep swinging for the fences in sometimes amazing and sometimes incredibly stupid ways.
It turns out that my rolling stone gathering no moss existence does have a point. It might be a bit solitary but it's never boring. The peripheral character is more fun to be and it's certainly better than being the bland background character who parks your car or delivers your Amazon package. For now, I'm good with this answer to the burning question and I'm pretty sure I'll be happier than Sartre.
