Home Repair, Lucy Van Pelt, and 'The Way of the Gun' Home Repair, Lucy Van Pelt, and 'The Way of the Gun'

“I think a plan is just a list of things that don't happen.”

Ryan Philippe as Christopher Walken as 'Parker' in 'Way of the Gun'

The Way of the Gun is a movie starring Benicio Del Toro and a damaged clone of Justin Timberlake named Ryan Phillippe. Naw, I'm kidding. Ryan's OK. Really, he does a great job in this movie as a disaffected young man who drops off the radar with his friend and becomes a drifter. He and his hetero (maybe?) life partner seem to live an “On the Road” sort of life without the casual misogyny and alcoholism. They come up with a fairly terrible plan, and violent hijinks ensue.

Parker and Longbaugh's plan and its inevitable violent outcome are not my point. Neither is the fact that James Caan has a super-great cameo as middle management for the mob. This is a movie made in a specific style, an homage to the nihilistic anti-hero epics of the late 20th century. Like Travis Bickle or The Wild Bunch, Parker and Longbaugh are characters who ask for no real sympathy, and frankly, don't deserve much.

However, much of their way of looking at life seems eerily familiar to me, and forced a kind of simpatico with me as I re-watched this movie the other day.

I can only watch horror/crime movies anymore, it seems. Peoples' problems seem so petty in the face of what H. and I went through. “Oh, poor spunky female protagonist of this rom-com. I am filled with sadness that you have to spend the middle third of the movie mad at your one true love because..whatever. Hopefully it will all be resolved by the end...oh good. Phew! Now it's time for the kiss while an Approved Motown SexySong © plays. Cue credits and....Your petty unrealistic problems have been completely resolved.

You know, like how this woman needs to hire a male escort for a wedding

date? Seems legit, “The Wedding Date (2005)”. Tell me more.

“There is a natural order. The way things are meant to be. An order that says that the good guys always win. That you die when it's your time, or you have it coming. That the ending is always happy, if only for someone else.”

Ryan Philippe as 'Parker' in 'Way of the Gun'

We all know that this isn't the actual way of the world, but that is the world we all hope for.

I made myself crazy getting ready for my son. Alone, I ripped out all the carpet in our house, refinished the original wood floors by hand, painted and re-plastered the nursery; in short, I went home improvement mad. It didn't help that the previous owners were serious tweakers. People on a real upper kick have all the energy in the world to work on home improvement, and absolutely zero judgment.

I worked with a guy at a grocery store that had an alliterative nickname based on his methiness. We'll call him Tweaker Tim. He came to work one day, and as we were chatting over a cigarette, this happened.

“I installed a toilet in my kitchen last night. Took like 10 hours.” he says casually.

I pause. Think about the sentence. I cautiously say, “You mean, you put a bathroom in your kitchen?”

“No.”, says Tweaker Tim, looking at me with a “What are you, a fucking idiot?” face.

That's where that talk ended.

I fixed so many crazy mistakes, I couldn't even begin to list them in a way that you would or could read. Let's just say the low point was pulling 37 three-inch screws out of my beautiful hardwood floor. The screws were so cheap that they couldn't be removed with a screwdriver; they stripped immediately when any tool was applied. So, I had to lock a pair of Vice-Grips onto each screw, then manually turn them out of the floor. Each one was almost at its full extension, and so it took not a little muscle and sweat. The screws were hot enough from friction when I got them out, they were uncomfortable to hold in your hand. Oh, it was also 85º, because I was doing this in August, and we had no AC. I felt like Tom Hanks in the 'Money Pit', except with more profanity and rage.

Home, Crap, Home.

It was an obvious extension of my fears at becoming a father. I questioned my emotional and psychological stability, my ability to forget the bad lessons of my childhood and remember the good.

At the moment our son was born, he had a massive hemorrhage. The second he came out, the doctor tensely ordered me to cut the cord RIGHT NOW. His arms, head and legs simply...hung. Dangled. Lights out. 

Nobody home. 

Obviously dead. 

Shakily, I cut the cord. I had to take two tries, and on the second, fluid and blood sprayed across me. I was simply numb and staggered by the enormity...and the immediate hot flame of guilt at hiding something from my wife. I knew a vast and terrible secret, seeing him like that. I simply KNEW that I would not leave the hospital with my son, not in anything approximating normality. It was a cellular knowledge, down to the bone. An intimate and nauseating voice, whispering a dire prophecy. After seeing E. simply hanging there, I could not argue with that oily voice. 

Immediately he was whisked over to an incubator, surrounded by what seemed like every doctor in the world. That is when the nightmare image I can't ever get out of my head happened, and I watched a doctor gently massage my first born son back into … well, not entirely life. A cruel approximation of life. After a forever time, myself and all the doctors in the free world went to the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit). They continued the process of trying to bring my son back to life. The powerlessness and horror can never be put into sufficient words. It knocked a hole clean through me that has never been filled. A parents duty is to protect and nurture their child, and no matter what the facts, I felt like the most useless fucking thing on the planet. I simply stared, hands over my mouth, and tried not to get in the way. 

One of the doctors came to me, as I stared in shock and horror at my first born son dying ten feet away. She asked me kindly if I wanted to keep...a blanket? Something from the delivery? Something. I don't remember it at all. I want to say it was a blanket. I assumed that E. would simply die in front of me, right there. I really, really didn't understand then why I would want to keep ANYTHING from this experience. What should have been the happiest day of my life abruptly turned into the worst. You can't control where the mind goes at times like this, and mine went to Lucy and Charlie Brown. Lucy, stone cold bitch and possible agent of Satan, promising this time would be different, again pulled the football away from Chuck.

AAUGH!, indeed, Charles. AAUGH!

It's the transition that causes the most damage I think. There we were, right at the finish line. We had spent 9 months training ourselves to be better people and parents. Books, cutting edge child rearing websites...anecdotal tips from family. We read everything, did everything. Took childbirth classes, made sure we bought non-allergenic paint, eschewed potentially dangerous products from China. Obsessive reviewed every stroller and cribs safety rating. Made a birth plan, based on our months of study, one that should have maximized our little mans' potential. 

Then, at the second when we cross the finish line, Lucy pulls the football away. Instead of going home with a beautiful baby boy, we spent a week living in the hospital. A time that to me, was like being on a cruise ship taking a tour of hell.