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Doctor Malamud
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The Archive's of:
Dr. Malamud©
The mostly unedited ramblings
of a broken-hearted man
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“Many divorces are not really the result of irreparable injury but involve, instead, a desire on the part of the man or woman to shatter the setup, start out from scratch alone, and make life work for them all over again. They want the risk of disaster, want to touch bottom, see where bottom is, and, coming up, to breathe the air with relief and relish again.”
Edward Hoagland
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Archived Page Number 19:
June 2006 through
November 2006
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Find Comfort Here:
The Book of Psalms
"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted
and saves those who are
crushed in spirit."
Psalms 34:18
The Book of Proverbs
"The first to present his case seems right,
till another comes forward and questions him."
Proverbs 18:17
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June 2006
Friday . . . Because of sheer willpower, sixteen hour workdays and restaurant Mexican food, I have avoided alcohol for all of two days. It wasn't even that big of a deal not ordering a mug of expensive Cabo Wabo tequila when I visited Macayo's Thursday. The office whittled down my workweek to a mere sixty-four hours, when I then received a call for help that will expand it to a more-usual and profitable seventy-two hours. Mainio has signed up with a private business college, and since he has no morals or any qualms about lying directly into someone's face, he is going into advertising. Going into advertising and moving out of the tony Paradise Valley apartment. He is on to the great adventure known as early adult life in the 21st Century. How exciting for him. I'm looking to clean up my apartment and, since I will be the only occupant, to keep it clean. In order that, should the occasion arise, I may actually entertain guests where I live. Hopefully fully-figured female guests, but most likely not before I loose forty pounds and get back in the top shape I've almost always managed to maintain since I began racing motorcycles in 1972. Of course I no longer race, or even ride for that matter, but there is no bigger endorphin rush than that supplied by a nut-crushing anaerobic and aerobic workout. That's the problem with alcohol and most drugs. Their molecules easily and immediately attach to many of the same brain cell receptors that generate euphoria without the hard physical labor that our glands were designed to respond to. Drugs and alcohol provide illusions of flying free of this Earth, while in reality they quicken our six foot deep plunge into it. It's hot. Thursday, while west of Central Avenue in Phoenix, a truly frightful area, the dashboard on my borrowed Cadillac read 112F degrees. As I type this at 9PM, the radio announces a temperature of 104F degrees. It's going to be a very hot next five months, however, without Mainio's everyday presence and the financial burden that entails, perhaps I can twist the apartment thermostat below the 80F degree setting, prior to the 9PM hour when the utility drops its rate from 12¢ per KWH to a far more reasonable 4¢ per kilowatt hour.
www.doctormalamud.com
Monday . . . I continue to wrestle with the demon alcohol. What a bummer. But I've got to congratulate myself that having been presented the use of any and every recreational drug, I have turned them all down. That's because drunk or sober, I realized that alcohol was going to be a big enough struggle. But, at least I am very aware that I'm basically a closet drunk, eh? Okay fine, I discovered a huge unopened bottle of liquid Lortab® prescribed by our dentist for our then very young daughter. Over a period of weeks, being retired from work at the time, I sipped down the entire bottle. The stuff is opium derived and its prolonged use gave me a chiseling center-of-the-frontal-lobe headache that no amount of aspirin would cure. How could anyone become addicted to that? I've read about six books centered around on how our brains work, and the consensus seems to be that it is impossible to halt cocaine use once you've become addicted. Crazy Paul, a friend of mine from my single days, (my single days over three decades ago) was once given an amount of cocaine at a bar on Hatcher Road in Phoenix, near where he was living at the time. He was amazed when three bar ladies followed him to his apartment for a swim and a naked orgy. He told me that the drug did nothing for him, but the females went nuts over it. I'll always remember the time when I went to an informal party at the house of a Firestone Tire heiress. I enjoyed the free and not often seen, bottled Heinekens and eyeing all the beautiful people. I counseled the young, new, and inebriated husband of the millionairess hostess. He was distraught that he was a mere construction contractor while his wife was so wealthy. I had to explain to him, in the most gentle of terms, that she had done nothing but be born to receive her wealth, while he was building theirs with his own hands. As we drove off, in my so unstylish (but with every optional feature including built-in car phone) Ford F250, Mark asked me if I had seen that everybody was snorting cocaine. I replied I had not noticed a thing, to which he responded, that, in his opinion, we were the only people who were not using the drug.
www.doctormalamud.com
Tuesday . . . Having a horrible time at work. So bad are things going that, my mind begins racing at night and I cannot sleep. At age fifty-five I've been formally indoctrinated into the tornado known as work-place politics. Unlike virtually 99.9% of American workers, my output is both prodigious and flawless. That's because I was raised by a Nazi and cannot do anything less than perfect. So rather than criticizing my day to day efforts, my simpering and spineless superiors are attacking imagined relationships I supposedly maintain with the various hierarchies spiraling around me. But, I'll let Mr. Wonderful get into the work-a-day world, while I remain ... heart-broken. I just heard today, probably on an e-Harmony radio commercial, about soul-mates. I involuntarily screamed out, "My soul-mate divorced me and she lives one thousand and fourteen miles away!" That reminds me, I have to cancel my internet dating service. Excuse me while I do that. Okay, "Subscription Cancelled." Visiting my fourth shot of tequila, and watching a cable show on the Travel Channel about the Japanese city of Tokyo. At half a century I know I am not too old to become a world traveler. I have had Japanese life fed to me from the blue eyes of a tall blonde female who lived there. And the Japanese males are extremely and openly misogynist. And as my regular readers know, since I worship women, I would have a hell of a time in Tokyo. My satellite dish system continues cutting out, so I ventured outside to check the dish itself. While the 78F degree 'dry heat' in my tony Town of Paradise Valley apartment was less than comfortable, with the Crystal-brand rock-hard and clear ice in my tall glass of tea melting every twenty minutes or so, when I opened the front door I was met with the same heat as I felt earlier this afternoon, when I fed last night's Jack in the Box French fries into my pre-heated-to-325F-degrees oven. One of my clients, who is currently at his estate somewhere in Hawaii, weeks ago, gave me a bottle of the expensive Tito's Handmade Vodka, which I am now slobbering down my gullet. I attract the strangest friends, eh? And you know how I do that? I just let people talk. I just let them jabber and try not to understand what they are saying, but what they are emoting. What they are feeling. And I'm feeling bad. Very bad.
www.doctormalamud.com
July 2006
Saturday . . . Almost as an afterthought, the ex-Mrs.Dr.Malamud revealed in an e-mail she would be in town the week of July 2nd. She will be helping Aili, my daughter, relocate into her fifth residence. I was thinking about cleaning up my own tony Paradise Valley apartment, but since she chose, via divorce, to no longer "be the boss of me", and I don't feel like cleaning it up, I won't.  I have mixed feelings about her visit. I don't even know if I want to talk to her. As my reader's readily remember, whether I had deserved it or not, she has hurt me very badly. I caught myself unconsciously staring at a car dry-baking in the apartment parking lot wearing Texas license plates and I involuntarily pictured her pulling up in her SUV shod in similar badges issued by the Lone Star state. A few days ago, while I was in the midst of telling an upset client, while backing away from him, what he did not want to learn, I heard my belt mounted cell phone begin to play the theme song from the movie "The Sting" (Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer") alerting me that the ex-Mrs.Dr.Malamud was phoning me. (Good choice eh? "The Sting"?) A cell phone call from the eMDM, a rare circumstance indeed! Forgotten until hours later, I played her voice mail. She sounded genuinely concerned about the fact that, due to nothing I had done or not done, I may soon lose my job. Thinking more about it though, I realized that her concern was most likely wrapped around the financial situation facing our son's higher education should I not be able to make the payments. The boy Mainio is moving out soon to his shared-college apartment. I will be left utterly alone. No dogs, no fish, not even a fucking cat. But I am such an inexcusable glob of corpulence and emit the undeniable stench of negativism, I am about as attractive as Rosie O'Donnell with a week's worth of Krispy Kreme crumbs flattened between her accordion-like folds of stretch-marked belly fat. I've just got to pull myself out of my quickening quandary at my place of employment (which is about as secure as the Iraqi government) and the slump in my personal life; which is as calm as a formaldehyde-filled corpse. Can I be the only non-bartender who noticed that Jose Cuervo changed the pourer on their 1.75 liter jug of tequila?
www.doctormalamud.com
Wednesday . . . It's 2am in the morning Tuesday and I was hoping to sit with the boy Mainio while watching cable-tv. I went in and took a shower and when I came out, my bedroom door was shut, just like Mainio does when he comes home after his late nights working the video store. He did come in shortly and we watched television until I had to leave for work at 5am. My last day at that particular office. In the two hours on July 4th I was allotted to train the new intern, being old acquaintances, we instead found ourselves reminiscing. One of the things he suggested is that I find a wife and a life. The stress of the past two weeks of turmoil at the office took their toll, and after my two hours, I called in sick to my new location ... funny, they didn't even know I was coming. My first sick call in almost five years. Not that I've never been sick, but I've never been sick enough not to show up at work and go through the motions. Now it is 8am Wednesday and adhering to my new schedule, instead of already having been at work for three hours, I'm sitting at my laptop pounding this out.  I assume the ex-Dr.Mrs.Malamud is in town and simply avoiding me. Which is understandable if Mainio has related to her that the last time I vacuumed was ... never. (Or rather than wash the needed utensils shortly after the long beep of the microwave oven, put a full load of silverware, glasses, dishes, pots and pans in the dishwasher: February of 2006. Or the last time I cleaned my toilet: the day I heard she was coming.) And then again she probably has strong feelings for me (even though emotionally she is made of much sterner stuff than Dr.Malamud - some would say that she is even 'cold') and doesn't need the wear and tear of being with this pathetic creature. Isn't it strange how we can call ourselves any name we wish, but if someone else tells us the same thing we ask if they'd like a knuckle-sandwich? The boy Mainio showed me a framed photo of him as a the six year old Great Snake Hunter and when I asked him where he got it he replied, "Grandma's." And since the eMDM has the only living mother, I'd have to believe he drove the sixty miles to visit his mom and her mother. Without me. Without saying a thing. Parents, divorce is very hard on the kids too. I was preparing my 2005 taxes for my accountant from Estonia and I came across my divorce papers. It was finalized on "a date that will live in infamy" December 7th, 2004. Okay fine, it was sixty-three years after the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, but for me, it was just as devastating.
www.doctormalamud.com
Thursday . . . It's early in the morning, and since my forceful relocation (much like that of those of Japanese heritage were herded into  concentration camps situated in the Southwest United States at the beginning of World War II) 4:00am is now a hour where I would normally be fully awake and striving to do as little as possible for my rapacious, heartless and brainless employer. For some reason, I'm in the mood for really wretched old movies, and one is playing now, a 1987 stinker by the name of Open House, a thriller about a stealthy slasher who murders real estate agents. (Who can blame him?) It stars my favorite big-bosomed has-been Adrienne Barbeau. And, as is her trademark, I delighted in viewing her God given talents of two massive and droopy mammaries. It's been way too long since I've been with a woman. Sigh. My income's been cut in half, my son just hit a car in an accident which I cannot afford to file on with our insurance, and I just signed a $17,000 loan for his education. I'm drinking like Nick Nolte when he's running around with Glen Campbell, and it's real easy for me to grab hold of the belief there is no way out. Later in the morning I went to the used-book store. I had picked up a book about 'depression' written from a Christian perspective. After I cracked it open and read " ... don't you know depression is a sin against God? " I put it back on the shelf and bought a work titled "Necronomicon" for Mainio's Christmas. Geeze, I feel bad enough, I don't need some author who is making a living writing, to attempt to make me feel worse. If I had the power to chose or not chose depression does he think I would chose it over happiness?
www.doctormalamud.com
Tuesday . . . Monday night Mainio and I were watching 'Home Movies' when the voice of Paula Poundstone told her son that it was time she start dating again. How quickly Mainio became 'disinterested' in the animated program and changed the channel.  Because the Poundstone character is also divorced, I think he was protecting my feelings knowing how heart-broken I continue to be over his mother's decision to leave me twenty-eight months ago. I was thinking that being the ex-Mrs.Dr.Malamud recently visited with Mainio and Grandma, and everyone but me, that Mainio knew she was dating. That would shiver my timbers. In regards to our divorce, that (her dating) is the final emotional obstacle I must clear. Imagining it, my spirits submerged to dark and depression filled depths not enjoyed for many months. The surest way to overcome the certainty of her seeing another man, and my own sadness, is for Dr.Malamud to begin seeing other women. Even when I don't particularly care to and the feelings appear mutual. Tuesday after terminating another soul-searching and dreary midnight shift, I arrived at the apartment thirty five minutes later and stuffed myself with red-hot Cheetos, a microwaved Jimmy Dean brand sausage-egg-cheese biscuit and half a Nestle's Crunch bar. I awoke ten hours later. Day five without any alcohol and I'm still crawling around like a hummingbird raped by a condor. I've been 'eating healthy', so I just don't understand my malaise. I've been getting more than enough sleep. Maybe too much. As usual, I have a lot of things weighing on my mind. I went to my apartment's cigarette-carton-sized mailbox and found the sky blue card left by the postman to remind me two packages, two 'too large' packages, were waiting for me at the manager's office. So I wouldn't be mistaken for a fag, I removed my black ancient-fish shorts sporting green frills at the end of each leg, and instead donned a pair of old-man brown plaid shorts. As I lumbered to the office, 22% humidity air heated to 106F degrees clung to me like a super-heated fog. In the shade a young man was cleaning his ten year old SUV with a dust cloth. An always covered car was exposed to the elements revealing a beat up gold 1970s Plymouth Barracuda. The silver Nissan Altima, usually shod with the beautiful fat-spoked chrome wheels, was today wearing it's dull black factory steel wheels sans wheel covers. I looked down, as I often do while I'm walking these days, to see the parking space pizza box-sized oil spot left by a vehicle far past it's prime. I've gotta get out of here. My life is becoming far too sad and hopeless.
www.doctormalamud.com
Sunday . . ."No right, no wrong, no black, no white," said the middle-aged lady across the Starbucks table to her partner. As my body continues to signal me changes are going on, I face day three of my prescription anti-depressive diet of Lexapro. As if in the last stages of a novocaine injection wearing off, sometimes I feel my lips tingling.  Last night, or was it this morning? a recently ignited cigarette smelled as alluring as a heavy loaf of oven-fresh and still steaming banana nut bread. While the cigarette's deadly smoke enveloped and beckoned me, I stared down at the smoldering generic slowly turning to ash and shook my head. Because in a single day, over three decades ago, I abruptly ended my five-pack-a-day habit of inhaling Half & Half cigarettes. As it is below 90F degrees and 25% humidity, I am alone inside my Starbucks with one dozen customers outside. A threesome just got up to leave consisting of a man and wife sales-team, no doubt attempting to sell the affluent married woman (beautiful except for a too-large fanny), on some work-at-home scam. The team left in a cheap make-believe sports car. The woman, in a late model BMW. Actor Gary Busey was being interviewed on a local FM radio station this morning and he let slip that two movies will be filmed in Arizona. Maybe I should audition to be an extra. A job that in California pays almost $500 a day. As I packed up my writing materials to leave, from an adjoining table I hear "What happened to your dream?" I always hear what other people are saying. I always listen to the other people. I listen to my dead father (God rest his soul) whisper negatives to me from the place he lives in my conscience. When will I begin to listen to me?
www.doctormalamud.com
November 2006
Tuesday . . . I saw her at the OfficeMax Sunday night. From twenty feet away, I was checking her out: she seemed to be affluent enough and looked to be in the target age-range (40 to 55) I had set for the next Mrs.Dr.Malamud. Making her appear even younger than her shorts-clad, trim torso advertised, her college-girl-long auburn hair flowed down the sides of her face, ending in a soft inward curl directly above her sweatshirt clad shoulders. She turned to look in my direction. At me. Our eyes met and I sent her my best George Clooney smile. Our glance over, we parted and went to our separate aisles in the store. She to faxes, printers and shredders; Dr. Malamud to search out 20 by 30 poster board. However, like a bee drawn to honey (sometimes I hate being so damned handsome) she seemed to be hovering in every aisle I ventured down. I was wearing my forty-four inch waist, custom-tailored denim pants, dark blue t-shirt (a client brought back for me from Hawaii) and new tan Birkentock's and I was feeling almost joyful and confident. This was because my prescription SSRI was nurturing my nervous system with the additional micro-grams of serotonin my massive brain required. I thought it was interesting that she had looked at me and we had (senior citizen style) 'flirted'.  Soon enough, I slipped my debit card through the reader on the counter, signed my name on the glass, grabbed my plastic bag and left the store. Immediately I spied a convertible sports car with its top down. This was late model one that I did not have a decent photo of yet. Slipping my Cannon Powershot ELPH Digital camera out of my pocket I took my photo, making sure that I had enough space around the vehicle so that either end of it would not be cut off. Within an instant of taking the photo, here she comes and gets into the same topless vehicle. Only later did I think that I should have talked to her while quickly checking out her left hand for any wedding band. My long-time readers (those who haven't committed suicide or went screaming off into the September Sonoran Desert) will remember the many times when I hung out at the Barnes and Nobel Starbucks Cafe near the 101 freeway and Shea Boulevard in order to pen these pages. Well it looks like that will be fine place for me to write once more and to hope to verbally introduce myself to this fine female once again.
www.doctormalamud.com
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