A Valentine’s Day Disaster

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

It was as if every wish I had made in childhood for a hole in the ground to open up and rescue me had been answered in reverse …

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I bear a scar from the first Valentine’s Day that I had a reason to celebrate as Valentine’s Day, as a part of a couple.

Until my last relationship, my romantic history was a long walk alone in an empty field, punctuated by moments in which I interrupted someone else’s walk, attempted to try a relationship, and discovered that I try people’s patience instead. (All the women I have dated are brilliant and accomplished and I was lucky to get to know them; I was stuck at age 15 for an astonishingly long time, however.)

My love right now, my soul mate, Jen, is quite brilliant and accomplished, and for the first time in my life, four-plus years now, I am an equal partner and have opened myself up to having an equal partner. Not too bad for a 48-year-old 15-year-old.
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Putting Help on I.C.E.

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“When Will We Know?”—an ongoing series

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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirmed on February 10 that ICE agents this week raided homes and workplaces across the nation in an immigration enforcement crackdown code-named “Operation Cross Check.”

The Washington Post reported that the search for undocumented immigrants became “unusually intense” this week and listed the locations as: Vista, Pomona and Compton, California; Austin, Dallas, and Pflugerville, Texas; Alexandria and Annandale, Virginia; Charlotte and Burlington, North Carolina; Plant City, Florida; the Hudson Valley region of New York; and Wichita, Kansas.

(I live in the Hudson Valley. The local media has not yet identified the location of any ICE raids that took place in the Hudson Valley.)

ICE does not usually release statements about its activities before a mission is completed, but many rumors proliferated about Operation Cross Check, so an ICE official, Virginia Kice, reported that any numbers of arrested individuals that the bureau might announce are “preliminary given that the five-day operation concluded only hours ago”—which confirmed that the raids were taking place and that the operation was finished—and that more would be revealed on Monday.

Kice told The Daily Beast that thirty-eight were arrested in the Los Angeles area on February 9 alone, and multiple sources report that as many as 160 individuals (one source old me the number is “200+”) were arrested in the operation. Also detained by ICE and its affiliates this week was any ability to get help to those being held, as several human rights activists have learned.

Here is that story:
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Lush Life

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

A personal reflection sparked by Olivia Laing’s excellent 2013 book The Trip to Echo Spring.

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Every alcoholic in recovery has a collection of anecdotes that can be simultaneously heartbreaking, outrageous, and hilarious. Perhaps they are hilarious only to fellow alcoholics; perhaps they can not even be listened to by outsiders. For an outsider, most alcoholic anecdotes may as well conclude with the same dark punchline, an interchangeable rubber-stamped ending: “And then I got away with it again.” Or, “I didn’t die that time, either.” And then comes the next hair-raising—or eyebrow-raising—tale.

Every alcoholic in recovery is living a story with a weird ending, if they remain in recovery. It is that two-word pair there, “in recovery,” that provides the surprise, the weirdness, a period of life as surprising to behold as some of the antics, the many bizarre actions and activities and inactions and inactivities that were surprising for outsiders to watch unfold in the previous life.
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