Flying blind

19 March 2020 – Tacoma, WA – Day 9

I had pneumonia once back in 2006. I was a heavy drinker – well, I still am a heavy drinker, if I drink – and I was also a heavy smoker. I had an odd routine, where I would get up at 0500, go to work early, get off at 1530 and head straight for the bar, my local place, just a few blocks from the house, Magoo’s.

Once there I would get a couple beers, in, and a smoke for every drink, and then after three or four beers, switch over to whiskey. Then I would walk home feeling warm and fuzzy and get dinner started for me and my wife.

Obviously, that’s not really a marriage – not when one partner is checking out on substances seven days a week – and things ended pretty much the way they always end for alcoholics, with a lot of denial and blame. Broken dishes, yelling, and then one day, she just left.

I kept going to the bar, of course. And one night a few weeks after my wife had left me I was hanging out at the bar with a friend. I don’t remember what we were talking about but he sounded like crap so I asked him what was going on and he laughed and said “doctor says I have pneumonia! HA HA!”

I didn’t believe him. I thought he was joking. No one would get pneumonia and go out to a bar. Two days later, I got a fever. Once week later, I was in bed, for 16 hours a day.

The second to the worst part were the sweats. I had almost no energy so it was difficult to take care of myself and every night I would sweat through my sheets. Lying there both cold and hot at the same time, night after night.

But the worst part was the cough. I would cough until I saw spots – like little fireworks going off in my eyes. I had an inhaler at the time and I would take rescue puffs off the inhaler just to feel like I could breathe properly. After two days of this, I went to see the doctor.

Doc gave me one of the basic antibiotics and told me to stop using the rescue inhaler. Then sent me home. Two days later I was worse. I’m not exaggerating to say that I could feel my life slipping away. I would lie there in bed, unable to eat, barely able to breathe, slipping in and out of sleep. When I was awake I would read a bit. If I had any energy I would cook some food. But slowly, I could barely do either.

I went back to the doctor. He was the kind of doctor who liked to argue with his patients. This was the doctor who told me once that he “didn’t believe in massage” and instead wanted to put me on Oxy for my back – “because it’s not addictive.”

Even he took one look at me, I’d lost 15lbs, and wrote me a new prescription. I don’t remember the name of the antibiotic he gave me but I remember it was fucking expensive. When I got home, I took the first dose and went to bed.

The next morning was almost like a miracle, or science, one of those two. I woke up and had energy, appetite. My cough was still there a bit, but nothing like just the day before.

My best friend called me that morning, he’d been bringing me gatorade and other supplies. He asked me if I’d gone to work. “No,” I said “I’m still sick, why?”

“Because I drove by and your motorcycle isn’t there,” he replied “I figured you must have gone to work.”

I threw on a bathrobe, took the phone with me, and went out to the garage. “Motherfucker,” I said “someone stole it.”

I’d bought that bike with my inheritance from my grandfather on my dad’s side. So, it wasn’t just that I’d lost a bike, I’d also lost the money he’d given me. Oddly, it was my ex wife who insisted I get insurance for the bike. You don’t need insurance on a motorcycle in Washington but I think she figured that my drunk ass would do something moronic and wanted to cover me anyway.

The insurance paid out in a few weeks. Just about the time I’d fully recovered from my pneumonia.

Back at the bar I met my buddy Curtis. He was an American who’d lived in England for a few years and was a Nottingham Forrest supporter. I had a few grand in my pocket and the topic turned to what I would do with the insurance money.

“Go see Arsenal,” he said.

This was a ridiculous idea. “I don’t know anyone there. How would I even get tickets?”

“Just go, talk to the concierge at the hotel, they will help you. Worst case, you go and you just watch the game on TV at one of the local bars. But you get to tour the stadium, and see everything before they tear it all down and build that new stadium.” He fixed me with one of his stares. He had a way of looking at people when he meant something, he just looked you in the eyes and held it there.

The wheels started turning.

“Fuck it. You’re right. I should go” and I raised a cheers to him and promised to get tickets that night when I got home from the bar.

Of all the decisions I’ve made when I was drunk, this was the only good one. I checked to see when an easy game was coming up – a few months away, enough time to get a passport, March 18th, 2006, Charlton. I looked online – was Orbitz even around back then – and booked a round trip flight and a hotel room in Piccadilly Circus.

One of the last things my Grandfather ever said to me before he passed was that ideas are worthless. What you do with the ideas is all that matters. Everyone has ideas, but not everyone does something with them. I took this on as my life philosophy and ironically, I’ve always felt like the Tottenham motto “to dare is to do” is polar opposite. Daring is not doing and as we have seen from their history, they sure dare a lot, and almost never do.

So I did. I didn’t just dream about going to London. I didn’t just talk about it like I had done so many times before. I took the money that my grandfather gave me and went to London, by myself.

My only goal was to see the Arsenal at Highbury. I had no blog. I knew no one there. I was flying blindly into the unknown and I have rarely felt more alive.

Qq