Yesterday, August 26. A day of days for the Collins family. My son Noah started his first day of school (kindergarten) yesterday. Twenty-one years before that was the day I left the unfriendly confines of Mount Vernon, New York for the greener pastures of college life at the University of Pittsburgh. A lifetime of changes coming down to one date, one time, for both father and son.

Noah wasn’t as excited about his first day of school as I was about mine some thirty-four years ago (That was September 8, 1974. Except that kindergarten classes were half-days in most of the country back then.) Noah wasn’t unexcited, though, either. He gave us a bit of a time getting out of the house, but we were able to get him to school on time, without any public displays of tears. At least until after he waved to us as he went with his class into the school building. So brave of him. So proud we were.

What does all of this mean? Not much if we don’t remain as diligent as parents of our school-aged child as we were when Noah was a baby. Yesterday was just the first of roughly 2,300 school days between now and 2021, the year my son turns eighteen and hopefully goes on to college. Reading, writing, print and cursive, addition, subtraction, multiplication tables, fractions, decimals, and long division, basic science, an additional language, tying shoes, summer camps, family vacations, friends, puberty, dating, algebra, geometry, trig, bio and chemistry and possibly physics, sports, music, dance, essays contests and science fairs, school trips and school plays, PTA meetings and parent-teacher conferences, and so many other things that I’ve forgetten or just haven’t thought about for a while are on our agenda for the next thirteen years. And we better make enough money and carve out enough time to make most–if not all–of this possible.

Still, I know all too well how life and bad parenting can sidetrack even the most focused and even-tempered of kids. I got off to a great start in kindergarten and in first grade, only to get completely sidetracked in second grade by my mother and father’s divorce, arguments, drunken rages, and my mother’s mystery kidney illness. It took a year and a half for me to make the adjustment. Only to be sidetracked a few years later by the Hebrew-Israelite nightmare that my ex-stepfather and mother brought into our lives.

We have to try as hard as we can to give Noah every opportunity to grow up in a nurturing environment that enables him to grow up and to learn naturally. Period. In the event of any major changes in his life, short of our or my own demise, we must do everything we can to protect him or soften the blow. I want him to have every advantage and every wonderful experience that I didn’t get the chance to have or only imagined for myself over the next thirteen years.

Noah’s another motivation for Boy At The Window. He just doesn’t know it yet. I hope to have it published before he finishes grade school.

My apologies for not posting last week. Too much drama at home, too many revisions to make to the manuscript.

Enough excuses. Below are drafts of a sample of chapters from Boy At The Window for your review. I will also post these in my “Other Writings” page of the website for your convenience.

I hope that all of you will read, enjoy and give me your thoughts, criticisms and praises about these drafts whenever you have a moment.

Thanks so much to all of you for your support and encouragement over the past year or so, and thanks in advance for your responses to these draft chapters.

Preface.pdf

Beginnings.pdf

AmazingGrace.pdf

PartingShots.pdf

It’s been a full year and a half since I completed the first draft of Boy At The Window. Since then, I’ve added to, subtracted from, rewritten and otherwise edited and revised the manuscript five times, most recently in March of this year. I’ve revamped my query letter so many times that I’ve lost track of what it was I wanted to say originally in it (not really, but it has felt that way at times). Yet with all of that, I’ve managed to interest about two dozen agents in Boy At The Window. Only to find out in a week or two weeks or a month or a year that while I’m a “wonderful writer” with an “interesting story,” that their “enthusiasm level” isn’t high enough for them to pursue an editor for publication of my manuscript.

It’s no secret what this means, at least from the rejecting agent’s perspective. No matter how well written, my mundane story of trials and tribulations of a Black kid growing up in the New York City area only to turn into a minor success story is old news, because there are so many books out there that shed light on the realities of Black males in America (not!). Actually, my book might not be making agents see lots of $$$$, since I’ve only published one book (and a self-published one at that), I haven’t made a $100 million and I’m not an elite journalist on the New York Times‘ payroll. That is the untold secret of the publishing world these days. That the quality of writing isn’t the first thing agents or editors look at anymore. It’s likely not in the top three or five either. Fame or recognized expertise or obvious leadership experience or being a veteran best-selling author or being rich (or a combination of all of these) are the leading reasons for publishing a new book in this business. If I go by this reality, I would probably have to wait until I’m at least fifty or dead before anyone will take a serious look at what I have to say.

So how do I break through, find the right agent, who in turn will help me find the right editor for a manuscript that I know is worthy of publication, that can be both entertaining and of benefit to readers? I haven’t completely figured out what the next steps are. I could put it aside and work on other projects. But if my memoir isn’t getting a lot of traction, I can’t imagine a collection of essays on American privilege and entitlement doing any better. I might want to think about self-publishing, but in light of my limited success with Fear of a “Black” America, I think it would be a disservice to my manuscript and all of the people I interviewed (or didn’t interview) to go that route. My wife says that Stephen King received anywhere between 200 and 300 rejections before finding a publisher for his first book thirty-five or so years ago. But as I’ve pointed out to her, he’s generally a fiction writer, and there are far more agents and editors for those than there are for nonfiction, especially memoirs.

I haven’t given up the ghost yet, though. I do think that I should contact another batch of agents with my refined query letter. I get to first base with it about thirty-five percent of the time these days, which I think is pretty good. Still, I can’t put all of my eggs in the query-letter-as-siege-engine basket, continuing to hurl boulders into the walls of Ba Sing Se (ala Avatar). I’m also thinking that maybe I should talk with some folks about talking about my story and my manuscript, maybe on the Web or TV or radio (it’s all a part of my proposal for the book anyway).

Perhaps the best thing I can do for Boy At The Window right now is to let some of the manuscript see the light of day. So what I plan to do in the next week or two is to post a few excerpts of the manuscript on my website for your reading and feedback, probably somewhere between one and two chapters. My interest here is only to find out from you if this is something that you would read if published, or if you’re only reading my site until Jon Stewart comes on at 11 pm on Comedy Central. 🙂

I’ll continue to blog and blather on all things related to Boy At The Window in the meantime, and hope to see some of your comments about my blogs in the near future. Thanks again for all of your support!

For some of you, including my wife, the subject of this posting will either be very bizarre or very annoying (or both as the case may be). Normally I usually talk about something related to Boy At The Window, not the “Boy In The Iceberg,” the original episode of my now favorite animation series of all-time, Avatar: The Last Airbender. Despite all of the strangeness over the ending of the series between Nickelodeon and its creators, it’s final four-part episode, “Sozin’s Comet,” aired Saturday evening. I must admit, I found myself tearing up on several occasions. It wasn’t all it could’ve been, but it was mostly a fitting end to a great series.

I know, I know, based on my background, I guess I should’ve been more upset about the series end of HBO’s The Wire, but I wasn’t. I saw more of myself in the characters of Avatar than in any other series I’ve ever watched. From the goofiness of Sokka to the cosmic spiral concerns of Aang, from the Kim Possible-ness of Suki to the need for redemption of Zuko, and from the utter evilness of Fire Lord Ozai to the complex nature of Iroh, I saw myself and many of my key influences in the characters throughout the show’s three-year run. I saw a bit of my first crush in Suki, Toph and especially Katara. I saw more of my second crush in Azula and Ty Lee. My AP American History teacher was a combination of King Bumi and Iroh. I saw myself in Aang and Zuko and Hakoda, especially in the third season. Surviving the things I survived and succeeding even to the extent that I did made me appreciate the complexities imbued into all of the characters. I even felt sorry for Azula as the series wore on from season two to season three.

As those of you who have read my postings on the end of the Disney series Kim Possible last fall already know, I’m a sucker for epic stories of turning possible annihilation into ultimate victory. Stories that illuminate struggle, redemption and renewal, unrequited love, succeeding against long odds, reluctant leadership coming from unusual people, and a deep sense of commitment to a vision and understanding of one’s self in the process. Avatar has done all that for me and more. It’s enabled me to form a deeper bond with my son Noah, to understand more why I react to certain things (like the love story of Aang and Katara, for instance) the way I have, and to rediscover my interests in Eastern philosophies and views of the world.

Not that the show is completely engulfed in the Dalai Lama or Tai Qi. It also presents women who kick ass and assert themselves — a very attractive quality, I might add. It shows young people who assume adult responsibilities while struggling with every important issue that any human being can face, including their own identity. It also shows a world in turmoil, on the verge of tearing itself apart, all in the name of spreading an ideology, an identity, that others are either forced to accept or get run over by in the process.

For those of us who are Christians, Jesus ultimately plays the role of Avatar. But in the end, it is each of us who has a responsibility of restoring balance to the world, to our world. That hopefully will be the role that the next president will take on. In a sense, the way many folks around the world see presidential hopeful Barack Obama is the way that many characters in Avatar saw Aang — as providing hope for a future worth living at a time when so much is out of balance. While Obama certainly isn’t the “last airbender” or isn’t likely to “glow it up” in the Avatar state, he does need to be the bridge over a number of divides in our world in order to fulfill his promise in restoring balance in our world and in America’s place in it.

Perhaps the only things for me to resolve as a result of my love affair with Avatar is both my immediate future and my distant past. I must resolve to keep striving for Boy At The Window’s publication while not allowing everything I have written about my past to define my present and future. I also must acknowledge my regrets, one of which includes never having given myself the chance to reveal my love and affection to my first crush. I must also take joy out of those things that do work out, including my marriage and with my son. I hope that he finds his Katara one day in a way that I couldn’t until I met his mother. In any case, I can’t wait until he’s older and can appreciate the series even more than he does now.

This week my father Jimme turns sixty-eight. That sentence is weird for me. My father Jimme, who I really didn’t get to know as a sober, recovering alcoholic until he was fifty-eight, just as I turned twenty-nine. The fact that he’s still alive and doing really well, all things considered, as he enters his late sixties. That we have any relationship at all is a miracle, and it confirms the old adage that is the title of today’s blog post.

Based on interviews for Boy At The Window, my own recollections and the stories told to me by Jimme and my mother growing up, my father’s alcohol likely started the year he moved to New York City (1962) and ended in ’98. From the Cuban Missile Crisis to Monicagate is but one way to look at it. Why so long? Why in New York City, likely the worst place to become an alcoholic?

My father’s grew up as the youngest of eight or 10 (I forget which at the moment) children in rural central Georgia in the 1940s and 1950s. He learned a lot about hard work and perseverance. Unfortunately, his formal education ended with the seventh or eighth grade, not uncommon in the Jim Crow era of segregation and exclusion. He was smart, which made him weird. He was shy, which made him vulnerable. And, not so coincidentally, his voice and diction made him sound Southern, which made him someone who likely should’ve never moved to the big city.

By the time my mother met Jimme in the late ’60s, my dad worked as a janitor for the Federal Reserve Bank in lower Manhattan making nearly $300 a week. It was good money for many people in ’69, and for a Black man with only a middle-school education, it was the American Dream. A dream so good that it was too good to stay true. He eventually lost that job because of his addiction, as well as numerous others. By the time my mother filed for divorce (’76), he worked as a janitor at Salesian High School in New Rochelle. The divorce process left Jimme wounded in many ways, and sent him deeper into alcoholism than I could’ve imagined at the time. Salesian fired him as well.

In the ’80s, Jimme worked as a janitor, a carpet-cleaning, wood-varnishing technician who for Glen and Bruce, the Levi brothers. Their offices were on West 64th and East 59th, near Jimme’s Manhattan bars. It was a job that he could show up drunk to. It was a job that he’d have for nearly twenty years (only to end when the FBI arrested one of the brothers for attempting to hire a hit man to take out one of their competitors; I’m sure that this is a story that’s stranger than fiction).

Among many things that I remember about my father between ’79 and ’97 was how vulgar his language would become once he sniffed alcohol, much less drank it. In finding him at bars or hanging out near liquor stores or on street corners as a tweener and teenager, he used a number of stock phrases that I could’ve easily made into a comedy routine.

Most of what Jimme talked about was money, drinking, his drinking buddies, and occasionally, women. But after he had his “pep-up,” which is what he called his Miller Beer, he started mouthing off like someone tried to pick a fight with him. “I’m a big shot, mudderfucka. I make fitty-million dollas a week. Look a’ dis po’ass mudderfucka. That mudderfucka cain’t do shit for me.” If anyone dared question his analysis of himself and his situation, Jimme would take it to another level, he’d say, “Muddafucka, you ain’ got shit nobody want. I buy an’ sell muddafuckas around here. I kick yo’ muddafucka ass.” Or “I’m da boss of da bosses. No one tell me what ta do!” The ultimate in Jimme’s mind was to say, “I make fitty-million dollas a week . . . I make eighteen thousin’ dollas an’ hour . . .” and with a wicked laugh, say “My name’s JC—Jesus Christ!” to end his expletive-filled tirade.

Despite this, despite his idiotic attempts to make a “man” out of me by paying for a prostitute to celebrate my seventeenth birthday or repeatedly calling me “faggat” because I had gone another week without getting “my dict wet,” there was a silver lining. Me and my brother Darren saw so much of New York because of being around our father and working for him in the ’80s. Whatever else could be said about Jimme, he did come through for us most of the time when we needed money during our welfare years (’83-’87). Of course, I had to hunt him down every Friday at a watering hole between East 241st in the Bronx and West 23rd in Manhattan for nearly five years to get it.

Thankfully, college, graduate school and working for a living ended this aspect of our relationship. It took another decade of drinking binges and fights and the loss of his one-room apartment and job for Jimme to fully hit rockbottom. Homeless and penniless, his brothers and sisters in Georgia convinced him to finally give up the excitement of New York and the pretense that he was a big shot in the city that never sleeps.

Every time he visits New York these days, my father is always amazed by how he lucked out. Most of his drinking buddies are long dead or are well on the way to a grave. He knows it’s only by the grace of God that he’s still here and still doing well. And he loves to remind me–and himself also– “If I can change, anyone can.” Happy birthday, dad!

Ever so often a person comes into my life who has the ability to influence my world view, my view of myself and my way of relating to the world. These people are like comets, in that they hang around for a season and then leave, usually returning once or twice (if I’m lucky) over the course of my life (at least to this point). This week, one person comes to mind. She’s the one person who helped me begin my healing and growth process in the aftermath of my obsession with my second crush. She helped me renew my faith in love and romance, not to mention my faith in myself. All while going through her own hard times at home and with her significant other.