Failure

And we never failed to fail
It was the easiest thing to do.
--"Southern Cross," Crosby, Stills & Nash

I was sitting with my face pressed against the
window in the back of the family car one Sunday afternoon when I saw him. He
might have been any age between thirty-five and fifty. He looked impossibly
old to my five-year-old eyes. He was shuffling along the sidewalk, his
enormous stomach barely restrained by a sleeveless white T-shirt. His face
was red, his hair thinning, and he needed a shave. The speed of his
ambling suggested that he had no particular place to go.

"That man," I thought, "is a failure."

There have been times in the last twenty-five years when I've wondered
whether I, as five-year-old social critic, was too quick to judge the
condition of another human being. There have been many more times, however,
when I've wondered whether I might find myself in his place, looking up
from the sidewalk one Sunday afternoon to see a five-year-old head solemnly
shaking as he passed.

My life, you see, has been full of failures.

This was impressed upon me most clearly during an encounter two years
ago with one of my former teachers. She asked if I was still working at
Sacred Heart. I replied that I was.

"Oh," she said. "Well, don't worry. I'm sure you'll get out of there
soon. Are you married yet?"

No, I replied.

"Dating anyone?"

Not that I was aware of.

"Oh," she said. "Well, don't worry. A lot of girls tend to wait until
they're much older before they go out with guys who are too nice. So,
have you published your first novel yet?"

"Actually," I said, "I write short stories."

"That's great," she said, in the tone of voice you would use to praise
a demented man who had learned to wipe his own drool. "Have you had any
published yet?"

"Well, no."

"Well, don't worry. I'm sure that you'll write a novel one of these
days, and that you'll be the next Stephen King." I find it interesting that
so many people who have never read my writing imagine that I want to be
Stephen King. I know many writers, and as far as I know, none of us aspire
to be Stephen King, although we may enjoy his work. Even Stephen King, it
appears, feels there is quite enough Stephen King in the world at present.
"Are you still living here in Plymouth?"

I was, and am, still residing in my hometown.

"Oh," she said. "Well, don't worry. I'm sure that one of these days
you're going to make your parents proud of you." She paused. "Not that
they aren't already, of course."

My friend Brad, upon hearing this story, pointed out that it is useless
to define yourself according to the standards of others, that success for
one person might be absolutely meaningless to someone else. It is, of
course, easy for Brad to say this, since he spent the last eight years of
his life researching a possible cure for cancer with a man who just won the
Nobel Prize, is now dating a very nice woman, and has not lost any of his
hair. However, he has a point. It makes no sense, for example, for me to
be jealous of people who make more money than I do, for two reasons:
1). Having a lot of money has never been very important to me.
2). I can always kill them and take their money.

For similar reasons, I shouldn't feel badly (although I often do) about
the fact that I have not met the "right" person, produced any offspring,
advanced the frontiers of human knowledge, or been asked to host "Saturday
Night Live." Yet. Although it would be nice to do all of these things,
none of them are essential to my image of myself as a human being, and none
have been the subject of my most intense effort and concentration.

Writing is a different story. I like to call myself a writer, partially
because it's easier to say than "underemployed graduate student," but mostly
because it fits my vision of the person I would like to be. I feel my
failures as a writer more acutely than I ever felt my failures as a teacher,
reporter, firefighter, or member of society. My failures as a writer goad
me particularly because there are so very many of them. For example, here
is how a week of my life typically appears:

Thursday: Leave "Writing the First Novel" class in deep state of
dejection after realizing, once again, how wonderful other members of the
class are in relation to myself. Resolve to astonish classmates next week
with at least ten pages of scintillating prose.

Friday: Wake, stumble around apartment in deep funk for two hours.
Sit down at computer and attempt to address the most shocking, egregious
errors identified by class in last week's writing attempt. Afterward, sit
down in front of legal pad to begin this week's work. After forty-five
minutes of thrashing and smacking self in head with pen, churn out one page
of turgid dreck. Abandon project in utter despair and leave to wash pen
marks from forehead.

Saturday: Return to legal pad, read over previous day's work, become
appalled by how awful it truly is, and rewrite the page as well as some of
what came before. Print out pages, wrestle with copying machine, deliver
pages to weekend writers' group, where fellow writers point out more places
in which story could be improved. Listen to NPR on way home from group,
sink into fit of hysterics after realizing I will never be as good as any
of the writers on "This American Life." Make more corrections.

Sunday: Read over previous day's work, gasp at its ghastliness,
suffer panic attack as I realize it's already Sunday and I've written only
one of the ten pages I'm going to write this week, and not very well.
Begin typing page into the computer, with heavy editing. Sit down in front
of legal pad and begin writing until I'm interrupted by a phone call. End
phone call by saying I need to get back to writing. Watch "Dexter's
Laboratory" on Cartoon Network.

Monday: Bolt out of bed in panic. Look at previous day's work. Am
nearly brought to tears by the horror of it. Type it into the computer,
edit previous two day's work, sit down in front of the legal pad for another
round. Receive two phone calls from well-wishers asking how writing is
going. Wonder if Stephen King uses caller ID.

Tuesday: See Monday.

Wednesday: Realize I've only written four of the ten pages I'd
planned to write this week, and that they aren't very good. Bring legal pad
to work, knock out a page or two during slow moments. Rush home that
evening and type out most recent efforts before collapsing in bed, a broken
shell of a human being.

Thursday: Bring mess to copier. After looking at how week's effort
appears in print, resolve once again not to type out writing late at night,
when faculties are not at their sharpest. Deliver five-page segment of
novel to classmates. Prepare for judgment.

And that's during a good week.

I wish I could say that I've gotten better at accepting my failures with
age, or that my mistakes have made me a better person, or something like
that. The truth is that failure hurts as much as it did in the eighth
grade, when Mrs. Joyal gave me an "F" on a preposition quiz, and I
concluded that being an English teacher must be the most wretched,
degenerate life known to human beings. I will admit to having learned
something from my mistakes, but it's rare that what I've learned was worth
the suffering and humiliation I had to go through to receive it.

In fact, the only positive thing I can say about failure is that it's
helped me distinguish who I really am from who I only thought I'd like to be.
For example, after a dismal season of Plymouth Youth Soccer, I concluded
that I was not cut out to be a soccer player, and quit. After muddling
through honors chemistry with a string of "D"s, I decided that I would
probably never make it as a research biologist. After my phone calls, notes,
Christmas presents and poems failed, and after she stopped speaking to me,
and after her friends told me to stay away from her, I eventually realized
that I was never going to date Beth Egan.

And yet I'm still writing. What's more, I still think I'm a writer,
despite all the evidence to the contrary. I am going to get up and fail,
day after day, not because I am a masochist, or because I necessarily
think I'm going to get any better, but because the pain of failure hasn't
been enough to destroy the sense that this is who I am, that writing is what
I want to do. And who knows -- maybe someday I really will make my parents
proud. Or the people who write for NPR. Or even "Dexter's Laboratory." Or
myself. Probably not. But you never know -- and that, at least, is enough
to keep me going for another day.