The Wreckoning - December 8, 2007

You'd think the current strike by the Writers Guild of America against Hollywood's Eight Biggest Assholes would've allowed me the time to double, even triple, my postings on the Wreckoning, but here I am having gone over a month since my last post and nothing to show for it but several half-written stories and a spam-filled inbox tirelessly offering second mortgages and fake Viagra under the guise of readers' comments.

Out of the tremendous respect I hold for my hundreds of thousands of readers, I am compelled to offer an explanation. The reason for the absence is twofold. Two months ago, yours truly stood helplessly by as the cloud of domestic bliss that had hung thickly about the castle for the last five years blew away in the dry, deathly heat of the Santa Ana winds, leaving in its wake only the gutting, tear-stained revelation that love is, in fact, a chainsaw.

A broken heart and a dour Scotsman...A crippling combination.

A breakup is flawless in its ability to make the stupidest, sappiest love song elicit such a dam-break of tears that even the Ice Queen receptionist at the dentist's office was so moved as to get out of her chair, come out into the waiting area and deposit into my lap a billowing mound of pink tissues. That, and I was upsetting the children.

What a breakup is not good at, in my case, is getting me to eat, much less write about something as trifling as eating out. I still had Thursday Dinner with the Gays as my weekly restaurant outing, but as my ex has always been part of those dinners, they just served as painful reminders of what had been destroyed.

So I'd stay home, where, under happier skies, I am an excellent and enthusiastic cook. But on many nights over the last two months, when even frying a pork chop seemed too daunting, I'd find myself sprawled across the couch, shoving down handfuls of undressed, triple-washed Ready Pac field greens straight from the bag while weeping through repeat viewings of Tell Me You Love Me.

The tears come in times like these and you learn there's not a damn thing you can do to stop them, even when you or your friends are trying to do something to cheer you up. Enough weeks have passed since Aaron's Legendary Sobbing Round of Golf for it to rightly become the punch line it deserves to be among a certain circle of my friends, but at the time, it was truly life's nadir. "Wow, that guy's game must've really hit the shitter," came a voice from one passing foursome.

But over time, the storm clouds begin to part. The sun peeks out for longer and longer. My self-worth returned. I remembered I'm a rich, white American male and that's not such a bad thing to be. I get a glimpse of myself in the mirror and realize that I'm a catch and a half. I've lost ten pounds, eight from my recently wash-boarded middle and two more from my overworked tear ducts. The crying jags have become the exception rather than the norm these days, provided I don't see any film involving a wet, injured woman in war-torn Europe or hear even a snippet from any of eleven Snow Patrol songs.

The second reason for my absence is the writers' strike itself. Even a spend-happy mogul such as myself is keeping a tighter grip on the wallet in these uncertain times. I recently had to scale back my assistant's schedule from eighty-five hours a week to eighty hours a week. And I've forced myself, grudgingly, to switch from the 16-year-old Lagavulin to the 12-year-old Macallan as my go-to Scotch. We're all feeling the crunch, but we're in for the long haul.

In the meantime, I'm getting back out there. Now the Wreckoning becomes not only a place to sound off about the places where I eat and drink, but an examination of the children, train wrecks and emotionally-stunted monsters I bring along as my dates.

This should be fun. For you, at least. Thanks for not breaking up with me.

Posted by Aaron Black at 12:16 PM