Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Failure?

That year I read 78 books. It was a feat only a brooding teenager could accomplish. I started with Wuthering Heights by Charlotte Brontë. Then, Journey to the Center of the Earth, 1984, The Great Gatsby, and, of course, Frankenstein (by Mary Shelley). I had a lot to catch up on. Then, that summer, on the cusp of turning sixteen years old, I read On the Road by Jack Kerouac. And my life changed again. I told you I was a very teenage teenager, but what could I do? I was the perfect subject for the type of hedonistic living the Beats glorified. So, this is what it is to be a writer, I thought to myself, have crazy adventures full of sex, drugs, art, no attachments, and then write about all of it for three mad, frenetic weeks, high on Benzedrine and caffeine and then pack up again and set off on your next great adventure. It felt like the antithesis of my life, dictated by math homework and petty high school drama. I wanted that life, that freedom, that power to write about the self. I wanted to be Jack Kerouac. I probably wanted to be with him too. But above all, I wanted to become a writer. As a result of my failure to get into that school, I was forced to change direction, and I found purpose in the pivot. I had emerged from a stunted path into a bright, dazzling light.

That rejection was my first heartbreak, I finish telling you. I felt so humiliated and afraid of ever wanting anything ever again but look where it got me in the end. Little did I know that there is life after death, after all. Phoenixes do hatch from the ashes.

You rub at the goose pimples rising on my arm. The water is starting to get lukewarm. We rise slowly, drops streaming down our bodies in rivulets, the bathwater lapping at our knees and shins. We’ve put candles everywhere, French cade and lavender scented, and turned off the lights. Our bodies are outlined by the soft orange light, our shadows flicker palely on the walls. As we wrap ourselves in our towels and pull the plug on the bath, I think of the baths I used to take with another lover some years ago. I don’t tell you this, I don’t think the ghost of my past lover is welcome in the condensation of this bathroom between our naked bodies, but I’m remembering those other baths years ago, and I’m remembering the heartbreak that followed them. After all, an ending can be a type of failure too.

It’s been one year since that lover and I ended things. Our relationship had failed. Well, our relationship had failed to continue, it had failed to deliver on its promise of presence, continuity, and companionship. It’s not that the relationship itself had been a failure; who’s to judge that?

In his absence, in the gap that our failure had left, I stepped in and took up the space.

For a long while, the relationship had worked, it had run smoothly, delivered joy, offered comfort, but eventually, its engine had started to sputter and huff, and suddenly a flashing message in red caps popped up on the dashboard as the apparatus drew to a staggering halt. WARNING: ENGINE FAILURE. We had to get off the ride. And we did, we got off. Immediately after, I was in a state of shocked numbness. Heartbreak paralyzed me, but like I did when I was fifteen, I suppressed the sadness with an iron fist and chose to see that moment as a wake-up call. Using the momentum from my descent, I packed my bags and flew all the way to another country. I stood at the doorways of a series of rooms and apartments in search of my new home. Then, I did all the clichés (I love a cliché). I partied loads, slept around, got more tattoos, traveled to new cities and countries. I chose to say yes to everyone and everything. In many ways, what I was doing was returning to myself. In his absence, in the gap that our failure had left, I stepped in and took up the space. I let myself expand in directions I had until then not dared to. From the ashes, I was reborn again. And somewhere along the line, I met you.

The tender end of On the Road reads, “I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.” Dean Moriarty is the pseudonym for Neal Cassady, Beat Generation muse and eccentric, and Jack Kerouac’s partner in crime throughout the novel. These lines come to my mind now, as they do every now and then, because Neal Cassady, baptized “the holy goof” by Kerouac, is one of my patron saints of failure. Cassady, despite his huge influence on the writers and artists that surrounded him, didn’t publish much original work in his lifetime. On top of that, Cassady was someone who constantly failed to live up to his romantic and parental obligations. It seems like his fate was to persistently fail. However, his saintliness comes as a direct result of this damnation. It’s not like he set out to fail, but in doing it, he shows just how eager he was to try, to test the waters, to tread down paths, any path, and take in the views, whether they led somewhere or not. Cassady was, as the famous line in On the Road goes, “mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time.” To fail is to live wildly. To fail is to not give up.

The drain gurgles as it swallows the remnants of the bathwater. I dry my hair and turn to you. I think of Dean Moriarty. For you, I’d fail a thousand times over.