How I Ended Up Rooting for the Yankees in the ALCS

I've been down to New Jersey twice in as many weeks. The first time was the Thursday after Columbus Day. All I knew then was that my oldest brother, Mike, had been hit by a car, and that it was "serious." On the car ride down, my dad mostly just slept, occasionally waking up to ask where we were and how I felt driving. "I'm fine", I would say. "Go back to sleep." After all, he'd already made the trip a few days before, and at a healthy 82 years old, and recovering from a recent bad fall, he needed his rest.

We got to the hospital and were greeted by my other brother, Dan. Always one to play host, he made small talk, asking about the ride down despite the exhausted look in his eyes. Our dad answered as if he remembered the ride down. After a couple of minutes we reached Mike's room. I went in, and he frankly didn't look as bad as I'd expected him to. Sure, some cuts and bruises, but his eyes were half open, and the nurse swore that he could hear, and maybe even understand us. I think what worried me the most that day were all of the tubes. I figured out that there was one for breathing, one for food, one for going to the bathroom (maybe two), and a couple for IV administration, but there were two that I didn't understand. And it were these unnatural ingressions into Michael's body that had me so worried and uncomfortable the first time I saw him after his accident, though I knew he'd be dead without them.

From Left to Right: Myself, Dan, and Mike

Walking back into the ICU's waiting room, I happened upon a conversation about baseball. My brother Dan and my dad were going at it because the Red Sox and the Yankees were both in the ALDS against the Houston Astros and Cleveland Indians, respectively. And frankly, if not for Mike's grave condition, this would have been all we were talking about. My dad is a Boston fan and raised me to be one as well, and that was all I'd ever really known having grown up on mostly Cape Cod (my early childhood in Yonkers ended before I could really pick a team). My brothers on the other hand are loud, proud Yankees fans, and unapologetically shoved it in my face growing up in the 90s before the Red Sox started winning pennants and rings, and back when the Yankees were an unstoppable baseball dynasty. Baseball was always a conversation at every family gathering I can remember, as is tradition in the households of New York and New England Jews, to the point that even when I was at my worst, having found myself a place in the New England heroin epidemic in the beginning of this decade, and not wanting to talk about anything, we could still talk baseball.

My beloved Sox quickly found their way out of the playoffs, while the Yankees went on to face the Astros in the ALCS. I found myself watching the Yankees games, lying to myself that it was just for entertainment, that I didn't care who won. I did, though, and soon enough I found myself openly rooting for them. And as news about Mike's condition became worse and worse, the series kept hope alive. Maybe I wanted something awesome for Mike to wake up to (it'd be badass to come out of a coma to news that your wildcard baseball team had made it to the World Series), or maybe I just wanted to keep that distraction on the table. Either way, the Yankees were eventually eliminated, while hope for Mike to recover slipped further and further away.

Yesterday Mike was removed from life support and passed away peacefully a few hours later. And so I'll be making my third trip to Jersey on Saturday, in just as many weekends. This time to lay my brother to rest. I'm not one to believe in any kind of a specific or tangible afterlife, but I plan on keeping the Yanks as my backup team as a way to keep spiritually close to my brothers. Both of them.

Me, too. (Or Whatever)

***this is piece is offered to you as a personal narrative and nothing more. Not a condemnation of the me too campaign. Just a narration of my internal experience as an exercise in catharsis for me, and maybe others. Content warning: description of sexual assault and harassment***

Here we are again. Discussing some high profile case of sexual assault all over social media. The perpetrator de jour - Harvey Weinstein, a person who has enjoyed a long successful career. A powerful and wealthy white male. I imagine meeting him. I imagine having that familiar feeling of unease, of the hairs on the back of my neck standing up, of wanting to shrink and cover myself, protect my body with baggy clothing and awkward poses. Because I’ve met Harvey Weinstein’s before. Not necessarily quite so notorious, or quite so powerful, or quite so wealthy, but men whose energy tells me they have gotten away with what they want before and will again.

So I decided to sit this one out. I have avoided articles, radio segments, and water cooler conversations. We keep doing this, talking about these high profile cases like it’s doing anything. Yelling at each other. Triggering each other. Calling for this or that. Thinking our way is what will work. Adding more aggression into the conversation. Recreating oppressive dynamics like centering cisgender and heterosexual experiences. And I’m tired. I feel hopeless, helpless, and powerless. I have submitted to those feelings. The only control I feel I can exert over this cultural shit show is to protect myself, my energy, and my body by choosing not to read any damn articles about Harvey Weinstein.

And now, the “me too” campaign. The new “#yesallwomen”. Another way for folks to attempt to convince people - * really * convince people this time - that sexual harassment and assault is a ubiquitous issue. And it is making me sink deeper into my pit, feel more hopeless, helpless and powerless.

I remember being street harassed for the first time at 13. I had already started puberty, but I don’t think you had to think twice about the fact that I was a minor. I can’t count the instances of harassment and assault that have happened since then, and I shouldn’t have to. I don’t owe you that. If you don’t understand that yelling profane things out your car window at a 13 year old is humiliating and scary, I don’t think recounting this story and saying “me too” will change your mind. It’s happened  c o u n t l e s s  times since then.

At 19 I was in an emotionally abusive relationship. Included in the abuse, this person told me I had no right to decided when we did or didn’t have sex because they identified as a sex addict. I eventually didn’t want to have sex with them at all. They would keep me awake late at night arguing with me until I gave in so I could get some sleep. I don’t think saying “me too” will change your mind.

I am a social worker. Seven or eight years later at a job, someone I know came by to say hi and and eventually asked if I know the person that I was in the abusive relationship at 19 with. I immediately panicked internally. What did they tell her? They’re still around? What are they telling others? Is this impacting my ability to build trust with people in this community? Are they friends? Is she on their side?

I reluctantly admitted knowing that person and asked why she asked? She stated she saw photos of us together on social media. I couldn’t look her in the eye. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears. I felt hopeless, helpless and powerless. She told me they had assaulted her, too.

At first I was relieved. I was in the clear. Then devastated to hear this person hadn’t changed much in all the time that had past. I don’t think saying “me too” will change them. I was devastated that the abuse and assault I have experienced at the hands of this person and others cause my knee jerk reaction to be to protect myself, to isolate, to shut down, and not consider that the person I was talking to had a similar experience. I don’t think saying “me too” will really do much to break through the walls I put up around that experience, between me and someone who could relate in a way I hadn’t imagined.

I understand that campaigns like #yesallwomen and #metoo have their place. Solidarity among survivors helps us survive and thrive. And probably a lot of other reasons. Maybe it does help. I’m not trying to tell you all how or what to do to cope with this mayhem. Especially since I feel like giving up. So much so that I can’t seem to appreciate the beauty of people shaking off the shame of sexual assault and harassment. I’m trying. I really am.

But in the meantime, I want you to see me giving up. I want you to see my hopelessness, my helplessness, and my powerlessness. My distrust. It’s all I have to give right now. So if you really want something else from me, here you go. You can have it.

And for my other siblings out there giving up, I am with you. I am with you not wanting to be seen. I am with you feeling even more isolated by the love and optimism and connectedness of the “me too” campaign. I live my life in a trauma informed way -  which means approaching everyone as if they might be traumatized in ways I will never know. Because you don’t owe me your story for me to have compassion for you, even when you’re being guarded or mean. Because we don’t need to read about Harvey Weinstein to know powerful men assault people and get away with it. Because we don’t need to say “me too” to know we have experienced trauma and assault. Because we don’t need to heal before we are ready, or join together and fight with the others. Because what works for them doesn’t have to work for us. Because it is ok to hide and be bitter and defensive and to protect your precious, precious energy in whatever way you can.  

-Anonymous

The Old Apartment

THE OLD APARTMENT

 by Will Burchard

CHAPTER ONE

          Three stories lie dormant before me, the paint chipping away like ash. Lead collects in the wind, bringing with it cigarettes and crumpled, unlucky scratch tickets. Three floors still standing, decaying and withering but still more alive than you are. If I had the strength I would bury this old apartment building with you, and I would kneel over your grave every day praying that these memories wouldn’t shoot out from the clay and the dirt. Still, it stands before me, a monolith and a tomb. “Are you ready to go inside?”, my sister Jean asks. I can’t see her eyes through her dark tinted sunglasses but I can hear the tears in her voice. She is one year younger than I am, 17 at the time of our fathers passing. We both had grown apart from our dad in his final two years, as school and social life began to dominate our time and empty bottles began collecting at his doorstep. I probably had not been to his house in over a year. We both grew up here, spending weekends in Providence while living with our mom in the suburbs further south. As we approach the door it feels far from a home. I get an eerie sense of dread, a heavy feeling of the undertow of regret pulling me into the depths of remorse.  

Instinctively I reach for the doorbell. Then I realize that no one is home. I start to go inside when I feel a rough, calloused hand on my shoulder, I turn around quickly and stare into the brown eyes of an aging drunk, Peter, one of my dads last tenants. His hand is clasped around a bottle of Guinness and he is teetering from right to left. I brush off his hand and he introduces himself, telling me what a great man my father was. His words have little impact and I barely pay attention to his ramblings. Since my father passed away barely a week ago, people have been coming up to me and telling me what a fantastic man he was and how sorry they were for my loss. They all claimed to know him so well.  Some of these people I grew up with and trusted. Many of them, however, seemed to only show up around the time of his passing. All of them wanted something. This is the sad, terrible thing about death. Once your soul has escaped these mortal boundaries, nothing that once belonged to you is sacred. Everyone from close friends and distant relatives felt they deserved something from my father, and after seven days of this I was beginning to realize that we didn’t owe these people a Goddamn thing. Yet I smiled and nodded and sent Peter stumbling back into his apartment. Finally, we entered. A winding auburn staircase greeted us, polished wood gleaming up twenty feet. I ascended, holding on to the railing like I had done so many times before in my youth. The wood felt cold, weathered, a far cry from a father's warm embrace. We finally made it to his apartment. I turned the key and stepped inside. Growing up, the first thing I would hear when I entered this old house was the sound of classical music. The soft hum or loud booms of opera and orchestras never stopped playing. Growing up with you I had just as much exposure to Beethoven and Chopin as I did the latest popular music on the radio. 

Now, there was only silence. It was a haunting, still sense of quiet, the sound of two decades of memories sinking into the ground. I notice your encyclopedia collection first, kept inside an antique wooden bookshelf with glass frames. I remember sitting on your lap and getting lessons in history, science, and astronomy from these dusty leather bound books. Although the knowledge in them is now likely old and outdated, they were my very first teachers. I never took the books with me, and to this day I wonder what has become of them. In the dining room clutter is all around, the piles of junk beginning to consume it. I sift through these piles of papers to find old tax documents, bills, and countless papers and drawing my sister and I brought home from school. Chicken scratch handwriting and smudges of crayon accompany note of “I love you Dad.” Some of these must have been from almost ten years ago. He never threw away anything we made at school.  

Across the room were piles of vinyl records and several antique record players. The black discs were beginning to collect dust. I was told many of them could be worth a good deal of money, but I couldn’t think about that right now. I couldn’t even read half of the titles, Italian and German composers from hundreds of years ago. I wish I had paid more attention to the music that you cherished so much. It was once your livelihood, although you stopped playing professionally long before I was born. Still, the sounds of your viola playing were constant growing up here. As the years went by and I grew older, I heard you play less and less, the sound of beautiful stringed music replaced by the hollow clank of empty liquor bottles.  I found your viola across the hallway in the bedroom. I opened the case and placed my hand on it, wiping away a layer of dust. I put the instrument to my chin and the bow to the strings and tried to make a sound, but all that I produced was a screeching echo. I wasn’t half the musician you were, although you tried so hard to pass along your knowledge. For a while, you succeeded, buying me a classical flute and driving me to lessons for years. I remember the proud look on your face when I walked away from a classical flute competition with the first place medal, the way you embraced me and kissed me on the cheek and told me that I was a natural, just like you. After five years of lessons I switched from flute to guitar, finding more inspiration in the sounds of Pink Floyd and Nirvana than Bach. I could see your disappointment at the time, and now I am left wondering, if I was such a natural, why didn’t I just play both at once? 

I walk up creaky, dusty stairs and reach the attic where my old room was located. Model planes and trains adorn the shelves, countless projects I built with my dad. He had this fascination with trains, and spent plenty of time detailing and building model train sets. He eventually passed on the hobby to me, and we began building them together. Down the hallway is the room where you kept your train set, a painstakingly detailed replica of a city with tracks that run the length of the entire room. Miniature cars and buildings add more layers of detail. I haven’t been in this room in years, and I had forgotten how impressive it all looked. I haven’t built models in a long time, but I can still remember carefully piecing together the different sets with my him, all the while the sounds of classical music reverberated through the house. I don’t know what became of the model set in that room. I refuse to linger on it, bothered by the notion that something he had invested so much time had been dismantled and thrown away. I wish I had done more to preserve it for his memory, instead it is just another unanswerable regret swimming in the currents of my subconscious. I can’t look at the models any longer and I leave the attic behind me, never to set foot in the room I grew up in again. 


Will Burchard is a native of the Providence, Rhode Island Area. He now lives on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. This is his first contribution to the Whydah Gally, and Chapters II and III will be published over the next week or so.

Falmouth: The Stronghold, Pt I

How did it come to be that this medium-sized, spread out, resort town of 25,000 year round residents has turned into a stronghold of recovering addicts in the fight against the suburban opiate crisis?

I haven't a fucking clue, but I'd be happy enough to describe it, and maybe even shed some light on this interesting demographic.

You see, unlike your average, once-addicted millenial that you'd usually find in one of the massive 12 Step meetings here on any given night, I grew up here. And, when I finally crawled out of the burning wreckage that was my part in this new "opioid epidemic", the fact that I was in the minority among other native Falmouthites (I have no fucking idea if we're actually called Falmouthites, but it sounds good) surprised the hell out of me. I guess that's because growing up here, I always saw this place as sleepy and uptight. So imagine my shock, in the dead of January, walking into a church that I'd barely ever even noticed before, and stumbling upon well over a hundred loud, happy, energized, youthful, somewhat reckless, recovering drug addicts. 

Part of my job at a local recovery resource center is documenting local resources for treatment and recovery. According to my latest count (and this can change weekly), there are 43 sober houses operating in Falmouth, and the bordering towns of Bourne and Mashpee. There are also two halfway houses, two thirty day rehabs, and a detox. Not to mention a plethora of outpatient and mental health services. I've estimated that there are currently ~1,700 addicts and alcoholics in recovery among Falmouth's year round population, or around 6%. 

So, how'd we all get here? Perhaps that's a question for another day.