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July
The Big Island
“We just got back from three months of driving
a rented RV along the coast of Australia,” Ken
said, eyes gleaming.
“It was amazing,” added his wife,
Gisela, a South African woman in her late 30s with
a beautiful face and brazen crew cut.
Just before meeting our new best friends, my
wife, Elena, and I had been sitting at the bar in
Kona Village, a family resort on the big island in
Hawaii, watching a mommy and baby humpback whale
breach out in the Pacific Ocean.
After they arrived, Elena kept asking them
detailed questions, clearly convinced that we would
soon be heading to Australia too, if she could
figure out how to home school the kids along the
way.
“Imagine a population smaller than New York
City, spread out over a country as big as
ours,” Ken explained.
“What are the beaches like?” Elena
asked.
“Pristine,” Gisela responded with a
British-sounding accent, “if you saw ten
people that would be a busy day.”
“Wildlife?” I questioned weakly,
trying to play along, but disturbed by the
direction the conversation had taken.
“Kangaroos everywhere,” Ken said.
“But the coolest was a Koala Bear
wanderin’ from one tree to the next right
beside the RV. He stretched halfway up before
climbin’ the rest of the way and goin’
back to sleep.”
“That’s so cool!” Elena said
enthusiastically, her wheels turning. During our
seven-year marriage, we had been to Florence
(twice), Athens, Paris (twice), London, a dude
ranch (four times), Florida (countless times), New
York City (countless times), Laguna Beach (for a
month once), Los Angeles, Dallas, Yellowstone,
Grand Canyon, Sedona, St. Lucia, the Bahamas, and
now Hawaii.
As much as I really liked Ken and Gisela, this
whole exchange set off a familiar terror that was
difficult for me to hide. As a hulking former
swimmer and rower, I still had my fair share of
demons. I was still alone in a certain sense, not
by choice but necessity.
Something my mom had once said about the film As
Good As It Gets—Jack Nicholson plays an
obsessive compulsive with whom Helen Hunt falls in
love—involuntarily entered my thoughts. Gisela
had mentioned port-a-potties and campground showers
and my mind had somehow connected the strange
bathroom protocol on a three-month road trip in
Australia to Nicholson coming home to pull a bar of
soap from his medicine cabinet (stacked with
nothing but soap), rubbing his hands under scalding
water, dropping the bar in the trash and repeating
the process over and over again, exemplifying
extreme germ phobia. He even brings plastic
silverware to the one restaurant he patronized.
Mom said the film helped her understand my dad
in a way nothing else ever had. Dad is perhaps the
smartest man I have ever known, having graduated
from Princeton, Oxford, and Yale. But he has to
arrange the chairs in a certain way at family
gatherings and becomes visibly upset when food is
served in a way that doesn’t meet his
expectations. He is not as extreme as Jack
Nicholson in the movie, but his
obsessive-compulsive tendencies can lead him to
dark places. These compulsions were a source of
huge fights in my house growing up and continued to
pain me as an adult. There are certain behaviors
that he simply can’t control; but mom always
wished he could.
The reminder was a very unwelcome thought as I
attempted to fit in with the heavy drinking crowd
at the bar. I graduated from high school a year
early to leave home abruptly at 17, determined to
escape my parent’s relationship. Yet now, at
45, the terror had me thinking that maybe I
hadn’t outrun my DNA after all. I stared into
my diet coke and remembered my first experience
away from home.
Kids are playing four square and tether ball and
jumping off the dock during free swim in a chorus
of boyish delight. The late afternoon sun shines on
the lake at Camp Becket. But I'm in the dark back
corner of my lower bunk, crying hysterically, my
head buried in a pillow so no one can hear me.
I had been brave all day long. I had awoken
disoriented; why was I in this strange place? I
somehow managed breakfast in the dining hall,
woodworking, swimming, lunch, nap, and archery. But
after suppressing my angst, I felt like I was going
to burst. I made my way back to the cabin to be
alone.
"Tom, you alright?" Stuart, my counselor, asks
softly from the doorway. I look up, my eyes red.
"Let's go for a walk, son."
The camp director feels that talking to my
parents would only upset me more. When I finally do
a few days later, my parents tell me that it’s
important that I stay at camp for my own good.
I bravely make it through a month, realizing I
can swim and run faster than any other kid my age.
But the open wound hasn't healed by the time I get
home. It has only festered.
I wouldn’t call myself a recluse now. I
like people fine — just in small doses. I do
like being alone. And I do like doing the same
things repeatedly (obsessive compulsive?). I ate,
drank, earned money, exercised; all to excess.
Having overcome those addictions over a decade ago,
my current vices include coffee, ice cream, and my
Blackberry. I struggle without a normal routine;
change of any kind is excruciating. I am not always
at ease socially.
I'm 19 and in the back of a U-haul van in the
fetal position, trying to fall asleep. There's an
open keg at my feet; the stench of beer fills the
air.
I am on the rowing team's “Hose &
Hike,” which consists of piling into a van on
a Saturday afternoon, drinking beer en route to a
women's college, finding a friendly bed to sleep
in, and then waking up Sunday morning to hike up
and down a mountain.
Inside, my rowing teammates are playing strip
twister. I have had another meltdown. I thought,
wrongly, that I could handle the trip. So I snuck
out of the party to try to calm down and get some
sleep.
After my divorce 14 years ago, I dated some nice
girls (and some clinically insane ones too). But
none captured my attention the way Elena did. We
were engaged in two months and married in six. I
grew up in a Quaker family as close to a commune as
you can get without official designation. Think
lesbians, pot, protests, FBI surveillance, and
endless community meetings. Elena grew up in
Bronxville, New York. While I was getting arrested
with my dad for committing acts of civil
disobedience at Westover Air Force Base, Elena was
becoming a debutante.
Four months into our relationship, Elena and I
took our first trip together to the Amalfi Coast.
She mentioned she wanted to see it and I
immediately booked the trip to please her. After
two planes, a van, a ferry, and a taxi, we found
ourselves on the very tip of Capri in a room with
an amazing terrace overlooking the limestone
masses, the Faraglioni, jutting out of the
Tyrrhenian Sea.
I sleep horribly the first night, suffering
through nightmares of abandonment and humiliation.
When I finally awake, I walk outside to the deck to
stare down hundreds of feet at the birds swirling
along the cliff below. My childhood fear of heights
is suspended in that moment watching the birds fly
in and out of the holes in the massive limestone
cliffs rising directly out of the impossibly blue
sea.
We wrap ourselves in thick white robes, don
sunglasses, and order espresso, fruit, and pastry,
basking in the beauty surrounding us. It’s the
first time I remember feeling completely at home.
Soon the terror returns, but it’s a sure sign
of progress.
Before meeting Elena, I had never been to a
charity event. I taught myself how to behave at
work, handling myself well enough to become the CFO
of a large media company. But for an introvert like
me, crowds have always been torturous. I don’t
like, and have never been good at, small talk.
After every required business event, I’d come
home with a painfully sore back from holding myself
rigid like a board while shaking hands and talking.
I can’t relax in a crowd.
Elena soon became a leader of several well-known
charities. She was chairing not one, but two of the
biggest annual social events.
The Storybook Ball, benefiting the Massachusetts
General Hospital for Children, is perhaps
Boston’s event of the year. I put on my tuxedo
shirt, trying to negotiate the cuff links.
"Just remember, Tom, there will be 500 people
there. Just blend in. Find someone you like to talk
to. No one is really going to care what you do.
They are just there to have a good time."
I am shocked. It has never occurred to me that I
might not stick out as if I had a neon sign on my
forehead blaring "Loser!" for all to see.
Just the idea that I can fit in, that all I have
to do is play along a little, find some friendly
faces, makes all the difference.
Maybe after attending event after event I
finally found my sea legs. Where at first I would
literally go to the bathroom 10 times during the
course of a dinner merely to be alone, I found that
talking to people really wasn’t as hard as I
once thought. I could always find a familiar face
and at least one interesting story.
By the time we got to Hawaii, it was really just
my fear of travel that continued to plague me. I
still had to suffer through the painful transition
of leaving home and adjusting to a foreign
environment and the loss of routine. I had been in
therapy for a couple years, taking medication for
persistent depression; but it wasn’t until I
stared into that diet coke and heard my mom’s
voice talking about Jack Nicholson that I
understood my dad and was willing to see myself
fully.
In that moment, I realized that as much as I
like to pretend to be macho, I am no different from
Nicholson’s character or my own Dad in his
struggles. I am not sure if my obsession with
Twitter and Facebook is a clinically diagnosed
condition, but they’re where I hide out.
Checking my Blackberry every twenty seconds day and
night, even while driving with kids in the car or
taking a leak in the middle of the night,
isn’t normal or healthy. I have always taken
the internal fear and transformed it into narrowly
focused—okay obsessive-compulsive—action
as a way to blot out the discomfort. My maniacal
focus —while useful in competitive situations,
like sports or deal making— has stood in the
way of my ability to show up in my life.
Like Helen Hunt in the film, Elena has pushed me
to walk on the cracks; something Nicholson’s
character wouldn’t do. She won’t let me
slip into the cocoon that would swallow me whole if
I let it. She’s forced me to see the world and
become a better man—that’s why I am with
her. It’s her opposite nature that attracts
me, challenges me, and, in somehow unconsciously, I
have always loved most even when it stirs the parts
of me I would most like to avoid.
In Kona Village, Elena made new friends at the
pool. After half an hour of intense conversation on
the chaise lounge chairs across the way, I figured
it was time to find out where we were going next. I
got up and walked over to my wife and yet another
set of new friends.
“Tom, meet David and Lisa. They were
telling me exactly where in Santa Barbara we should
move.”
I laughed. Despite the fact that Elena and I had
both spent our adult lives in Boston, she had long
been determined to move some place warmer. Santa
Barbara has been high on her list. The
sweet-looking couple in their late 40s, smiled as
they discussed the microclimates.
“Sounds like just the adventure I was
looking for,” I said, without a trace of
sarcasm.
“Really?” asked Elena, looking me
directly in the eyes.
“Really,” I said with a grin. “We
still gotta get to Australia, but who wouldn’t
love horses, beaches, mountains, and California
sunshine?”
©2011, Tom
Matlack
* * *
While all complain of our ignorance and
error,
everyone exempts himself. - John Glanville
Tom Matlack,
"I am a sucker for real-life heroes, particularly
the ones that get overlooked. My profile work grew
from my first published piece, THE RACE, which
describes my own life altering experience in an
athletic event barely worthy of the local paper.
Coaches and athletes in the sport of rowing were my
initial focus before expanding to mainstream sports
like professional basketball. Music, film, and
television have proven fertile ground for heroic
journeys of a different, but related, kind.
Finally, I have continued to write bits and pieces
of my own story in an attempt to inspire and
enlighten."
Thomas Matlack was Chief
Financial Officer of The Providence Journal until
1997. He was the lead investor in Art Technology
Group, which reached $5 billion in market
capitalization in 2001. He founded and ran his own
venture firm, started companies like American
Profile (sold to Disney for $260 million) and
Telephia (sold to Neilson for $560 million), before
turning to writing. His work has appeared in
Rowing News, Boston Common, Boston
Magazine, Boston Globe Magazine and
Newspaper, Wesleyan, Yale,
Tango, and Pop Matters.
In 2008, Matlack founded
www.TheGoodManProject.org,
with his venture capital partner James Houghton. He
has appeared on national and local television and
radio as well as print across the country. The fall
of 2009, Matlack led a non-conventional book tour
for The
Good Men Project that
started inside Sing Sing and ended in Hollywood
with a screening of THE GOOD MEN PROJECT
documentary film followed by a panel discussion
including Matt Weiner and Shepard
Fairey.
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