The Long Way Home

I continued walking south on Parsons Boulevard after work, in the opposite direction of our tiny New York City apartment. I didn’t have much idea where I was heading; just that it couldn’t be there. Jennifer, as much as I loved her, was not pleasant to be around the past few months. In fact, she was downright miserable to be around.

I don’t believe I would ever say it to her, but the word that most accurately described her attitude (at least in English) was asshole. I realize that is not a word often used to describe a woman, but damned if it didn’t feel right to think to myself. Asshole I thought again, internally hearing my own voice grumble the word. It felt good.

My own irritated thinking voice was replaced by that of Roger Hodgson, quite unintentionally. Take the long way home, I heard him repeating, antagonizing me. I always found his voice soothing. He has a way of describing a nasty subject that infuriates me (particularly when Jennifer is being an asshole) while simultaneously making me feel at ease. But this time, as I slowly lumbered past a strobing storefront with a bright neon OPEN sign someone had forgotten to switch off, that familiar sense of ease did not accompany the fury. And the bastard kept right on belting lyrics about my life.

Then your wife seems to think that you’re part of the furniture.

Oh, it’s peculiar.

She used to be so nice.

I have seen Supertramp perform live four times. The last time was in Buffalo on their Famous Last Words tour in 1982. The only reason it has been such a long time is because I have not bothered going to the concerts since Hodgson left the band.

How could the new Supertramp possibly live up to the original group I fell in love with? Similarly, how could the new asshole Jennifer ever… Oh, shit. I almost finished that thought.

Over the next eleven blocks, as I rhythmically glowed in the neon lights and faded in the forbidding shadows of a deserted borough, I came to hate Roger Hodgson. His complete understanding of my marriage was proof that he was to blame.

I can vividly remember standing in the pit in 1982, balled fist in the air, watching him sing Take the Long Way Home while simultaneously hammering out notes on the synthesizer. And he was singing and playing specifically for me. I was absolutely sure in that moment that he cared about me in the same way that I cared about him.This I remember clearly.

But I do not recall ever once wanting to pound in his mouth and leave him spitting out those goddamn British teeth of his in some horrible and dreary place far from home and far from help—not until right now had the thought occurred to me.

And, of course, he kept at it as I slipped deeper into the wet, misty early morning hours.

Lonely days turn to lonely nights.

You take a trip to the city lights.

And take the long way home.

I pulled a joint from my jacket pocket and turned the corner, heading west. Usually if I go in a round about path home, rather than heading back North up Parsons Boulevard, asshole would be asleep by the time I got in, impossible to wake in her painkiller coma.

While I rounded the corner, right onto 147^th Street, I considered her need for the meds and her dependency upon them. I wondered if my need for the joint I was burning was a similar compulsion.

Around the time I passed Queens Library I decided that I got high because she is an asshole. I subsequently supposed that she takes meds not because of her MS, but because she can justify it now.

It was a handy excuse. And it doubled as an excuse to treat me like piss (lucky her!). Asshole, I thought. Or maybe I grunted it into the ominously silent air. Either way, it felt really, really good.

I would have sworn that New York had never been so quiet. A taxi cab would pass by here and there, but not another soul on foot and, perhaps most unsettling, not a single bum groaning near a dumpster or rustling beneath an overpass. I flipped into the gutter the roach that remained of my spent joint and reluctantly pressed on, motivated only by my need for a bed (and my lack of interest in the brawl that would ensue had I not gone home).

At the very moment that my aching feet hit the tiny, octagonal tiles on the ground floor of our old apartment building, I finally recognized the root of my distress, though I had not quite yet affirmed it for myself. On the fourth floor, I turned the clunky lock and creaked open the door.

Jennifer would not wake up, but despite my certainty of that fact I was unwilling to challenge it (the way you would bet $500 that the Ravens won the Super Bowl this year, but not your life). I squeezed in through the half open door, careful not to let too much light spill into the miniature apartment. Inside, I stood silent and motionless like one of those ridiculous Buckingham Palace guards.

I don't know how long I held my station on that tacky welcome mat she had picked up at a Bronx flee market, but it was long enough to come to terms with the simple fact that faced me. Stoned and exhausted, but thinking as clearly as I have since the day I said my vows, I admitted it to myself: Hodgson wasn’t the only person I had come to hate on that night’s stroll.

At least he wouldn’t be there in the morning, hissing at me like I was a raccoon who had toppled the trash bin one too many times. Not to mention he would never have a welcome mat on the inside of the door (I should tack that onto the unofficial List of Reasons I Hate my Wife right below “There’s no L in BOTH”).

I had not seen Roger Hodgson since 1982 and, as it would turn out, I would never see him again. Realistically, he had never seen me at all but that didn’t matter. It would be Asshole doing the hissing in the morning; not my boss or my creditors or my friends, and certainly not my former idol.

Nevertheless, you took the long way home, he went on taunting.

You took the long way home.

You took the long way home.