The Narcissist Chronicles 2: "Wows" and "Hows" and Chaos in Taos
Ice blue silver sky fades into grey
To a grey hope that all yearns to be
Starless and bible black
King Crimson - "Starless" - Red - 1974
No, it was not literally chaos, but the visual alignment with “Taos” is too good to pass up. However, contrary to popular belief and my needs for this title, the words do not rhyme - “Taos” sounds like “towels.” Hows and Wows and Chaos in Taos. I like it. Pity no cows were involved. Hows and Wows and Cows and Chaos in Taos.
2004, summer. We staggered into the Taos Ski Valley, New Mexico, exhausted from a long drive after 6 days of rustic high alpine tent camping in the San Juan range of Colorado at 11,000 feet. Marginally-equipped and even less experienced, we'd made an audacious journey with a bone-stock SUV into one of the most remote areas in America and emerged alive, triumphant, and starving.
It was my first real vacation in 19 years, centered around the iconic rock band Rush playing at the epic, legendary Red Rocks venue on my birthday and their 30th anniversary. That is simply Holy Grail territory.
It had gone wonderfully, but we'd constantly been under the gun, so we planned for my first ever night in New Mexico to be a leisurely birthday celebration after a week of hectic traveling with canned camp food and hard ground sleeping bags. A nice hotel and restaurant were most welcome after living in a Marlboro rewards tent I smoked my ass off to "earn."
We checked into a lovely, interesting hotel and prepared to dash to dinner at a restaurant, chosen weeks before for this celebration, renowned for their chiles rellenos. Never had we been so stoked about a particular eatery, plus it was my belated birthday dinner. I can't recall ever so eagerly anticipating a meal.
Hey, You! Yeah, YOU! Don't Do It! Just. Don't. NO!
I eyed the clock and chose to quickly call my parents. Lisa, aware that my calls to Mom risked both running insanely long and resulting in bizarre, heartbreaking conflict, pointed out the time with an air of concern and hunger. I assured her I'd be but a moment, so she donned her waiting hat and examined our room's fine woodcraft.
How I wish it had been Dad who answered that fucking call.
Alas, Mom answered, relieved and happy to hear from me. She was an urbanite ultra couch potato prone to worry and had trouble accepting that anyone could be out of touch in America for 6 days or would want to sleep in a tent. I could only explain that's exactly why they call it wilderness and the expected great time indeed came to pass.
I said we were starving and in a hurry to catch dinner before they closed, then excitedly chattered a rundown of our thrilling past few days. Looking back, it's funny how excited I was, for since then we've traveled much. This, however, was our maiden voyage, my first real vacation in almost two decades, and my first EVER as an adult despite being closer to age 40 than 30.
It truly was a huge occasion.
I wound down my recounting and guided the upbeat call toward conclusion. Lisa, still photographing the fine old woodcraft in our room, smiled at me, relieved. The call had gone well and New Mexico cuisine, which we'd heard was excellent and now love, was on the horizon.
Then, it happened.
Conflict #1: Open Wide for a Europe vs. Rush + Camping DEATHMATCH!
I made the careless mistake of uttering this fateful declaration.
This has truly been the best vacation of my life. We're thrilled beyond words.
Under normal circumstances it would have been benign, but speaking with Mom one had to tread carefully. Unfortunately, I was very at ease and, lost in the moment, I'd dropped my guard, disregarding those ever-present eggshells on the floor and failing to discern how potentially troublesome those words were.
Fuck!
Expecting her to be happy for us, I instead heard an oddly long silence and thought the call had been cut off. Just as I started to ask if she was still there, Mom icily replied, “Oh. (long pause) That's good.” Her words were laced with contempt and resignation. The truly nice lady with whom I'd been speaking had yet again vanished.
Fuck!!!
See, 19 years prior, my parents and I took a classy, grueling 6+ week voyage across southern Europe from Mom's old haunts in Istanbul, Turkey to Greece, Italy, France, and England. It was indeed a very fine time, but best was the least conflict Mom and I had suffered over such a span since I was a small child. We butted heads just twice on the 44 day trip, once in Florence and another, perhaps more absurd than Taos, in Paris, that nearly cost me my life.
Really, whether Taos or Paris, briefly described below, was more absurd is a tough call.
We Have Derailed
Yes, our pleasant conversation jumped the tracks and crashed when I offended Mom with an implication that I was enjoying my current adventure more than the 1985 Europe trip.
Surprised by the instant, massive shift in demeanor, I asked what on Earth was ailing her and she replied, “Nothing, it's OK” while sounding almost bitter. After another long pause, I curtly suggested that this is the moment at which she was supposed to seem happy for us.
How could such a nice phone call go down the crapper at the drop of a hat? Worse, we were just getting started.
I again asked what in the hell was her problem; she finally answered, and with gusto, dressing me down with incredulous, incisive contempt:
Do you think just SITTING THERE IN A TENT is better than seeing THE LOUVRE?!?!?!? What about The Acropolis?!?!?!? Or the Piazza San Marco?!?!?!?
I was stunned. Before even considering how disturbing it was that my mother chose to pull such a stunt out of thin air on this big day, I struggled to wrap my mind around how someone could characterize our trip as merely "sitting there in a tent.” More on that later.
Mom had a flair for postulation of fundamental conclusions on a paucity of facts. Or, more informally, flappin' her damn yap while not having a clue of what the actual fuck she was talkin' 'bout.
An Informed, Earnest Speaker, He Was
I, in stark contrast, knew exactly what the actual fuck I was talkin' 'bout:
Yes, I'm enjoying this more than the Louvre, Acropolis, and Piazza San Marco COMBINED. Best time of my life. Or, at least it WAS until I fucking called your ass.
Mom took rebuke poorly; doubly so if it contained "your ass."
Angrier, she escalated to what most would call shouting:
REALLY?!?!? THE ACROPOLIS?!?!? THE LOUVRE?!?!? THE LOOOOOOOUVRE?!?!?
I held the old flip phone away from my ear in a mock attempt to avoid ear damage as “THE LOOOOOOOUVRE???” soaked the room in a tinny shriek.
Lisa asked in a puzzled stage whisper:
Is she telling you to move???
Yup....yet again things had up and done turned fuckin' surreal on my ass.
No. She's howling about a vast French museum she quite clearly prefers to camping.
Aware that Lisa zealously awaited dinner, I started to add an apology for this bizarre detour, but instead of the expected due annoyance I found her looking at me with shock, sadness, and pity. That look, something that should NEVER result from a simple call home to inform a very intelligent parent that one is safe, made the nightmare real. My mind went blank as the absurdity of the moment soaked in.
I was just plain embarrassed. What an awful feeling that was.
At a loss, I attempted to explain, but such was often challenging with Mom and her Flozberky habit of countering with a ruthless barrage of interruptions, mind games and tangents that make escalation inevitable and rebuttal impossible. When put on the spot, Flozberks tend to respond with deafening silence or an avalanche of uncouth utterances marinated in weaponized bad faith.
Conflict #2: Extensivity
Extensivity. I quite like that word. I'd never used or considered it until today.
Continuing, I reminded Mom that I'd not traveled much in my life, making this a big deal. That made her even madder and she roundly scoffed, shrieking that I'd traveled “very extensively.” and had been on four continents. Not merely extensively, mind you, but very extensively.
South America was when I was 10 - about six hours in Venezuela consisting of a tour bus ride from a cruise ship to a hotel where we were served “veal stuffed chicken.” It was $100 (in 1978 dollars, too) meat loaf with chicken parts pressed into the outside. How I wish I'd photographed it, but that was back in the film days and shot selection was way different then.
Asia was age 16 and lasted about six minutes when I took a taxi across the Bosporus Bridge in Istanbul to get a weird ice cream cone and some weirder candy that plain sucked. So, lets please not make like I'd climbed Mr. Fuji, then had cocktails in Bali en route to the Taj Mahal.
That I'd been to the Acropolis and the Louvre over half a lifetime ago in no way mitigated the fact that I'd not been on a vacation in almost 20 years. Any notion to the contrary is silly.
Vacationing and recreation are not things that one checks off a list, then ignores. One doesn't take a walk in the park, then declare that matter tended to forever. People flourish given regular applications of such and they should not be singular, monumental events like graduating from high school.
But, that's how we often did things. We drove to an in-state location for a vacation once. We took a west Caribbean cruise from New Orleans once, and an east Caribbean cruise from Miami once. Dad and I went to one Cowboy game, one Dallas Tornado soccer game, and one time to Six Flags. Once to a different mall outside our Northpark comfort zone. Fishing in the boat Dad bought once. The July 4 fireworks stand thing once. It's just how we rolled, unfortunately.
A claim that, as of 2004, I'd traveled very extensively is simply patently absurd.
It Was My Understanding That There Would Be No Math
Whether a long five-digit $ trip to Europe must be more enjoyable than a shorter three-digit $ trip to the Rocky Mountains is obviously subjective. However, a dispute over how well-traveled one is can be easily put into numbers, and they's objective. One need only count the years, the days traveled in those years, and the places visited, then compare to people of similar family makeup and socioeconomic status. Easy!
In my 13 years between kindergarten and high school graduation, we took exactly 4 vacations totaling 72 days (and 44 of those days in one trip), with the last family vacation in 1985. The average American family of our class traveled about 13 days a year, so 169 days over 13 years. Extensively-traveled families in our affluent area spent at least 2 months a year on holiday, totaling 780+ days in 13 years.
So, we managed about 42% of the norm and 9% of extensively-traveled. It's best to be wary of trying to massively bullshit an analytical data freak. Given Mom's health crises and my injuries, I spent more time at the hospital than on vacation during those 13 years. Then, as an overworked adult approaching age 40, I'd done no traveling except for business with little time for recreation before having to rush home to my obligations.
I nutshelled these details for Mom with one of the finest spoken paragraphs ever I'd crafted. Clarance fucking Darrow himself couldn't have argued it better, and even his wily mind and silver tongue wouldn't have had a prayer in advancing Mom's absurd side. My position had been calmly and perfectly put forth. Surely this very learned soul would glean some insight from my words AND be proud of how her spawn formulated such a damn eloquent argument on the run!
No. Not at all. Get real.
She became even more angry. When faced with evidence that she's just plain wrong, Mom often responded with rancor and deflection to distance herself from the error, creating new conflicts as those preceding are left dangling.
Next came the familiar guilt trip spiel with a theatrical declaration that she was sorry she was such a terrible mother who rendered me so ill-traveled. That one always hit me like a horse kick to the earlobe, for never once did I tell Mom she was a bad mother (or even think that) and it pained me greatly to know my mother was inclined to say such a thing no matter the reason.
Welcome to Conflict #3. Wow. Just....wow.
Conflict #3: Mind Games & The Bad Mother Trick
We are rabidly anti-mind games, insisting to interact cleanly and drenched in earnestness and accountability. Why? Very simple: We prefer life be more purposefully delightful and less senselessly horrible. Mom, though, often opted for an alternate path.
Before I could push back hard against #3 - Mom's predictable, outrageous stooping to The Bad Mother Trick - she launched into a rant defending herself from a nonexistent personal attack and a claim she had just insisted was invalid, yelling at me that we didn't have time to travel, she was too sick, they worked too hard, and so on.
For some reason, she reminded me that about 30 years prior she built "me" (actually, “them” - I never asked for it) the swimming pool that I quit using after the horrific, repeated immersion torture by The Golden Psycho, nauseated permanently, at least up to this point even 48+ years later, by the smell of pool water.
And, I'd be quite the dolt if failed to mention that, with years to go in my 19 year travel drought, Mom was funding a lavish lifestyle for said Psycho, including $12,000 for him, his son, and their girlfriends to celebrate New Year's 2000 in black tie splendor in the Bahamas.
So, uh......jeez Louise...this story simply has not aged well for Mom. It gets cringier by the minute and sits worse now than over 20 years ago. Mercy!
Anyhow, I'd not yet uttered so much as a grunt in response to Conflict #3, yet Conflict #4 was now upon us. Dang!
Conflict #4: Passionately Defending The Nonexistent
Mom often would vehemently deny something, then unleash a flurry of excuses for why she did that very something she'd denied mere seconds before. It's behavior we now only see on police bodycam videos of thieves, abusers, and drunks on YouTube.
It's fine to change one's position, especially when dead wrong. Hell, that's desirable. But, see, Mom would leave out that really important part in the middle where one acknowledges they were wrong and the other guy was right. That ever-important “You were right. Sorry 'bout that.” thing. Instead, she'd swan dive into dreadful mind games and worse.
That's how autocrats roll. They can pull stunts that would be unthinkable in my circle with a dismal, oblivious impunity that I can't help but be fascinated by. Still, to a rational, deeply-feeling person, such antics are simply torture. Torture, I dare say.
So, Mom had claimed I was “very extensively” well-traveled. I, a chap in his late 30s on his first vacation since age 17, ransacked that nonsense with a reasoned, orderly rebuttal that should make any brainy parent proud. She dismissed my rebuttal, guilted me with the Bad Mother Trick, then rattled off a list of justifications for my lack of being extensively well-traveled mere seconds after passionately insisting I was indeed extensively well-traveled.
Oh, dear.
Let's Have a Look at the Loserboard
Pretty grim, if'n ya ask me:
- Conflict #1 was unresolved.
- #2 was perhaps somewhat partly resolved, I suppose, given her impassioned defense on why I was actually not as well-traveled as she'd earlier shrieked. In a humanistic sense, though...no. Not so much.
- #3 remained untouched
- And now #4, all from pretty much out of nowhere. What a mess.
Aside from that shitload of other stuff, this was special in that it was my first vacation as an adult and as the leader. I chose where we went and what we did instead of being along for the ride and answered to no one other than Lisa in a very pure, lusty, and cooperative union barren of mind games, power struggles, or naggy, unreasonable, fun-eviscerating rules.
So, in a final heave-ho for glory, I shifted gears to some fresh meat.
Bonjour, Ya Fuckin' Lunatic
I reminded her of our 1985 Paris debacle in which she freaked out, insisting I'd “passed out” after drinking a bottle of champagne and was tragically wasting my time in what many call the world's greatest city.
In reality, I'd taken an afternoon nap after drinking much of the bottle in a triumphant celebration of a two-part delightful encounter with a sizzling hot French lady amid a rampage of enjoying Paris to sheer excess. As a 6'5" teen party animal, three glasses of bubbly barely put a dent in me.
The resulting absurd fracas almost cost me my life. To this day it stings that one of the greatest delights and triumphs I'd ever known, something I toasted on the balcony of a centuries-old four star Paris hotel, had to get fucked up like that. Read about that surreal bummer HERE (link coming someday).
So, hell yeah – a vacation in which I could have a few drinks and take a nap without it causing a conflagration was the cat's ass and then some. So was having the lovely, delightful, and talented sex kitten Lisa at my utter disposal at all times. Amusingly, unlike Paris, I recall no naps or "heavy" drinking on the Rush jaunt, but hell...it was nice just to know three drinks and a nap were in reach if chosen.
Mom faithfully exalted how Europeans often have wine with lunch and then shut things down for a nice siesta before a busy evening. They can do it, but I can't? And while in Paris? Damn straight I had more fun in Colorado than in Europe.
I'll be damned...that sort of worked. Sort of. She settled down, but sounded mostly resigned. Hell, any sort of resolution was, as usual, just not in the cards.
Noooooooo!!! (Rellenos for You!)
As we performed our toxic waltz over those (at least) four conflicts, time, unimpressed with our lunacy or needs, boldly and coldly marched on. How time can rocket by while spinning one's wheels in the abyss is often astonishing. The conversation ended on a sour note amid an ocean of sour notes.
After the call ended, I could only heave a heavy sigh, apologize to my poor, ever-patient companion, and heave myself onto one of the approximately 350,000 cigarettes Mom, Dad, and I smoked in scratching and clawing to relieve the stress of being in our family. Well, that and haul ass to the restaurant.
As I sucked on the Marlboro Red like a vacuum cleaner, quite shaken up but still ready to eat, we arrived to see our prospective chef emerge from the kitchen and turn off the OPEN sign 40 minutes before their alleged closing time.
Staring slack-jawed from the parking lot, all I could do was hang my head and start sobbing. What a turnaround our delightful day had suffered simply because I opted to call home. I'm not a nervous person and didn't shed a single tear when my leg was almost blown off as a 12 year old until about 6 hours later, bled out, near death, terrified, and freezing in the operating room just before being knocked out.
Mom was able to do to the man what a high-powered rifle and terrifying bloodbath could not do to the child - break him.
24 years after being shot, there I was - a slumped, momentarily broken man in a parking lot on my first night in the great state of New Mexico amid my first vacation in 19 years. Of the many disheartening tangles I'd had with Mom, this one was among the worst. So very unnecessary it was. So much it hurt.
To boot, we were not allowed real Mexican food at home. excruciatingly-finicky Mom found it inedible, enjoying only the odd, sanitized version at Pancho's Mexican Buffet, an entity that outlived her and remains in business. I've eaten there once in the last 25 years, yet it remains the place I've eaten at most in my life, by far, unfortunately. It is not a good place.
Yes, Mom had actually managed to again deprive me of fine southwestern food, only now while I'm almost middle-aged and across state lines! Wouldn't that make it a federal crime?
Maybe Rellenos for You?
Desperate for food, we got it together and drove around the dark, off-season ski resort streets hoping for a miracle. At the end of the last street, we saw a neon glow. OPEN! Soon after, I was enjoying my first New Mexico meal, chiles rellenos included, with free birthday flan and found it far better than the oft-flat Tex-Mex of my home state.
We salvaged the day and had a great time as Lisa (and our nameless chef) guided things back to the delightful with her typical deftness. The differences between her and Mom and the herd of toxic Flozberk women are remarkable. As mentioned, Mom, Neila, Mutchie, and Tiffany combined have shown themselves just plain unfit to suck the salty sweat from Lisa's bra strap, and that's a damn shame. At least some of those around them deserved better.
What to Do?
The most lovable people avoid putting others in situations in which none of the options or outcomes are palatable and most conflicts have a crossroads moment at which one can guide the affair in a variety of directions. I strive to deescalate conflict and detest when days go poorly, but dysfunctional people often bring quandary.
I could have avoided the conflict and its attendant ripples simply by restating my initial “error” along the lines of, “Ah, of course, Mom. What I meant, of course, is that it's the best trip since I left home, of course.”
Of course, it was the only one since I left home.
But, here's the problem: Such placation over a vacation is at stagnation with my inclination. I bristle at having to engage in such bad theater with my own mother. Being earnest and accurate is preferred and it's demeaning to all involved for thinking people to stoop such foolishness. We were supposed to be high-end, sophisticated people, not pitiable goofballs destined to deal with matters in ways suitable only for nervous toddlers or the insane.
When one allows ludicrosity to root, it often takes over the garden.
Nadir
Perhaps the worst part of this saga is that I had never been in a US National Park or National Forest until my 36th birthday on this very trip. That's a filthy damn shame. Mom and Dad were people of means. They had no boss other than Mom, who traveled extensively before I was born and regaled me with stories of such. Just some weekends at a lake cabin or with Dad's wonderful family just a few road hours away would have been great.
Sadly, a path planting them in front of decades of oft-bad TV while destroying themselves with cigarettes was chosen for our days together. One of Dad's biggest regrets was not seeing more of this nation and he was thrilled that I resisted that path, following our progress on his worn-yet-underused road atlas and eating up our vacation tales with delight.
Again, how I wish he'd been the one to answer the phone that evening.
We Dig Narcissism...Dig INTO It, That Is 
This is one piece of a multi-part examination of the malignant narcissism (which also happens to be a Rush song!) I've experienced in The Parade of Kooks, and that's part of a much larger, fascinating examination of narcissism spurred by one Princess Corn Log's goofy claim that I am the most dangerous type of narcissist in her epic Monster faceplant that so blew up in Floz faces like a toddler-wielded firecracker.
I've no doubt Mom much loved me and wished us a nice vacation, but dire personality flaws would often crash to the forefront and shoot down her better angels in a ball of flame. Horribly out of balance, she was an odd, seemingly-impossible mix of self-deprecating humility, selflessness, and intense narcissism which spawned results far below her vast potential.
A good mother functioning properly would have been happy to hear from her son and know he was having literally the time of his life, period. Instead, as a good mother not functioning properly, she was angry and defensive simply at the implication that the Euro-jaunt she'd commissioned 19 years before was not his best time ever. That's a shame and a direct product of malignant narcissism.
Really, that trip wasn't my best time ever even back then. Yes, it was often very fun and enlightening, a positive experience I'm glad to have had the honor and fortune to know. Young men should see the cradles of Western civilization and fuck the steamin' donkey snot out of some of said cradles' ladies. Good times, indeed.
But, it was also a grueling 6+ week affair in which I was the lead pack mule, and quite the homesick one late in the game. Much of it was spent on tour buses packed with Jews that Mom detested and could pick out like a bloodhound. I missed my friends. It was hard to party to my teen standards living so closely with Mom. Home, I had wide autonomy that still surprises me, but as a stranger in a strange land with my parents, things were different.
Getting along well with Mom for almost all of the long trip, the Deep Purple concert, kick-ass hashish, fine cuisine, and royally meat-plowing delightful damsels in three nations (of five visited) were the high points, by far. In my 1985 high school life, partying with girls and my friends, not spending 14 hours in a museum or all day on a bus, were the best times of my life. I treasure the memories from that adventure, but it was not my existential apex as Mom so hoped and assumed.
I must repeat: A good mother functioning properly would have been happy for us. Mom was a good mother, but she was not functioning properly. Compromising even one second of my vacation by acting like a lunatic was unconscionable and an embarrassment to all. If I pulled a stunt like that, I'd be riddled with guilt and shame until death.
Perhaps had I told her that we'd seen no Jews on the trip, things would have gone better.
Epilogue: "Sitting in a Tent"
Mom was of the habit of mocking and misrepresenting things outside her tiny sphere of favor, so it was no surprise she labeled our adventure as "sitting in a tent." Her caricature of my bass fishing hobby, for example, was of a brutally vapid clod sitting still and holding a stick while looking off into the distance, vacant eyes crossed and slack jaw badly askew. She could not have been more off base.
Well, really, she was often that far off base.
To recap, the drive from Texas to camp in the Nederland, CO area was a blast. Merely crossing the border into The Centennial State at Trinidad so thrilled us that we had to pull over and take photos.
Our first night in camp at the edge of the Indian Peaks Wilderness was a landmark moment. I still marvel at how happy we were eating canned soup in the cold with almost all modern conveniences absent.
The next day, the Peak to Peak Scenic Byway and Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. called the best drive in the nation by many, blew our minds. The concert by hallowed Rush at the hallowed Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison made my 36th birthday by far the best to date.
The next morning, we drove to the top of Mt. Evans on the highest road in North America, which was awe-inspiring. Then, we headed southeast to the San Juan range for camping and wildlife research near Platoro and the Conejos River and explored some of the most remote land in the nation, bushwacked to the top of a mountain without the benefit of a trail, and got naked at the top.
The only times spent in the tent were sleeping after collapsing at the end of one jam-packed day after another of challenging fun, new experiences, and ample lewdness.
From there we enjoyed a gorgeous drive south into New Mexico and the Taos area, then the Enchanted Circle Scenic Byway before heading home to Texas.
The delights we tasted were sublime, but the best part was that Lisa and I enjoyed each others' company tremendously – THAT is the true goal of a great vacation, far transcending the setting. We probably had more fun on that one trip than Mom and Dad had in the entire last half of their 50 year marriage with the lone negative a flat tire right on the Continental Divide.
Well, that and the fucking insane phone call home.
Sitting in a tent, MY ASS!
It be staggering to behold how bizarrely, obliviously, and unapologetically dead fucking wrong and unfair the various Flozberks have again and again shown themselves to be in things small, medium, large, and beyond. Release from that has been the best thing that ever happened to me.
Trying to live among narcissistic, autocratic kooks is a bitch.