I don't think it's betraying a confidence to admit that, for a while, the principal places for gambling in Mississippi were the Mayflower Cafe and the Jackson Country Club. It was at the Country Club that I'd play my card.
Although very few of my friends did, all of my dad's friends knew that I was critically unhappy in my life in Jackson. Of all Daddy's friends, I had an affinity for Rowan Taylor. We shared an appreciation for art, women, and whiskey. He asked me once, "what is it you want out of life, son?" I had no answer for him.
When I said what I said, my father looked at my mother and his mother, who had dubious expressions on their faces. "Whatever you feel like you need to do, I'll support you, but come see me in the morning." My father's office was at most a hundred steps from where I had set up camp in a corner of one of our five conference rooms, the one we opened mail in, with two computers, a scanner, and a printer. "Come talk to me in the morning." meant that he was taking what I said seriously but that we should talk about it alone, lest it upset his mother, which it did.
There were men in Jackson who became concerned that Mississippi was developing a bad reputation around the country and around the world. One of their responses to this was to dress modernly and adapt modern designs for their buildings and offices. The result of this effort was buildings like First National Bank, Capitol Towers, and The Sun-n-Sand Motel. Dumas Milner was a prime mover in this modernizing trend, and so was my father.
For some people, the Capitol Street Gang was betraying our sound Southern Heritage. The criticisms didn't change anything. Mississippi was moving into the sixties if it gasfaced the navy. When it came time to move the Country Club from West Jackson to North Jackson, many members wanted a Greek Revival style like an antebellum home, but Dad and Rowan and Dumas Milner and a few others pushed for what we now know as mid-century modern. My Grandfather was one of the ones who preferred the Greek Revival style. Ultimately the modernists won out, and although several remodelings have tried to hide the building's base design style is still very evident.
Daddy didn't play golf or tennis. For some people, membership in the Country Club was a sign you'd made it in the world; for Daddy, it was a sign to the rest of the world that we weren't quite the mindless savages we appeared to be on television. At least not all the time. The Country Club provided us a great place to swim, although I don't think my father ever actually witnessed this. Usually, we were just dropped off by my mother and told to put these elastic bands around our ankles with numbered tags on them. I suppose so they could identify the body if we drowned, which no one ever did. At least not to my knowledge.
One service of the Country Club Daddy used was the Sunday Buffet. Organizing outings to the Country Club for Sunday lunch was something of a statistical ordeal. Starting from Galloway, we had to get my Grandparents, My father's family, his sister's family, and any visiting relatives to the Country Club and in line by twelve-thirty or we'd be standing in line for an hour before anyone ate. For a ten-year-old, it was a challenge to keep my shirt tucked in and out of trouble until we got to the table. For a twenty-four-year-old, it was more a matter of lasting in line, still suffering from the effects of the Saturday night before.
For some time, Daddy and I had been discussing how unhappy I was in my life in my job. I'm an extremely object-oriented person. Like my father, my happiness depended almost entirely on my relationship with my work. Unlike my father, I wasn't in anywhere near the right field for my talents and skills. This conflict was leaving me very empty and unfulfilled. I'd given up on my art in hopes that it might help me align myself with what my job actually required.
Being competent but not good at my job was a problem. I'd been through that with school, but that problem I could blame on my reading problems. This was real life. I needed to excel, and I wasn't.
At that point, my job was to help organize twenty-seven other office supply companies into a buying cooperative and coordinate our core inventory system and develop a catalog and purchasing history program for what became known as the Office Supply Ordering System that we were members of, but decided to develop on our own. My father began moving me into more of the marketing and advertising part of the company. Although my performance was sporadic, the programs I was involved in were successful. Although people thought I had potential and had some technical skills nobody else in the company had, it was becoming clear that I was very unhappy, and it was affecting my performance. I wasn't going to be the success my father, and his uncle, and his father were. For me, that wasn't good enough. I needed a plan.
Knowing that I wasn't performing anywhere near my capacity made me feel like I was constantly disappointing everyone. Knowing that the things I could do much better meant nothing to the people who depended on me made the situation much worse. I felt like a fraud. "Take the money and shut up. Life should be this easy for everybody." Some would say. I was constantly aware that I was wasting an opportunity many would kill for. It didn't help to know this. I felt like a spoiled asshole who should just go along to get along. I also felt like if I died, it wouldn't be so bad.
At this point, I'd been involved in two relationships, both ended with the other party deciding they wanted to be with someone else. The first was perfect, no harm, no foul; we went our separate ways with no hard feelings. I wasn't so lucky with the second one. She wasn't willing to let me go until I'd spent almost two years helping her dad out of a jam and making sure she had a chance at a college education. At no point was she willing to make any sort of commitment to me, but should I ever waver in my commitment to her, I'd receive a lengthy and tearful phone call to reconsider. One day she said, "sometimes you look at me like you hate me." "I don't hate anyone," was my reply. I think she knew I wanted to escape from everything, including her, but she wasn't ready to go it on her own.
I couldn't love my partner. I couldn't love my job. My art was in abeyance, and it'd been two years since I'd seen a movie that I really liked. I needed to do something. To change something.
I had a plan to escape. I'd been thinking about it for a while. The idea thrilled me, but it also filled me with doubts and regret. Escaping meant leaving behind every person and every responsibility I had in Mississippi. Maybe it'd work out, maybe it wouldn't, but I would be far away and separated from everyone either way. There was no guarantee this would work, but I thought I had to try something. Telling my family would be difficult. Lunch, Sunday a the Country Club was the soonest time they'd all be together.
"I've sent in applications to USC and UCLA for their film program. I'd like to join their undergraduate program, then move on to the MFA program at either school." I said after the plates were removed and Bubba's Sanka coffee was served.
Silence.
My father looked at my mother, then his mother. There was a hurt look on her face. "That's California," she said. "Yes, Los Angeles," I said. That I might try and escape this life they'd laid out for me since my mother announced she was having another child had never crossed anyone's mind. What I was talking about was a betrayal.
"Come talk to me in the morning" was my father's escape plan from discussing my escape plan.
