Martin F Lance Groundhog's Day

 His name was not this, but that was his moniker in many forms.  His name was Malcom Ryder.  One of the more profound individuals who ever made an impression in our city, as well as in my life story.  He was a complicated person, as was our relationship, but that is usually the case with many.  

It was the late 90s and I had returned to my fair city having freshly graduated from college and about to start my official adult life, a 90s hipster post grunge child.  I entered Corporate America and got my first real job, as I would expect anyone in the same position to acquire.  What one does not anticipate when one is adapting to this change is the isolation and loneliness, yet coming into your own during the first year as one is adapting to the change of life going from a kid / full time student to that of being a working adult.  Many days are like the move Groundhog's Day, but one must not complain about it as this is, as one would find out, how most people operate.  One day is the same as the one before, "same shit, different day" as some would say.  One can and does easily turn into the whole work, eat, exercise, sleep, work, etc.  Some are okay with this.  I asked someone once on the job at my first job what their dreams were as a little kid (ex. When I grow up I want to be an astronaut or a cowboy).  Her answer was "I just figured whatever would happen to me would happen to me".  Misery.  And yet she complained the whole time that her boyfriend wouldn't marry her and what would I (or any other employee around her at the moment) do about this?  

After a few weeks/months of this, I drifted into something and was networked into a world.  It was known as The Scene.  It was the underground of rock music, art, partying, etc. that all in the In Crowd were all about.  I had spent so much of my childhood as being an outcast, excluded from groups and deemed too weird to be liked by others (individual or group level, especially with other women), and I had accepted this as my lot in life.  Then, I came into The Scene, and eventually I would meet Malcom.

He was an influencer before there was social networking, and he was one of the macros of our city before there were phones in which to share items on social networking.  Always with a video camera at events, he would take them home and share them on his cable access TV show The Psychic Shopping Club.  We'd perform small skits on them as well as help co host events.  I would meet a lot of the artsy / rock and roll people back then, as it was still the golden age of cable access TV, and when we'd meet to shake hands hello it would always be punctuated with "I've seen you on TV".  Technology would change, as all of us would, not to mention our fashions and hairstyles, as well as our world in general.  He was a local celebrity, as we all would become in our city.  We were throughly engulfed in the party circuits - hitting all the rock clubs and hot spots until the wee hours and staggering home with only minutes to spare before the alarm was going to go off and we'd have to go to work in a few hours.  Everyone knew him, you couldn't go anywhere without someone saying hello to him.  

What was he like?  It's hard to say, he was a difficult man to know.  He was most certainly complicated, as he was one person in public and another in private.  His roller coaster life was, quite honestly, a roller coaster of ups and downs and changes.  His childhood in Ashtabula, Ohio, being part of a Jesus group, working in the steel mills, always on the cutting edge of technology, liking all the coolest new music to come down the pike, parties.  He was a good guy, had a lot of knowledge about so many things, and yet he was also a flake and had bad communication skills.  He had a temper, yet he was goofy.  We had a wonderful time together, eventually as we aged out of the late nights and hangovers, we gave way to more peaceful events like barbeques, cooked meals, sipping drinks on summer evenings, and the Christmas Eve dinner we'd started in 2020.  Each year would be a different theme / food - Christmas in London (Beef Wellington), in Scandinavia (pork roast), Cleveland (perogies and kielbasa), Paris (coque au vin), and Hungary (chicken paprikash).

Aside from my high school sweetheart who I was with for four years (long distance for three of them), I really didn't have much experience in the whole relationship department.  I was 22 and I thought I knew everything, I so didn't.  While experiencing all the terrible things that others can and will do to you when you are 22 and just entering the world, either in a work or personal setting, he and I would meet.  He would be the first true adult relationship that I would have.  We had a rocky relationship for two years, we were one of the stranger couples because I was 22 and he was 40.  We had our ups and downs and had our dramas (he broke up with me then we got back together, then I broke up with him and we got back together, etc.).  What was the main issue?  The age difference, of course.  When women hit a certain age in the their early/mid twenties, they spread their wings and fly, which happened to me.  I grew up, and he wanted me to stay a kid forever as he was still dedicated to remaining a kid forever.  Then the Black Summer of 99 happened that nearly killed me (Mom got cancer, Dad flipped out on me and punched me, car accident, fell out with two childhood friends) so I decided to take a spiritual journey to Egypt.  While I was gone, he took up with the woman who would be his second wife and didn't bother to tell me until well after I had returned.  And after that, we healed up and resolved things to have a lifelong friendship of 28 years.

Why did we have this lifetime friendship?  There are many reasons.  First, he was a good guy underneath all of it, this I know and continue to know.  He said I was one of the more memorable girlfriends he'd ever had in his lifetime.  While it sounds trite that others say "I just want to be friends" and then don't remain friends, I remind myself that everyone else lives in real life and I live in a TV show.  I had to put my hard feelings aside and get over it because that's what we do if we are going to be adults, and it wasn't all about me as it wasn't all about him.  Second, life is complicated.  I had thought about all the bad relationships I had had before and since him, how some of them ended with burning bridges, cutting ties, and fallouts.  While ours didn't end in the most pleasant way possible, it ended because it had to end.  And instead it became what it became because that's how it would be.  Strange?  Odd?  You bet it is.  But, as I am as fairly odd as he was, it happened.  Third, we were still going to see each other at parties and events and whatnot, and we were going to be friendly towards one another because we are nothing but grown up 8th graders (others act like it but we don't).  Fourth, the world's full of lonely people.  Malcom had a harem, and I was one of them.  How many stuck around after their relationship with him was over with?  A few.  And I knew them, and they became my allies as well, as would the other women of the harem did with one another.  His head wife was the woman he was married to at the time.  There was no jealousy or competition for his affections, he gave it out to all around him.  As a matter of fact, his second wife would divorce him ten years later.  He married for a third time, and his third wife and I would cook Christmas dinner together.  If he were Charlie Sheen he would have called us his goddesses. 

How can I put into words the affect he had on my life?  He gave me the model to become a celebrity in the city.  I too am known everywhere I go.  I made sure to make my world exciting and live the dreams I had always wanted. I turned my life into a Netflix miniseries of events with different chapters and phases, filled with exotic places, rock music, theater, art, freaky and famous people, and many a life lesson to be learned.  While I spent so much of my childhood as an outcast, I became one of the coolest girls in the city in my own nitch, known as "the a-ha chick".  I didn't let life be Groundhog Day the Movie, and it was partly because of him.  I am a big part of who I am because of him - quirky, eccentric and proud to be.

RIP Malcom.  You made such a difference to everyone around you.  I'll always love you, no matter where I am.