Damaged Beyond Repair

"There's a lot of fear connected with the inner journey because it penetrates our illusions. Taking the inner journey will lead you into some very shadowy places. You're going to learn things about yourself that you'll wish you didn't know. There are monsters in there—monsters you can't control—but trying to keep them hidden will only give them greater power."

Parker Palmer
Leader to Leader
Fall 2001

I once mentioned to some friends that I was going to put together a book called "Damaged Beyond Repair", and it was going to be full of opinions and observations culled from the ten plus years I've spent working in the adult industry. They all thought it was a great idea. I had every intention of writing it then, and I still do -- maybe I'll even sell a couple.

The conceit behind the idea for the book, which I didn't explain to them at the time, was that the reader would start out thinking the title referred to the various people I met who worked in the industry -- dancers, porn actresses and actors, directors, etc -- but by the end of the book it would be clear that the person who had been "damaged beyond repaid" was actually me.

It's been an interesting, often difficult few years for my wife and I. During my last few years as GM of Flamingo Showclub, we were fighting a lot, and I was drinking too much, and our whole family suffered. Then I quit/gave up/got fired in December of 2010, and Beth got pregnant, and my friend Kevin offered me a job, and (with the help of a great lady named Donna Cox) my wife and I were able to find our way back into each other's lives and work on being happy together.

My wife, God bless her, lost her father in September of 2011 and her grandmother 17 months before that. That was hard on her. She had to take time off from school to have the baby, but now she's back at it and getting straight A's. We have two wonderful kids together. We're busy, but doing well.

I'm writing again, more than I ever have in my life -- I did too little of that while I was working at Flamingo. I wasted a lot of time on things that, in retrospect, weren't all that important. Tod Hunter, a great guy and an editor who bought one of my articles, once told me that I was wasting my time if I was doing anything other than writing. I try to remember that and I've been keeping busy.

Damaged? Certainly.
 
Beyond Repair? Maybe not. I hope not, anyway...but we will see.