Bedford, VA Super 8, early morning with horrible motel coffee. Guy in hospital scrubs pulls into the parking lot, apologizes for invading my space, and sits down next to me. JR's a doctor, a hospitalist just off his shift. He has a full head of longish salt-and-pepper hair, Mediterranean skin and features.
Possibly the most beautiful view out the back of any Super 8 in the world
"During my residency, my mother died. She'd been sick for a long time, never recovered really from my brother dying when he was three. I was five. A year later I went down to help my dad's girlfriend move, and taking apart her waterbed, we found a shoe behind it next to the wall. She says, 'We’ve been looking for that for years!'
"And that was my mother’s suspicions confirmed. Dad had had a girlfriend for a long time. Thirty years, it turns out. I can kind of understand why Dad did it, looking for solace somewhere.
"I met my wife when I was 19, and we dated ten years before marrying. Now I'm 45, and it’s just…habit. She told me straight up I can get a girlfriend if I want, she doesn’t care. She’s told me straight, but I think it’s a trap. And I'm too lazy to get a girlfriend. After so many years with my wife, some things just…disappear, you know?
"My wife doesn't work, and that’s part of the problem. She and her mother started a business together a while ago, it was huge, they had 180 employees, but the Bush years screwed it up because it was government contracting and everything became the ‘Old Boys’ network.
"She had an idea for a business and gave it to me, and I took it public but took it in a bad direction. I ended up doing wrong by a bunch of people and racking up a bunch of debt. Now I don't have any options. That's part of the problem.
"I have three kids. My daughter's fourteen. A bitter fourteen. And then another daughter who's eleven, and my son's nine. My oldest daughter gets straight As and took her SATs last year and is kind and respectful to everyone at school, has a good head on her shoulders.
"She’s a good kid, but she tests boundaries. She has major OCD. This,” he says, waving his cigarette, “is part of the problem. I never used to smoke. Then I started working this job, staying up all night, and I went outside one night and a bunch of guys were smoking. I lit up. My wife smokes, too, and my daughter freaks out about it. There was a Major Incident a few days ago when she sprayed my wife with Lysol." He laughs. "But it’s not funny, too. I asked Grandma to come up and stay with us a little while. She’s one of the few people my daughter'll really listen to. I can’t do anything with this.” He shrugs. "I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
“Part of the problem is that she’s spoiled. She knows I’m a sucker. She knows she’s getting a new car when she turns sixteen. She knows I can’t deny her anything. I tell my wife not to threaten things that I won’t follow up on. Like the camps this summer. She’s going to two -- a law camp in DC, and a medical camp out here. I’ve already paid the down payment -- a couple grand, not cheap -- and she’s going. My wife threatens and says ‘I don’t care if you’ve paid the down-payment, she’s not going.’ And yes, she is. She’s going.
"I don’t know what to do -- I take away her phone, she doesn’t care. I take away the TV in her room, she doesn’t care. We live out in the woods. There’s not much for her to do. Maybe that’s part of the problem. We moved from Tampa, the city, out to the woods. Maybe ten cars pass the house all day. We lost our support system. Maybe that’s part of the problem. We’re just sitting out there alone, slowly going crazy. Like everyone else.” He laughs.
I ask him what sort of boundaries he'd be willing to set, that he hasn’t yet. “I don’t know. I’d have to define it. I guess I’ll just see it when it comes, you know? I’m just trying to figure out what to do, and I’ve never done this before. I tell her -- minutes before, I’ll tell her I’m about to blow. 'Please stop, I don’t want to explode.' And then the fight goes on for another couple minutes, and -- boom. I’m ashamed to say, I’ve taken out the belt a couple times. I was raised that way,” he chuckles. “But I can’t do that anymore. I feel horrible afterwards. I’m getting old. It’s going to start hurting me.
“Part of the problem,” he says, “is this traveling. I took the job in Richmond for a year so I wouldn’t be traveling, and then they offered me this job -- a week on, a week off -- and it’s thirty percent more than Richmond. A crap load of money. I couldn’t say no. I want my family to have nice things. I want my daughter to have that car. Here, doing this, I can work my twelve hours and be done, no one calls me. I work my week, and then I get to be a dad, spend time with my kids. When I go to work, I get to be a doctor. It doesn’t matter if someone has insurance or not, I just help them. The business side of medicine sucks.
"In the beginning here, I'd drive around and explore, but that was done in a couple days. There is a pretty cool winery around the corner. I showed up one morning at 8:30 or 9 after work and the owner was there puttering around, he wasn’t open yet, but said ‘hey, what’s going on,’ and invited me in. Took me down to his wine cellar and started pouring. I was so wasted!” He laughs, “I was like, man, you’ve gotta stop. I’ve gotta drive! And he was like, ‘Nah, don’t worry about it, the cops won’t hassle you.’ They didn't."