Atlantic City

“Well they killed the chicken man in Philly last night

            And the DA can’t get no relief …”

            

So begins Bruce Springsteen’s soulful acoustic ballad “Atlantic City.” I’ve been thinking about that song a good bit the last few weeks. It’s a song about a guy who has to do a favor for a friend. He knows the favor will cost him… probably with his life. The singer is on the wrong side of the law. And, like most ballads, there’s trouble coming. He knows it’ll cost him his life. Still he has to do what he has to do. Then, the refrain:

            “Everything dies baby that’s a fact

            But everything that dies someday comes back

            Put your make up on

            Fix your hair real pretty

            And meet me tonight in Atlantic City”

            

I can’t get Springsteen’s lyric out of my mind. “Everything dies.” It’s the message of Ecclesiastes and the Book of Lamentations in the Old Testament. Everything dies. Nothing survives. It all ends. And. As I recently read, “nothing dies pretty: reputation, marriage, dreams.” Springsteen’s protagonist begins as a realist. He knows the score. He has a job to do and it can’t be avoided. And there’s a cost to what he’s doing; a dear cost; a cost so great that as you listen you hope he won’t do the “favor;” he’ll choose the other way. “Everything dies baby that’s a fact.”

            

But, I can’t mouth that first line without the second. “But everything that dies someday comes back.” And, I can’t help thinking Springsteen’s telling me something. There’s a season to mourn, but that season will roll forward. Like the tide coming in and going out, everything dies, but everything someday comes back.

            

I’ve been thinking about that a lot – the dying and coming back part – as I watch lives go on around me in here and outside. It’s a recurrent theme in literature, which means in life as well. The most critically acclaimed show on TV right now is “Breaking Bad.” The premise is simple enough. A high school chemistry teacher faces the news he has cancer. From the outside, all looks well in his life. It isn’t, his marriage – like his health – is failing. So he makes a deal with the devil. He needs to make sure his family is provided for, needs to make sure his family survives. He begins manufacturing crystal meth. And, the money pours in. What does he do? He lies repeatedly to his wife to cover up his wrong doing.

            

Here’s the funny thing: audiences pull for him. You know what he’s doing is wrong. And, you know that crossing the ethical line, the line that keeps you doing what’s right even when no one’s watching, can’t be uncrossed. And, you know that one ethical lapse makes the next one easier. Walter White, the protagonist anti-hero of “Breaking Bad” survives his cancer; but the cancer of selling his soul, corrupting the man he is, eats away at him worse than the disease ever could. We watch and we pull for him; we hope he finds his way out because we know what the story writers already know: we are all capable of crossing the line.

           

 “Everything dies baby that’s a fact, but everything that dies someday comes back.” Walter’s life dies in many ways. His marriage survives – his wife becomes a partner in his business venture. She devises the lies to hide the money, to keep their friends and family from learning the truth. But, she betrays him in so many ways. And the security, the future, that Walter sought when he made his deal with the devil can’t exist with drug manufacturing, and drug gangs, and killing. He can’t stay in and he can’t get out.

           

 Most of the guys in here watch “Breaking Bad” because they understand the drug culture. They understand the tweaked out junkies, and the guns, and the wrecked lives. I watch it because of the disintegration and transformation of Walter. I watch because I know what Walter is dealing with.

            

Atlantic City. I spent dozens of nights in Atlantic City. We’d go every month or so with friends, three and four couples. There’d be suites, and concerts, and spa treatments and shopping for our wives. Dinners were with wine and sixty dollar glasses of scotch. There’d be five hundred dollar crap tables, and cohiba cigars. We were living a fantasy life. In the back of my mind I always said I’d quit. But how? That’s the dilemma.

            

So one night we’re in our suite and the full wall length windows show off the lights up and down the boardwalk. You can see the white tops of waves crashing into the shore. She senses something isn’t right. “Tell me what’s wrong,” she says. And for an ever so brief moment I consider telling her. It flashes through my mind. I want to tell her. I want to leave the country and buy a small beach bar in the Caribbean and read and run and live with my soul intact. “I love you,” I tell her. “I always have; I always will.” I explain I’m stressed out at work. We dress and go to a late dinner with our friends. Two months later I’m arrested. “I haven’t loved you for years,” she says. “Everything dies baby that’s a fact …”

            

The “Boss” sings his soulful refrain and you know it won’t end well for his anti-hero. The funny thing is, you hope it does. “Everything that dies some day comes back.” Springsteen knew dying is just part of living. And living goes on. There is a tomorrow. There will be a second act.

            

So “Miko-bones” – a new reader: remember prison in many ways is a state of mind. Focus on the future. It’ll be different, but there will be a future. Springsteen was right:

            “Everything dies baby that’s a fact

            But everything that dies some day comes back.”