The Fiddler’s Bill

The Parable, Redacted

A long time ago, a grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing. A wretched thing, laboring away in the heat, an ant passed by, hauling a great, miserable ear of corn.

“Why not come and dance with me?” asked the grasshopper. Dance. As if life were a mere costume ball.

“I am collecting food for the winter,” said the ant. “And I recommend you do the same.”

“Why bother about winter? It is summer, and we have plenty of food.”

The ant, of course, went on its way. Continuing. Always continuing.

When the winter came, the ground was a white, hard joke. The grasshopper had no food. So he went to the ant. “What shall I do? I have no food!”

The ant replied. And the ant, always the moralist, always the damned keeper of the ledger, said something unforgivable about frolicking. About toiling. About singing and dancing while others worked.

And the grasshopper, naturally, had to go hungry.

A Charmed Life

Charmed. That was the word, wasn't it? Favored. A darling of the Universe, and didn’t I know it. Felt it, deep down, like a congenital condition. Worked hard, mind you. Started in a hospital the legal minute I could, a full-time gig while still in high school—a kind of fastidious, sober little teen, counting my pennies and my sins. Which were few. Pathetic.

And then… Birmingham. The world got larger, the colors louder. “Life’s a banquet and most poor souls are starving. Learn to live a little.” said my own Mama Rose.  It was an invitation, really. A theatrical staging of possibility. I worked through college—full-time, sometimes a few part-time gigs stitched together.

In 1990, I got the call. My dream job. And a ten-year, corporate and social tour de force began. Entrepreneur. Advocate. Adventurer. It was more than merely living; it was performance. And I danced the dance. Oh, god, I danced. Never keeping in mind, you see, that the fiddler is never an altruist. The fiddler must always be paid.

The rise was meteoric. Upward and onward. No safety net—who needed one? I worked hard, I played harder. Tomorrow was a concept for lesser men. A tedious, distant whisper.

August, 2002: The Curtain Falls

Tuesday. Minnetonka called.

“John—I need to see you. Where can we meet tomorrow around 11a?”

The blood rushed from my face. Where does it go? Does it just… abandon you? 

Me? Severed? The arrogance of it! Don't they know who I am? This is how I'm to be treated? After all I’ve done for them!? 

Two years. Only two years since the diagnosis—two years of silently hiding the wound beneath a Zegna suit. I had a three-bedroom apartment in Midtown Atlanta. A new Volvo, leased. A pied-à-terre in New York City. A casual $5,000 in credit card debt. And thirty-four dollars. $34.00 in the bank.

Denial is a warm, thick blanket. I wrapped myself in it. Severance. Retirement account. I'm nowhere near retirement. It was a liquidity problem, nothing more. A temporary inconvenience.

December. Sold the car. March. The first yard sale. The endless, degrading series of yard sales. The art, the furniture, the china, the crystal—all reduced to price tags and sold for pennies on the dollar. And it was the ants—the careful, prepared friends—who came to collect, buying up my history for their own meager winter stores. They were just following the script. 

The irony, a particularly vicious little joke: my cheap New York rent-control bedroom was my remaining anchor.

To some, my decision seemed counter intuitive, but to me it was clear. Give up the Atlanta apartment. The car. Pay the credit cards with the retirement savings - and move to New York. 

I was such a lemishke.

The Winter

New York. Low cost of living. A little money. But the job search. The applications, the interviews, the sheer, endless zero. Position eliminated. Company bankrupt. Always a twist of the knife.

And then, COBRA ran out. The money followed. And then, the HAART therapy. The medicine. Gone.

After helping so many—why couldn't I seek out help? Pride? Denial? Shame? They are a trinity of poisons.

By the end of 2003, there was only one word left: nothing. I had nothing. No prospects. I was numb. 

Lying in bed for days, the television a constant, mocking static. Staring at a ceiling that didn't care.

Then Mom called. Holidays. Come home.

I told her I couldn't. No money. No job.

She didn't lecture. She didn't moralize. She guided me. Pack a bag. Go to the airport. A ticket back to Birmingham awaited. Grace. A sudden, stunning theatrical lifeline thrown to an actor who’d forgotten his lines.

Home. Gifted a car. Stay. Stay here. The friend, the renovation, the subcontractors. He fed me. A new kind of work: managing the minutiae of someone else's stability.

The Fiddler Is Paid

Atlanta again. Another attempt. But the meds—gone for over a year—the body, it protests. It remembers. It begins to falter.

Another friend. Another reprieve. But the universe demands its dramatic tension. He finds the man of his dreams. I must move out.

The morning he told me—the same morning I woke to find the IRS had frozen my bank account. The retirement savings. The taxes I hadn't paid.

Like a biblical plague, and I was a modern, pathetic Job. 

Three years severed. Two years off the meds. 

But I was still moving. Stalking the hiring manager for a national pharmacy company.

I drove overnight. Florida. Slept in the car. Washed up in a gas station men’s room—the final, humiliating ablution of the fallen god.

She met me for breakfast. I made my case. She said, “You had me at hello.”

The job is yours.

Miami. An apartment. The first provider visit. The meds. The healing. Physical. Emotional. Spiritual.

I was back. But this time… this time, I was the ant. The consummate planner. Saving for tomorrow. 

Hoping for the best. Planning - with a fierce, quiet vengeance - for the worst. This trial by fire forged a new me. Taught me humility. Taught me gratitude. And most importantly: to never take the gifts of today and the promise of tomorrow for granted. The curtain closes. The house lights come up. And the fiddler, at long last, has been paid.