Gangster’s Paradise

There is a character in the television show The Sopranos, a show I won’t bother praising because you should have already watched it three times.

In fact, get yourself a gabagool, provolone, and vinegar pepper sandwich and watch it right now.

I send a weekly newsletter about writing, creativity, and making space between who we are and who we tell ourselves we are. This week was about the insurance we think we have when we do the work, only to find ourselves haunted by the victims of our own nonsense. Or bullets. Whatever you got.

Anyway, this character, Paulie, is as fascinating, terrifying, hilarious, deeply layered, and endlessly interesting to deconstruct as the rest of the show. As a soldier for the mob, his lack of coping skills - unless you count hitting someone with a tire iron as a coping skill - isn’t usually a problem; a hair-trigger temper isn’t a unique quality among his peers. But, for Paulie especially, the smallest emotional ripple causes him to erupt in childish insecurity and rage. He prefers to dwell in a reliable, transactional, quantifiable world of black-and-white, us-versus-them, and might-makes-right. Simple. Clear. Impossible to argue with. And I wouldn’t recommend it even if you wanted to.  

This balance, this life of codes and rules, keeps Paulie grounded. He thrives in the structural hierarchy of things like the Mafia and the Catholic church, and just because he breaks kneecaps and necks for a living doesn’t mean he can’t wash his rap sheet of sins, right? Religion also serves as a moral counterweight, an afterlife insurance policy in case any doubts start creeping in about decisions he’s made or acts he’s committed. He has a net, a protection program. First, you got your mortal sins; those are the bad ones, and you multiply them by fifty. Then, there’s the venial sins; those are medium-sized, you times them by twenty-five. You add them together, and that’s how long you have to spend in Purgatory, Heaven’s waiting room. Paulie figures he’ll be there about 6,000 years, but in Purgatory time, that’s no big deal. I imagine he’ll have a deck of cards.

So, he can relax. He can keep doing what he’s doing, and any problems will work their way out in the end. The guardrails will do their job, and he can do his. It’s the perfect crime.

But then, one of the guys in the crew is shot and has a near-death experience. He comes back with a message from Hell. He tells Paulie there’s a spot for him, a barstool at the hottest club in town, if you know what I mean. No math formula, no waiting room, no cards. Just a puzzle with three missing pieces and a broken TV playing The Real Housewives of New York on a loop. 

In light of this upsetting news, Paulie panics, loses sleep; how can this be? Finally, desperate,  he goes to a psychic. To get his footing back. To hear he’s right, not so the medium can tell him he’s surrounded by spirits that are laughing at him. Not so the psychic can call out by name the first man he killed in front of everyone, and tell Paulie that he haunts him. He throws chairs at the empty air and yells a few curses, makes some threats about breaking phantom legs. He’ll make those specters sorry.

Spooked, in every sense of the word, he storms into the church to confront the priest about his lack of immunity.  All those years giving them money should have offered him protection from his past victims; what gives? He re-organ-ed the church organ, white-d up the altar boy whites, and this is the thanks he gets?  Now he’s just supposed to face consequences for his crimes like a regular person? 

This is how I feel when I find myself making the same mistakes over and over. The therapy. The journaling. The meditation. The walking around lakes, the essential oils, the crystals, the yoga, the tapping, the looking, the not looking, the holding on, the letting go. I mean, when does it end? When do I get enough hole punches that I get a free pass? If you wax a table enough times, you almost can’t get to the table; why does the dysfunction keep getting all over me? Why aren’t I hermetically sealed at this point? 

I guess what I’m asking is: where is the set-it-and-forget-it button on this thing? And by this thing I mean my life. And what sandwich pairs best with inescapable consequences and chair-throwing?