MY FRIEND PINOCCHIO DAVID RABE

When I broke Kenny's bedroom door, I was in the middle of a crazy argument with my girlfriend.

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Kenny and his wife, Cathy, were away, and, actually, I didn't ruin the door, but I damaged it and hurt my hand. This was the girlfriend I'd run after in a panic-stricken, wild breakout that destroyed my first marriage and led to a nervous breakdown. Time in the break-down lane. It turned out to be a kind of walking collapse, in the sense that pneumonia is sometimes “walking.” So I walked around pretty much like shattered pottery glued back together haphazardly, all the while drinking, with a teeth-gritted determination to hang on to my girlfriend and survive. Not that pottery can drink or walk. But I could and did, and one of the things I did in that time was break Kenny's door.

She was in the bedroom, and I was outside it. We talked through the door, each of us drinking—which was a big mistake, a big miscalculation that went unrecognized at the time. I had some sort of idea or perception of her that manifested as this gigantic, ungovernable feeling that I couldn't live without her. It was like I was midair and only partway down a long fall with no end in sight. If I wanted to be kind to myself, and to her, too, I could say that we were self-medicating. But, no matter what you call it, we knew enough to get away from each other, and I had to get a new door.