Permanently Suspended by Anthony Cumia

Author:Anthony Cumia
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: N/A
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Published: 2018-09-24T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

Limbo

Initially the hard part of being fired was trying to convince my family that everything was okay. I certainly didn’t know or think it was. Opie and I were damaged goods and as fucked as you could possibly be in the radio biz. Even when our contract was up in two years, we might attract zero interest. I thought this time we really might have done it to ourselves to the point of no coming back.

We had fucked up bad, and it was frightening.

My family had been so proud and amazed at what I had accomplished in this industry. It went from their seeing me as a completely irresponsible employee in the real working world to their knowing I was a multimillionaire radio personality. Prior to this success, I had been the one in the family everyone was constantly worrying about. “Is Ant going to be able to pay his rent?” It wouldn’t have been a stretch for me to be knocking on their door asking for a place to sleep. I was that guy. To have transcended from that to what we accomplished in Boston and then New York was beyond anything my family or I ever could have imagined.

It wasn’t like I had the luxury of hiding my firing. I was on the cover of the newspaper as half of “Opie and Dopie” and had to reassure my family that this was just part of the business. That I been through this before and would totally get another radio gig. I didn’t even know if I could put it across believably because I didn’t believe it when I was saying it, but it was important for me to put them all at ease.

The worst part of our being fired was not being able to get another job for the duration of two years. That’s a long time not to work and to be so far removed from our fans.

I was still getting paid and had all this money pouring in with twenty-four hours in a day to fill by doing nothing. I started realizing how important structure was and having something to do except spending insane amounts of money to entertain myself. I found it hard trying to fill my day. On paper it sounds great, having a ton of money and nothing to do with zero responsibility.

During this time, I was living with my girlfriend, Melinda, in Brooklyn on Shore Road. Melinda was the bright side in all of this. We were having fun and would travel together. We vacationed at the opulent Atlantis hotel in the Bahamas for two weeks. As we were checking out I said, “What are we going to do when we get home?” She was like, “I don’t know.” We were rolling our luggage past the front desk and I said, “Ya know what? Can we get our room for another two weeks?” We went right back upstairs and stayed a month at the resort.

It’s difficult not to have the mindset of someone who has something to do.

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