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“I’m not going,” I said, interrupting Lois’s wardrobe check.

“What? What do you mean, you aren’t going?”

“Just what I said, Lois. I’m not going to Hong Kong.”

“Buzz, you have to go to Hong Kong. You have two very important speeches to give.”

“I’m not going!”

Lois could tell by my demeanor that I was serious, but she kept trying to encourage me, to get me up and ready to go. “Buzz Aldrin, you are going on the plane tonight!”

“Lois, I’m not going,” I said emphatically. I got up and walked out of the bedroom, out into our living room, and kept right on going. I walked out of our condo without telling Lois where I was heading, and let the door slam behind me.

One of the reasons I didn’t tell Lois where I was going was that I didn’t know. I just knew I had to get out for some air. I pressed the elevator button, thinking at first that I would head down to the ground level and walk, but then, when the elevator door opened, I pressed the number for the top floor instead of going down. At the top floor, I went over to the fire-escape door, pushed it open, and climbed the stairs to the rooftop of our building. From the rooftop, ahead of me, I could see all the way to the Pacific Ocean, several miles away to the west, and to the east, the lights of downtown L.A.’s skyscrapers. Behind me, four lanes of busy Saturday afternoon traffic on Wilshire Boulevard whizzed by the condo tower. I walked over to the edge of the roof and looked down. It was certainly a long drop to the street. Heights had never bothered me, so I simply stood along the edge and looked out at the sights below.

How long I stayed on that rooftop, I’m not really sure, but it must have been longer than I thought, because when I finally went downstairs, Lois’s daughter Lisa was there, and the women were in a tizzy. Apparently Lois had called Lisa when she realized that I was adamantly refusing to go to China, and Lisa had raced across town from Santa Monica, a good twenty-to thirty-minute drive. Both had been frantically looking for me, in the lobby, in the exercise room, everywhere.

“Buzz, where have you been?” Lois implored. I could tell she had been worried about me.

“I was on the roof,” I replied.

“On the roof!” Lois and Lisa practically shouted in unison. Apparently my answer did nothing to allay the women’s concerns.

“Buzz, what were you doing on the roof?” Lois wanted to know.

“Getting some air.”

Lois was troubled by my going up on the roof, though she continued packing for the trip nonetheless, and I remained equally as determined. “I’m not going. I won’t go, not with my tooth like this,” I said. The tooth was a problem, but it was a lower tooth, so it didn’t really look bad, but it was a good, legitimate excuse. I went back into the bedroom and crawled in bed. The blue funk was back.

I told Lois and Lisa I just “couldn’t do it in my current state of mind.” I couldn’t control the way I was feeling. Lois knew, however, that this could be devastating to my reputation as a professional speaker. In all the years since I had met Lois, we had only canceled one previous high-end speaking engagement because of illness, and while everyone understands that cancellations by speakers, musicians, and other performers can always be a possibility, it is never a good thing when it happens, and it is always inconvenient for the sponsor and disappointing to the audience. Just as in the space program, the slogan “Failure is not an option” was well known, so in working with speakers’ bureaus, the adage could be adapted to “Cancellations are not an option.”

Lois and Lisa started scrambling. I knew that my refusal was a self-destructive act, and at that moment I didn’t care. I tended to give myself permission to do that which was not in my own best interests. But Lois refused to give up. She felt sure that I would get on that plane the next day, if I could just have a little time to mull things over. Lisa called the agency and explained that I had a problem with