BATTLE ELEGIES for PEACEFUL PEOPLE BORN INTO a MODERN WORLD a Written Creative Work Submitted to the Faculty of San Francisco St

Home , Alias (season 2), Cougar (slang), Dove (toiletries), My Own Thing, Pass at Me, Something Changed

BATTLE ELEGIES FOR PEACEFUL PEOPLE BORN INTO A MODERN WORLD

A Written Creative Work submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for ~ k the Degree

2L0IS Master of Fine Arts

Creative Writing: Fiction

Jacob Alexander Boyd

San Francisco, California

May 2015 Copyright by Jacob Alexander Boyd 2015 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL

I certify that I have read Battle Elegies for Peaceful People Born Into a Modern World by

Jacob Alexander Boyd, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Fine

Arts in Creative Writing: Fiction at San Francisco State University.

Maxine Chernoff, M.A. Chair and Professor BATTLE ELEGIES FOR PEACEFUL PEOPLE BORN INTO A MODERN WORLD

Jacob Alexander Boyd San Francisco, California 2015

My novel excerpt is about the narrator’s recovery from the hopeless state of mind and being that is addiction, and it is also about his simultaneous journey of learning to manage and accept my superpower/mental illness in the suburban community of Hemet, California, in the heart of Southern California's Inland Empire. The novel's plot will follow the arc of the Joseph Campbell monomyth of the hero's journey as the narrator learns how to become Clark Kent. The chapters are divided into very small pieces which, in addition to the novel's plot, include the narrator's writings in notebooks kept during this time in his fictional life. Entries from the notebooks will be very short lyrical opinions on metaphysics and theology, assignments from his time in treatment, and selections from the science fiction epic novel about clones and restaurants and filmmakers and addicts and two siblings traversing a post-apocalyptic landscape.

I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this written creative work.

Chair, Thesis Committee Date Part 1: You're a Broken Human Being, D on’t Be a Pussy About It

Prologue to the Epilogue

1. The book you are about to read doesn’t have a flashy opening sentence, which is unfortunate because I really like it when a book has a flashy opening sentence. Here are some of my discarded attempts (the ones that I liked, anyway): “What’s worse — going crazy or being sane afterwards?” “Memory is a virus,” and “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

2. It’s been years since I’ve spoken with or seen anyone from that time in my life when I got better. They (those that I’ve not seen or spoken to for years) find me daily.

Sometimes they make me smile (smoking Djarum Blacks with Joni on the balcony of our apartment in the desert dawn hours, steam curling off our coffees and weaving with the smoke before vanishing in the air between us, a pausing in our morning routines) and sometimes they make me cringe (coming-to in the emergency room, strapped to the bed, a prisoner who didn’t remember his crime, and that nurse with hard eyes and a smug voice who only undid the straps one at a time). I love and resent them equally, the characters from my past. Each person I met in that impossible time carried a verse, and now push against memory’s narrative, their spirits humming in refrain, those who created the book you are about to read.

3. The book you are about to read is a safe book. There is a happy ending. It is a story of healing and forgiveness, but there are some perilous passages that might cause you some discomfort. The drug fueled spiral that nearly ended my life, for instance, or the cancer 2

that ended my best friend. In the interest of relieving any discomfort you may or may not experience as narrative suspense, I’ll lay out the chronology for you now so you’ll know which sections to skip if you like (starting off with a little pertinent backstory about myself as well): I graduated from high school as class valedictorian and received an appointment to the Air Force Academy and then I was hazed at the Air Force Academy and a new part of my brain sparked to life giving me a superpower/mental illness and then I went to film school on scholarship and then my brain shut down and I spent some time in that place and then I trained to be a chef and then I got hooked on all the drugs and then I had a brief tenure on the streets (the book you are about to read starts right around here) and my awe-inspiring B.A.C. of 0.517 and then I died and came back and got clean and then sober and then the Cinderella story I lived through where I almost made an independent movie that folded at half past five rather than midnight and then I took care of my friend who was sick because she took care of me when I was sick and then she died from her sickness and I was left alive and then about how I could see through the identities of narrative that people in the world construct as being nothing more than a dream, a metaphor, a cinematic projection of the subjective and how it could ultimately even be that death is nothing more than a temporary solution to the permanent problem of soul sickness but even if I was dead from my overdose and landed in Hemet and Hemet was Heaven like the bumper sticker said which could be true because it felt like it might actually be so in those euphoric moments of creative energy as I wrote and wrote and discovered a way to find peace and be in this world and reconcile my 3

superpower/mental illness and be of service to others (the book you are about to read ends right around here) (Also: I will explain the superpower/mental illness soon).

4. I get truly bored writing the connective tissue that most stories contain. I wouldn’t dream of making my failing your frustration, however, so here is a permission slip

(though not necessarily instructions) from me to you: feel free to just jump to around the text, you can always come back to plot points later in the story. Please don’t stop reading.

Altogether, the story spans a little more than a year. That first year.

5. This story is not a typical allegory for addiction where we follow a protagonist making unwise choices and spiraling out of control. Nothing is really at stake in such stories because drunks and junkies do not value their lives, the families, or their futures. How can a protagonist be in danger if he or she doesn’t have anything to lose? The only motive any true junkie or drunk has is to escape life, grind towards oblivion, with a distant hope of suicide (while being simultaneously terrified of it). They also always say or think the line: “Insanity is doing the same thing expecting different results.” While I have found this to be true, I’m more interested in telling about the time I did a different thing and discovered a different result. There will be no sloppy ending where the “hero” hits rock bottom at the end and then the narrative flashes forward to a magical “all better” epilogue. The book you are about to read takes place during that chapter break, between the rock bottom and magical epilogue. It’s about the crawl out of the horrific spiral, about the delicate steps towards finding a reason to live, where there are real stakes (new friends, renewed families, a perceivable future) and the very real threat of relapse 4

(because it is in every decision you make for a while, lurking in a comer and never forgotten).

6. The book you are about to read is written in the first person past tense. Even so, there are two different times that the same narrator is narrating from: the voice in the regular text (not in the parentheses) is looking back from a year or so on, but (the voice and asides and commentary found within the parentheses) and not in the regular text is speaking from ten years on. It’s taken me this long to actually be able to write out this story.

7. The book you are about to read is not just about recovery from the hopeless state of mind and being that is addiction, it is also about my simultaneous journey of accepting my superpower. I have a superpower (though I don’t like that label), an ability, and it is among the most useless abilities anyone could have (actually, I don’t like calling it an

“ability” either). When I meet someone and touch them for the first time, and only on the first moment of tactile contact, I’m transported into the body and mind of their previous life, as that life is ending. I see a lot of death. This “thing” is just a thing that I do — as magical and fascinating as any other naturally occurring phenomena (like the glittering shimmer of sunlight off the ocean or the smell of concrete during a thunderstorm). I didn’t always have a healthy attitude towards it (and I think that attitude is healthy) (the book you are about to read is also about how I acquired a healthy attitude towards it).

8. There are rules and limitations on my superpower and the book you are about to read will make more sense if I familiarize you with them now. First tactile contact with 5

anyone creates a transportive experience across time which lands me in the body and mind of their being as they are about to die in their previous life. I am flooded with images, smells, sounds, tastes, and often brief memories. I am unable to steer their body to prevent the death, or in any way control the body and mind experiencing the fatality. I am an observer, a hostage passenger. Sometimes the deaths are peaceful, sometimes they are violent. The violent ones are uncomfortable.

9. The book you are about to read does not cover my childhood or adolescence. I’ll sum those years up now: they were fine. My superpower didn’t manifest until I was older.

During my brief duration as a cadet at the Air Force Academy, upperclassmen took it upon themselves to turn me into the real deal, a crackerjack soldier. The hazing short- circuited something in my biological chemistry, something in my brain that doesn’t show up on any scans (I have a very healthy brain...medically speaking). The short-circuit gave me my superpower.

10. The book you are about to read contains writings from the notebooks I kept during this time. Entries from the notebooks will include very short opinions on metaphysics, assignments from my time in treatment, selections from my epic novel about clones and restaurants and filmmakers and addicts and two siblings traversing a post-apocalyptic landscape. I also might include anything else I feel like including, especially lists (I like making lists).

11. The book you are about to read is divided into small pieces because I’m often uncomfortable when I write them. Reading (for me) has always been an escape from the 6

crudeness of reality and the unbearable truth of personal insignificance in an unbiased world. Writing about the crudeness of reality and the unbearable truth of personal insignificance in an unbiased world hurts my heart. Paradoxically, it’s been in facing some of that crudeness through writing that escape from insignificance and ambivalence was made possible, so I suspect that by reading this story, you’ll experience a similar discovery of beauty and dignity by facing crudeness and escape within these pages into events of significance, importance, and true miracles performed by heroes! Please enjoy the brevity of each small piece and by no means feel obligated to read more than one at a time, but if you choose to read more that one at a time, please enjoy the unintentional side effect of a quickly paced story.

12. Great love and great pain are the only things ever worth writing about, and I hope you enjoy them while you are here.

The Shadow People

In January of 2006, three weeks before my death and rebirth in an ordinary emergency room of an ordinary hospital in a very ordinary suburb, I had an enviable spot behind a small movie theater in Hemet, CA, where the business’s heating and air conditioning unit vented out warm air into the night. My duffle contained six days worth of clothes, some spare toiletries (even while out camping, I still hated smelling bad), a notebook (which I was using to write my epic novel about clones and restaurants and filmmakers and addicts and two siblings traversing a post-apocalyptic landscape), two 7

cartons of Parliament Lights, one uncharged cell phone (you can’t buy dope without one

— when it’s charged), and a copy of The Iliad (which seemed to surprise a paramedic who found it in my gear during one of my overdoses and trips to the E.R.) (I assumed, at the time, his surprise was that I preferred the new Fagles translation, but my interpretation of his surprise has since changed). I was grateful to have a warm spot on a

January night, secluded and undisturbed. Looking back at how important that fucking theater turned out to be while I was in Hemet — well, it’s the type of thing that if you read it in a book, you wouldn’t believe the coincidence. I ended up in Hemet because it was near the town I grew up in and my mother had relocated there. She, of course, wanted nothing to do with me (at the time) because I was a mess (and I can’t blame her, I was a disaster). When I was three, she took me to this exact theater (which was under different management then, Old Man Martin was the last in his family’s line that owned and operated the business since its opening in 1908) to see the movie E.T. It terrified me, and she had to carry me into a little room in the back of the auditorium with a few seats and a glass window so mothers with loud children could keep watching the movie without disturbing the audience. I howled in terror at the wrinkled, gurgling, creature with spindly arms and fingers reaching across darkened floorboard for Reese’s Pieces.

Old Man Martin sold the theater two years prior to my tenancy in the rear to a young screenwriter/producer who had just landed a huge script sale and used the profits to purchase said theater. I’d eventually end up working for him.

Obviously, living behind a theater was not ideal. I couldn’t stay there during 7

cartons of Parliament Lights, one uncharged cell phone (you can’t buy dope without one

Obviously, living behind a theater was not ideal. I couldn’t stay there during 8

daylight hours, lest I get run off by the owner or the police, so I did what every bum did: I spent a large chunk of my day in the public library. I liked books and there were toilets.

After hanging around the library for four days, one of the workers approached me and suggested I go to the county mental health office and get on disability. The money might help me find shelter, provided I didn’t “piss it away on drugs.” I explained to the nice lady that I hadn’t done any drugs in over a week, and she explained to me that I smelled like booze, and I then explained to her that that was because I had just finished off a pint of Popov (red label, classy) before entering her fine establishment. Her eyes narrowed and it was time to leave, but not before getting directions to this magical place where the government gives you money to not go to the library.

I walked directly to county mental health, which was half a mile west on the same street. I waited four and a half hours before I was admitted to see anyone, the vodka slowly draining from my pores and the dryness building behind my eyes in that stark waiting room where neglected children shrieked, broken elderly people muttered to themselves, and gravel-voices echoed from unwashed beards cracking through tanned cheeks. I was finally ushered into an office where a very polite bald man with a pony tail, desperately clinging to his scalp, looked me over through thick aviator style bifocals. He had an intern, female, my age, Latin, and cute if chubby. He was my newly designated social worker and she was shadowing him. He interviewed me and his intern was taking notes on my responses. I didn’t like this, especially since she wrote down so much when I lied about drinking earlier that day (sure I was lying, but she didn’t know that), and with 9

each scribble she made on her legal pad, she got chubbier, older, uglier.

The Riverside County mental health social worker suggested that Rancho Phoenix

House was the perfect place for me to stay while my paperwork was filed and evaluated.

I was shuttled there immediately following a call to the facility (as immediately as it took their van to drive from the edge of city limits to the clinic in the middle of town). The compound was a dual diagnosis behavioral health clinic that “specialized in treating adults with psychological disorders who self-medicated their illnesses with alcohol abuse and illegal drug use.” Mostly we were left alone to play cards and listen to the radio.

Each of us received a prescription psych-med cocktail to aid in the process. One of the counselors would take us to a morning A.A. meeting twice a week (Wednesday and

Saturday). It was more a nut-hut than a rehab, and really not very good at being either.

Rancho Phoenix House was one of many county and state funded facilities in and around Hemet. It was tucked against the base of the southernmost foothills on the very outskirts of city limits, near the newly constructed reservoir, out in the dust and the sage.

It was far enough away from Hemet proper to be ignored by the community and still be a reasonably practical location to operate such a facility. Phoenix House was an elaborate converted mansion with large vaulted ceilings in the common rooms and redwood walls that once hosted a privately owned recording studio in the 1970’s, which saw many bands

I had never heard of and The Eagles. They re-recorded two tracks here in ’72 and ’73, for the Desperado album. Those two tracks were “Certain Kind of Fool” and “Outlaw Man.”

I hated (and still hate) The Eagles. 10

I think the reason I ended up so rapidly admitted into Phoenix House was because the Riverside County mental health social worker asked me about the shadow people. He didn’t see them, but knew others like me who did. I suppose it was his barometer for evaluating how far gone into junkie-crazy someone might be. There are so many stories and testimonials about seeing these things, and it’s hard for those who haven’t seen them to truly understand what they are. No one knows (Only the shadow knows!) where they come from; they are dark humanoid shapes in peripheral vision. They linger in corners and on the walls, sometimes up near the ceiling, indoors, outdoors, rain or shine. They don’t have faces or clothing, and they don’t try to communicate. But they’re there; a ghostly darkness, a person shaped shadow, creeping closer to my full range of view but I never could quite focus on them. I felt them: emotional beings, made up of pain, creeping dread, terror, and/or any uncategorized doom that hasn’t happened yet and seems as if it might at any given moment. It was like the moments before a sneeze (a sneeze of menacel), always on the verge of manifesting but never quite appearing. Meth users or really anyone who has stayed awake for days on end (like, a week or longer) is aware of their presence. There isn’t a first time you experience the shadow people; you slowly become aware of their presence, like an inaudible crescendo that builds so gradually you simply accept that the sound has always been there.

I made a friend at Rancho Phoenix House, within an hour of arriving, his name was

David. Here is a list of significant details about David:

1. David was psychic (a talent that was brought on by his drug use, unlocking the 11

potential of his human consciousness) and discussed it at length. For all I knew, he might have been, but it sounded like the usual drug-fueled ramblings I had with using

acquaintances at three-thirty in the morning. He told me about being haunted by the same numbers, following him around and appearing on clocks, receipts, phone numbers, and the like. Fie spoke of this connection he had as a child to an airplane he saw flying high above Whittier (where he grew up) and how he willed it to crash into the ocean (a plane did crash into the ocean that day, it might have been the same one). Of course we spent a

significant amount of time talking about deja vu and dreams. David didn’t know the cards

I carried, my ability to transcend space and time, to relive previous deaths through tactile contact, so most of his authoritative lectures secretly resonated as merely darling

(especially when he gestured emphatically with his hands).

2. David was my age, thinner than me, and sporting a wispy mustache. He was also educated, and he liked the right type of music (not The Eagles). And he, like me, wasn’t really crazy. Not truly. I think he understood this as well. Though we were both

diagnosed during our time there as Bi-polar bears (a convenient psychological catch-all that doctors with limited time and resources fall back on), there was an understanding that drugs probably accounted for most of our difficulties.

3. He had two women in his life, I think. One was an ex-wife, the other a kissing cousin,

and his stories about either often overlapped requiring me to ask, “who are we talking

about again? Your ex or your cousin.” He would nod emphatically while taking a long drag off his cigarette, yellowed spindly fingers keeping it in place between his lips, 12

identify one or the other, hold for a few seconds, and then exhale through his nostrils with a smile. He had many smiles for me. David left his wife or his wife left him because

David was bisexual and frequently commented on his attraction to men in her presence, insisting that she accept him fully and completely with a strong sexual appetite. He said he was trying to torpedo the relationship because his cousin didn’t like her. I heard a range of stories about his cousin, the same age as him, and still living in Arizona (his previous city of residence). In one story they were soul mates, trying to build a life together in secret, in love, the deepest, truest love, her child most certainly fathered by him, and in another she invited him over to dinner, adding a special ingredient to his dish, and his dish alone (David saw this from the other room), revealed after a trip to the emergency room to be rat poison. I stopped asking David questions about his women because I kept getting confused about who or what happened and I didn’t want to accidentally come across as confrontational, insisting on the truth.

4. In Maricopa, Arizona, David spent time in Tent City, an extension of the county jail. I don’t think he ever told me the charges, probably possession of narcotics. To escape the sweltering heat under canvas in the middle of the afternoon, he would walk the yard singing the “Milkshake Song” by Kelis. He threw back his shoulders and belted out how his milkshake could bring all the boys to the yard. Apparently, the wackier he acted at

Maricopa County Tent City, the less likely he was to get hassled by other inmates.

Our days at Phoenix House were not very busy, mostly it was a place for us to stabilize on a regiment of prescription psych meds while we peed and sweated out the 13

drugs and booze in our bloodstreams. Occasionally we threw up. There was a daily group therapy session, but it was not intensive and didn’t last long. Most mornings and afternoons we played cards and listened to the radio in the sunroom at the rear of the house behind the kitchen. We smoked a lot of cigarettes. Our favorite card game was

Five Hundred. I know how these places are depicted in movies — wailing dirty corridors with mumbling shuffling patients haunting the halls or (and this is even more inaccurate) anorexic starlets singing Motown hit singles to each other — but in all honesty, county facilities like this one were quite boring.

David and I would play cards and talk metaphysics. Once, during one of David’s many speculations on drugs expanding his now unlocked psychic potential, another patient, a schizophrenic whose name I can’t remember and who never wore shoes and had filthy fucking feet, was sitting in the corner and rolling his own cigarettes and listening in on us. He joined our conversation (a rarity, he scowled a lot) and explained how evil existed in the fifth dimension and how good existed in the sixth dimension. He then seemed puzzled by this and changed his declaration into evil existing in the sixth and then good existing in the seventh. I asked him what existed in the fifth dimension with the recent promotions of evil and good to higher planes and he told me it was beyond my purview. He actually used the word “purview.” David said he liked schizophrenics the best because they were still capable of childlike innocence. David asked me if I saw the shadow people. I lied and told him that I didn’t. Not wanting to talk about it, I changed the topic, “You know I have a theory about reincarnation.” 14

“I am, as they say good sir, all ears,” he said.

“What if while we’re waiting to be reborn, we just linger in the world as pop songs?” I said, “Our souls exist as harmonic frequencies and once we die, they go into the ether and hover around everyone as our favorite pop ballads.”

“Which song would you be?”

“I have to think about it,” I said, “You?”

“Nelly Furtado, ‘I’m Like a Bird.’”

“Oh, that’s a good one.”

“Do yours,” David said, “Think about it.”

I thought about it, “Jane Says by Jane’s Addiction. Because I also don’t mean no harm, and I also just don’t know what else to do about it. I also like the part where Jane says she ain’t never been in love, she don’t know what it is. But that might change. So I don’t know. I also like Here Comes Your Man by The Pixies. Or maybe anything by

Elliot Smith.”

“Maybe the shadow people hovering around here are all Eagles songs, just waiting to be reborn as people,” he was staring out into the brush beyond the window, maybe looking at them. I hoped that wasn’t the case. The shadow people were unsettling., but they seemed even more sinister if they were “Lying Eyes” or God fucking forbid, “Hotel

California.”

Our conversation ended because “All Along the Watchtower,” the Hendrix version, came on the radio. All of us in the patio (David, myself, and two other clients/patients 15

that were smokers) started singing along at the top of our lungs to the opening line and

David turned up the radio. Even with this extra volume, I managed to cut through, clear as a bell, with the exact wrong lyrics. I sang, “Said the joker to the queen.” Everyone laughed at me, even David, and the schizophrenic with dirty feet pointed at me. I felt fire under my scalp and left the common area for my room. I cried there for a while on my bed, curled up on top of the blankets. This was not an unusual occurrence in the day to day operation of Phoenix House, and only one patient, another schizophrenic (a middle aged woman named Gracie), voiced concern for me. Of course they laughed at me, because of course I didn’t belong here either. But there I was, in a small room with an empty second bed, while everyone was laughing and enjoying themselves somewhere else. At least I had the room to myself. I should have told him I saw the shadow people.

Later, like six months later, when David and I both had six months clean and were roommates and living with our sponsor, David told me he was sorry about laughing at me. He also told me that he was going to follow me to my room and offer to suck my cock to make me feel better. I thought he was about to proposition me after telling me this but he didn’t, and silence hung between us, a predatory softness in his eyes. I told him it didn’t matter anymore (it was a lie, it still mattered). I also told him that I had changed my soul song to “It’s My Life” by The Animals. He missed the significance of what I was trying to tell him because no one listens to The Animals anymore. He asked me if I wasn’t sure my soul song might actually be “Desperado” by The Eagles. I told him I was certain that he was wrong. But that hadn’t happened just yet. 16

Zen of the Closed Fist — How to Dress

1. Hat (1997) — First essential item added to my suit of armor. At the Air Force

Academy, on any given night, four of upperclassmen — always the same four — would wake me and take turns holding me in place while administering punches to my torso or other body parts that were covered by my daytime uniform. It was, according to them, necessary in learning how to hold my posture while standing at attention (though they went on to train me for a variety of other things as well). During the first beating, I witnessed a death by beheading, a death by cardiac arrest, a death in childbirth, and another death by beheading at the same time and location as the previous one (my belief was that these two were tried and executed together in their past life)). I wear a hat, so no one can touch my head.

2. Jeans (1997) — Second essential item. Jeans are durable, reliable, and always in fashion (making it easy to blend in). While unloading the weekly shipment at my first job

(post-Air Force) (it was in retail), my tan work slacks tore along the length of the leg and as I was leaving for home to change, I brushed against a coworker’s legs (she was wearing a skirt) (and was sacrificed on one of those building-blocks pyramids in

Mexico). Don’t ever even think the word “shorts.”

3. Undershirt (1999) — Third essential item, and one I wouldn’t have thought of before recognizing its necessity. Long sleeves are not enough. The undershirt must be worn under a long-sleeved shirt or sweater at all times. I worked at a local TV station while in film school and was the low man on the totem pole, doing the gofer tasks which included 17

escorting guests from the front lobby of the station to the studio. For one particular episode of a talk show we produced, Ruth Buzzi was the guest (a kind and warm human being) and seemed put off by my avoiding her handshake. She put an arm around me, but being short and my shirt riding up in the process, she connected with my lower back above my belt. Ruth Buzzi’s previous incarnation died of old age (it happens sometimes).

4. Hooded Jumper (1999) — After experimenting with a variety of scarves, turtlenecks, and vaulted collars, I discovered that the hooded jumper is the best way to protect the neck from stray fingertips that might connect during a rare hand-on-shoulder (or even rarer pat on the back). I posed for a photograph with a group of friends and one stranger while waiting in line for a midnight showing of Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom

Menace. The stranger, a man standing in line behind us who we invited to join us as a fourth for a pickup game of Spades to pass the time, stood arm in arm with us as the picture was taken (this man and two of my friends are smiling in the photograph, I am not). I don’t remember his name, but he died with his boots on (if you catch my meaning).

5. Fingerless Gloves (2004) — Gloves were an unfortunate mainstay for me in public

during the winter months (unfortunate items because they could only be worn outdoors

and never provided enough dexterity for much use), and during the warmer half of the year I was forced to walk with my hands in my pockets often (very impractical).

Fingerless gloves were a welcome discovery: I could wear them well into the spring and

again, starting early in the fall, wear them indoors without receiving too many scowls. 18

They provide the dexterity I needed with my exposed fingertips to grip keys, hold a pen, and use a phone. All this without risking my hand brushing against a stray arm

(something that, for all my care, happens too often). When not using my hand, resting position has always been as a closed fist. For protection.

6. Smoking (2005) — Smoking is the single most effective means of preventing unwanted contact with anyone. No one wants to get too close to a smoker, even other smokers. I have never had an instant of contact with another person while smoke, even in passing lighters back and forth. Plus, smoking is cool.

There Were Wolves

I didn’t touch David until the day he left, five days after we met. A bed opened up at a county-run detox and drug rehabilitation center, a real one, two cities over in

Riverside, and David would be its occupant. When his departure happened, it happened fast. That morning we went for a walk around the grounds, the dry dust kicked up from shuffling steps and dead tall weeds crunching under my worn Chuck Taylors. We talked and we walked beyond the property limits though we didn’t know we were doing so.

There was nothing near Phoenix House for at least a quarter mile, and only that was the highway in and out of town. At the base of the nearby foothills was a squat water reservoir accessible only by a rocky utility road. We went there and talked about what we might do once we left Phoenix House.

“You want to be roommates when we get out of here?” he asked

I didn’t really have anywhere else to go. My mother wouldn’t take me back, and 19

January was getting colder (February is typically the coldest month in Southern

California’s Inland Empire). “Sure,” I said, “I mean, yeah. That would be terrific.”

His face brightened and he politely hammered out a series of affirmations, nodding with each one, “Yes. Excellent. Excellent and fantastic. Good. Yes.” He explained how certain he was that because we were such fast great friends that we’d be even better roommates. He said I had sensitive eyes that understood so much, and at the time I felt that he understood me by seeing who I was beyond the artifice of the sickness we shared

(I was just relieved that someone had made the decision for me, the decision of what to do next. And anyone who liked me at that point in my spiral was a valuable person to stay close to).

When we returned from our walk, the staff was surprised, assuming that we had left against medical advice and were drawing up appropriate paperwork. David was called into the main office (used by the Doctor for his daily visit — around noon — to check up on our meds). Something was going on. I could tell by the way the staff eyeballed me from the kitchen while I huffed and puffed cigarettes on the back porch. When he came back out, he had news that a bed had opened up at a rehab in Riverside. He would be leaving immediately.

I would be losing my new friend, and assumed that we would not cross paths again

(though we did keep in touch, and did eventually become roommates). Equally troubling was the realization that I would be by myself with the crazy people. Forty-five minutes after his announcement, David was telling me goodbye and collecting my phone number 20

and promising to call as soon as he had phone privileges (restricted phone access is common in detox). I intended to hug him before he left and was preparing myself to prevent the inevitable flash into his previous incarnation’s death — I had a knit watch- cap that I could pull down around my ears and the side of my face — but he caught me off-guard before I was ready.

I was in a woman’s body, running uphill through a forrest. I ran as fast as I still could, exhaustion closing in around the periphery of each of my senses. What might have been adrenaline minutes or even hours ago was lagging. I could no longer feel my legs; only the howling pushed me forward in decreasing strides, my clothing snagged on bushes and fallen branches, and my feet kicked up decaying fauna from the forest floor. I looked down and I saw an antiquated skirt, like the one’s worn by actresses in westerns.

The howling was louder, overlapped with other howls, an echoing chorus. Other sounds were increasing as I ran, forming harmony to those terrible notes: heavy bodies crashed through brush and bramble to the sides and from behind, heavy panting — wolves, many

— seemed as heavy and thunderous as my own heartbeats. I couldn’t run any further, I wouldn’t make it home, I didn’t even know which direction home was — I fled at the first howl and left Simon, poor Simon. The creatures’ cries repeated through the trees, piercing and without end. There were so many of them. Closer, I was certain they were closer, but I couldn’t see them. I faltered, briefly, but it was enough to close the gap between the closest of my pursuers and me. My body was slammed forward by an incredible weight thrown across my back. As I hit the ground, my head was knocked 21

against a rock. I heard the merciful cracking of my skull splitting as my entire upper body began to shake vigorously; the wolves presumably, though I never saw them. And then it was over.

I squeezed David close to me and made him promise to call my mobile as soon as he was granted phone privileges (though who knew where either of us would be and if we’d even be able to follow through on our tentative plans). His eyes welled up and he gripped my shoulder, telling me to be brave and that I could do it, get better — that we could do it together. I nodded, yes, and wished him well, optimistic with limited confidence in his words. They were kind enough, but bravery (or any stoic ideal) is like lightening; violet brilliance announces itself across the big sky, leaving blinking neon afterimages in the eyes of all who see it, but the only evidence that it happened is the brittle black branches of something that used to grow.

You’re Isolating

Every night we gathered in the main room. When this house was a residence, I imagined this space as a living room full of martini glasses clinking dully above Astrud

Gilberto’s disinterested voice hissing and popping on a formica turntable, and when this house was a music studio, I imagined this was where the musicians broke up the late night recording monotony with drug-induced headstands or other contests of physical prowess. The walls sectioned off the kitchen, the dining room, and the other rooms in the house that were newer than the walls making up the rest of the building, a remodel.

Along the remodeled walls were sofas angled towards a TV in a comer. The counselor’s 22

(babysitter’s) desk was here too, monitoring the entrance. The original walls were ruddy wood that looked like cedar (I am not a woodsman or a carpenter, and I can’t tell the difference between actual cedar and painted particle board), and a staircase led to the upper story of the house. I never went upstairs because the ladies bedrooms were up there. I never imagined what the upstairs residence was like because the ladies at Phoenix

House were not attractive.

The counselor’s (babysitter’s) desk always had one social worker doing paperwork

(or office work — the type of work that people do at work that you just ignore as background buzz). There always seemed to be another three or four counselors around

Phoenix House doing... something. They certainly weren’t doing much with us, and they certainly weren’t doing the housekeeping and cooking. We took turns doing chores

(except for the cooking, Gracie and I did the cooking).

After David left, I became more aware of how time passed. Hours became lopsided, elongated, and condensed. Daily events divided increments of time that I and the other residents lived by, each scheduled event ended and began a unit of measurement:

Wake Up — 6:00am

Morning Meal — 8:00am

Midday Meal — 12:00pm

Dual Diagnosis Information Lecture — 1:00pm

Evening Meal — 6:00pm

House Meeting — 7:00pm 23

Lights Out — 10:00pm

So rather than a twenty-four hour day, it felt like I had seven hour day with each event ticking off another rotation around the clock.

At our evening house meeting in the main room, we rotated out the chores (except for the cooking) and talked about our feelings. One of the counsellors would go around the circle and ask each of us to identify on a scale of one to ten how we felt. The night after David left, I identified that my mood was four (the lowest my mood had been since arriving and the lowest it would be for the duration of my stay). Before the counsellor could ask me why my mood was so low, a crack addict with borderline personality disorder named Joe, whose leathered face and brassy bald scalp was usually twisted into a feral, watchful glare (hard-eyed and thoroughly investigative) piped up that my friend was gone (Joe had no friends, he was always on the take and frequently tricking the more severe cases into giving him cigarettes or doing some chores for him — no one liked him and he knew it). The counsellor seemed to anticipate that I would be upset and started to explain to me and everyone there that it was okay to have friends and it was okay to form attachment to them, and that it was okay to feel sad when they were taken away from us.

I suspected this man was a father who watched Sesame Street with his children, scribbling down kernels of wisdom (scratch that — I hope he wasn’t a father and didn’t have children and watched Sesame Street for the same reason).

I spent less time with the others. I tried, for a day or so, to keep up the routine of sitting out in the sunroom, but I didn’t like it there anymore. I tired playing cards with Joe 24

(who cheated), I tried asking the schizophrenic with filthy feet about multidimensional spirituality (he would just grin and hum a few bars of All Along the Watchtower), and I tried listening to the radio with Gracie (she would only listen to Christian contemporary stations — we picked up eight or nine). So I started spending more time alone, and discovered what the counsellors did when they weren’t doing paperwork. They nagged.

I’d be reading and a counsellor would come ask me why I was “isolating.” I went outside to sit alone and smoke, but a counsellor would find me and ask if isolating was the best use of my time. When I stayed in my room writing my novel and journaling my thoughts and ideas about how I live and what it’s like to live with a superpower, and was discovered, a counsellor would ask me if the writing helped but if doing so much of it was really healthy behavior because it was another form of isolating.

“What should I do with my time instead of isolating?” I asked.

“Have you thought about where you’ll go when your two weeks are up?” they said.

They were a “they.” Interchangeable heads and bodies with a single voice and message.

“I’m going to get an apartment with David somewhere after he’s done in

Riverside,” we were going to get an apartment together, possibly somewhere near downtown Riverside, where David had lived previously, near the coffee shops and the used bookstores and the Mission Inn. Downtown where they do the Arts Walk on the first

Thursday of the month and the Festival of Lights every holiday season. Near downtown, we would have a two bedroom apartment, although David for some reason thought we could get by just fine and save money by getting a one bedroom (this made sense to me 25

later), with a balcony to sit on and smoke cigarettes and drink coffee and more coffee in the dry dusk, in the cooling Santa Anas, in the crimson purpling evening.

“And what about you?” they asked me, “You have a disease and you can’t endanger him by still being a practicing addict. You need help. Look at where you’re at.

Think about where you’re going next.”

I did think about it. My old friends, from before, cut me out of their lives as I cut them out of mine, and my mother kept tagging conditions on all conversations. No one wanted to be near me but him, and I couldn’t let the one person who wanted me around go away.

“What should I do?” I asked.

“Rehab. Or at least move into a sober living and go to meetings,” they recited like an ambivalent Greek chorus, “You have to get your problems under control. We have a list of places you can call. Places where you can live while you recover.”

I took their list of places and started calling, trying to find a sober living to move into when I was done here. These calls I made proved useful when my mother came to visit me a few days later. She brought me another carton of Parliament Lights and asked what I’d been doing with my time. I told her that I had been calling sober livings and rehabs and trying to find a place to live and get clean. She didn’t believe me and I asked her if she’d like to see the call log on my phone. Of course she would, she told me, because this is how trust is formed. I showed her and she nodded and smiled, good, she said. I remember thinking how handy that list of phone numbers the counsellors gave me 26

was; not because I was finding a place to live, but because it pleased my mother to see I was making an effort.

A Brief Opinion Piece on the Nature of Time (And Why It’s Complete Bullshit)

Everyone has a different relationship to time. It might be a linear concept, or a circular concept, or the expanding loaf of bread concept, or the infinite eternal concept, or any other concept that I can’t think of off the top of my head. I have opinions.

Because our primitive ancestors were spread out over vast distances hunting and gathering, there was plenty of food for everyone in bountiful supply. Hunting and gathering didn’t take too much time, maybe fifteen to twenty hours a week. I imagine this relaxed survival schedule led to a lot of caveman sex (when humans get bored they have sex — feel free to google this for evidence). With life expectancy being as short as it was, caveman populations remained at a manageable homeostasis with the ecology, hunting and gathering a few hours a day and probably screwing away the rest. But primitive man discovered water supplies, tools, things to do with fire, and eventually cultivation. These discoveries prolonged life expectancy. Cavemen understood death, there was a lot of it, and postponing death probably seemed like it would be a good thing. So they started to civilize. They were no longer hunting and gathering and migrating across rich and bountiful landscapes. Their resources became limited and they had to grow crops and herd livestock. This required a lot of work every day (and it was hard work that sparked some remarkable ingenuity), so they needed to figure out a system of time management.

For a while, it was just looking up at the sun and figuring out when things had to get done 27

based on where the sun was in the sky. This was good as long as they didn’t stare for too long. Then, looking up at the sky changed to putting a stick in the ground with some markings around it. This was better on the eyes. These people were connected to the sun and the sky and the present and living a day at a time.

And then some asshole in Egypt drew a calendar. And then there was a yesterday and a today and a tomorrow, and it was all depicted in calendar form, a symbolic representation of some thing called “time.” People asked what they could do with “time.”

Well, they could monitor and plan out growing seasons, resulting in better crops, or they would know when to castrate bulls and cull goats, resulting in better herds. Time was divided up to correspond with the sun rising and setting, the moon waxing and waning, the stars changing and moving across the heavens. And even though mindsets were shifting from daily living towards annual living, this new means of monitoring and recording time offered newly civilized man a feeling of control over his environment.

And this appearance of control made everyone happy.

So happy, in fact, that people to the northeast in Babylonia said “hey, this business with the calendars is great and I love those sundials, but they don’t work at night. Look at how we can divide up units of the day and now the night too with two bowls of water.

We call it: the water clock!” (Although Babylonians were known for their ability to invent clever names, Nebuchadnezzar for instance, this talent did not extend to household objects). But this water clock made everyone even more happy, because they could then organize their days and nights with more controlled specificity. The water clock and the 28

resulting better time management system it created brought about an increased awareness of change. Change could be measured and evaluated — because one event happened a second event could then happen, and this change was noted, recorded, and applied. For instance, if you planted your crop in October after the river flooded, you’d have a more fruitful harvest; other times, not so much. People realized they could cause a second event by repeating the first event. They discovered they could diversify their resources

(beyond crops and herds) with better time management and expand into other markets; stuff like property (that piece of real estate floods and drains better than this one), salt

(these rocks keep our food from rotting), and other people (the poor will always be with your, right? Just capture a bunch of them and have them be poor and do all your stuff).

Time managed today ensured a tomorrow, making plans for a new and exciting abstract concept they named “the future.” Fear over these plans not working out, loosing the future they believed they earned, led to all kinds of strife between borders and often war.

Warring over control of things like property (I’m taking your piece of real estate that floods and drains better than mine!), salt (I’m taking all your rocks and access to all the rocks so my food won’t rot!), and even other people (let’s cripple education funding, bail out big business, and transition to a consumer based economy where we trick the poor into believing they may one day become millionaires!) never really stopped. It’s what we do. So the clever people in these ancient civilizations invented smaller units of time: hours, minutes, and seconds. In doing so, they also invented a new object to serve as a symbolic representation of these smaller units of time: a mechanical clock (the 29

Babylonian heritage of naming things remained intact). Everyone felt more in control of their life, being able now to manage and monitor tasks down to more specific increments.

The warring over stuff continued, and great thinkers contemplated how they could use time to get a leg up on their competitors. They would eventually use time to build weapons. It took a while, but they sorted it out. The key was inventing new, even smaller fractions of time and using these new measurements to split the tiniest thing in the world which resulted in the scariest weapon ever. Over what? The illusion of control offered through the illusion of time. Does time have any substance? Can you touch it? Can you see it, taste it, smell it, or hear it? Aging isn’t proof of time, it’s just a biochemical process that we have assigned measurements of change to. Time only ever exists subjectively. It’s only ever in one’s own head. And there is no future, I should know, it is an empty mythical place that self-important people struggle to control by any means necessary. But you can’t control something that doesn’t exist. It’s a delusion, an imaginary abstract concept like “kindness” or “sharing.” So when I said my relationship to time was “unique,” I meant that I think it’s really a great big fucking joke. You might as well slap units of measurement on “surprise.” Just thinking about it makes me long for the days of cavemen sex where a today was the only thing that existed.

So why was all of this important? Turn the page.

Cooking for Crazies

I accidentally revealed to one of the social workers that I trained to become a chef for just under a year before landing myself in Phoenix House. While I was isolating, she 30

checked up on me, and knowing I liked movies, sparked a conversation about movies and how much she loved food movies in particular. I got carried away into verifying my opinions with my biographical expertise. A revised list of chores appeared within an hour or so, and I was assigned to the kitchen. I didn’t want these responsibilities for two reasons: the kitchen was Grade’s and I didn’t want any responsibilities.

Here is a short list of significant details about Gracie:

1. She was tall and round, a bosc pear, her hair was dry, wavy, and styled loose — long split ends drifting above her belt with a neon headband at her crown (there was a different color for each day of the week).

2. Gracie checked in to Phoenix House frequently — something about her family that I can’t remember — and smiled at everyone like an elementary school teacher. I didn’t trust her. She was all smiles and soft-spoken, and even cut the crusts off for the filthy - footed-schizophrenic (pedo-v/7e!), but the second anyone else requested the crusts cut off their sandwiches, she smiled and sing-songed the words, “We’ll see.” What we saw was that it never happened for anyone that Gracie didn’t like. She was not above holding a grudge through food preparation, and no one could make sense of the morals/value system she used to make these judgments. If you beat her at cards, she was your best friend, but if you beat her at Parcheesi, you better like crusts on your sandwiches and

Raisin Bran for breakfast (this lonely single-serving box came with the value pack of cereal and she somehow made certain that it was all that would be left for you after the sugar and marshmallow ones were taken). 31

3. Upon leaving Phoenix House, Gracie wrote me the following note: “Dear Jake, I’ve never found a friend as good as you. I want to keep in touch and stay friends. You have a beautiful heart, and I want to keep in touch with David too. Please tell him. You’re a wonderful man full of life and kindness and I know we’ll be friends forever. Love

Gracie.” And then her phone number was under her signature. It was a sweet sentiment, touching, but we had nothing in common, so I never called her. I eventually showed it to

David and he cried when he read it, but he also never followed through in reaching out to her.

I loved cooking, but what we prepared was barely food (I hate coq au vin, a tough bird rendered in Burgundy thickened with blood, but the food at Phoenix House was so bad that I longed for anything that didn’t come out a package, even stringy rooster meat).

We were not allowed under any circumstances to use the gas range, and the only blade we were given was a pair of yellowed safety scissors for opening packages (under counsellor supervision).

Breakfast: cold cereal.

Lunch: bologna sandwiches and chips on even numbered days. Turkey sandwiches and

chips on odd numbered days

Dinner: an alternating variety of frozen ingredients zapped to temp in the microwave and

assembled afterward. The temperature of the meal was uneven; the first-heated

ingredients, very al dente Rice-a-Roni or noodles that had gelled into a cake of

damp starchy brains, cooled by the time the last-heated ingredients, the ketchupy 32

meat sauces and the sodium-flavored cheesy equivalents, were added to the mix.

In some meals, this created alternating bites of nuclear fission and arctic wind,

and in other meals, everything combined and settled to room temperature. There

was also, usually, salad from a bag, limp and browning.

Newly assigned to the kitchen, I wanted to let Gracie run the show. Even though I liked the crusts on my sandwiches, I didn’t like Raisin Bran. I would be her sous chef and help prepare “food” for everyone. Lunch was my first meal with her, and she said she was thrilled to have the help. She went on to say that she could learn so much about cooking from me. While she was saying all this, her eyes widened and a little vein near her hairline emerged. Her lips sealed together, prim. I told her that I was there to learn from her. The little vein disappeared and Gracie relaxed a fraction (one of the smaller fractions, maybe one-eighth). I caught a smile skip across her face before disappearing.

We gathered the ingredients:

1. One loaf generic white bread.

2. One package generic sliced bologna.

3. One package individually wrapped cheese singles (also generic).

4. One jar of Best Foods mayonnaise (high roller coming through).

5. One bottle French’s mustard (hold on to your butts).

6. One large bag of individually packaged chip pouches.

7. One gallon jug of orange drink.

8. One gallon jug of punch drink. 33

9. Eleven paper plates.

10. Eleven red plastic cups.

Gracie laid out the paper plates across the counter in the shape of a star (one in the middle and two plates making up each extending leg). Then we put on disposable gloves

(powder free, but still smelling as if they weren’t). She told me to put down four slices of bread on each plate, open-faced and ready. I was handed the bottle of French’s mustard and Gracie started pointing to different legs of the star shape made out of plates (side note: Gracie had an uncanny ability to remember perfectly who had their sandwich prepared a certain way, and who had sandwiches modified into punishments. How she managed this perplexed everyone. This was how it was done). She started scooping mayonnaise from the jar with a plastic spoon (even butter knives were off limits to us) and daubing it on certain slices of bread. I started making crude Fibonacci spirals on alternating slices but must have gotten over-zealous because she reached over and grabbed by arm. Her disposable glove was tom along the palm and I was transported.

I was in a bed, large and stuffed with purple linens and azure pillows. The walls were some kind of plastic screens, like T.V.s, and they had murals slowly moving across them, digital frescos. I couldn’t pinpoint the year or location, but there was technology here. Lots of unexplained technology that I didn’t understand. Strangely placed touch screens were mounted on items that actually existed in space, other items seemed a projection of something appearing to exist in space. Some things were antiquated, decorative: I think I recognized a baseball card in a display case. Someone was in the 34

room with me, a woman. She was dressed like the characters in movies about Rome, but not quite like that — it seemed to hint at that type of drapery, togas and the like, but it wasn’t quite like that; she had a skirt and a loose blouse, her hair was braided and held up with ornate pins. She was barefoot and hovering over me, a troubled but compassionate face. A necklace dangled free from the fabric: I thought it might be ivory or some other type of bone, each piece was heavy and carved, linked together with woven cords. I felt a sharp pain in my chest and I felt my hand move there. Lung cancer or heart disease. “It will be soon, my heart. I’ve consulted everything, the cards, the stones. Even the wind carries the same verdict,” she was speaking in English and without an accent —

American — and brushed her hand across the side of my face, “Thank you for letting me love you,” she cleared her throat here, but it still cracked when she spoke, “and thank you for loving me in return.” I tried to respond and couldn’t. Instead, hacking coughs radiated pain from my chest outward. I settled again but could barely breathe. “You’ve almost made it, you’re almost there. It will be...” her eyes welled. Then they narrowed. Her entire countenance changed. “You have a visitor inside you.” She took my head in both hands and tilted it to one side, “You are not welcome he— ”

I didn’t hear the rest because 1 was back in Phoenix House. I was shaking and

Gracie (presumably) had run to find a member of the staff. I held tight to the counter; my back and forehead itching from sweat beading up to the surface of my skin, dizzy breaths were forced and hissing across my lips and flushing my body of oxygen, lightness filled my legs as sparkly tunnels formed around my periphery. The staff arrived and helped me 35

to the floor. I convulsed briefly, fully conscious and aware, but unable to control what was happening to my body. I sat up with some help when the worst of it had passed, but rigid tremors still flailed my arms and legs at irregular intervals. I asked for help to go back to my room, but of course didn’t receive it. They needed to monitor me. I was twitching; the type of twitching that happens when you mix prescription anti-depressants with over the counter cold and cough medicine, an antsy and uncontrollable need to kick and shake repeatedly and without relief no matter how many times you shake and kick.

The twitching didn’t go away but I was, very easily, able to talk to the staff sitting there with me, describing what happened, and how I was doing. The head counsellor asked me if I was faking. The expression on my face must have said a lot because I didn’t say anything and he put his hands up in an unspoken response, a resigned apology.

Eventually — half hour or so — they got through to the doctor on call and I was given something I had never taken before. Ten minutes later I knew it was over and ten minutes after that the aftershocks stopped.

Zen of the Closed Fist — On Managing Doctors

The doctor arrived at Phoenix House every weekday at noon to see us, interview us, and make adjustments to our prescriptions. He probably had a name. His arrival was mysterious: I never saw him enter or exit the building, yet he was always in his office waiting once we were summoned. An accomplishment because the office itself was in the middle of the residence (lacking an entry/exit to the grounds) (there was no window); it was probably a converted den or study. Meeting with him was like Batman meeting with 36

Commissioner Gordon, suddenly he was there, dispensing information, and next moment gone. Joe claimed that he saw his car pull up once, but because it was Joe, no one could really be sure if it was true. The office was full of books and videocassettes, binders and patient files sticking out in multicolored angles from shelves, and a desk unlike any I had ever seen a doctor sit behind before — it was cluttered, like slutty with clutter (probably because the office was used by the counseling staff during the other twenty-three hours and fifteen minutes of the day).

We were summoned in sequence, a sort of tag played by the patients, while we were eating and cleaning up the midday meal and mess. Sandwiches were often abandoned with cartoon tooth-prints and remaining patients waved flies away from the plates left behind before someone remembered to cover the food with a napkin. Gracie always waited her turn in the hall just outside the door. Once she finished cooking and covered her own lunch, she proceeded to her spot in the hall to wait. This did not effect the doctor’s order for seeing us, Gracie still had the same placement every time in the queue. Letting her just stand there in the hallway seemed like a real dick move on his part.

The day after my flash on Gracie’s past life death that was somehow in the

(previously believed to be) nonexistent future and my resulting attack, I was summoned to see the doctor expecting — well, I didn’t know what I was expecting, but I knew that I would a.) need to address the previous day’s “episode” and b.) wanted to push my agenda for a new prescription regimen. I had a few ideas from years of seeing psychiatrists and 37

psychologists as to how to direct his questioning in order to a.) minimize the importance

of the previous day’s “episode” and b.) get a new prescription regimen.

1. Listen tj) the doctoi\ By listening carefully to what they are saying and where they are

leading me, I can determine the diagnosis they want me to have and either roll with it or troubleshoot it towards something else. A diagnosis comes with a variety o f prescription psych meds, tailored specifically for that series o f symptoms. I ’m ultimately always aiming for a psych med cocktail that will primarily help me get to sleep at night (the most

useful side effect) and secondarily take the edge off some o f the residual effects o f my superpower (the depression, the anxiety, the hopelessness, etc).

I walked into the doctor’s office and immediately knew that I would get exactly what I wanted out of this man with minimal effort on my part. Normally, a doctor has been observing me consciously or unconsciously, and rapidly deciding what is wrong with me before I spoon-feed the meaty information. Typically he or she will take a

moment and jot down a few notes before even asking me what seems to be the problem today. This doctor was out of place in his tailored casual dress in the overstuffed office.

He was collared angles, knit cords, and pressed seams. The room only smelled like hand

sanitizer when he was there, and it was strong. Gas leak strong. His hair was short, black

without grey, and neatly trimmed across his neck. His hands were dense and nimble, the

type of hands you see on men who played baseball in high school or college.

He did not look up or shake hands, he shuffled some papers around until he came to 38

the form he was looking for, and started asking me questions. They were all centered around my attack. He asked me if I had snuck any drugs into the facility. Of course not, I answered, and then in one of the little boxes on the form he printed out “denies.” He asked me if I had received drugs from any of the other patients, I said that I had not, and on another blank space he printed out “denies.” I didn’t understand why he couldn’t just write down “no” or “negative” or really anything else that didn’t make me sound like a fucking liar. We moved on to talking about my medication.

2. Know your meds. I still have a vague hope that prescription psych-meds may one day help limit or even eliminate my past-life-moment-of-death flashbacks. The brain is the only organ in my body with enough processing power to Quantum Leap my consciousness through space and time. I ’m always aiming for some combination o f anti depressants with anti-psychotics because troubleshooting the chemical/electrical process of my neural network is where hope lies. I also get bummed out often. The side effects o f some meds like Depacote (weight gain) or Geodon (nightmares) are brutal. I keep a journal o f the pills I ’ve been on and for how long and how they affect me, but I guard it closely. I revealed to a psychiatrist (a chubby brunette with humanities hair that was still young enough that she needed to wear a pantsuit every day to remind us both in the room who was in charge) that I kept such a journal and she lit up, suggesting how wonderful this information would be in treating me, but upon being presented with this evidence, she became perplexed and then irritated because this information was incongruous with 39

the diagnosis she had already determined.

According to him, Wellbutrin was the problem. I started taking it the morning of the attack. The doctor explained to me that Wellbutrin was not the drug for me, and decided that it was time to reorganize my treatment around a family of drugs that did not include Wellbutrin. He kept repeating the name Wellbutrin. Wellbutrin was the culprit. I briefly considered asking him if it might be better to begin a conversation about

Bupropion (the drug’s actual name) and whether or not going back to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors might be a better use of our time, but that would go against Tip #4 so

I kept my mouth shut.

He explained that he liked trying Wellbutrin on patients because as far as most antidepressants go, the side effects are a little easier. I presumed he was referring to the fact that legalized speed doesn’t cause weight gain or sexual dysfunction, but he didn’t elaborate. He went on to state that a response like mine was rare (actually, not so rare, but

I also kept this to myself — the drug was pulled from the market for a while after being introduced and doctors nationwide lowered dosages immediately when patients experienced epileptic seizures), and that when dealing with and diagnosing psychiatric disorders there was some margin of trial and error. There was some more circle talk about getting to the root of my problem, all still without looking up from his paperwork and my file, and then some more about trial and error.

This rambling unfolding explanation was significant, because — and those of you who have heard a speech like this know — it’s how doctors apologize. It was also my 40

window of opportunity. I wanted to test drive an anti-depressant I’d heard about from other patients but had not yet tried called Mirtazapine, and moments like this one — a subtle shift in power as blame was assumed by one who wronged the other — were the best moments for advancing an agenda.

3. Invent similar symptoms. It has been useful to fake symptoms to get on new or different medications. My actual condition is something a doctor, a person o f reason, a scientist, cannot understand. Mention severe mood swings in order to get an anti-depressant/mood stabilizer to feel less anxiety around touching other people. D on’t let them convince you that the cycles last days at a time, as is the case for bi-polar patients (psychiatrists really want you to be bi-polar). Guide them towards depressive disorder, but also subtly hint at the possibility o f something more serious like schizo-effective, schizo-typical, or borderline personality and/or anxiety disorders. There’s some finesse required here and it can only be learned over time through trial and error. I f I share too much, I get some nasty diagnosis like delusional disorder (this way thar be dragons and/or seventy-two hour holds).

After explaining the depression I had felt since my friend left and expressing a desire to be less inclined to isolate from the other patients, I requested going on

Mirtazapine. This perfectly coincided with the reports he (presumably) received from the counseling staff, though I prepared rehearsed phrases like “new sedentary lifestyle has me listless and wondering if recovery is worthwhile” or “recent panic attacks amplify 41

hopelessness” or some such. The doctor, who still hadn’t looked up from my file, nodded and said he was going to suggest that very thing. Unfortunately, he tacked another adjustment onto my evening meds: Geodon. This drug, created by Pfizer and also known as Ziprasidone, was the worst prescription psych med I had ever been on, but at the time I hadn’t tried it. He explained that it, along with the Mirtazapine, would help me sleep and help reduce social anxiety. Geodon would also reduce hallucinatory experiences, as well as the anxiety surrounding their potential occurrences. When I asked him what he was talking about, he cited information in my file from my intake interview with county mental health before I arrived at Phoenix House. The Geodon would, hopefully, reduce the Shadow People hallucinations, if not end them entirely. He was really going on about

Geodon, because Geodon was the solution. 1 was willing to give it a spin and I had the script that I wanted, so it was time too...

4. Defer to their wisdom. Doctors have egos like everyone else on the planet and they are proud o f the decade they spent in school to become an expert. They are at their most comfortable when they think they are the most knowledgeable person in the room. I let them be, and under certain rare circumstances they are. Always allow the doctor to be the expert by nodding and smiling and occasionally saying “you ’re the expert. ” This has gone a long way in creating the most pliable atmosphere for getting any new medication to try out.

He finally looked up at me and offered what sounded like a practiced pep talk, 42

though I hadn’t heard it from him before. I heard the words “not an exact science” and

“practice makes perfect.” Maybe he only brought it out after needing to “apologize” for a

hiccup in treatment. He said something about baseball and I smiled, more out of self-

congratulation than at his punchline, but I think we were both satisfied with how things

went. He held out a hand for a handshake. This was unexpected. This was not what he did

at the end of our brief sessions. It rested in suspension between us, a half completed

bridge.

5. Never touch them. When dealing with the mentally ill, psychiatrists tend to anticipate

all kinds o f strange behavior. I avoid touching them at all cost, otherwise I end up

flashing to their previous incarnation’s moment o f death and upon returning find myself

with a series o f seizure tests specially ordered. Apparently, my eyes flicker momentarily

when my consciousness jumps to where it jumps. It was noted. Worried about a lawsuit

(or maybe treating me to the best o f their ability) an electroencephalogram was ordered.

It was a nasty experience — strobe lights in my face for an hour and all those little wires

attached to me, struggling to find out it I had chronic seizures. I always avoid this now if

I can.

I hesitated and seeing my hesitation, he withdrew his hand, nodding and returned to

shuffling papers. I was dismissed with a request to get the next patient. He was probably

as relieved as I was that we didn’t touch.

Dreaming: I’m a Little Bit Completely Terrified of It 43

Before I get into the dream itself, I need to introduce my relationship to dreaming.

I had a lot of nightmares. The content my brain recorded during the day was slightly more charged than your average person, so ordering and organizing information while I dreamed (which is something the brain is doing while you’re dreaming, or so I’ve read) was a montage of disorganized deaths, an orgiastic bloodbath. That in-between just as I fell asleep, that wiggling moment of lucidity where I was conscious of my subconscious, was where I heard the voices. Their voices. Like waves when you walk towards a beach, soft and muted from a distance, and then suddenly louder, more real, and not just the expectation of sound. The carnage continued through the night. Their brutal deaths met my disjointed dream logic nightly: decapitated heads asking if I knew a good seamstress who might reattach what was severed, terminal cancer patients brainstorming ideas for marketing leukemia as a miracle diet now that they were finally a size zero, and one particular charred corpse of a little girl burned alive by her mother dared me into double-dutch skip-rope. Miss Lucy had a baby, that baby had a bell, Miss

Lucy went to the Heaven, that baby when to —. Valerian root and herbal teas didn’t do much to help me relax knowing this was waiting for me every night. Drinking to blackout was a way to escape my dreams. In blackout, I skipped that awareness period of transition between awake and sleep. I also rarely remembered dreams the following morning during a good bender. So my “medicine” became the plastic gallon of generic vodka (I drank most of it into and through my blackout. If I woke up in the middle of the night, there was usually a few fingers left sloshing around the base of the jug mixed with 44

vapory backwash — I’d top myself off on the nights I came to, find oblivion again, pass out). Ecstasy and coke helped me stay awake for days on end, skipping sleep altogether.

And when I did finally crash, it was dreamlessly for twelve, fourteen, or sometimes eighteen hours straight. I medicated my sleep patterns and controlled my participation with my subconscious. Paradoxically, the substance abuse led to loosing control in the waking world. It was a fair trade off.

Night 1 — So that night, hours after visiting with the doctor and getting my meds changed, my first night on Geodon and Mirtazapine, the long sure fingers of a new medications massaged my brain and swept me into my sleeping mind, into dreams.

I’m on a rocky seashore, slick flat stones shimmering in the afternoon sun. The surf is aggressive, roiling, but there is no wind. I bend to pick up a stone, to throw it in the ocean the way I did with my father when I was three and would “frow frocks” into the lake where he fished. I wonder why he isn’t here. I bend down for another rock, but I can’t reach it — my arms are shorter. But then I realize they aren’t shorter, I’m floating.

And then I realize I’m not floating, this isn’t a flying dream (I stopped getting flying dreams at the Air Force Academy when my abilities manifested). I’m being thrown, catapulted, slowly at first, then I’m accelerating through a high trajectory above the waves, past the shallows, and beyond my ability to swim back. I rise higher, peaking then for a moment, and I begin hurtling towards the ocean. I’m gaining, gaining, faster towards the pulsing sheet of water. I can smell it, I can hear it, and just before I hit it I’ve 45

already sliced through the sea surface, my arms and legs leaving a wake of bubbles, I am an underwater snow angel, and I begin to sink. I kick to the surface, but something has my leg. I look but there is nothing there. I frantically pull at the water above me but something has my arms. I don’t know what it is. And then I feel hundreds of hands, thousands of fingers, but I can’t see them. They’re grasping and pulling, finding purchase on every square inch of my body, yanking me downward as I struggle. I fight all the way to the ocean floor. Once there, I am shoved through the water beneath me into a classroom. I’m breathing, I look up. The ceiling is the ocean above us, a silvery narrow fish investigates the membrane and skirts across it leaving ripples in the surface. Instead of walls, the four sides of the classroom are a garden hedge, holding back the water. The linoleum floor is dry, stained from years of use and poor maintenance (probably a public school) (of which I am a deeply proud product of). Whiteboards with grey ghosts of lessons past hang on three hedges and all the desks are pushed away from the center to the perimeter comers. In the center of the classroom is the woman from the future flash with Gracie, that bone necklace dangling across the hem of her neckline. She’s leaning over a high table with a map spread across it — green terrain with spoke-like roads, and hills as concentric circles are layered within a latticed grid. She’s pushing red and blue plastic soldiers, horses, and canons around.

“You?” I say. She ignores me, focusing on the toys, “What are you doing here?”

“Surrendering,” she still doesn’t look up. I notice a red plastic castle now and she pushes a blue plastic horse to the gate, “and winning.” 46

“Who are you?” I ask.

“A soothsayer, a shaman, a dreamer,” she looks up, “Like you.”

“How can you be from the future? You’re Gracie’s incarnation so she must have been born backwards. How is that possible?”

“You know nothing of Time. It is not a river,” her eyes drift up to the ocean floor above us, before resettling on me, “I am your harbinger, I’m here to set you on your path.

You will pass through the death and fire and then death again. These events will help you reconcile the four paradoxes. You will not do it alone. The battle-born will guide you, but only those who stood their ground, fighting and falling, in defiance of superior forces, those few who stood against many.”

“Path? What path? Who are you talking about?”

“You cannot refuse this undertaking, this call,” she picks up a blue plastic canon, but in her hand it is suddenly an antique blunderbuss pistol. She yanks that eerie bone necklace off her body in one quick tug and stuffs it into the flared barrel of the gun. She pulls back the hammer, aims the thing at me, and fires. Remember the Sam Peckinpah movie Pat Garret and Billy the Kid? The one where Kristofferson fires the shotgun full of sixteen dimes at the sheriff? It’s like that, only slower, longer, suspended. I can’t move, frozen. The fragments of bone each have intricate carvings on them as they tumble closer through the air. As the fragments pierce my chest, my shoulders, my face, I woke up gasping. 47

Night 2 — It was the second night of dreaming the same dream with Gracie’s previous incarnation on the ocean floor that got my attention. It woke me up (or it might have been the counselors performing “checks”) (“Checks” was a system of monitoring patients in residential psychiatric care. Every twenty minutes, a counselor swept through each room with a flashlight to make sure everyone was asleep and not killing themselves or someone else. The door squeaked open, the flashlight beamed across the covers and wall before gently disappearing as the door clicked shut). In the movies, people have recurring dreams (at least when it’s necessary to visually express some interior struggle for a character arc that would otherwise be lost), but I’ve never had a recurring dream. Ever.

I’ve had recurring elements appear (a tyrannosaurus rex appears twice a year to eat me alive), but never an identical replaying of one in its entirety. This one was identical to one

I had the previous night. I stared at the dark ceiling for a long time.

Night 3 — I flipped over onto my stomach and hugged the pillow. If I went to sleep, I knew I would see it again. Some prescription psych meds have side effects like vivid dreams. I tried turning again, fluffing again, and resettling to find a new comfortable resting position. Shouldn’t vivid dreams as a side effect in anyone would be reason enough to pull a medication off the market, especially one designed as an anti-psychotic?

Maybe the recurring dream was the drug affecting my brain. Maybe.

Night 4 — I turned my pillow over to the cool side, laced my fingers behind my head, 48

and imagined the stars outside and above. The same dream was there last night, as it was the night before, as it would be tonight.

Night 5 — I was at the threshold, aware of my subconscious, I heard my lucid dreaming thoughts taking over. The crashing of waves on that rocky seashore were louder, real. I knew that the dream was pulling me in and would soon be vaulting me towards drowning and meeting with the mystic. I jarred myself back awake, resistant and in control. It was my choice to be awake. I wasn’t afraid of my dream, I just didn’t want to have it.

Night 6 — I rolled onto my left side, facing the room. I could see the bright edges of the door in the comer opposite my bed. My meds had already kicked in: irritable skin and twitchy tendons. I was tired but too anxious to sleep, worrying about sleep. I rolled over and faced the wall, my back to the door. This was no good. I couldn’t seen the entrance; I was vulnerable, exposed. I tried my back, staring up at the ceiling. It was a harmless dream. It was not a nightmare. I would wake up in the morning. I was worried about waking up in the morning. I resented how the counselors would wake us up in the morning: cheery words but spoken with a commanding tone. Rise and shine, motherfucker (the “motherfucker” was implied through tone and never actually spoken). I needed to look at a wall, looking up at the ceiling reminded me of the ceiling in my dream. I needed to stop worrying about waking up in the morning and just fall asleep. I began hitting my head against the pillow over and over, repeating the time I wanted to get 49

up. It was a technique I learned at the Academy because we were not allowed alarm clocks there either. We were scheduled to sleep between lights out and reverie the following morning, standard issue seven and one half hours rest. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough time to polish shoes, starch shirts, and accomplish the impossible standards for uniform presentation during the scant fifteen minutes of personal time before lights out. I developed a technique of setting my internal clock by hitting my head against the pillow and repeating the time I wanted to wake up over and over. It usually worked, and I woke a half hour before morning bugle sounded over the P. A. My boots were beautiful. I rolled onto my side, facing the door again, my arm wrapped up under my pillow. With my internal alarm clock set, I could rest. I would wake up just fine.

Sleep. Go to sleep.

Night 7 — I was a zombie that day, all day, and incredible exhaustion was my pathogen.

The dull distant itching under the skin made me scratch my arms, the dry throbbing behind the eyes made me rub them until they were watery and bloodshot, and the constant yawning through half-completed sentences made conversation sound like the bridge of a Miles Davis recording (from the blue period) (and by “blue” I mean

“heroin”). I took a hot relaxing shower before bed. Standing under the gentle water made me sleepy, but it was a tease. I passed the stage of drifting-off-tired and landed right in the middle of exhausted-yet-somehow-still-wide-awake. After the fourth “check” by the staff, I jumped out of bed and started doing pushups. Some sort of exertion would push 50

me past the threshold and maybe it would be different if I was tired. Maybe I would be so tired that I wouldn’t remember what I dreamt of. My arms started to tremor around my seventh pushup. Up and down in the dark, I couldn’t tell if I was getting within a fist- height of the floor. In basic training, if you didn’t touch the drill instructor’s first with your chest, you got twenty more. Was I getting low enough for these to count? Twelve, thirteen, and my arms were shaking to keep getting back up into the front leaning rest.

Fuck. This was exactly how it was when I was a cadet; couldn’t sleep, waiting, people coming in and out my room. I was even doing pushups.

Night 8 — I woke up in the middle of the night, disoriented, still hearing the woman’s words about surrendering and winning, with an enormous erection and damp boxers. I thought I had pissed myself and investigated immediately. My fingertips felt goop, not piss. If someone had seen me, and had there been any light in the room, I’m sure I would have appeared flushed, distressed, and confused. I’ve never, ever had a nocturnal emission before in my life. I masturbated so much as a kid that there was no biological need to release backed-up sperm. Why now? The dream was the same. There was nothing sexual in its content. This couldn’t mean anything. Everyone must have recurring dreams, right? Maybe they put them in movies for that very reason. Everyone has wet dreams too, right? Having them together didn’t mean anything.

Night 9 — The bed was my kingdom. The crisp fitted corners stretched across the plastic 51

slip which stretched across a dogged mattress that had been pissed through by other crazies, dried and aired, and returned for reuse. The previous occupants live in this mattress, ghosts still anchored by their excreted DNA trace particles. The nylon breathed with each shift, my kingdom, the ghosts of crazies from before, exhaled worry that I could not sleep. I could not simply reach back in time and tell them that this too shall pass us by, that would be impossible, simply speaking aloud. But I could traverse time and space with Morse Code of my own invention. The wall, up near the comer where it met the other wall, was my instrument, my transmitter: close enough to where so many dreaming heads rested. They could receive it from there, in the past, through the sound of my drums. I tapped lightly, lightly enough that anyone on the other side of the wall couldn’t hear, but firm enough that the signal, my message, could trip through time and calm the concern of those who were reaching forward through the piss residue super conductors in the mattress. The nylon acted as an amplifier. I tapped, paused, tapped, tapped out Never give in. Tappity tap. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty— Pause, tap, pause, pause, tap. Never give in, except to convictions o f honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming night o f the enemy. So far away they were, my ghosts, cowering and worrying while I fought on the beaches that were my blankets as the Jerry machine of lucid dreams rolled across the covers, consuming the bed. Linen after linen conquered, and it seemed nothing could stop it, until one tiny damp little pillow said no.

My mouse in front of the lion of dreams — I was Kal-El, shuttled to Earth to be 52

strengthened by its yellow sun. I breathed deep and the nylon breathed too and I imagined a protective force-field of irradiated energy, an envelope that no dream could penetrate as this long dark night of the soul was tested, and pushed, but could not be broken. Though the night surrounded us and our enemy was vast—

The room expanded slightly, as if holding its breath, and my mind emptied. The door opened quietly and I remained still and facing the wall. A cautious light illuminated the comer, my shadow was a lumpy silhouette. It was the fifth “check” since lights out, but this time the beam of light held and a voice followed, “If you can’t sleep, you can come out and watch TV.” I didn’t move. I pretended to be asleep, “Or we could talk.”

She knew I was awake. I rolled over and squinted, the flashlight beam shot down to the floor, but all I could see was a human shadow in the doorway. I thought it was a counselor, the dialogue seemed right. “Can you give me anything to help me sleep?” I asked.

“Pills? ‘Fraid not, kiddo,” she opened the door a little wider, “But a burden shared is a burden lightened.”

“I’ll be alright here, thank you,” and I rolled back over.

“If you change your mind, come on out,” I saw the square of light from the open door compress on the wall and pause as she added one last thing, “And stop tapping on the walls.” The square of light blinked out as the door clicked closed behind her.

Fucking Goddamned Penguins

The other patients went to bed over an hour ago. It was approaching midnight and 53

Phoenix House was more or less settled. I was in the main room, awake, watching a documentary about penguins marching across Antarctica, aptly titled March o f the

Penguins. The movie was an unexpected hit when it came out. I don’t know why.

Documentaries usually aren’t successful. There wasn’t anything really interesting about the penguins. They were just birds. Birds that couldn’t fly. Fat, squat, waddling creatures that joined together in an annual trip through conditions so extreme that they really ought all to have died. Maybe they just wanted to prove to all the other birds that they too could participate in the majesty of migration, keeping up with the avian Jones’s.

Anthropomorphizing animals is just weird.

The room was empty, blue light intermittently flickered off the screen, contrasting with the solitary warm lamp hanging above the empty counselor’s desk. Jennifer, the on- duty staff member who usually worked nights, was performing checks while I was sprawled across a pleather sofa watching the movie. The penguins on screen were waddling as fast as they could from a killer whale breaking up through the ice, trying to catch a delicious snack (and now the inevitable must occur) (the very best part of any nature film) (except for when they’re doin’ it). I did not feel sympathy for these penguins.

How many years have they been marching and not avoided this spot? Stupid dumb birds.

My skin rubbed against the cushion, and made a farting noise as I shifted position (I did not fart). After a few more minutes of watching the penguins and falling into the cadence of Morgan Freeman’s voice, a narrator whose every syllable was like tempered ribbons of caramel falling across a sheet of ice, I began to relax. It wasn’t the type of relaxation that 54

leads to sleep, but that trancelike zone of disconnect, the bubble of safety in someone else’s story, far away from where I was.

Jennifer shuffled past the screen and then across the room to the counselor’s desk, the chair creaked as it reorganized under her weight. Her cotton sweatshirt was turquoise with rhinestones in the shape of a treble clef along the left side of her torso, and she had wrinkles around her mouth that made it look like a sphincter when she pursed her lips.

“How are those penguins,” her voice was forged in the ashtray of an ’89 La Sabre,

“Still marchin’?”

“Yep,” I said.

“Feeling sleepy?”

“Nope.”

“Want to talk?”

“Nope,” I said, still not taking my eyes off the screen.

“A burden shared,” she reminded me.

“I know. I’m fine,” but I didn’t really want to be rude, it was her job after all, so I added, “Thank you though.”

“I’ll still be here fifteen minutes from now when you change your mind.”

I wasn’t planning on changing my mind in the next fifteen minutes. There was no way to explain to her why I was still awake, why I wanted to stay awake, why I was fighting against the prickles behind my eyes and the stuffy brain feeling of my meds already working. 55

Fifteen minutes later, the credits rolled up the screen. Determined to ride out the fifteen minute challenge Jennifer laid out, I started the movie over again. I was going to anyway, I wasn’t ready for sleep.

“How those penguins?” she asked, “Still marchin’?”

“Yep,” I didn’t really pronounce this word, it was more like I exhaled and a word tripped out.

“What do you think,” she said, “Are they a metaphor for modern-era bourgeois ennui?”

I sat up and faced her. That was unexpected.

“Well, what do you think?” she asked, “Why do they keep marchin’?”

“Exactly,” I said, leaning into the conversation, “They’re all going to die.”

“Guess then they’ll stop marching,” she said.

“No,” my eyes settled on a shiny spot in the blue-grey carpet a few feet in front of me, the individual fibers ground into each other, “No, they’ll be reborn to march all over again. And again. It’s cruel.”

“Cruel that they get another chance?” her brow and temples wrinkled, tributaries branched from the carved fissures in her face, “Does every living thing get reincarnated, or just penguins?”

“It’s for the birds,” I tried to smile, but it got lost somewhere on my face, “It’s cruel because it never ends, even if they’re the best penguin in the history of the march and they march the shit out of their march, they die and come back and do it all over again 56

with no knowledge of their previous life. Maybe the next time around, they’re the worst

fucking penguin ever — no, that would mean there’s some significance or specialness or

difference to their existence, no, they come back as a completely average and

unremarkable penguins. And they still have to march. No end in sight. Forever.”

“Or until penguins go extinct,” she said.

“No, the penguins never go extinct.”

“How do you figure?”

“I’ve had some bad dreams lately,” I said.

She smiled, ignoring or not hearing that last bit, “The penguins have each other.

Even if they don’t go extinct and they have to march forever, they make it together.”

“Together,” I didn’t like how that word tasted, “If the penguins really knew each

other, they wouldn’t band together like that. Penguins have their secrets.”

“They’re animals, kid. They only want to love and be loved. They know exactly

who and what each other are. They have no secrets. Secrets make your soul sick,” she got

up from behind the desk, the chair creaked wildly in relief, lazily rotating half a turn, and joined me on the couch, “I used to mix gin and Dr. Pepper at the end of my career as a

drunk. Only combo I could keep down. Kept the voices quiet. I woke up once barefoot on

the side of a dirt road in the desert, no idea how I got there. I ended up in a place like this

one, one nearby. I don’t know what big secrets you’re holding onto, but if you want the

pain to stop,” she paused, thinking, and then continued with a gentler tone, “They have a

guy who specializes in people like you. If you want to learn how to manage your secret, 57

they can help you there.”

“People like me?”

“Psychics,” her lips stopped moving, “Those with the gift"

I instantly put as much distance between me and this Jennifer the innocuous counselor as was human possible. I was practically one with the sofa’s armrest, attempting to become part of the upholstery. I considered demanding who she was and how she did that. Or I could make a move for the front door, away and sprinting out into the night. No, I needed a weapon — but what could I use if she attacked my mind? Could

I knock her out before she put a spell on me or whatever was happening?

She raised a hand, a gesture intended to assure me, to put me at ease, “I didn’t mean to scare you, I just wanted to get your attention.”

“I never told you about that —” and I swallowed the end of that sentence, grimacing. I shouldn’t have said that, I shouldn’t have tipped my hand to her, whoever she was. I should have immediately denied it. Let her be the crazy person by denying it to her face and pretend that thing that just happened didn’t actually just happen. I was tired, not thinking carefully.

“Didn’t you?” the comer of her mouth twitched, a held back smirk, “Huh.”

“Who are you?” I said, “Tell me or I’ll...”

“Or you’ll what?” she asked, “Yell, run, attack? Please. If you yell at me and wake the house, then all that’s going to happen is everyone will wake up and we’ll give you a sedative. If you sprint out into the night, you’ll be out in the January air in your jammies, 58

a little colder than when you checked in. And if you find something to use as a weapon against me, you’ll be facing criminal assault charges. So you’ll do what now?”

“Nothing,” my shoulders slumped.

“Relax.”

“No.”

“Suit yourself then. We’re just having a conversation, there’s no reason to get riled,” she said, “You think you’re the first psychic to come rolling through here? The first psychic with a drug problem?”

The question was probably rhetorical, but I answered anyway, “I don’t know.”

“Damn right, you don’t know. There’s a whole world of things you don’t know, college boy,” she exhaled, and the lines in her face unclenched and pulled apart, “There are people who can help you with your condition,” the skin around her lips contracted again, frowning, “Condition. Don’t like how that word implies something unnatural,” she brightened again, finding a better term, “Now I don’t know what it is that makes you unique, I don’t dig without permission, but since we’re both up, and since I’m paid to listen if someone needs to talk, I’d like to hear about it if you don’t mind talking about it.”

It was the note of compassion in that last part of what she said. It was a tender clarinet, timidly playing the words “if you don’t mind” that bound my insides: a tugging

— pulling really — to tell her everything that I’ve never been able to tell anyone else, everything that felt how dense life was. About how far away being happy was, like a 59

memory of something comforting that would remain lost; Saturday afternoons or Nestle

Quick. Why did I suddenly want to tell someone, even this woman with the sequin sweater about past lives, and not touching people, and about my dreams, and about the pain, and how the pain dimmed by feeding it dope or booze, and how the pain was getting to be too great, too large, to dim down anymore, and how I wanted to die but that wouldn’t change anything because suicide is a temporary solution to the permanent problem of being born and reborn and reborn and reborn. In that moment, I accurately identified an honest desire to tell someone that might understand what I was something about what I was. But why did I want to? What did that matter? My eyes welled and my voice was small. She started to get up, to scoot closer towards me on my side of the couch, to console me, but I said, “Stay right there. Do not touch me.” She stayed in her corner, obedient. And I locked it up. My face did not break and I held it in. I didn’t tell her anything. I couldn’t. Because nobody can trust anyone that much.

The must have been silence for some time after I finished, because her voice seemed to boom, “You’re going to be okay, kid.”

“Huh?”

“You’re going to be okay,” she repeated, “I’ve already made the call. I told them that there’s someone here that needs their help. May I give you something?”

“Of course,” I said, “But please be—”

“Don’t worry,” she went to the desk, picked up something, and returned, “I’ll keep my hands to myself. Open your hand, palm out.” I did. Her hand hovered an inch above 60

mine. I nearly pulled back but she dropped a business card into it. It was a simple, boring, average business card printed and embossed on regular card stock with regular black ink.

The treatment facility’s contact information was in the upper left-hand corner, shaded beneath an illustration of a Monterey Pine. Five digits were scratched onto the bottom right corner in ballpoint pen blue.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“The card has the center’s number on it with Angelo’s extension. He’s the one who specializes in cases like you. Like us. It’s a chemical dependency treatment facility, and he works there like everyone else, but he — he, not the facility — also works with... special cases. The less you think on it, the better off you’ll be. But if you want help making the pain go away, you’ll find it there. For when you’re ready to ask for help. For when you’re ready to get your life back on track.”

“I can’t accept this, I won’t be able—”

“You will,” she said, “and yes, you will. We can call him tomorrow morning.

Together. Before my shift is up and after you get some rest. Now then. How you feeling?”

“Okay enough,” I was not “okay enough.” My fight or flight was pulsing, but it was struggling against fatigue and yawning, the body’s natural response to emotional upheaval.

“Sleepy?”

“I think I’m ready to try to sleep,” I lied. Did she know I was lying? She said she 61

wouldn’t “dig” without permission. How far did that go? I could be away in under fifteen minutes. I could shove everything in my duffle and sneak out into the night. Could I sneak out without her knowing? Would she try to stop me? Could she stop me? The nearby foothills would be the cleanest getaway, all the rattlesnakes were hibernating this time of year. They couldn’t follow me there or find me easily like they would if I followed the roads. Would she be able to find me easily? Could you hide from a psychic?

Did she have magic-powered GPS? I could hike back into town, tandem to the highway. I didn’t know what had just happened, but I didn’t trust it. I needed to get away. Away from her, whoever she was. The fatigue waned as the anticipation to be out and away again increased. I made a conscious effort to keep my knee from bouncing up and down.

How much of this was she aware of and would she act on it?

“Well, if you change your mind, I’ll still be out here with the penguins,” she said,

“A burden shared is a burden lightened.”

“I’ll let you know,” I said, getting up, “thank you for...” She nodded and waved a hand, gesturing me out as if nothing more needed to be said between us and I was dismissed. I walked uneasily down the hallway back to my room. I crawled under the covers, my legs slipping across the sheets. I rested my head on the dense, deflated pillow and faced the wall.

Some minutes later, I heard the door open, the flashlight beamed across the corner, and the door closed lightly behind me. I had twenty minutes, more than enough time. I threw back the covers and moved with purpose. I didn’t dare turn on the light, but I didn’t 62

need to. I got dressed and shoved everything into the duffle. I slipped the business card into my dog-eared copy of The Iliad and tucked it into my bag before zipping it up snug.

With the bag secure on my back, I stepped carefully through the hallways towards the kitchen. I was not spotted. I slipped out through the back door and put as much distance between myself and Phoenix House as possible. I was in the wind.

Prints

Remembering a solid bender is like looking through photographs you just picked up from the drugstore. You were at a party, some of the photos you remember, others seem to have been taken by people who borrowed your camera. You flip through the prints and encounter the stuff you remember with other pieces of evidence filled in from other party people’s testimony. This timeline of things I’d prefer to not tell you about is the roll of film that was my last hurrah.

First Photo — I walked into the hills behind Phoenix House, but after climbing the first hill, I was already at a fire access road that circled the perimeter of a nearby housing development. I followed the fire road, my path illuminated by the yellow sodium streetlights in the neighborhood to my left. As I walked up an incline into more hills, the dirt road became gravel, and then was paved. A rusted sign welcomed me to Sylvan Park, an overgrown habitat with picnic benches and tall browned weeds that never quite die.

The paved road went over a small summit and then steadily declined into the parking lot area for the Ramona Bowl Pavilion (the Ramona Pageant is put on every May by the 63

Hemet locals since 1925. Basically it’s Romeo and Juliet with the Native Americans as

the Montagues and the Spanish conquistadors as the Capulets) (it is not a comedy). I

knew exactly where I was, and more importantly I new where the closest liquor store

was; all I had to do was follow Girard Street into town. While standing on that shy

summit, looking over the valley lights, I’m temporarily silhouetted against the starry

night behind me, a shadow blocking out the rising ribbon of Milky Way on the horizon.

The image makes me hum a few bars from the “Lonely Man” piano theme that played at

the end of every episode of The Incredible Hulk.

Second Photo — I’m at the liquor store ATM, holding a receipt with the green screen of a

disposable cash machine behind it. Apparently these cheap little things that seem to have

been reconstructed out of parts from elementary school computer labs can now give you your bank balance. My first disability deposit had arrived. $718.00.1 needed a drink (it

had been two weeks), and I needed privacy (when 1 make a drink, I tend to be generous

with the booze. They call it a rum and coke for a reason, it isn’t a coke and rum).

Third Photo — Close on a gallon sized bottle of Smirnoff vodka, a large bag of Tostitos

corn chips, ajar of salsa con queso — grouped at the register like animal shelter rescues

waiting for me, just me. I hand over three twenties and he hands me back one twenty, a

ten, a five, and two singles. My guts are light and my asshole is puckering, ready for the

big drop at the amusement park log ride. It’s nearly dawn. 64

Fourth Photo — I’m looking at a laminated flier on the wall in the lobby of the Super 8

Motel on the comer of Florida and Sanderson. I got this image by walking here from the liquor store on Girard — I’d been walking all night. It’s the only decent cheap hotel in town. It was ten in the morning and I was waiting to check in. The laminated flier detailed the rules for the complimentary internet cafe (a barren adjoining room with two folding tables, three computers, one chair, and knots of wires) and the specifics of the complimentary continental breakfast (coffee, oranges, and individually wrapped danishes). I overhear the pudgy lady running the front desk talking to someone maybe a guest or maybe someone on the phone. She says, “if you want a great rate, come to Super

8! But if you want a fix, go to Motel 6.” The context was unclear.

Fifth Photo — Victor Garber’s football shaped head fills up most of the TV screen, and it’s a widescreen TV. I’m watching an episode of Alias, my favorite show, and he’s talking to his daughter about their most recent Rambaldi artifact acquisition. I’m on the bed, my pants are off, but my socks are on. It’s midday and TNT or TBS or USA or some other useless channel has programmed a block of Alias to mix things up from all the Law

& Orders. I’ve eaten half the chips to get some starch in my gut, to pace myself. There’s lots of booze left.

Sixth Photo — Blank. 65

Seventh Photo — I see socks on a wet cement floor and I smell piss and I wonder if my socks on the wet cement are in water or piss and I wonder where my shoes are but I’m glad that I don’t have to worry about my shoes because then my shoe laces would get soaked and trying to tie soaked shoelaces is awful and if I was given my shoes to wear right now it would be awful anyway because there’s nothing worse than wet socks in wet shoes that slosh and rub and eventually blister when you walk in them. I tap my toes to make small splashes in the puddle.

Eighth Photo — I’m in a cab pulling up to the front of the Super 8 Motel. It’s night and I think it’s past midnight for some reason. I try to pay the cab fare with my debit card and the photographic image I hold on is the driver looking at me in the rear mirror without turning around with a giant bright yellow and red and black Super 8 sign also visible through the front windshield with me holding my debit card out over the front seats. He doesn’t take the card, he says something. He might be insisting on me paying cash, but I hope he’s saying that my fare was somehow paid — he says something, but I don’t understand it and he doesn’t take my card, so I get out of the cab.

Ninth Photo — I am in the lobby of the Super 8 and I only have eyes for the elevator on the far side of the entry area. I see the doors, I’m walking on wobbly legs and taking careful steps, but I hear something to my right. I look and it’s a young man, a tall man, 66

talking to me saying hey, hey you. You get your things and leave. I want you to get

everything and get out. And I’m confused and I ask where I’ll go and he says it’s not his

problem.

Tenth Photo — I walk into the room I was in earlier, my room, and it looks just like it did

from before, from when I was watching Alias, like fucking exactly as it looked before. I

didn’t understand that front desk guy’s problem so I turn the TV on again to see if TNT

or TBS or USA or some other useless channel is still playing back-to-back episodes, but there’s nothing on but Law & Order and Wings so I go with Wings. I try to piece together

why that man wanted me to leave since I didn’t trash my room, but I can’t remember and

I go to sleep.

Eleventh Photo — After gathering my things in my duffle, I find the vodka kicked under the bed. Thank God: there’s still four fingers of it left, sloshing around in a mixture that’s

probably mostly my backwashed spit. I down it and go downstairs for some of that shitty

continental breakfast. I’m fuzzy on the night before, it doesn’t make any sense — wet

cement and cab ride. I shake it out of my head and arrive in the lobby. I don’t see any

breakfast, just an empty white tablecloth with some crumbs and a styrofoam cup full of

balsa coffee stirrers. I’m reading the laminated flier again and I look at the clock and it

appears that I have missed complimentary continental breakfast. I’ve got fifteen minutes

to go before the checkout deadline, but why the hell not get the room for another night? 67

I’ll stock up at the grocery store across the street and do another A lias marathon. The tubby middle aged lady from before is ready to help me and she’s cheery, but it’s a type of forced cheeriness that borders on sarcastic. She congratulates me on checking out on time, but explains that she’s charging me for another night, an inconvenience fee. I tell her no, no, I’ll be staying another night and she says no, no, I’ll be leaving as soon as we’re done. I ask her why and she tells me very little, focused on what she’s doing, eager to complete the transaction and not talk to me, but what she does tell me is that I was in the hall, not wearing pants, yelling, knocking on doors, and peeing in an alcove (it’s only months later that I figure I must have gotten locked out of my room on the way to the bathroom and gotten stuck in the hall) (yes, this took me months to figure out). She completes the transaction and pushes the receipt across the counter for a signature and I sign it with shaky hands creating jagged loops in my name. I walk out into the midday sun and the parking lot and everything is so bright, so very bright.

Twelfth Photo — Blank.

Thirteenth Photo — My mother’s face. I’ve come to in a hospital bed, I’m in a hospital room and my mother is standing over me, jacket still on and clutching the strap of her purse with her right hand. Her expression is smug and iron, she’s radiating a self- righteous correctness; as if the universe has finally sorted me properly into a category she’s been warning me about for some time. Firm pressed lips that are saying that I 68

deserve my circumstances without actually forming words at all. This is what happens when you become what you’ve become. There isn’t a single hint of comfort or security, just a hardness. But her eyes — her eyes give away the saddest part; they’re alive and indulging in the moment, delighting in my chaos and betraying her stoic face. She will be able to take this chapter, rich in pain and anguish, scribbled in her life by her horrible son, to her social circle and be elevated to martyrdom. I used to call this woman mommy, my mommy.

Fourteenth Photo — Blank.

Fifteenth Photo — I’m in a hospital room by myself, light spilling up from beneath a very generous gap at the bottom of the door. There a lot of noise on the other side of the door.

It’s otherwise dark in here. I sit up in the scratchy bed, I know that I’m not supposed to be here, no one else is here. I have a foggy notion that my mother was here, but I don’t see how they could have contacted her when they admitted me — however it was they managed to admit me and contact her. She didn’t say a word. I take stock. My duffle is on the floor, the clothes I was wearing are scattered across the zipped up bag. I’m not dressed, I’m in a gown. I need to get dressed so I pull back the covers and am about to swing my legs over the bed and stop at the last minute. There is tube running up into my penis. It’s not very thick and seems to have some very yellow piss residue in it. I’m dehydrated. I contract my bladder and a bead of vivid urine zips through the tube and I 69

follow it to see it’s connected to a bag hanging on the bed. I can’t get dressed with this thing in me. I have to get it out. I pull on it carefully, testing it, and it doesn’t seem to be too securely anchored so I pull again, harder. I feel a slight pressure within me, but not much — I can do this. So I pull, and then I pull again, and I keep pulling. This goes on for some time and I think I’m making progress, but then I notice that there’s some red in the tube and the bag of piss is turning from yellow to orange. That can’t be good. So I abandon the tug of war with my insides and decide to get dressed. If I get dressed and gather my things and get dressed and present myself at the desk to sign paperwork and check out of here, they’ll take care of the tube and sack of piss on my way out. I’ll sign paperwork while they snip off the teal wrist band and extract the tube. All part of the service. I pull up my pants, careful to leave the zipper open around the tube, but I also try my best to tuck my penis to the side so I won’t flash anyone I might see in the hall like a pervert when I leave this room. I think the tube folds, but that’s no worry since they’ll be removing it soon anyway. I pull off the gown and pull on my shirt and then I put on my jacket and gloves and put on my shoes and sling my duffle over one shoulder and hold the bag of orange piss in the other. It’s time to leave.

Sixteenth Photo — This photo is very blurry and everything seems to be happening at once. The only true image I can see is a group of people at the nurses station, all in scrubs, turning to look at me and frozen as they spring into action at me. I try to explain to the mass of arms reaching at me and shouting things at me that this is no big deal, that 70

I just need the tube removed and I’ll be on my way and out of their hair. I’ll sign whatever I need me to sign. But this mob has me and I don’t understand what’s going on, and whether or not they hold me up above their heads like villagers taking a criminal to be tarred and feathered in days of yore or don’t is unclear — I am swept up in the tide of people moving me.

Seventeenth Photo — I’m back in the same hospital bed, calmly talking to the four people in scrubs holding me down in place. I’m asking what’s going on, but they aren’t answering so I try addressing a large man in scrubs who is connecting my wrists and ankles to the bed using brown leather straps. They don’t remove any clothing except for my shoes, so no one is making contact with my skin. I suppose that’s something. I ask if it’s necessary to strap me down and everyone in the room can suddenly talk now and seem to answer in unison that yes, it is. I tell them I’d be happy to put my hospital gown back on if that’s what they need me to do to remove the tube from my penis because maybe that’s some mandatory regulation for penis tube removal, that I have to be wearing a gown, and then I’ll be on my way, but the large man finishes connecting my left ankle to the bed so all four points are restrained and throws one of those sad thin blankets over me, fully dressed and bound, and says that I’m not going anywhere. Then they all leave but before they go, they shut off the light, and I’m confused, I’m so confused. 71

Eighteenth Photo — This photo was taken with a very long exposure, time lapse tracers of a single nurse coming and going every hour to shuffle in and bring me a small cup with a straw because I’m thirsty so very thirsty, thirstier than I’ve ever been in my entire life. And I have to pee, pee so long and so hard, and pressure is building and I try to tell the nurse that comes in every hour with the water that I have to pee, but she tells me that it’s normal because I have a catheter and it’s taken care of it, but I don’t think she realizes that I have my pants on under the blanket and that the tube is being pinched but she’s gone before I can say anything to her and I have to wait another hour and it’s now approaching morning but there are no windows. I can tell from the clock on the counter near the bed that it’s six thirty in the morning. I’m dying, my need to piss is greater than any need I’ve ever felt in my life and the nurse comes in and before she feeds me water I explain to her about the catheter and the piss and she unbuckles my pants and undoes the kink in the tube and my bladder exhales. I ask if she’ll undo the straps, but she says she can’t. There’s another nurse that can and she’ll be in at seven or maybe later to check on me. That nurse does eventually arrive to check on me at nine forty-five. She’s only a few years older than I am with curly sandy colored hair pulled back in a pony tail. She doesn’t look ethnic, but she’s shaved and painted her eyebrows. Even though she’s wearing scrubs I can see that she has a pert figure. She asks how I’m doing and I smile politely and say, conspiratorially, that I’d be a whole lot better if she’d be kind enough to remove these straps. She tells me that she’ll come back in an hour and if I’ve been good she’ll remove one strap, and I explain that I’ve been good since I’ve been restrained, but she 72

tells me that she needs to see that I’ve been good for one of her hours and that’s when I decide that I will not give this woman my number if she asks for it later today. She arrives one hour later and asks me about my drinking and drug use, and I lie and tell her that I only get wasted on the weekends, and she says that how her ex-husband used to drink, and then she brings up Jesus. She says that when you have big problems, problems that are too big for you, it’s helpful to have something or someone like Jesus to give those big problems to. I explain that I’m not Christian but I believe in reincarnation and she explains that that’s good and that it doesn’t have to be Jesus, just something bigger than me that I can believe in and give all my worries. I nod and register understanding and say that I understand and she nods, maybe she believes me, and undoes one of the straps. She has gloves on and doesn’t make contact with my skin. I rotate my wrist in aching circles and smile at her and she promises to come back in an hour and remove another strap, but only if I’m good. Here’s the thing: it never occurs to me to use my free hand to undo the other straps. What I do use my free hand for is to inspect my penis and tube. Every time I exert pressure on my bladder, more blood than piss seems to run through the tube. I’ll tell my nurse about it when she comes back again. Before she returns though a paramedic comes in, mid-thirties with large glasses, and explains that he’s the paramedic who picked me up in the parking lot of the Super 8 Motel where I passed out. The desk clerk called 911 and he and his partner arrived to the scene. They went through my duffle, he explains, to see what drugs I had on me or might have taken. Man, he says, I saw a copy of Iliad. Are you reading the Iliad? I nod that I am and he really encourages me to get 73

some help, like really man, get some help. He’s never met a junkie that reads Homer. I tell him that he has now and smile and then ask him what he thinks about the blood in my piss sack and his face gets concerned and he says that no, that’s wrong and hurries to get the nurse. My nurse comes back and hisses when she looks at the catheter and then she’s talking to me without really addressing me and says that this is why they strapped me down so I wouldn’t do something like this, and I explained that that was from last night and she says that it’s okay but she has to remove it and if I’m good during that process she’ll undo the rest of the straps, all of them, but almost as soon as I answer her that this sounds like a fair agreement, the catheter is removed and she’s undoing the remaining straps. Oh, thank you, I say. She says that she has someone she wants me to meet, and will be back in another hour to check on me. I ask when I can leave and she says not for a while yet, and then leaves the room but leaves the door open. I look at my penis and it seems to only dribble blood when I put pressure on my bladder. That’s not so bad. I look out the door into the emergency room beyond. Lots of people moving around out there. I try standing up. Not too wobbly considering the past two days. I look out the door again, peeking my head around at the nurses station — lots of green and blue scrubs milling around — and then I look the other way. Closer to me than that nurses station is an emergency exit. Here we go. I can stand just fine, that seems okay. Can I walk? I practice walking in the room. Can I run? I do a couple high steps in place. I think I can, I won’t have to run for very long or very far. I can do this. I put on my shoes, grab my gear, and split for the emergency exit. No one yells, and surprisingly no alarm sounds. This might 74

not have been exactly how my escape happened, but I’m keen to get back to where I need to be. I’m free and I need a drink.

Nineteenth Photo — I’m at the same liquor store ATM again, holding a receipt with the green screen of a disposable cash machine behind it. This photo isn’t a duplicate, it’s taken two days later. My bank statement now reads $623.14.1 need a drink (it has been twelve hours at least), and I needed privacy (no more hotels, my spot behind the movie theater should do nicely).

Twentieth Photo — There’s someone in my spot, an older fellow with a big grin, an easy and welcoming grin that’s missing one lower front tooth. He’s maybe forty, very clean, and kind and easy to talk to. His name is Mike and he’s just fallen on some hard times of late. I tell him that I feel that, I understand that, I know how that goes and offer him a slug off my blue Gatorade. It’s mixed with gin, I tell him and he beams, taking a long draw. He welcomes me into the space and says there’s plenty enough room here for both of us and we settle down, and take turns drinking the blue Gatorade and gin mixture. I am in the middle of explaining to him how fucking controlling the people at the emergency room are when everything goes black.

Twenty-first Photo — Blank. 75

Twenty-second Photo — Blank.

Twenty-third Photo — Blank.

Twenty-fourth Photo — Blank.

Part 2: The Place Where People Win By Raising a White Flag

Peace Came Upon Me and It Leaves Me Weak

I don’t remember dying. I always thought the entire ordeal would be different, more cinematic maybe. I can say this about it: most of what you’ve seen or read is complete bullshit. There was no white light, no visions, etc. I understand though why bullshit stories are out there. People have asked me what it was like and I’ve told them nice things about it because they seemed worried about my answer. I’ve lied to be kind.

The truth is that dying and recounting that experience of dying is like trying to remember a dream at three-thirty in the afternoon. You know there was something that happened, and you’re tempted to claim a vision or a white light, just as you would claim to remember a dream in the moments before waking, but it isn’t there. You’re only aware of a memory gap; you know something happened, but it doesn’t really impact your afternoon, so you go on about your errands. If someone asks you about your dream the night before and you don’t remember, you construct a narrative based on a dim notion of imagery or feeling or impression and folks believe you because it doesn’t seem out of the ordinary. It’s what I imagine people who claim to have touched the other side do. That’s 76

what people who haven’t want to hear. Rarely do such accounts include an unidentifiable void. Which is what I experienced: emptiness, nothingness, a lacuna, a blank space on a cassette tape.

I had no concrete sequence to those first few days afterwards. I was in the hospital and there were a few solid images and smells, feelings or impressions, but I pieced together most of it by guessing or by what I was told when I was confident enough to ask someone what happened (which might seem important, but I always preferred, when waking up from an especially toxic blackout not knowing any of the horrendous behavior

I demonstrated the night before).

The first image I remembered within the blank spaces of those days was my father at my bedside. I was in a hospital bed, a hospital room, and my father was there with me.

His shoulders were hunched and leaning forward, his eyes were wide while the skin around them remained folded. He tested at speech but stayed silent. Pop was not a physically imposing man. He was tall but round in the middle, often pausing on each landing as he climbed a flight of stairs. His hair went shock white at a young age (he was blonde before this happened) and when he styled his snowy crown with gel, which I saw him do before a date during one of my more recent trips to New Zealand, his clumps of hair stuck straight up and with his wire framed glasses perched high on his bridge, he looked like a man-sized, middle aged, human version of Bart Simpson. Most days he simply parted it to the side. When he was still married to my mom, he was a history teacher, then he was hired by a firm in New Zealand to track down antiques for Jewish 77

families whose valuables were stolen during World War Two, mostly art. He was (and still is) a man born hundreds, if not thousands of years too late. He belonged in an ancient school or a Renaissance court, maybe a monastery as a visiting scholar, hunched over precious few documents, or scrolls, crumbling papyrus that was falling apart before

Rome became an empire, preserving what he could, where he could, battling to preserve the knowledge of the world so civilization could continue advancing. His hand quivered as he replaced the oxygen plug back under my nostrils when I tried to pull the tube away.

“Hey. Dad.”

“My boy,” he smiled one of those smiles that was also a frown, resolved. There was precious little else said for a long series of moments. He cleared his throat, “Son, I talked to your mother.” Jesus, my mother? He must have been worried if he talked to her (and of course worried enough to hop on a plane from the other side of the world, but it was them communicating that really got my attention), “Did you try to kill yourself because of your... trouble?”

My trouble. That’s what my father called my past life flashing thing. I hesitated,

“Yes” (I’d like to take a moment to clarify something: I didn’t commit suicide. It might have been a suicide attempt but it was really hard to tell. Of course I wanted to for some time, and I was certainly living like a suicidal person, and I did actually make a go of it in my sad little room in my sad little apartment in San Francisco (pills), but who knows what thoughts went through my mind while in that blackout? Do thoughts during a blackout drunk even count? Pinning a suicide attempt on my “trouble” seemed like an 78

easy way to push the responsibility for my actions away from myself. It was something he could understand, so I carried that narrative for him. Honestly though, I couldn’t really say. Maybe, probably, and certainly, but also doubtful, uncertain, and no).

My father exhaled with every muscle in his body. His head bowed, as if his next words were printed on the coarse industrial blanket covering me (without actually managing to keep me warm. Those blankets never keep anyone warm). When he looked up, he was not focused on me but at something across the room and through the window and maybe as far off as the next town over, maybe even further, “I wasn’t around for enough of your life. For much at all. For any of this. I didn’t — I can be around for this.

Just till you’re okay.”

“Okay,” I was starting to drift out, sleep pulled at me.

He shifted, “There’s a treatment center across the street. We need you to check you in. They can help you there.”

My speech slurred slightly, “Where will you stay? It’s going to take more than a day or two. Not with.. .her, right?”

“Don’t worry about that,” he was smiling, “While you’re awake, we need you to sign some paperwork, okay?”

“I’m really sleepy, Pop.”

“Stay awake just another minute or so. I have it here,” as he attended to finding that paperwork, a nurse entered and asked me if I was a smoker. I nodded, and could feel the lag in the affirmation, the sluggishness in my motor skills. 79

She pressed the transparent square against my arm, and I felt it’s effects immediately.

I mumbled “Thank God,” and Pop grinned and the nurse said, “You got that right.”

Maybe she was a smoker too (my interpretation of her response has since changed). She left and my father placed a form on my lap with a pen. I signed on a line at the bottom next to where a celluloid sticky arrow was pointing. Dad put the signed form on the tall tray next to the bed, reached over, and patted my hand. I was transported into the previous life of someone who was not my father’s...

I was in a man in uniform who was standing in a ditch, a trench, waiting in line by a ladder. It was pouring rain, concealing other men in uniform, in the trench, beyond ten paces. Cascades of shitty water and mud crumbled from the upper lips of the dugout walls around me and I knew not to touch the earth; the disruption could cause chunks to loosen and fall into the foot or so of muddy water I was wading in. Rocks came loose from the walls when it rained and rocks that you can’t see in the water twisted ankles, an injury that didn’t warrant leaving the front, let alone getting sent back to medical. I heard a propeller plane, like the type you might hear at an air show or in an old movie, grow louder and then quieter. As the sound moved away, a much louder sound exploded in my ears, water and cold earthy clods and pebbles rained down on the wide brim of my helmet, more of a metal hat. Another solder, closer to the ladder fainted and the man in front of me picked him up so he wouldn’t drown. “One place is as good as any other boys!” sounded off behind me, causing me to jerk again. The bellow belonged to a tremendous man in a different hat from the men standing in line, an actual hat and not a 80

helmet, clearly an officer of some kind. I kept looking at the man who fainted, propped up now against the trench’s wall, and wondered if he might survive a erosion cave-in should one happen. And then I realized that if I took him to the medical station, I wouldn’t be here to go up and over. I would miss the charge. “Ready your weapons!” The men in front of me chambered bullets and secured chinstraps. A high pitched whistle tweeted the order to advance. As my peers started scaling the ladders and as gunshots filled the night above me, I went to the man who was still passed out, lifting his arm around my shoulders, pulling him up. The officer was over us almost immediately, screaming, “leave him! He’s mine! You go over!” I ignored the him and continued in my task. He pulled a revolver out of a button strap holster and pointed it at me, “You go over or you join him in the ground!” He wouldn’t shoot me, I knew it was a bluff. I ignored him, and started dragging my charge towards medical. The gunshot was the last thing I heard.

Re-entering a drugged brain was always a surreal experience, time slowed down suddenly and though my heart was racing in the previous time and space I had just occupied, here I was sedate and groggy. The man who looked like my father seemed aware that something had happened. My father, my real father, died as a caveman, mauled by a tiger with a mountain range in the distance that looked like it was probably the Himalayas.

“Who are you?” I asked the man who looked exactly like my father pressed who was pressing the call button on the bedside controls, “What’s going on? You tell me who 81

you are and what’s happening.”

The nurse returned and he said, “He needs some rest. Please put him back under.”

“You got it,” she said and went to work on the opposite side of the bed, fiddling with the machines I was attached to.

“Where am I? Who the hell are you? What’s going on?”

Things got cloudy fast, so cloudy in fact that it really didn’t matter what had just happened because whatever they gave me to sleep felt amazing. I grinned peacefully at the TV and pointed. The man asked if I wanted to watch TV and I nodded, making the entire room jump up and down around me. My eyes rested on Oprah introducing Jake

Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger as they came out on stage to applause and sat down in ugly purple chairs.

List of Things to Do While in Hemet

1. Find shelter, a mailing address with running water and electricity. (January in Hemet was cold. Cold was not measured by layers of clothes or blankets. I would walk between

3:30am and 4:45am, the witches teat hour, when nothing was cooling off or warming up.

Accomplished on January 25th, 2006.)

2. Eat regularly, foods that I enjoy and are nutritious. (It was months before I started buying food for myself that wasn’t single serving or easily ingested while standing.

Accomplished on March 3,2006, by preparing my first meal since culinary school of english muffin pizzas for my housemates in sober living. It took five hours, my French knife was too dull to cut through roma tomatoes. It unlocked my ability to prepare a meal 82

again.)

3. Find work that doesn’t make me want to kill myself. (Ongoing.)

4. Contemplate whether or not life is worth living once the above three have been accomplished, and then either die or don’t. (Lying in bed, thinking about all that needed to be done (dealing with the world in the pursuit of shelter, food, and employment) rather than drifting on the breeze would create panic attacks, in bed, and I hit the snooze on them into early afternoon. I had one solution: I could wake up, grab the notebook I kept on the nightstand, and make a list upon awakening. The panic attacks stopped with the lists, what seemed impossible had a map. Accomplished February 22, 2006-Current (I still have days).)

5. Probably drink less and completely stop using drugs. (Accomplished March 23, 2006, and January 26*, 2006, respectively)

6. Find answer to the following, a slightly different version of suicidal ideations: why am

I here (Earth) and why am I the way I am (crazy/magic/drunk)? Should I keep living as a freak, something broken, a human being that ought to have been sent back to the manufacturer? Is there any reason at all why I shouldn’t do that? It seems to be the only thing I want considering how I’m living. (Modified in the years since writing this list into the following question: can the ego put itself to death? Accomplished and ongoing)

The Hypnogogia of Detox

Welcome to the disorganized chaos that is detox! As a kid, I loved this series of books branded as Choose Your Own Adventure. If you’re not familiar with the sub 83

genre, they were short novels written in the second-person. After each section or scene, you’re given some kind of choice, which you make for the character. Each choice gives you a different page number. You turn to one page to make a particular choice and continue the story from that point or you flip to another page, making a different choice. I feel this narrative format is the best way to represent those first few days, those fragments of memory repeating themselves in the fog without connective tissue. Enjoy my detox adventure in a numeric order of your own choosing, but you can also feel free to read it consecutively if you prefer.

1. You wake up in the ICU after perhaps a nap or perhaps a full night’s sleep, you are uncertain, but the kind nurse who helped you with getting to the toilet to make little charcoal rabbit turds is there and she tells you it’s time to get dressed. This same nurse who always shuffled in for however long you’ve been in this hospital bed, which feels like days with some blurred recollection that your father was there from distant lands over the sea even if that doesn’t quite make sense, is helping you put on your pants.

Oprah is on TV. It is the same episode you saw before. You look out the window; the smeared glass to your left refracts the sodium light from the streetlight in the nighttime parking lot into frayed yellow halos. Isn’t Oprah on at three in the afternoon? The nurse indicates that it’s time to raise your foot so she can help you tie your shoelaces, but instead of tying your shoes, she begins to unlace the laces. Why can’t you keep your shoelaces where you’re going? You are too groggy to understand and voice the question.

Your hands tremble slightly as you unbuckle your belt, which the nurse also takes. You 84

suddenly realize there is a man in uniform, not a police uniform, a security guard. The nurse explains that you will be going there with him. You ask “There?” and the security guard smiles, kindly, and says something trustworthy. You like and trust this man. He reaffirms this sentiment by saying something else trustworthy that’s also a little bit funny.

You laugh slightly and decide that you are not going to a dangerous place. This is the last thing you remember about the ICU. To wake up in detox, skip to number four, to go on a ride with the trustworthy security guard, continue to number two.

2. You are in the passenger seat of a facilities maintenance electric cart, driving through the parking lot. The January air cuts through your single layer of clothes, a long sleeved shirt. The cart stops at a road, a cross street, an empty intersection. All is quiet, the blanketing night is muted and secretive (whatever that means). It must be very late because you cannot even hear traffic from nearby streets. Your driver, the trustworthy security guard, looks both ways down the empty street and the cart whirs beneath you, moving forward once again. Your eyes drift up to the passing streetlights above, feathered this time through your cloudy eyelashes. When you were a child, you went on a school field trip to the Palomar Observatory, south of Hemet, where you learned that all streetlights within fifty miles of the observatory were required to be yellow so as to not interfere with the telescope’s ability to see the night sky. The cart jerks to a halt. To have a cigarette, skip to number nine, to go through detox intake, continue to number three.

3. You are seated before an overweight woman of Native American descent with stray black whiskers on her chin and upper lip. She is asking you questions in a systematic 85

cadence and recording your responses on a form (probably, you can’t see what’s on the other side of her clipboard). You suspect this has been going on for some time. The questions have been invasive, and you are uncomfortable. She begins to quiz you on your sexual history, orientation, and behaviors. You consider whether you should explain that your preferences have always been a moving target and your partners have included both genders. You’re in Hemet, where the public is less open minded than your previous city.

You scratch your scraggly beard. Maybe you answer her or maybe you simply think the answer in your head because you don’t like labels. You also consider whether or not to explain that your most recent year or so of sexual history, orientation, and behaviors were primarily focused on acquiring narcotics for trade. What category would that put you in?

Gay, bisexual, or straight entrepreneur? You hear her voice either in your thoughts or because she’s talking and it says that this is simply the standard interview they give every patient during intake. Her tone remains formal, even bored. To masturbate, skip to number seven, to wake up in the morning, continue to number four.

4. You wake up in a hospital bed, an ordinary hospital bed, identical to the one you left in

ICU but you know you are not in the hospital. You hope you are in a safe place, but you don’t yet know what or where it is and are too exhausted and drugged to worry. You roll to your side and see another bed and in this bed there is another man, a decade older than you if a day. You see the early morning pastel sky out the window. The man in the bed, who is awake, turns his head and introduces himself. His name is Jim. He offers nothing else. You introduce yourself and he rolls over, his back to you. Between the two beds, 86

you see a blue curtain hanging on runners along the ceiling, scrunched together near the wall, and following the line of the ceiling runners you see a door, slightly open in the center of the opposite wall leading to a dark bathroom. You aren’t sure if you need to pee. Before you can contract your bladder to test if you do, you fall asleep again. To feel a cool rush of air on your backside, skip to number eight, to speak with an orderly, continue to number five.

5. You’re awakened by an orderly attending to your roommate, and you get the impression that it’s the ending of a larger conversation. The orderly, a thirty-something black man, tells Jim that there is nothing he can do about the mice running laps along the circumference of the room’s walls (there are no mice), and that he will receive his medication at the allotted time, not sooner. As the orderly is leaving, he notices that you are awake. He asks how you’re feeling and you ask him if you need to get up or be anywhere and he laughs briefly to himself and says that “Nope. It’s the weekend, sleep all you want.” He leaves, but you realize that you do need to pee and it is what woke you and you sit up in bed, steady enough to make it to the bathroom on your own. Jim rolls over, facing the window’s drawn curtains which are heavy enough to conceal whether it is day or night, as you stand and shuffle to the toilet on your own. The lights in the bathroom burst alive in flickering green, and it’s spotless — possibly the cleanest bathroom you have ever entered — with the exception of a gently bobbing turd in the bowl drifting near some neatly folded floating tissue. You flush the toilet, but it bobs back up to the surface of a refreshed water supply. It’s inconsequential to your needs, so 87

you stand there waiting to pee. It trickles at first, then a steady stream; bright orange, then darker orange, and then it’s red. You shake and droplets of blood land on the rim. After cleaning them off and flushing, blood, urine, turd, and paper disappear. While washing your hands, you see how greasy your hair is in the mirror. You cannot remember your last shower and suddenly feel filthy, but you know you need to go back to bed soon. You sniff at yourself. Disgusting. You grab at the hand soap dispenser and collect a generous palmful of foamy soap, smearing it under an armpit. You repeat this process with the other. To meet Joni, skip to number nine, to wake up from a using dream, continue to number six.

6. You wake up with a tremendous erection and a lightness in your stomach. You just had a using dream, cocaine and Bud Light. You can still feel the memory of it and you thank

God for the gift of this freebie. To redirect the potency of your erection to escape and bare knuckle box the security guard who dropped you off in this strange place, skip to number two and rewrite the scene (and maybe the rest of the book), to masturbate, continue to number seven.

7. Jim the roommate is in the bed next to you. You need, truly need, to jerk off. You’re pretty sure he’s asleep because the lights are off, but it’s hard to tell because again you only see his back. The lightness in your middle is radiating out into an insatiable accelerated warmth. You stand up more steadily than you have before, and then quickly and quietly step to the bathroom, silently shutting the door behind you. There is a turd bobbing in the water, gently drifting flirtatiously with a neatly folded flotilla of tissue. It 88

doesn’t bother you and you begin working at yourself while standing, grateful again for your parents decision to leave you uncircumcised as a child. You move your folds of excess skin rapidly, remembering the recent dream, but then you remember the turd and try to remember if you already flushed it because you think you did and the oddness of an identical turd is confusing to you and you remember the blood and are momentarily dismayed. But then you think that you need to test it (your penis, not the turd) to see if it still works, so you sit down on the toilet and the turd is gone. You need to focus. You begin cycling through the stock images, memories, and fantasies your regularly visit in your mind’s eye when jerking off. You settle on a image or series of images of your girlfriend at the time who was maybe a love or maybe just a steady connection who, and you aren’t making this up, had a PhD in pharmaceutical chemistry and worked nights to make some mixture that sounded a lot like barium for x-ray patients, and you remember her face sweaty and speedy with big round glasses resting on her chubby brown cheeks as she mentioned we could get dressed and get tacos because it was “Two for Tuesday” and there was something about the way her front teeth scraped across her lower lip that was the single most adorable thing in the world that you had ever seen up until that point in your life and you reached down and cupped her bald snatch, wet and ready for you and told her you thought she was adorable, and she kept repeating “Two for Tuesday” while you worked at her clit over and over again, her face inches from your’s until she started to come and her head dropped and she grabbed your cock and squeezed too hard and began stroking at the same intensity with which you were working at her until she quietly 89

and mildly finished, and then finished again, louder, and then leaned back, head back, growling at the ceiling, all without missing a moment in the cadence on your cock until you came and shot across onto her lower belly and her eyes lowered and narrowed and without breaking eye contact, rubbed your jizz across her stomach and then down across her mound, the ropey fluid catching on the micro stubble, and then she leaned forward and bit your cheek gently and tilted her small tit, the left one, toward your face instructing you to kiss her left nipple.

And this memory is working for you and you feel it, the orgasm in the bathroom is imminent so you stroke faster, registering the dryness on the head of your penis, registering even limited discomfort where the dryness is chaffing and a thin membrane of blood has appeared, but you will come in moments and you reach the peak that happens just before. And then you’re still there on the threshold. And then your body feels done.

Done without completing the orgasm. You continue stroking but your penis is beginning to go flaccid and you realize that you’ve chaffed quite a bit around the head of your penis, and a portion of foreskin is rubbed raw. The lightness has left your middle, the urge has disappeared, and you feel like you should try to pee again since you’re already on the toilet. It’s a dribble at first, red, and more dribbling red before a forked stream sprays into the bowl like a pinched hose would. You flush. The turd and paper remain. To do drugs in a San Francisco dance club, save up all your bread and fly trans love airlines to San Francisco U.S.A., and maybe you’ll understand the magnificence of shaking your ass, high as a kite in a loud and bright club, it will be worth it, if not for the sake of doing 90

a shit-ton of drugs and feeling the nightlife, then for your own peace of mind, or to feel the cool rush of air on your backside, continue to number eight.

8. You are in the hallway outside of your room, quietly closing the door and then changing your mind at the last minute to leave it ajar. Your room is adjacent to an emergency exit door that (something you learn later) buzzes when opened without a key.

The counselors and staff come and go through this door often as it leads to the front foyer and the parking lot beyond. The hallway is long, over one hundred feet long, lined with doors just like the one you’re leaving ajar. At the far end of the hall is a desk (you later learn is the nurses’ station) and beyond the desk is a matching set of alarmed emergency exit doors. These doors lead to the behavioral health clinic adjacent to this facility, which is also an entry/exit point for the counselors and staff. Whenever either door opens at either end of the hall, a brief gust of wind eventually finds its way down the corridor.

You feel a cool rush of air on your backside as your hospital gown flaps wide from your body as the set of alarmed emergency exit doors next to you swings open. A lean black woman with short curls (you later learn is a counselor) steps through replacing the keys in her pocket. Surprised to see you there as the same gust that cooled your bottom slams the door to your room closed, you both jump at the sight of one another and the noise.

She asks you where you’re headed, and you explain you desperately need a cigarette

(these are already in your hand). To unleash your Praying Mantis Kung Fu abilities on this counselor, be defeated by her Tiger Kung Fu response, but distract her long enough to escape through the closing emergency exit doors and into freedom, skip to number ten, 91

to have a cigarette, continue to number nine.

9. You are on the back patio area, a concrete slab with four patio tables, round with umbrellas in the center, each surrounded by cushioned patio chairs. It is daytime, midday shadows hugging their sires as if wanting to squeeze under their objects for shade themselves. There is a cigarette in your hands, a brown one, a clove. It’s rich and hurts when you inhale too deeply. There is a woman, forties with botoxed lips and bleach blonde hair sitting near you. You’re sure she gave you the clove but you can’t remember this. You thank her and she smiles, telling you that she appreciates your gratitude but this is now the fourth time you have thanked her since you sat down. Oh, you say. She chuckles to herself, “Welcome to treatment.”

Binary Sunrise

I woke in the predawn hours and my head felt relatively clear. It was the type of morning wakeup that my body automatically triggered after a night of heavy drinking

(and considering the big pharm cocktail they put me on during that first weekend, it’s unsurprising that my body reverted to behaving the same way). I knew where I was, a medical facility, and I was pretty sure I knew why: it had to do with my overdose.

Beyond that though, I was a little uncertain. I didn’t know what the facility was. I

scrolled through the disorganized memories from the past three or four days. My conclusions were vague, I didn’t have much from the intake interview to go on or really

any of the rest of it, although I remembered someone welcoming me to treatment. The only way to find out would be to investigate and since I was up, I did what all smokers 92

did, sought out my morning j ones.

The room was more or less a standard hospital room with a dividing curtain, the weird bathroom with handles for everything, and the bunkmate you have no interest or motivation in bonding with. The variation here was the lack of medical equipment next to each bed, replaced with squat little nightstand cabinets, and instead of those feeding trays

(the rolling high tables where the shelf can be pulled over your lap) there were bendy arm lamps snaking over the headboards of each bed. Inside the bedside cabinets were towels and washcloths, soaps and shampoos, a toothbrush and a set of those maroon plastic jug and cup setups that are so popular in medical centers. My duffle bag was underneath my bed. My clothes were all there, along with The Iliad, but my toiletries were missing. So was my cell phone. At Phoenix House they took the bathroom stuff because apparently someone could use them to kill themselves if ingested. Must be the same here. I assumed

I lost my cell phone (Later I found out it was confiscated to “preserve the confidentiality of the wing.” Which was complete bullshit. The outpatients came and went with their phones and were frequently farting around with them on the back patio and on the wing between groups. The staff snaked my phone to control my contact with the outside world). My cigarettes were in the drawer of the nightstand even though I hadn’t yet looked to confirm this. I just knew that’s where they ended up. I found some clothes that looked clean enough and smelled like the canvas material of the bag. Not the most desirable of scents, but better that they smell like the bag than like the last few days of me. 93

Fully dressed, I went for my smokes. I had just under two packs left; thirty-six total, a quantity I would need to preserve. I didn’t know when I would be able to restock again. I grabbed the open pack and stepped quietly out of the room, leaving the door slightly ajar behind me (they didn’t like us to fully close the doors unless we were changing — they did checks here too, every fifteen minutes, but a little less invasive (no flashlight in the face)). I made the long walk to the nurses station. I would get answers and I would have my first cigarette in however many days (days people) under the morning stars.

The nurses station was a counter, elevated and empty, coming up to my nipples, with a desk on the other side that was low enough for me to look down on the occupant if there was an occupant. There was a room with a glass window behind the counter where a blonde head and a less blonde head were bobbing in conversation. They didn’t see me so I waved my arms. One of them caught it in periphery and got up to see what I needed.

She shuffled through the door and chirped at me, the coffee for the graveyard shift must have been exceptional, “What do you need [redacted for thematic purposes]?”

“You know my name?”

“Of course I do,” she tilted her head to the side, “You checked in three days ago. I don’t know much else about you though, unless you want to hear about your medication regimen.”

“Not especially,” though this would have been prized information under normal circumstances (always know your meds!), I had more pressing concerns, “This is 94

probably going to sound strange, but, uh, where exactly am I?”

Her face bloomed; warmth, security, a question she could answer, “A chemical dependency treatment called IERC (Inland Empire Recovery Center). You’ve been here since 2 A.M. on Friday morning, or 2 A.M. Thursday night if you prefer. If that’s easier.

You came here directly from the hospital’s intensive care unit across the street where you were recovering from an especially nasty alcohol overdose. Does that help?”

“A little. No, a lot,” I said, “Is this the first time we’ve had this conversation?”

“Yeah, sweetie, it is,” she said.

“Cool,” I nodded, “One more question...”

“Let you outside to have a cigarette?”

“Please.”

She walked around the counter and collected a tangle of keys in the process. I was then escorted down a another hallway, adjacent, perpendicular, and short with a door at the end that needed unlocking, “Joni’s already out there.”

“Joni? Who’s Joni?”

“You were singing her praises to us just yesterday. She gave you a clove and you were so grateful that you had to come in and tell us. You were very enthusiastic.”

I could only imagine, “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t worry about it. Detox is rough. The happy little things see you through,” she unlocked the door and held it open for me.

“Was I wearing pants?” 95

“Why don’t you go enjoy your cigarette and we can talk later if you need to,” I walked out onto the patio, my feet knew where I was going, a smoker’s migration, ushering me towards the tables and chairs around the corner of the building. The patio itself was about twenty by thirty, each table had two or three ashtrays and at three of the four comers of the concrete ground beneath me were those plastic cone dispenser butt buckets. A woman, Joni, I assumed, was sitting with her back to me facing the approaching sunrise. Not wanting to startle her, I coughed. She twisted around and the face was familiar: huge lips, lively eyes, bristly blonde hair, and creases at weathered angles in her face. As she smiled, the creases transformed into smile lines, making her look considerably younger, “Hey! I see you found your smokes. Would you care to join me or would you prefer to be alone?”

“Oh, no,” I was momentarily confused by a double negative that I didn’t actually hear, “I mean, yes. I’d be happy to. I’d like that.” I sat down in the chair next to her, the cushion was damp and cold, I stood back up and wiped a hand across the seat. Dew.

“It goes away after a couple minutes. Either your body acclimates and ignores it, or warms it up. Here,” she put an ashtray from the tabletop on the arm of my chair, “That way we don’t have to pass one between us or turn around to ash,” the table was behind us, “I like to have an uninterrupted view.”

“But we’re outside,” I said, referencing the ground.

“And if you ash all over the patio, someone has to sweep it up. Don’t worry, you’ll catch on to etiquette around here quickly. We all do,” then, more to herself, “we all 96

blend in to the best of our ability,” then, addressing me again, “Although you’re the first to join me for the early morning since I got here.”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“Me neither. I’m out here every day. Up at four like clockwork.”

“It’s four in the morning?”

“No,” she looked in her ashtray, “it’s three cloves past.”

I lit up and inhaled deeply, a true and sincere inhalation. Oh God, the first one is always the best. My stomach flopped slightly as the mellow lightness spread through my arms and legs, “Thanks, P.S., for loaning me one whenever that was. Want one of mine?”

“Not a loan. A gift. It’s hard enough being here and getting off of everything. I always try to share cigarettes with new people. I have a pretty much unlimited supply.”

“What, like a closet full of stacked cartons in your room?”

“Not exactly. I have a lot of money and this is how I spend it. For now anyway.”

“What do you do?”

“You mean, for work? I don’t. But he’s going to divorce me soon and I want to spend as much of his money as humanly possible before I get cut off. And this is a way to do it, a way that I can do it. So I do.”

“You could be withdrawing and stockpiling cash instead.”

“There’s a record of those withdrawals in our account statement and knowing him, the divorce will be ugly and itemized. It’ll look bad in court. Enough about that asshole,” she waved a hand in the air brushing him away, “What’s your story? Who are 97

you, where are you from, and what are you in for?” she said this last part like a character in a prison movie.

“Well, I grew up near here, but moved away for college; Long Beach State for film. Production though, not theory.”

“There is a difference,” she said this solemnly, knowingly.

“Yes.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Production qualified me to work at a shitty little cable station after college for a while making those shitty local business commercials you see on basic cable. But that didn’t work out so well, and breaking in to the industry is practically impossible without some heavy-duty nepotism working for you. I mean, you really have to know the right person and be there, ready, at the right time. Before that I was a cadet at the Air Force

Academy in Colorado Springs.”

“That’s a career shift,” she said, “What prompted the change?”

I gave my standard stock response, “Saw through the system, the bullshit. How I was nothing more than a cog in the military industrial complex, how bureaucracies were just another system, how state and federal government prompted this existential framework we’re imprisoned within. You know, the dark side.”

“That’s stoner conspiracy theory talk,” she wasn’t cruel in this confrontation, she managed to (in only how she was capable of doing) express empathy, “Is that what you tell people?” I nodded. “Something happened to you there?” 98

I laughed one of those good-natured uncomfortable laughs that I’ve seen people laugh sometimes, “Yeah.”

“Don’t tell me about it, sunrise-time is new-day-time.”

“How did you know there’s more to the story?”

“Can’t bullshit a bullshitter,” she shrugged, “One of my exes, like years ago from the first college I dropped out of, was at West Point. We hooked up over a holiday break and swapped a few letters for another month or two after he went back. I didn’t ever hear much but I gathered it was a kind of fucked up place,” she let me hold on to the quiet for a moment, “Why film school?”

“I was creative,” I shrugged, “And I liked movies. They were my happy place, my escape when I was young.”

“But that didn’t work out.”

“Nope,” I said, “It might have, if I stayed with it, but it’s corporate storytelling. I was more interested in doing my own thing.”

“You could always write books.”

“I’m not good enough to do that,” I ashed, “you can fake being a good writer in a film, but not a novel.”

“So you became a — ” she twisted her wrist around in a circle, the smoke lassoing up before dissolving, “Which are you? A drunk or a junkie?”

“Um, both I guess.”

“Me too,” she inhaled/exhaled, “So you’ve been in the wilderness ever since?” 99

“Yeah. No. I did cooking school next.”

“Why?”

“Do you want the fancy impressive reason that I tell everyone or the real reason?”

“Both. Of course.”

“Okay, the explanation that I use to impress people is partially performance depending on who I’m talking to. So I’ll have to sell it,” I got into character, making a show of warming up and tossing my head back, shaking out my hands, and doing a few vowel exercises, “When I was in the first grade, I had to draw a picture of what I wanted to be when I grew up. There were lots of doctors, firemen, and policemen in my class, but

I drew a funny man in a long white coat, a beret, holding a paint brush with a large red drip coming off of it. Artist, right? I didn’t really like film so much anymore and I wanted steady employment. I remembered that child’s illustration from way back. I would be an artist. And it hit me,” I pantomimed a gesture worthy of Archemedes, “Chef. Chefs are the ultimate artists. They have a blank canvas, you know, the plate/bowl/etc. It holds a medium, food. And the final product, the end result of the artistic endeavor is a work of art that stimulates each of the five senses in an audience member. It’s the only art form that can do that,” I leaned back, and the cushion was still damp.

“Sound?”

“I’m so glad you asked,” I was back in character, “Does your mouth salivate at the sound of sizzling fajitas being walked to your table, or the clacking of a box of french fries, or the juicy crunch of an apple?” 100

“Nice,” she said, “And the real reason?”

“Steady supply of coworkers who could get me drugs or knew someone who could get me drugs. Kitchens employ people who love drugs.”

She cracked up, a real laugh, an honest laugh. I lit another cigarette, “What about you? Tell me your background. Where are you from, what’s your story, what are you in for?”

“Well now okay (and here I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t hear a word of it.

She laid out her whole background but I was basking in the glow of impressing a new friend with my varied past. I didn’t hear a word. I never really quite got her full life story again, but over the year I knew her, I managed to fill in some key points and events as the details presented themselves).

Here is a list of significant details about Joni:

1. Born and raised in Utah, and very Mormon. This of course became problematic once she started drinking and using casually (and especially once she started drinking and using heavily). She was fully excommunicated. Because her folks were pillars in the church community, they were able to hold a funeral in a Morman temple and have her buried in a Morman cemetery.

2. At age seventeen, she formed a Heart cover band. They were magnificent.

3. She was the oldest of four. Often feeling responsible for her siblings, dropping everything to take their phone calls (once they started speaking to her again), and taking action to mend those relationships. While I fully supported her rebuilding those bridges, 101

it was pretty inconvenient sometimes. Like when we went to the movies. People who leave their phones on during movies, answer them, and then walk over others while talking and disrupting the auditorium while exiting really ought to be slapped. Hard.

Even her.

4. The divorce proceedings she was about to enter (and she was right, it was ugly and itemized) would be her third. She was already looking for a future ex-husband before the ink was dry. She met one of the more promising candidates seven or eight months after our first cigarette together. He was a nurse and he wore a toe ring. But she seemed happy with him and loved that he had a jeep and they would go out hiking and camping and all sorts of activities. He was the opposite of every rich controlling ass she’d ever been hitched to. I have this one perfect snapshot of her being truly delighted with him: it was at a Christmas banquet hosted by IERC (we had holiday banquets/dinners for people who had no family or family who wouldn’t talk to them anymore) (I ended up cooking the

Thanksgiving and Mother’s Day events). While the MC was introducing the speaker for the evening, nurse with a toe ring was whispering something in Joni’s ear and she was laughing, a girlish giggling just this side of phony. Sincere joy. She then fed him a piece of cantaloupe off her plate and playfully swatted his chest with a “You” exhaled quietly enough to not disturb anyone else.

5. She loved her sons more than anything on this earth. The youngest was in the clutches of her active divorce and she didn’t receive any custody whatsoever. Her ex, the father, shut her out of his life. But her eldest was fifteen and wonderful, calling her twice a day 102

or vice versa. Joni would come to me with pop-culture questions nearly everyday (stuff about what “the kids” are into these days), taking a break from texting her son, to ask or text me a question about the music group Gorillaz or whether she needed to be familiar with the cinema of Seth Rogen.

6. Basically, she took whatever she could get her hands on pill-wise. Opiates and benzos were her favorite, but she’d take anything. When her oldest son was young, he was diagnosed with ADHD. She would open up his ridalin pills and take half the powder (but only half). She also saw three different psychiatrists in order to receive three different scripts. Even that wasn’t enough. Fortunately (or unfortunately), she lived in Phoenix and could/would cross the border into Mexico for an additional supply of ambien, colonopine, vicodin, and just about anything else that would be a good time in Dallas (those of you who know and love Dr. Strangelove: that was for you).

7. Her family drove her out to Hemet from Arizona and dropped her off on Christmas day after she threw the Christmas tree out the window and passed out across the presents left for her youngest son (he was three).

“You didn’t tell me about what it was that brought you in,” she said, the direct address snapped my attention back into the conversation, “Why did you check in?”

“It was an overdose. Vodka and blue gatorade. You?”

“Pills,” she stared towards the horizon, “You’re lucky. Benzos and opiates are the worst to come off of. I still see shit all over the place. Crawlers, critters, echoes of voices that aren’t there. Stuff like that, you know?” I nodded. I knew. “Booze doesn’t usually 103

warrant a long stay. You know when you’ll get discharged?”

“No idea. I only just woke up today, like, an hour ago. I don’t really know what’s going on here yet.”

“Well. If anyone asks you this question, and they’ll ask it soon, today at some point, just answer ‘whatever it takes,’ okay?”

“What’s the question? Is it a secret question?”

“Oh, God no. Sorry. The question will be, ‘to what lengths are you willing to go to get clean and sober.’ Just say ‘whatever it takes’ and you’re golden.”

The sun was crowning, finally, over Mr. San Jacinto. Now would be a great time to contemplate my new life, a symbolic representation of renewal and regrowth, but all I was thinking was that when someone asks me that question, I’ll answer and it’ll be a lie.

They Hold Hands When They Pray (And They Pray A LOT)

After sunrise, I went back to bed. My time there was short lived. An orderly came in our room to get me and Jim (with the back that I see so much of) into motion. He had a name, Gene, and I later found out that he and his wife of four years were expecting. Over the weekend, allowed me to sleep through everything and confirmed that the best place for me was in bed. Gene was not kind to me on Monday morning. The door opened fully, the lights went on, and he wouldn’t leave until he saw that we were sitting up, standing up, and getting dressed. He also let us know that we were the first room of a long hall of detox patients and that he had a lot of other people to wake up so we should, you know,

“shake a leg.” I asked him if I could sleep longer, and he said that it wasn’t the weekend 104

anymore.

“No sir-ee, you got groups to go to,” something about the way he said it seemed to be making fun of me.

“I have to get up?” repeating the question would find new wiggle room in getting what I wanted. Surely.

“Yep, yep,” he said, “up and at ‘em.”

“What do I do?”

“You get dressed, maybe go to the recovery meeting, we’ll feed you in the dining lounge at seven, and after that you go to group and do what you’re told.”

“Is there a shower?”

“Shower’s down the hall, but you got to move fast, there’s already a line of early risers.”

“Is there coffee?”

He laughed, flat out laughed at this, “No way. Don’t bother to go looking for diet coke or anything else with caffeine. You won’t find it. The only place you can get a cup of coffee is the seven o’clock meeting that’s starting in fifteen minutes. It’s the same time as breakfast though. Now get in motion.” And with that he was gone.

As the days passed and I got to know some of the inpatients in groups and over cigarettes on the back patio, most of them bitched about the culture shock of that first morning of being bossed around by the staff. It wasn’t much of a shock or change for me.

Signing over agency to an organization was the first thing I did when I left home. 105

Medical routine is a lot like military routine; industrialized, formal, sterile, and

disciplined. It was easy for me to comply with instructions I didn’t fully understand.

I stepped into the hall, looking to the left for the shower. There was a line of

seven people with ratty hair and impatient stances, people who probably didn’t have any

familiarity or experience taking military showers (which are a lot like regular showers,

only faster and shorter) (except for this one time: determined to brand us new cadets with mental and physical toughness, our drill instructor taught us how to “shower like Navy

SEALS.” I still doubt the validity of his claim, that this was how Navy SEALS showered, but I’ve never had a Navy SEAL to ask for verification. The shower room, which consisted of four stalls without curtains lined opposite walls (the curtains were part of a punishment/rewards system, and would be there one morning only to be gone the next) had all the showers turned on full blast with each station alternating scalding hot water with icy cold. We lined up naked and were instructed to hold our soap in our right hand up above our heads like we were gripping a static line in the back of a C-130 (a really big propeller plane that opens in the back so people can jump out of it). The drill instructor waited with a stopwatch near the front of the line, the steam billowed clouds around us, and every twelve seconds he said “ready,” slowly raised his arm, held it aloft briefly, and then brought it down quickly, barking out a single word, “jump.” That was the signal for the person at the front of the line to move into the shower closest to the right, freezing cold water, and for the cadets in the other stalls to rotate to the next one in a counter clockwise pattern. I went numb from the shock of the cold water, but honestly, once I 106

rotated into the next stall jetting an opposite temperature on me, it really wasn’t so bad.

By the time the heat or cold was about to become truly uncomfortable, it was time to

switch to the next extreme). Someone else joined the queue in the hallway while I

calculated the odds of how long each patient would be in the shower. I hated the thought

of missing a shower, but I really hated the idea of missing my only chance at coffee. A

quick spit-bath in the bathroom sink would be fine. I wasn’t especially hungry either.

I turned to see Jim vacating the bathroom, giving me a contempt-smirk in greeting on his way out of our room. I did not care for this man. I cleaned up in the bathroom sink, and collected a pack of smokes, joining a couple other patients on the patio for their first cigarettes of the day. Joni was somewhere else, maybe already enjoying some coffee inside. I only had one cigarette, it was all I had time for anyway, and went inside to ask the nice lady at the nurses’ station where the recovery meeting was going to take place.

She directed me down the hall behind her to the multipurpose room where most of the groups happened.

I had been to meetings like this before. I didn’t like them. Generally, they weren’t much use to me because my drinking and drug use was a special circumstance of self- medicating.

The multipurpose room had a thick floor-length curtain scrunched against the wall that could divide the room (something that was done daily after lunch to create two spaces, one for men’s group, the other for the ladies. The curtain was heavy enough to completely drown out sound, preserving privacy). The wall opposite the scrunched 107

curtain was windows with a small courtyard just outside, and beyond the courtyard was

an iron fence like the one circling the back patio. Beyond that fence was freedom, but it had an alarmed gate. The chairs were arranged in a circle around the room, a few people were sitting, but a lot of them were waiting for coffee. I made straight for the large chrome dispenser of liquid joy across the room. The wait was fucking terrible. Whichever moron set up the sugar, creamer, and stirring sticks right next to the pot itself needed to be shot. Everyone had to wait while each person put all the silly bullshit people in their drink, bitter became sweet and black turned tan. I bounced on my feet. When someone behind me said that they were going to start the meeting soon, my heart rate jumped.

Someone addressed the big circle behind me as I reached the front of the line and they all chanted a prayer. The pot was nearly empty. I managed to hold my styrofoam cup under the spigot and tilted the pot forward, collecting that last bit of sweet nectar.

Coffee in hand, I made for the door. I could enjoy a nice coffee and cigarette while the rest of these chumps were having their meetings or eating their breakfasts. Until the person leading the meeting called out, “If you take that back with you into the wing, they’ll take it away from you. Believe me, many have tried to do the exact same thing you’re doing right now. You want the coffee, you gotta stay. You might learn

something.”

“There’s a chair right here honey,” said a nearby woman. She had a

grandmotherly way about her and was a dead ringer for this cartoon character from

Disney’s Sleeping Beauty', Merryweather, the fairy who kept turning the princess’s dress 108

blue. I sat down quickly and the meeting resumed. On my other side was an older

bearded man wearing a sleeveless tee shirt to display his surprisingly impressive (for an

old guy) upper arms.

I’ve heard people say in meetings that they went to their first meeting and heard

their story and it opened their eyes and that they finally found a home, etc. I’m sure some

have had that experience or believed themselves to have had that experience. I was only

there for the coffee, focused entirely on it, savoring the smell, the flavor, the heat. When

was the last coffee I had? I was in the ICU, then here, and that had been a couple days at

least. I didn’t have any coffee during my twenty-four hours of freedom, and Phoenix

House had the same restrictions about caffeine that this place had. Weeks. Multiple weeks. That is entirely too long to go without coffee. This might have been the best cup of coffee ever brewed. Nothing fancy, Folgers, but that morning it was a radiant guiding

light in liquid form. I savored it in slow slips for eighteen minutes while people shared their feelings and told stories.

As the hour was ending, everyone stood up and held hands, connecting the group

into a circle. And then they were waiting on me. I was about to break for the door, but before I could move, Merryweather mumbled “Come on now, a prayer never hurt anyone,” and grabbed my hand. Sleeveless Tee Shirt grabbed the other. It felt like they both grabbed my hand at the same time. The flashes into their past lives happened one after the other and I had no idea whose I was seeing between the two of them.

I was in a man fighting on a castle battlement during medieval times. A soldier 109

with a big red cross on a white background rushed at me, and I ran him through the guts with a broadsword, kicking him off the walkway into the courtyard below to free my blade. I raised my weapon and called out, rallying the forces to my position where the siege tower was approaching. I must have also attracted an enemy archer’s attention and I felt a pinch in my chest. There was half an arrow in my side, still quivering from it’s flight. I growled, took a deep breath, and gripped the shaft, yanking it from my middle.

The arrowhead snagged flesh, snagged something. Clumps of my insides glopped out in a dark red mess, clinging to my tunic. I knew I would die, but I also knew I had to take as many Englishmen with me as I could. There was a blur of white behind me and I turned in time to catch one of them in the shoulder, where my blade stuck. I tugged at it.

Nothing. There was a cry behind me, a bellow in a language he did not understand (but I did: “For Henry”). His last thoughts as a massive hammer come down on his head were of their leader, the young lady who was sent by God.

I was back in the multipurpose room for less than a blink, a frame or two, a literal fraction of a second.

And I was in the body of a monk running through a series of halls and then rooms and then through doors. I looked over my shoulder, how close were they? Foolish, it slowed me down and I stumbled but caught my balance and my stride before falling. I could hear them, why did I look? I sprinted through a labyrinth of right turns, hoping to confuse them enough into following me back outside, and if possible away from Johan. I thought of Johan hiding in our secret place, the place where so few went, the attic, the 110

place where we could delight in one another. He was a good boy, he was hiding and would live to become a man, a good man. I just had to lead the monsters away from him.

I overturned furniture behind me and slammed a door shut as I bolted through, not locking it, not wanting them to lose track of me. He would be safe; his soft cheeks, his lips, his shy penis. I arrived at the door leading to the countryside beyond and threw my weight against it, hitting it hard. It was locked. Why? I tried again. It wouldn’t budge and only Brother Thomas has the key. He always leaves this door open, why is it locked today? I turned to face the two brutes arriving in the annex behind me. As he prepared himself for death, the monk prayed for the safety of Johan, that he might be spared to continue doing God’s work in this world.

I was back in the multipurpose room for good, the prayer continued. Both of them were battle bom, each stood their ground but one of them was a pedophile — the worst thing that a person can be. What morality would Grade’s prophetic invasion of my dreams assign to that?

I weighed this as I exited the meeting with everyone else towards the back patio for a smoke, my forty-yard stare directed just a few feet at the browning tile in front of me. A middle aged Latino man with head of thick raven black hair stopped me in the hall.

He was wearing cowboy boots, slacks and a neatly pressed shirt, “My name is Angelo.

I’m going to be your counselor while you’re here. And we need to talk.”

I didn’t take his offered hand, “You don’t shake?”

“No, sir. I don’t like touching.” I ll

“Buddy, you’re in the wrong place.” He clapped me on the back up between my shoulders, his fingers making skin contact just above the collar of my shirt. Nothing happened.

My First Assignment

Angelo walked me from the multipurpose room around the corner to a doorway; the counselor’s office. It wasn’t much to speak of, spare and little more than a place for the four of them to do paperwork. He sat down at one of the blue plastic desks that circled three of the four walls in the room. The chair settled and he began filling in some forms with hand writing I couldn’t make out. From upside down anyway. It looked a like some code or shorthand or Arabic. He gestured for me to take a nearby chair without looking up from whatever he was filling in. 1 was about to say something, but he held up a finger and hissed “shh” without pausing in his scribblings. It gave me some time to study the man and my surroundings.

Here is a list of significant details about Angelo:

1. He was a very imposing man physically. Tall and probably once lean, some ethnicity from Latin America (a blend of his Cuban father who immigrated to Haiti and a mother of continental Native American descent). He always wore a tan long sleeve button down shirt, pleated slacks in colors rotating through shades of earth tones, and cowboy boots, always cowboy boots. Even though his hair was impeccably slicked back, there was something casual and quiet about him, content to watch and listen and then whisper into your ear, and your ear alone, a solution to whatever issue you might be wrestling with. 112

While he didn’t have the imposing presence of another counselor who I’ll introduce later, he was firmly planted in my memory as the heart and soul of that place. He was my counselor after all.

2. Angelo also had a superpower. Here it is in his own words: “I was bom in Mexico

City, but my parents moved to Haiti when I was an infant. My father was a drunk but he never beat me. He was a doctor with a practice in Port au Prince, but we lived on the fringe of the city. My mother stayed at home, kept house. She was educated and loving.

My father was another story. He was cold, quiet, and carried a heavy load. On top of being a doctor, he and I shared what every male in my family has — a gift. We didn’t talk much about it in my family and my parents made a choice to be away from his family before I was bom because they were bad news. Criminals really. I had an uncle with limited telekinesis; he could move objects made out of glass by just thinking about them, but he worked for a cartel until he was executed, also before I was born. I found out about my father’s abilities when I was eight. I knocked my head pretty hard one afternoon, running through the bush with some classmates. I was bleeding from the back of my head so I went home. My mother screamed, and my father jumped in. He put both hands on my crown and whispered over my scalp. When he was done, he showed my mother that it was mended and she calmed down. I didn’t understand what had fully happened until it was explained to me two years later. I was ten, and I broke a window. I hid in a closet and my father looked for me, I could hear him calling, opening and closing doors, finally opening the hall closet. He looked directly at me and was in the process of 113

closing the door to move on with his searching when I sneezed. The gust from the opening door must have kicked up something. Anyway, he turned back around and started feeling around for me in the coats, asking if I was there. I kept silent, but he got a hold of my collar, yanked me out, sat me down. Whatever camouflage I had created by instinct vanished the second he got me. He asked me if I knew what I was doing. I did not. He told me about the men in our family, and why we lived far out in the bush — so he could maintain his practice in the city, but also help those who couldn’t afford a real doctor. I was home schooled from that day forward. My mother taught me subjects that weren’t covered in school. American English, world history, stuff like that. But they couldn’t keep me locked up in the house all day, hidden from the world. And you can’t, when you’re that age, hear that you have a superpower and not try to practice it. As a kid, like any other little boy, I loved comic books. The Green Lantern was my favorite, but not Hal Jordan. John Stewart Green Lantern. In Haiti, we generally got older comics that hadn’t sold out in the U.S., a few years behind the publication release, but we got John

Stewart Green Lanterns right away, probably because he was black (He drifted off here, lost in thought or memory or speculation, scratching his cheek). I loved John Stewart because he had problems with authority figures. His powers were close enough to mine for me to identify with him (as with all Green Lanterns, the ring each recruit is trusted with gives the wearer power of mind and will, limited only by the wearer’s imagination, to create “constructs” that are always green and can be controlled telekinetically). I suddenly came into this ability, like Stewart, with an older more experienced person, my 114

father playing the part of Hal Jordan, passing it along to me. While I couldn’t create something out of nothing, I could make others believe that was the case, seeing whatever

I wanted them to see. And the other senses too, they could interact with, hear, and smell whatever information I painted in their minds. During my rebellious teen years, I got into some bad behaviors, and of course never got caught. Mostly petty theft, some vandalism, but nothing that any other teenager wouldn’t do. I worked alone. I knew I couldn’t tell anyone. Having a secret identity was an easy thing for me to understand. When I turned eighteen and they insisted that I go to college, I just left. I didn’t need an education to provide for myself, and I didn’t like studying. I bummed around Miami and New Orleans for a while, sent letters homes, called on the holidays. They didn’t approve of my lifestyle, suspecting correctly that I was well on my way to some hard truths. I was drinking a lot, smothering a thing I felt underneath the surface of everything I was doing: that my behavior was wrong. Wrong to steal, wrong to manipulate other’s perceptions, wrong to lie my way out of jams. I was raised better than that, and it was easier to ignore it with booze. Beer at first, then the hard stuff, and then weed, and then heroin. I used my ability to score, get money to score, and then be alone with my favorite lady, my mistress, my dope. I ended up in Vegas. My first night at the tables was also my last. I was winning. Now, when I say “winning,” I really mean I was convincing the dealer that I was winning, and everyone else at the table. What I did not know about, or imagine to consider, were the cameras in the ceiling they used to watch the casino floor. Four large men escorted me and the dealer into a little room without any cameras. They shot the 115

dealer four times, killing him. I had been drinking complimentary booze, so I was a little fuzzy. That shook me into a shade of sobriety, but not quite enough for me to give them a target of myself in their heads that was far enough away from where I was actually sitting. I took two bullets, one in the shoulder, another in the arm. They thought they killed me and I could barely keep control of the illusion, me as a dead body rather than my actual bleeding alive ass self, as they carted our bodies through a winding labyrinth of hallways to a loading dock where a van was idling. I assumed we were on our way to a couple of shallow unmarked graves, but I wasn’t planning on sticking around long enough to find out. It took everything I had left in me to stumble away, make people see something other than a ragged drunk bleeding all over the place. I found a taxi, crawled in, and surprised the holy hell out of the driver. They patched me up in the ER and shipped me off to behavioral health. I must have told the doctor the truth while I was under the influence of anesthesia. So I did some time with the mentally ill in Vegas.

Pretty bleak. While I was there, an H & I speaker (“H & I” stands for Hospitals and

Institutions: volunteers from the recovery community often go to psych wards, prisons, etc to share their message as a way of giving back as other gave to them) came and told us about his drinking problem and how he got past it and got a good life out of it. It sounded like bullshit. But then I watched him walk through those locked doors and I watched those doors close locked again behind him. That was the message I heard. I asked to be bumped over to detox, and after a few days they sent me to a rehab on the other end of town. You think Hemet is bad, Jesus, it’s nothing compared to detox in 116

Vegas in the 80’s. I cleaned up, sobered up, and started putting together the life I have today. Working here with you. So that’s my magic powers story.”

3. He rarely smiled. Not a grumpy man by any stretch of the imagination, it was just how his face worked. This dry presence was particularly affecting when I met him, but created some surprising interactions later. He made eye contact with me pre or post group and curled a finger from across a room or hallway. Being summoned by a staff member usually meant something difficult was about to happen — a private session with my counselor led to pointed, confrontational feedback and often an assignment. Following him to a quiet corner or simply going outside for a private word was worrying as he turned to face me, narrowed his eyes, leaned in closely (and for many patients this meant leaning down over them), and said “Gimmie a cigarette.” And then his eyes lit up as I exhaled in relief, his mouth holding in a smile, knowing exactly what he was doing. I imagine he’s still trying to quit.

4. He had a strange working relationship with the other counselors. The other patients felt the tension and wondered what might have happened for him to set himself apart from them. The staff was not entirely certain why he had special exceptions from the higher ups for pulling certain patients (like me) out of groups for private meetings and giving them assignments that couldn’t be shared with the larger groups (superpower stuff).

While the entire staff and treatment team maintained a face of stoic unity, there were occasional cracks in the facade; an offhand comment or mumbled frustration (tone and/or content) that hinted at some carefully cultivated professional resentments. I don’t know if 117

anyone enjoys it when one coworker is perceived as special, receiving preferential treatment, I know I really fucking hate it.

Angelo paused in his scribbling and I perked up only to watch him shift on his hips and turn the page over, resuming. I must have exhaled longer or louder than I thought because he said, still not looking up, “I’ll be with you soon, young man.”

“Yes, sir.” It was an automatic response, but it caused one corner of his mouth to turn slightly up before changing its mind and resuming its place in a pursed lip line. The desk was one of those office supply store plastic numbers that hugged the room’s three walls somehow perfectly, as if it were one big piece of furniture. None of the chairs matched, beaded with fabric dangles and never pushed in, abandoned by the previous occupant jumping to troubleshoot whatever new emergency arrived (there was never a dull moment). Hanging along the length of the wall opposite the door, next to the window, was a large dry erase board with a permanent grid. Every patient’s last name was listed in the leftmost column (I knew this because I saw my name towards the bottom), and I had no idea what any of the symbols and abbreviations that made up the rest of the board were. We patients all talked about it, coming to the conclusion that it was a group progress report for all the counselors to quickly and easily reference, knowing with a glance what assignments we had completed without having to track down a colleague to answer a progress related question. No one was able to decipher the code

(which was probably the point for privacy purposes) (of course being the grateful recovering honor role student that 1 was, I often tried to figure out the board, staring at it 118

while answering questions. Angelo started sitting me in a chair facing the opposite wall.).

He paused again in his paperwork; the recently completed document was shuffled behind another, but this time, still without looking up, he asked me about my using history, “You were admitted for an alcohol overdose and when they pumped your stomach, they found all your psych meds in your guts. Your BAC was 0.517, lethal, so your tolerance was high enough for you to survive. I need to know what else you used and how you used it. Marijuana?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I thought so. How often?”

“Every day.”

“How much?”

“Probably a gram a day, when I could get it, but I haven’t had any since I arrived in Hemet.”

This interview went on for quite a while since we went through a lot of drugs. The dialogue between us was more or less a pattern of the exchange above. Here’s the rundown: alcohol (absolutely, whenever I couldn’t get my hands on anything better. Not being able to keep brown liquor down, the past year had been a love affair with with vodka, occasionally cheating on her with gin), heroin (once, my connect cut up some sort of speed and put a little mound of heroin at the end of it. He called them matchsticks.

Decent enough, and if I could afford it, I certainly would have become a heroin addict), methadone (no), opiates (I needed specifics here) codeine, vicodin, oxycontin, dilaudid 119

(yes, yes, probably cut with something else, and not to my knowledge), barbiturates or benzodiazepines (again, I need some clarification) ativan, xanax, valium, klonopin, seconal, tuninal (no, yes, yes, yes, don’t know, don’t know — again, maybe cut with something else), cocaine (yep, whenever it was offered, I took a bump), amphetamines

(occasionally, when someone was sharing, but I never sought it or bought it on my own), hallucinogens (which ones?) mushrooms, acid, LSD (yes, yes, I don’t think so), inhalants

(hell no, that shit will kill you), nicotine (every chance I get now).

“By smoking?” Angelo asked.

“Yeah.”

“What would these pharmaceutical drugs be cut with that you kept mentioning?”

“Ecstasy,” I said, “MDMA. That, weed, and booze were the only drugs I’d buy.

And cigarettes. Coffee too, when it comes to that.”

He finally looked up from his paperwork, “You were at Phoenix House before you landed here. Did Jennifer give you my card?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You don’t have to call me sir. Military?”

“Briefly.” He acknowledged this and I asked, “Isn’t this all in my chart?”

“It is. From your intake interview,” he crossed his arms, “but patients tend to be a little more honest during that first one than they are with us after some of the fog has cleared. I wanted to see how guarded you’d be now a few days later. You’re answers are consistent, which tells me you’re willing to be honest. About this at least. So: what’s your 120

deal? Psychic, empath, or dreamer?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your gift,” he uncrossed his arms and leaned forward, “Your magic powers. If you read comic books and things. Tell me about it.”

What the hell, right? I told him.

“The flashes into people’s deaths, does it cause you any physical discomfort?”

“The violent ones are a bit shocking, so I get really upset sometimes. Depending.”

“And the booze and the drugs makes it better?”

“Mostly I use them to help me sleep. I have trouble falling asleep and I get really bad nightmares.”

“Is there any other type of physical discomfort? For example, if you jump into a beheading in progress, does your neck hurt when you return?”

“Not quite.” My hand drifted up to my collar and returned to my lap. “It’s more like phantom pain. But I mean, I did just live through a beheading. Sir.”

“I’m not discounting the trauma you experience, I just want to know what we’re dealing with. And you can drop the ‘sir’ whenever you like.” He leaned back again, the chair creaked. “So while you’re there, you feel and experience everything that person feels and experiences?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a real bummer, kid. That’s really too bad.” His tone changed, back to business, “This is how your treatment is going to go: while you’ve got a slightly different 121

excuse to get loaded, you’re going to need to remember that you’re just like everyone else here. You will go to all of the groups during the day with all the other patients and participate fully with one exception; when the pain management patients break off for a different group at eleven each morning, you and another patient are going to a specific pain management group that isn’t special or significant, just different. Now, part of getting clean and sober is giving up our lying, manipulative ways. You’re not going to be lying to other when they ask you about where you go that’s different. I want you to tell them that you’re in ‘Angelo’s pain track.’ And in the process of breaking you down you will experience pain, so you won’t be lying. If anyone asks for more, you decline to explain further because you’re embarrassed by it, which I gather is also the truth since you check yourself into Phoenix House for dual diagnosis and there’s nothing in your paperwork from there that mentions what you do. I don’t want to get into it too deeply right now for five reasons (he started tapping successive fingertips on his knee like he was pressing piano keys): one, I believe in the group therapy process. God works through—”

“I don’t believe in God.”

“Alright. Higher Power.”

“Same thing.”

“Something bigger than you. A tank, a rock, the boogeyman. It doesn’t matter.

You’ll discover that a group of people maintain a certain energy. And it is in that group consciousness that a few can do together what one couldn’t do alone. Wherever two or 122

more gather. In our group, we’ll discuss our our abilities and coping mechanisms for

living with them, but at a larger group level with all the other patients you’ll only discuss your drinking and drug use, which is completely unrelated to your abilities. Two, after

you’re done with the doctor, you’re going to have group on the back patio with the other

patient like us and the two of you can discuss your magic powers or your using careers or just chain-smoke. I’d join you, but three, I have a lot of paperwork to do, and four, I have

a lot of other patients, non-Istari” he gave me a little wink with that Lord o f the Rings reference. I was wondered why he didn’t use the term Miaiar that most Tolkien fans use, rather than the Elvish name. “Five, like 1 said, you’re on your way to see the doctor. And

I do have an assignment for you to do today. We hold hands and pray at the end of every group here,” he said, “You will hold hands at the end of every group you attend. You don’t have to pray. You just have to hold hands.”

“What?”

“Would you like me to repeat it?”

“No,” I said, “no, I mean, can’t I do something else?”

“These assignments are non-negotiable.” He crossed his arms again. “That’s not a

good attitude to have today. Let me ask you a question: to what lengths are you willing to

go to get clean and sober?”

He barely finished saying it when I started answering, “Whatever it takes.”

“Good. Prove it by doing this. Now go away.”

On Managing Doctors, Redux 123

While there were a great many things I’d encountered since waking up that morning that were new and complicated and confusing, I remained confident in one thing that would make what came next easy and familiar: my ability to wrangle the doctor. I was an expert at going to the doctor. Of course, in the past, I always had an endgame with a mapped out agenda, but before I had time to figure out what I wanted out of this meeting, I was waved into the small conference room across the hall. And there seemed to be a lot of people in there. Like a group of doctors. Maybe this facility was a teaching hospital-type-place, where med students took notes and asked questions.

They sat me down at the head of a long table that cramped the room. It was just too big. Bookshelves lined each wall, loaded with texts from all aspects, disciplines, and approaches to treating addictive behaviors (medical, psychological, sociological, theological, etc, etc, all the major ‘ologicals’). There was barely enough room between the table and the shelving to pull out each chair and sit down. The shelves were so loaded with books that the tops tilted slightly forward, the titles of each text looking down their spines while I was being interviewed.

Since I did eventually get to know everyone in that room with me during my time in treatment, and since I don’t particularly want to take the time later to introduce each of them, I’ll summarize them in turn (although the younger version of me sitting at that table has no idea who they are, meeting them for the first time). The treatment team was headed by Dr. Thu, MD of addiction medicines, though not sitting at the head of the table. He was at my immediate right. We didn’t see each other again after the first week 124

or so of my treatment, when he stopped needing to check if my hand still had the shakes

(more on that demoralization later). In his past life, he died in what I gathered to be a

Siberian gulag. To his right was Darlene, who looked like an elementary school teacher and had the presence of an elementary school teacher. She had a slight speech impediment, like there was too much saliva in the comers of her cheeks (caused by her new braces for her new teeth) (meth destroys your teeth and it’s a big deal when someone in recovery finally gets to fix their teeth, in her case twelve years into her recovery). She died in a cave shooting a bow and arrow, holding off men with guns trying to get at her, the blistering desert beyond (not sure when or where this was. Ever since men got guns, they’ve been snatching and grabbing the many deserts of our pale blue dot). To her right was Sam, also a counselor, older, bald with a bristly Saul Bellow mustache (the younger version of me is confusing Saul Bellow with the illustration of Ignatius J. Reilly on the cover of Confederacy o f Dunces. I, years later, still haven’t read any Bellow or Toole, but the younger version of this narrator is still attempting an erudite perspective in his inner monologue). Sam died in a salt mine centuries ago. He was, from what I gathered while there, a huge mountain of a man who single-handedly held up a cross beam while a tunnel was collapsing so other slaves could survive long enough to evacuate (I doubt if this was a mercy). To his right was the head nurse, the boss of all the nurses and orderlies and janitorial staff. I don’t remember her name, I don’t think we ever spoke and we certainly never touched. I think she was some sort of halfway step, professionally, between doctor and nurse, whatever that title and level of education might be. She was, of 125

course, appropriately matronly — but what middle aged woman in charge of other people who wears scrubs wouldn’t appear matronly? To her right — and now we’ve completely circled the table so this man is to my immediate left — was the staff psychologist/psychiatrist, Dr. Dan Last Name Unknown. Why do shrinks insist of you giving them a cute nickname? What the holly hell is wrong with just a first name? Or the honorific plus last name? Anyway, Dr. Dan and I didn’t see too terribly much of one another until after I left treatment, and then it was a series of really short visits to keep my meds consistent. Good dude, round-faced red head with a ginger Van Dyke prickling the sweaty puffs of his swollen cheeks. In his past life, he was in textiles during the industrial revolution and fell off a train while traveling to a nearby shipping facility in either Europe, the United States, or some other anglo country (this could really put him in any country with tracks because wealthy white people were the only ones who could afford to ride the train).

Dr. Thu had me hold out my hand, fingers extended, palm facing the floor,

“Okay, a little shaky,” and then he jotted something in doctor writing down in my chart,

“You’re lucky to be alive young man. Very nasty, medically speaking.” His English was perfect with the slightest Vietnamese clip to it, where he hailed from.

Sam started talking at me from the opposite end of the table, he too had a slight speech impediment, but his was a little lisp, “We’re only going to hold on to you here in detox for another day or so, depending on how you’re doing tomorrow. You seem to be healthy enough to discharge since you did most of your detox in the hospital and over the 126

weekend. Our outpatient—■”

“You’re letting me leave?” 1 asked, “Tomorrow?”

“You can leave whenever you want, there are no locks on any of the doors,” he leaned forward, resting his elbow on the table and pointing at me, “but you would be leaving against medical advice and you need our help.”

Darlene piped in at this moment, and I do mean “piped in,” her impediment playing harmony to Sam’s melody. Her neck seemed to extend, raising her head an inch or two, a baby ostrich, and her mouth widened with each syllable as if she was trying to release the words through its corners, “If you left, where would you go? The chart said they picked you up unconscious behind the old movie theater. Is the cold street and a bottle really more promising than a warm bed and the possibility of never having to drink again?”

I honestly had to think about it but her either/or example wasn’t what I was considering. For me it was freedom versus control. So I said so, “I don’t think it’s about a bed for me, I’ll get by, I have before — but it seems really.. .1 don’t know. Fascist around here.”

She didn’t even have to think about what she would say next, “And who is in charge once you get back outside? You or the booze, the dope?”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how they got me.

“What do I have to do?”

This was met with a bit of head scratching and glances being exchanged between 127

them. It was like I farted. Sam spoke up, “You can change your attitude for starters. It’s in your best interest to adopt an attitude of what you can put in to this experience rather than what we can hand you on a platter.”

“No! I didn’t mean that, I just...” as 1 backpedaled, his mustache twitched and resettled. “This is all new to me, I’ve been in a place like this before this place and this place is kind of a whirlwind. I went to this meeting and then I talked to Angelo and—”

The head nurse spoke up, “You’re one of Angelo’s pain management patients?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She leaned in, “Then it’s really in your best interest to stay and complete the outpatient program,” and her eyes raised, like she knew something. “He works wonders for patients with chronic pain.”

Next up in their chorus of extra-convincing was Darlene again, “If you don’t like what you hear or you want to go back to that alley, you can do so at any time. But maybe, just maybe commit to trying this out?”

“I will. I am. I have committed. Yes.”

“Okay then,” Dr. Thu said, “we’ll check up on your shakes tomorrow and most likely discharge you to sober living. You’ll be living in one of two houses connected to what we do here.” (Not literally connected, but close by). “You’ll sleep and spend your weekends there. Unless you want to come back here and do activities with the other inpatients on the weekends. You weekdays will begin at seven a.m. and end at eight p.m. and all the hours between will be groups and meetings here at the center. You’ll be doing 128

assignments. I know it sounds like a lot, but you can learn how to live without drugs or

alcohol, free from its control. Sound good?”

“Sounds pretty good,” I held in what I was thinking. Jesus, is that all you want me to do?

“Okay then, we’ll see you tomorrow.”

And with that I was dismissed. My head was cottony from so much info all at once. They did say I could leave whenever I wanted, that I could have my freedom back whenever I wanted it. So that was something. But what was that bullshit about my hand shaking? I held out my hand in front of me, steady as a rock (I’m not lying. My hand really did seem steady as a rock to me. But I've been told that my tremors were like a scene in the film Blazing Saddles where Gene Wilder shows which hand he shoots with).

I needed a cigarette after that and made my way through the empty hallway to the nurses station and then outside. Where the hell was everyone?

You May Say I’m a Dreamer, but I’m Not the Only One

I walked onto the patio, instinctively going for the cigarettes in my pocket

(because I was outside, and that’s what you do when you’re outside), when what should I see but the same blonde head from early this morning. I cleared my throat and she turned, grinning, “Hi neighbor.”

“You like Audrey Hepburn movies?”

“Just that one,” she was quoting a scene from a 1954 classic, Sabrina.

I joined her, sitting more or less the same as earlier that morning, “So where is 129

everyone? The hallways are empty.”

“It’s like that during groups. This is the time when the staff magically get things done while we’re otherwise preoccupied. You know, going to groups. We’ll be doing our special group at this time everyday. Although we won’t probably ever do it like this out here again. We’ll have adult supervision. I think they made a change so you could talk to the doctor.”

“There were a lot more people around this table in this room than just the doctor,”

I said. “They were interviewing me about whether or not I was staying.”

“The psychiatrist, a couple counselors, and the head nurse right — what’s her name?” she said to herself. “I can never remember it.”

“Yeah. Them.”

“Did they ask you the ‘what lengths’ question?”

“Kinda. I think I screwed up my answer. They said I needed to change my attitude about being here,” I said. Then as an afterthought: “but when Angelo asked me I answered him correctly.”

“That’s all that matters anyway. He’s your counselor.” She lowered a few inches in her chair, “Do you think you’ll stay?”

“Probably. I don’t really have anywhere else to go. And they seem to want me here. People tend to not want me around. My mom kicked me out of her house a month ago. I don’t think any of my friends would return my phone calls at this point.”

“Oh, I get that. Pretty much the same here. But that first moment you realize after 130

they tell you that you’re not locked in. Did they do that?” She gestured a lot with her hands, ruby acrylic nails blurring and pausing, “It’s that moment of hearing the actual words they said. You only hear the echo and wonder if someone actually said the original thing, that you’re free. And you’re not a prisoner. But that was the moment when I really felt like the bars were slamming closed. Because.. .where would I go?”

This hadn’t happened to me but I needed to know about something else, “What is pain management?”

“Well,” she reorganized on her chair, “for real pain management patients, it’s a group about living with chronic pain. They learn coping mechanisms so they won’t have to self-medicate. It’s hard to get clean if you have a permanently bad back. The pain management group is at the same time as this one, and it’s different from the other groups. So we all get up together at the same time as the actual pain patients and go to our special group without arousing suspicion. They have us do that so the other patients won’t ask too many questions.”

“I’ve gotten used to lying, so I’m not worried about it.”

“It’s not exactly lying, it’s more like a vague non-specific way of protecting them.”

“Protecting them, or protecting us from torches and pitchforks.”

“Little of both. If people here, detoxing off of some of the worst shit imaginable found out that there were three psychics in their midst.. .they would probably check their already paranoid butts out of here for a big bender.” 131

“But they still keep us here.”

“We’re junkies just like them. Drunks too. We just have this other thing that caused it,” she corrected herself, “I mean, they tell me that this isn’t the cause, that the disease is the cause, but come on. We have this thing and that makes us special unique cases. But we still have the same problems because of it, you know? And we have a common solution with them.”

“That’s incredibly articulate. I should write that down. Like in a book or something.”

“Oh go fuck yourself,” she mumbled, turning her face to hide her grin.

“No, no. Really,” I said, “We can put that on tee shirts. I’ll make the tee shirts and sell everything for you and—”

“Alright, alright,” she rolled her eyes, “I’ve been here a month. You pick up the jargon after a minute.”

I pulled a fresh smoke out of the blue and white box, forming words around it in my mouth as smokers do, “So. Magic powers. You got ‘em?”

“I got ‘em.”

I had the lighter poised, unlit, in cupped hands around the dancing tip, “Well, don’t keep me in suspense.” I lit up.

“I dream the future. Other people’s future, not really mine. I guess I do dream mine if I see the future of someone close to me but that actually happens a lot less than you might imagine,” she inhaled, “Anyway, I dream an entire day of their life. Usually a 132

couple weeks out, sometimes a year or more, sometimes a day or two, and sometimes

somewhere in-between all that.”

“Sounds more useful than mine.”

“Yeah? What I do is not especially useful. Most of what I see is really ordinary;

like people going to the store or post office or waiting to pick their kids up from school.

Boring shit that’s easy to forget. And the vivid ones are bad. I’ve seen things—” and she paused, changing her voice into a deeper, gravely impersonation of a war vet from a movie, “I’ve seen things. Your turn.”

“Mine’s also useless. I’ve seen things too, like really seen things. When I touch someone for the first time and only the first time, I’m transported to the last moments of their life before this one. I think their thoughts, feel their feelings, experience their deaths.”

“Jesus. That’s terrible.”

“You get used to the experience, but it’s the nightmares that are awful. You never really get used to that.”

“Ah, so the drinking...”

“Exactly. Dreamless sleep.”

“I’ve done that,” she didn’t explain further. “You born with it?”

“No, It happened when I was eighteen. I was a cadet at the Air Force Academy, and it...” I didn’t want to explain how, “switched on there. What about you?”

“I’m not certain when it started really. It was more of a gradual build towards 133

realizing what was happening. When I was really young, I thought that I was a time traveler and could only time travel while I slept. This was like, maybe between five and ten years old? When I was a teenager, I started reading a lot of fantasy and sci-fi, especially ones about psychics and shit. For research. I started assuming at some point, don’t know when, maybe twelve? That an angel was watching over me, giving me information to help others. Like I had special information and could go be a difference in peoples’ lives. I saw where and how people were doing what and where they were doing in my dreams, and then later in real life they were performing it out. But that was only like a moment of interaction with a person and I dreamed their entire day. See, I could always remember the whole dream, their whole day, once I recognized that one little snapshot of events unfolding. Like when you get deja vu. Identical images and sounds and smells.” She lit another clove, “So back when I thought it was an angel sending me messages, I assumed that I was getting directions to pay attention, maybe do something.

Mostly for stuff like trying to prevent someone from having an embarrassing thing happen to them, but my messing with it was a total failure. I didn’t ever change anything.

And I wanted to, except for the popular girls or the cheerleaders, fuck those twats. It was the other outcasts like me that I wanted to help and couldn’t do anything for. Frustrating.

I didn’t know why I was chosen if I was so bad at it.” Her tone changed into reciting facts, exploring and confirming scar tissue, “The first tragedy happened two weeks before graduation. I dreamed the day of a student, one of the stoners, well-liked, funny, who died that night in a car accident. I tried to warn him as much as I could without sounding 134

like a crazy person, and ended up sounding like a crazy person. Nothing changed and he died. And that was when the drinking started. I was the only kid in school who was drinking after that — everyone else was sober through graduation and going off into summer. I never really sobered up after that. I’ve gone a few days here and there. And I didn’t drink or use for the pregnancy of my first son but—,” she paused for just a second.

“I was dampening the pain. It never went away. The hurt from it.”

“How are the people selected? In relationship to you. For me, it’s physical contact, just touching them,” I said.

She turned and gave me a strange look, “Fucking.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Want to know your future?” I couldn’t tell if she was joking, “We have some time during lunch. Want to meet in the bathroom?”

“Want to know how you died in your past life? Because seeing how you died is how I start foreplay. And that’s a hard image to shake.”

“Foreplay? Please,” she leaned back, “I’m kidding. The first time we do it isn’t in a bathroom.”

“Now you really are joking.”

“Am I?” She waved the exchange away with the spicy smoke between us, “I have no idea how the people I dream about are chosen or tagged or whatever. The angel or demon or whatever never told me,” she paused, “but even if I knew it’s only halfway helpful. I still have no idea how far out the dreams are. And it all got muddier with the 135

booze, and then it got impossible to sort out when I started using benzos and opiates.

Which I love.”

“So the drugs really did block it.”

“Yep. Just like the drinking gave you dreamless sleep.”

Angelo’s voice cut through our conversation behind us and we both jumped in our seats and turned, “You can rationalize it all you want, but your addiction is separate from what you do when you dream.” He was walking up behind us. Guy had a quiet step.

“I’m done sharing,” she scowled at him even though I think she was still talking to me.

“Are you giving me attitude?”

“No,” she held the “oh” sound waaaaaaay too long. “I guess you finished your paperwork.”

“It’s lunchtime,” he handed her a slip of paper and went back inside without saying another word.

“What’s that?” I asked after the slip.

“A voucher for the hospital cafeteria across the street.”

“Don’t I get one?”

“Your lunch is inside.”

I felt like she was dismissing me, “Was that thing with him—”

“Why don’t you mind your fucking business,” she tried biting it back and frowned. “Go eat your lunch.” 136

Hold This Tray While I Run

Lunch in detox was an abomination. The “hot” tray held an hour old meal from the hospital cafeteria, covered with some sort of opaque cake saver looking thing. I lifted the thick and maroon plastic lid to see what was held beneath it, and condensation coating the inside dripped down onto the food. I assumed the main dish was supposed to be a chili dog. Once anyway. It had a little puddle of water droplets in its center now. The salad next to it had limped from the heat of the chili. There was a fruit cup of hard mellon and a couple grapes that probably acquired the taste of the chili through osmosis. The packaged saltines looked pretty good though. And then I heard a voice close to my ear. I turned to see a face, Margo’s face. Here is a list of significant details about Margo:

1. Margo was referred to as a chocolate covered angel by one of the patients, and by another as simply a saint. I completely agreed.

2 .1 was surprised to discover, weeks after knowing her, that she was actually in her fifties. Margo smiled and declared, “black don’t crack.” In the seventies, she was a Black

Panther (did you know that their message has always been about class and not race? I didn’t. Thank the rich white men in the media playing on your hidden fears for scaring you into believing their distorted message and thank Margo for explaining this to me so I could then explain it to you). In the eighties, her addiction blossomed into a consuming lifestyle — heroin (pronounced HARE-on) was her drug of choice (though she also relayed a love of Michelob forties) (hey, who doesn’t?). In the nineties, Margo got clean and got her chemical dependency counseling certification. When I met her in 2006, she 137

was still vigorous in her hopeless defense against the disease of drug addiction, seeming at least a decade younger than she actually was. I always thought of her as being like

Morpheus from The Matrix. I once told her this and her response was a rounding “Hell yeahl”

3. Her body was lean and springy, constantly moving. She had round cheeks and full lips, an easy smile with lively eyes. And a clipped Kid ‘n Play flattop haircut. I remember her coming in on a day off to check on my progress, decked to the nines in Fubu gear with a canted stylish cap.

4. Margo loved pointing her finger straight into the air when talking to us in group how her disease was split into two personalities, Pinky and The Brain, a reference to cartoon lab mice bent on world domination, Pinky was a cockney buffoon and The Brain was a genius who spoke like Orson Welles. She would say things like, “This program is about surrender, to live in harmony with your Higher Power. Everything is going great for me with my new lady love or my kids or my work and then BAM! (this is where she would point her finger in the air) Pinky and The Brain takes over! 1 get an idiot idea that I turn into a genius plan to get what I’m deluded enough to believe I’m entitled to or deserve.”

5. This is a conversation I had with Margo during my first week at IERC:

Margo: You know you’re in here because you’re gay.

Me: I’m not gay, I have sex with women too. Really more with women than men.

Margo: So you’re bisexual.

Me: I don’t think so. 138

Margo: You have a deal worked out with your connect?

Me: Nothing I didn’t want to do.

Margo: I’ll bet.

Me: What’s that supposed to mean?

Margo: Sex and power. He had power and you had sex. Had to score somehow.

Me: I liked it.

Margo: Really?

Me: I don’t know.

Margo: You’re damn right. There’s a whole world you don’t know.

Me: I like having sex with women more because I don’t like how men smell.

Margo: You ever have sex with a man sober?

Me: It’s been a long time since I’ve had sex with anyone while I was sober.

Margo: Been there. Let me tell you, the first time you cum after detoxing off of heroin

(pronounced HARE-on), you’ll cum harder than you’ve ever cum in you life.

Me: I’m not a heroin addict. I like coke, E, weed, meth, shrooms, acid, and prescription

narcotics. But those don’t matter. I’m here because of alcohol.

Margo: What about all that shit you said you crushed up and snorted up your nose?

Me: What shit is that?

Margo: From your intake transcript.

Margo paused to look at some paperwork in my file.

Margo: “Crushed up oxycodone, vicodin, and whatever else I could get my hands on for 139

a little ‘bump.’” Those are opiates.

Me: Right. So I’m going to have good sex if I get clean?

Margo: I just want you to have something to look forward to. Do you think you’re an addict?

Me: No. I might be an alcoholic (this, I presumed, was what she wanted to hear).

Margo: Just maybe.

Me: Probably.

Margo: Probably. We’ll get that figured out first and then we’ll get you figured out about your sexuality.

Me: I’m not gay.

Margo: You’re a real Brain, you know that?

Me: Brain, like the cartoon about the mice?

Margo: You know it?

Me: Yeah, I made my younger siblings watch it. They didn’t like it, but I did. It was too esoteric for them.

Margo: That’s me. Both of ‘em. I’m Pinky and The Brain (she pointed here in the air, but not with the type of exclamative authority I would later see in group sessions). You are too. We all are.

Me: I told you I’m not gay.

Margo: Dope fiends. Lovers of oblivion. We who hide from real life with our mistress of

choice. Booze, heroin (pronounced HARE-on), or whatever else we use to escape. 140

6. This is what Margo laid out for me: the success of getting sober and clean and staying clean and sober were minimal. The statistics were mounted against me and it would be most likely that I would become a statistic (I nearly had). But she also said that I could become a positive statistic, part of the minute percentage that remains clean a day at a time and returns to life. Even against such unstable odds, I had a chance to succeed. She told me that miracles happen every day in treatment, and if I applied myself, I could have a life again. It was touching and inspiring, but at the time I just wanted to go outside and have a cigarette. She asked me what I wanted to do with my life once I got out. I had a immediate response, something I scribbled down after my time as a cadet, something that has stayed with me: write a novel, make a movie as writer/director, and build a house. I didn’t expect to be taken seriously by her, but she did, “There ain’t no reason why you can’t do any of that. Hell, I don’t see why you can’t knock that out in the next couple years.” Her belief was infectious. I once heard a reporter, a pretty famous one, talk about meeting Bill Clinton. He said he was shocked to have confirmed what he’d heard about the man: that when you shook his hand and looked into his eyes and talked to him, you really believed you could do anything. Margo radiated this type of energy in a place where people needed to believe that they could do the impossible.

“Come with me,” she said and I closed my tray to follow her out of the room. We made small talk as we walked through the hall, “If you’re really hungry, we’ll get you back to your lunch as soon as we can.”

“I might have been hungry before, but I can’t remember,” I said, “Definitely not 141

now.”

“I don’t blame you,” she stopped at the door to an office used by one of the psychiatrists who frequented the center, and flipped through a collection of keys, “That’s practically dog food. Don’t worry about finishing it up then, greener pastures await.”

She unlocked the door and ushered me in, “How you doing?”

“Okay, I guess,” I said, “I haven’t really thought about it. It’s a lot to take in.”

“You ever been in treatment before?”

“No.”

“You sure?” she asked.

“Of course I’m sure. Why would I lie about that?”

“Everyone here is a liar, me included. I just wanted to double check against your intake interview.”

“They asked me that?”

“You don’t remember?”

“Not really. At all.”

“You remember anything else?”

“I can’t,” I said, “I’m sorry.”

“It don’t matter, you get used to that with time, how to live with holes in your memory. It’s not important yet, for right now,” she shifted in her seat, “I wanted to take your temperature for how you might be getting on. And to prep you for a change that looks like is going to happen today depending on how your doing.” She put her hands up 142

like she was holding an invisible box, “So here’s the deal: we take drunks and junkies in for detox and generally, if they’re going to be staying with us for any length of time, we keep them in our program as outpatients while they live at a nearby sober living. You would sleep there, but spend your days here going to groups. We want you to do this if you’re ready.”

“I don’t have to though?”

“No, but we got a bed that just opened up at sober living and I want you there. We also need your bed empty here for someone else who needs to check in. Medically, you’re cool — well, good enough to discharge as an outpatient. The treatment team thinks you’re ready too. You’re going to be one of Angelo’s kids, right?” I nodded and was about to ask a question, but she waved it off and kept talking, “I don’t know nothing about that I don’t want to know (at first I thought this was an affectation of speech, neglecting to include the word “and” before “I don’t want to know”, but within a couple minutes I heard the sentence for the amazing triple negative that it was).”

“Well, Darlene said something about control that—”

“Hell yeah it’s about control. You were out of control and now you can get some.

For real for real,” Margo used the phrase “for real for real” as a punctuation mark. It was a half-step between a period and an exclamation mark.

I nodded and mustered a faint smile, the most enthusiasm I had for my new clean and sober way of life. I could give it a shot, for a while anyway, and it wasn’t like I had another magic powers sansei I could go to. 143

“There you go there you go,” she said this like it was one word, “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do: we’re moving you along a little faster than anticipated. We’re sending you out to sober living from right now. They didn’t tell you this, but they were going to send you out tomorrow regardless — if you had chosen to stick around another night. We need the bed today, someone in the lobby is in a bad way, worse off than you are, which is pretty stable. So Fred will be outside waiting for you and I’ll walk you out. Go ahead and take the rest of the afternoon off. Don’t worry about coming back here for groups or anything. Watch TV, maybe get some real food, a burger or something. Just relax. And you’ll be back tomorrow morning as an outpatient. Cool with you?”

“Yeah, fully,” I nodded, “I’ll be here.” Probably.

“Alright, go get your things and knock on the counselor’s office door. I’ll be waiting.”

And just like that I didn’t have to spend my day holding hands.

My Big Damn Afternoon of Freedom

Margo walked me out the front door after signing some forms and instructed me to come back if I felt like drinking or picking up later today, “You come back if the itch takes over. For real for real.” It wouldn’t be a problem. While the thought of vodka made my stomach turn (something that hadn’t ever stopped me before) I was pretty sure I would give them a shot to show me something (pretty sure).

Banjo Fred was waiting for me in an idling golden ’86 Buick Century, full of cigarette smoke, a small sleeve escaping through an inch-wide opening in the top of the 144

driver’s side window. He didn’t get out of the car to greet me, instead I heard the trunk latch pop, the lid opening a few inches (no smoke escaped from this opening). I exchanged nods with Margo as I got in the smokey car, “I’ll see you tomorrow if not sooner.”

I closed the door and turned to meet my driver. “I’m Fred,” he said and offered a gnarled knobby hand. I preoccupied myself with looking for the seatbelt and buckling up, taking too much time. His hand was retracted when I looked up. Fred was old, large in a very tall way. I don’t know if Fred is coming back into the story after this (he is) because he was always in the periphery at sober living as onsite manager and resident. I didn’t interact with him very much. Even so, here is a list of significant details about Fred:

1.1 can’t remember his name. It was something classic and classy like Hank or Stan or

Morty. I remembered the Banjo moniker, that was true, but I named him Fred because he looked like a retired Fred Flintstone; tall, 6’ 4”, chinless, and well into his seventies. In my new clean and sober community where last names were unknown, nicknames were attached as prefixes to differentiate one person from another. Fred got his handle because of his obsession with Dixieland jazz. Dixieland music could be heard in our house at all times (mostly because Fred didn’t get out much). Sounds awful, right? I was so wrong and so very grateful for this gift that Fred gave us. It was impossible to be sad while listening to Dixieland jazz. It is the most upbeat optimistic music in the history of the twentieth century. Tinny strings and bright horns bounced through the air every day and especially on Saturday mornings when we did Pride Where You Reside clean-ups. To 145

this day, I know that I may not have any idea what it means to miss New Orleans, but the light chords still accompany my housework and even as I write these pages.

2. Fred put us all to shame with his chain-smoking abilities. If smoking were an Olympic sport (and after seeing Fred smoking, it really ought to be), Fred would clean up in the regulars category. Regulars unfiltered. He spent his days, when he wasn’t driving us around or managing the house with an invisible hand, in his room watching TV or listening to music (often both at the same time, drowning out the misery of broadcast news with energetic washboards and tubas) with a cigarette in one hand and the plastic mask to his wheelie oxygen tank in the other. He kept it next to his bed with the ashtray on the windowsill. It was possible to get a nicotine contact high in Fred’s room.

3. Mayonnaise collected in the corners of his mouth when he ate egg salad and chicken salad sandwiches alternatively every day. Most of his life was as a bachelor math teacher at the local high school until, in his fifties, he started dating one of the librarians, a widowed single mother of two. She died four years prior to my meeting Fred, who at the time had two years sober. Her death sparked a two year bender that ended with his hospitalization. He had never smoked a cigarette before entering treatment (even when he was in The War) (and I don’t know which The War he was in — when I asked him, he looked at me like I was dim and said, “The War”).

4. This is my favorite memory of Fred: the day I was filling out my exit interview paperwork for the sober living house (the form was required for legal purposes or tax purposes, or some purpose that could convince someone above Fred and the people who 146

owned the house that the whole operation was a legitimate enterprise and not just a house full of deadbeat roommates trying to piecemeal their lives back together). I signed off on the bottom sheet and he looked up at me (he was sitting, I was not) and gave me a solid handshake, holding it a little too long. He said, “There’s a good lad” and his voice cracked slightly. We hardly ever spoke, let alone saw each other, but my exit touched him, which touched me.

5. And speaking of touching, Fred’s previous life ended in court, a royal court where there were frilly collars on the men and boobies pushed up towards the chins of the ladies. That’s the Renaissance, right? And it was hot, so maybe southern Europe? He made a toast to a lady, drained his cup, and fell to his knees, unable to breathe and grasping at his neck.

On the drive to sober living, both of us smoking, Fred laid out some of the basic rules of the house. We were required to go to a recovery meeting of our choice every day beyond our requirements at the center. It was a house rule but the morning meeting at the center would suit the requirement just fine because it was open to the public and not technically associated with the facility (though the meeting was allowed use of the room at that time every day). I was welcome to find another if I preferred (I was later given a little slip of paper with a grid on it to give the secretary at these meetings who would then stamp or sign proof of my having attended, which I returned once a week to Fred).

Residents kept track of the their food and were required to not eat each other’s purchases, this was important and a frequent source of conflict apparently. Only Fred had special 147

permission to smoke in his room, otherwise this was a nonsmoking residence. The garage was where I could smoke to my heart’s content, or if I wanted to be alone, there was a single chair on the small backyard patio area with a lonely coffee can beside it (we rarely smoked here alone). My roommate who I would share a room with — two beds per bedroom with another bed also set up in a corner of the living room — would be someone named Tim, another young guy. Saturday mornings were for chores, which would be assigned in rotation at our Friday evening house meeting, which was also required attendance. Since most of my weekdays would be spent at the recovery center, I was welcome to do whatever I wanted with any free time I had. The TV in the living room was usually free. No women were allowed inside the house, but visiting in the garage was okay. I assured Fred that I would follow all the rules, that it sounded like dorm living (which I had done) and it wouldn’t be a problem for me. He nodded and said that there was one more thing: he reserved the right to require participation from me in an over-the-counter drug test at any time. Basically, if I seemed a little too screwy, they’d check me and decide whether or not I would be evicted without a refund of the month’s rent. “This is for the other men’s protection. If drugs are found on the premises, everyone pees on the paper, but this hasn’t happened in over a year. It’s a house for men who need a little help, recovering men, like you, like me. Keep your nose clean. They told me they’re giving you the day off.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The grocery store is a few blocks over. You got money, right? SSI?” 148

“Yes, sir.”

“Maybe go get yourself some food. If you need company, wait for someone else to get home and they’ll be happy to walk you over, keep you from buying anything you shouldn’t be buying. You have the afternoon. How you feeling? Feeling rabbity?

Jumpy?”

“A little. It’s new.”

“Do your best to not think on it too closely. Find a way to keep yourself occupied.

TV, read if you can,” he wasn’t making a comment about the literacy of the residents with the “read if you can comment.” It’s hard for anyone in those first days to sit still, let alone concentrate or focus, “just anything that isn’t smoking and brooding. Here we are.”

We pulled into the driveway of an ordinary suburban house in the middle of an ordinary neighborhood. The type of place where neighbors know one another in passing, but not well enough to form a homeowners association or set up an elementary school carpool schedule. The house had no lawn (pretty normal in Hemet) but instead had rocks painted green (also pretty normal in Hemet with desert heat nine months out of the year, two of which — mid-July to mid-September — when the sun tells the city’s residents

(and their lawns) to go fuck themselves). He hit the garage door opener and the door cranked up. There was a coffee table with a couch on one side and four chairs strew around the other sides.

“We come and go mostly through the garage, but we’ll get you a key for the front door here in a minute. Always keep it open when you’re smoking.” 149

I grabbed my gear and followed Fred in. We sat down at the kitchen table, and I mentioned my concern about leaving the garage open. He let me know that we generally don’t leave valuables out there, and since there’s so often a person out there anyway, we just leave it open most of the time to save the door mechanism from getting tired.

I signed my resident contract and Fred walked me through the house, an ordinary four bedroom house with a living room, bathroom at the end of the hall, and aged carpet and linoleum. It looked like the worn flooring, walling, and lighting was the original flooring, walling, and lighting that was installed during construction (I would guess

1970’s). He showed me my room, the room that I would be sharing with Tim, whoever he was, and I dropped my duffle. Thinking that our time was over, I went about unpacking and Fred cleared his throat, “cash or check, son?”

Right. I still had a few checks in a sad little checkbook from when I opened the account in ’98, buried deep in the bag.

“Receipt?”

“No, sir.”

“Make yourself at home. Let me know if you get squirly and need babysitting,” and with that he was gone. I figured out which bed was mine, unpacked, and went straight to the garage to begin smoking and brooding. Here is my list of reasons to not go and get a little bottle to nip off of before everyone got back that night:

1.1 would probably get caught because I’m a little sloppier than I used to be, and they’re probably just a good at hiding it as I am. You can’t fully bullshit a bullshitter. 150

2. But I am pretty good at hiding it, I think.

3. No. I just wrote a check for $375.00 that I would loose if they did manage to catch me.

4. And I’m going to give this a shot, just to try it out. Don’t forget that you can always go back and drink as much as you want whenever you want some day in the future, maybe even tomorrow.

5. But I am pretty good at hiding it.

There was little else I thought about over the next four cigarettes. On the fifth, I scratched at my cheek and decided that the scraggly beard I’d been sporting was the single-most horrible thing about me in the growing list of things that I hated about myself. And it itched in a way I had never felt it itch before. It was day six of neglect, threshold day, when the beard gets itchy and I really want to shave it off but have to power through for a few days to keep it. I hated it, I hated my fucking face in that exact moment, so much in fact that I stubbed out the rest of the cigarette and grabbed my bathroom gear. The dull razor tugged on the long whiskers as I ripped them off, cut them off, pulled my face into a new clean-shaven person. I breathed. I breathed. I was not done. I needed to take a shower. So I took a shower but that wasn’t enough. I turned the water back on and took another shower. I toweled off, got dressed and decided that I needed to calm down with a smoke. In the garage, huffing and puffing, and feeling still filmy, coated, greasy. I knew what I needed: a kitchen sponge with a rough side that would get in there and scrub the grime away. Yes, then I would be clean. I finished my cigarette and collected the sponge, a fresh one from under the sink, and took another 151

shower, scrubbing every inch of my body thoroughly. I still felt dirt and sweat and filth,

so I turned the water to as hot as it would go and scrubbed hard and slow over every inch of my body. It hurt, but goddamn if it wasn’t the most magnificent shower I had ever had in my fucking life. Finally.

Back in the garage, smoking and reviewing the short list of whether or not I should (could) sneak over to the grocery store for a little bottle — not a big bottle, a little bottle — I saw an old typewriter up high above a cabinet of tools (finding strange objects in the garage or closets was not uncommon, with so many different people coming and going through the residence, odd pieces of furniture, equipment, or clothing haunted the comers and closets. Residents tended to leave them be because they weren’t theirs and the owner might still return for it. There was a four foot long neon sign hanging on the wall that read “fresh coffee.” We never turned it on, not because it didn’t work, but because every time we turned it on someone would complain that it was a trigger, seeing the neon, because it reminded them of drinking in bars. There were three hat stands, like full length stands that would live in a home’s entry way, that were left by the washer and dryer. Two of the hat stands were empty but one was adorned with a variety of baseball caps, which also didn’t belong to anyone currently residing in the house. A giant box of abandoned clothes was off to the side of the lounge area that belonged to previous residents or were donations from people in the community. There was a set of golf clubs that upon closer inspection were nothing but putters and five-irons. Six or seven crappy fishing poles were tangled together into one super fishing pole, the Voltron of fishing 152

poles, in a comer. And there were toolboxes, so many toolboxes — upright and portable

— lining the walls. As it turned out, most men still have some essential tools that they

didn’t pawn for dope when they arrived. In some cases, the tools were the only things, along with the clothes on their backs, that some men arrived with — they were that important to their old selves).

The typewriter I could use. I pulled it down from it’s perch and placed it carefully on the coffee table. It was old, manual, a Smith-Corona Clipper make and model (at least that’s what the text printed on the back metal covering said). There were rusty pock marks on the metal pieces that weren’t finished in black matte, mostly around the mechanisms of the spool. The keys seemed to work, even if the letter R stuck (and sometimes when you pressed the letter C, you got a letter R instead). The shift key was a little too far to the side of the keyboard and a little too resistant for my pinky to comfortably hit it (years later, I researched this typewriter online, where there’s a community for every sort of enthusiast. Apparently this model was preferred, for a time, by e.e. cummings. Most of the drafts I wrote on this typewriter didn’t have capital letters either. It really was a chore to hit the shift key). It was dusty too, filthy fucking dusty grimy horrible gross coated nasty. But with a little love and attention, it could be a beautiful machine again. I asked Fred who owned it and he said that it had been there as long as he had so it was mine if I wanted it. I did want it. I grabbed a couple paper towels from the kitchen — paper towels, toilet paper, cleaning supplies, etc were community property that were purchased with our rent money by Fred. I lit a cigarette, sat down, and 153

got to work. I forgot about the store, I forgot about the little bottle, I forgot about finding reasons to run away from these people who wanted to help me. There was something about the machine that kept me in one place. I had hocked my laptop a year ago for writing supplies, and my writing process was cagey at best. I had only ever completed one screenplay, a weird post-apocalyptic road movie, kinda like Rain Man after the fall of man. But that started as an assignment in film school and took years to write, and even then I never showed it to anyone. It didn’t matter anyway. Making movies was a pipe dream for a freak like me.

I heard someone to my right clear their throat. A male voice. I looked up to see a tall, young, athletic blonde man standing in the open mouth of the garage, holding a styrofoam to-go container in the rapidly falling dusk, “Can I help you?”

“I think you’re the man I’m looking for,” he held up the container, “I’m Tim. I live here.”

“Hey man. You’re my roommate, according to uh, Fred. Are you done for the night at the place? Jesus, when did it get dark?” It was already passing into an early

January night.

“I’m just here to drop this off for you,” he hesitated before finding a spot on the table away from the filthy wadded up paper towels. “We go until nine every night, except

Fridays.”

“What is it?” I couldn’t smell what was inside.

“Dinner. I have a note too, from Joni,” he pulled out a folded up piece of 154

notebook paper, folded the way girls in middle school used to fold their notes to one another (a complex origami that I could never replicate), handed it over, and sat down. “I went with chicken instead of a burger. Their chicken sandwich is one of the few things I get regularly.”

“It’s from the center?”

“The hospital cafeteria. When you’re an outpatient, you get a voucher for the cafeteria across the street. Joni talked the counsellors into handing out an extra one for you. She didn’t know if you’d be eating tonight or whatever your financial situation was.

Do you mind if I?” he gestured to his cigarettes.

“Of course not. Why would I mind?”

“The food, and I guess I don’t know if you’re a smoker. You are, right?”

“Of course I’m a smoker,” I unfolded the note, investigating. “Everyone who’s anyone smokes.”

Scribbled in a manic loopy purple ink was the following: I ’m bribing you with this delicious sandwich delivery. I talked to the staff, who are on 24 hour shifts, and got special permission for you to come in at 4 am if you ’re still having trouble sleeping and want to meet for cigarettes in the dawn. No pressure, but this morning was nice and I think us Specials ought to stick together. XO JP.

“She trying to get in your pants too?”

I lit up, “I don’t think so. She does that?”

“She did with me, a couple of other young guys too,” he scratched his elbow. 155

“She’s been there a long time.”

“Since Christmas.”

“Yeah, since Christmas. A long detox. Prescription narcotics are the worst to come off of, weird right? You’d think illegal heroin would be worse than the legal version. Especially when you used as much as she did and,” long drag, “we all get a little cagey, and the old behavior kicks in.”

“Well, it was nice of her.”

“And that’s very true too,” he was pointing with two fingers at me, “about her I mean. She does shit like this all the time for other patients. It’s a way of not having to look at herself.”

“Oh,” I must have frowned, “okay.”

“Sorry. You’ll get used to the social deconstruction language sooner or later. It’s a little weird, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You map out the routes to the closest liquor store yet?”

I grinned, “Yep.”

Big smiles back from Tim. I liked Tim, “Yeah, me too. I wonder if that ever goes away?”

He stood up, “I got to get back to the center or I’ll be late for group. Don’t worry about that shit I said about Joni. She really was probably trying to just be nice. That’s all.

Good to meet you,” and he held out a hand. I would have to deal with this tomorrow or 156

sooner anyway. I stood, reached back, and dove right in, connecting with a moment in history that I could identify:

The battle at Rorke's Drift during the Anglo-Zulu War on the afternoon of January

22, 1879, is among the most famous in the history of the British Army. Approximately

4000 Zulus warriors were opposed by 95 British soldiers (a company of engineers), with medical personnel and hospital patients bringing the total number to 139. The battle began at 4:30 PM and continued for twelve hours. The British were armed with .45 calibre Martini-Henry breechloading rifles, while the Zulus were armed with throwing spears, short stabbing spears, oxhide shields, war clubs, and many rifles in various calibres. The British beat off repeated charges as the Zulus bravely pressed the attack. In fact, the Zulus were not fearful of the rifle fire, but were terrified of their bayonets. In the morning, the Zulus saluted the British for their defense of the mission and withdrew.

Fifteen colonial defenders were killed, and two died later of their wounds. It is estimated that the Zulus lost 600 men. Eleven of Rorke's Drift's defenders were awarded the

Victoria Cross, more than for any other single battle in history. Queen Victoria summed up to the action by stating, “The defense of Rorke’s Drift is immortal.” (I had to re-read that last word in the quote too) Among the British dead there is one notable footnote:

Corporal William Anderson, 3rd Regiment, N.N.C., was killed by British fire, the bullet hit him in the back of the neck as he fled from a force described by civilian contractor

R.J. “Bob” Hall as, “black as hell and as thick as grass.”

My father was raised in the British Commonwealth (New Zealand), and 157

subsequently raised me to believe that this battle was an example of bravery, integrity, and honor in the face of unstoppable odds. It was one of his favorite moments in world history, one that he talked about pretty frequently. When I was a kid and visited him, he’d tell me about the defense of Roarke’s Drift as a bedtime story. I’d seen the different movies about it, the most famous one sported the credit “introducing Michael Caine,” and even read a book about it before one of my last visits to New Zealand. When I was a kid, it sounded really dramatic, but these days, I believe it was a deeply unfair fight and the bloody history of South Africa over the past century offers volumes of evidence to this point. Corporal Anderson seemed to be the only one with any real sense at that outpost, seeing the unstoppable odds stacked against him in what I hope he viewed as a bullshit war, and he was killed by his friends for it. Tim was the guy who shot him, getting a spear through the heart for turning his back to the enemy.

“You okay?” he asked, still shaking my hand.

“Uh, yeah,” I let go. “Head rush.”

“Cool, a freebie,” he said. “Well, take it easy. We get back a little after nine. Don’t drink till then.” And with that, he left.

The sandwich could have been much worse. It’s not normally my thing, especially the fries, but I didn’t want to go to the store by myself. I finished cleaning the typewriter, which seemed to be working but I needed paper. I spooled up the back side of the note from Joni. The keystrokes were faint, so I opened it, turned the ink ribbon gear, and tried again. It looked great; dark and antiquated, the same font you see in paperback novels 158

from the fifties.

When were they getting home? What time was it now? Instinctively, I went for my

pocket where my phone normally would be, and the I remembered: phone. They gave me

back my phone. I grabbed it from my duffle and returned to the garage just as welcome

screen and jingle finished powering up. No new messages. Not that I expected any.

I called my mom to see if Pop really wasn’t in country and she confirmed it, saying

that if he had arrived that this was the first she’d heard of it. She explained that she called

him after I landed in the ICU, immediately after the hospital notified her, and then again when I bounced over to detox. He was still in New Zealand. He asked if he needed to fly up, if I was dying, but Mom said she told him not to bother. That they would just wait and see if my latest tantrum was worth the trouble of international airfare. I hung up the phone. That’s some hard shit.

Seriously Though, I Can’t Sleep Past Four AM

I had a dream that I was rolling hard, dancing in a club with beautiful light

signing through the treetops above, the forrest glade was the dance floor, with each thundering bass booming through my spirit and into the beings of the beings around me who were not dying horrible deaths. My fellow forrest dancers were not all human, each a majestic spirit of the forrest; sprites, pixies, and talking animals. A bear was spinning beside a mulberry bush, and a sprig of mistletoe high above was reflecting the sunlight like a mirrored ball. It was Namia after The Fall. I woke up giddy, still feeling the aftershock waves and coming down off what felt like a legitimate high. I whispered a 159

small prayer of thanks, God gave me a freebie. Really my horrible subconscious gave me a freebie. It was the happiest I’d been in weeks. Certainly since arriving in Hemet.

The glow carried me through the disorientation of recognizing my environment; a strange new bedroom (technically not really much of an unusual occurrence for me considering how many, um, unique places I’ve woken up in). My brain when into fact finding, prioritize-and-execute mode: sober living, in a twin bed with threadbare sheets, clean by the smell of them but very worn from thousands of trips through the washer and drier, and there was another person in the room gently snoring, Tim. That’s right. Last night we talked about the comfort and ease of dorm living having both been cadets at the

Air Force Academy (though not at the same time) (this will be discussed in more detail later). Could I go back to sleep? Unlikely. While I would love to try and attempt to find that beautiful dance floor of light and love, the effect it had on me accelerated my heart and bathed me in a nearly post-coital energy. Of course I needed a cigarette.

I would take Joni up on her offer to join her again on the back patio of the center.

Mostly because I didn’t exactly want to spend the next two hours or so in the garage. I got dressed as quietly as I could, unable to tell if Tim was a heavy sleeper or not. I don’t think I woke him. I was about to slip quietly out the front door until I remembered all that stuff from Fred’s orientation about drug testing me if he or anyone saw me behaving erratically. I left a note, explaining where I went and why.

The Hemet morning air was fresh and cold, and I wouldn’t use the word “crisp” to describe it, even though that might have been the best word available, after a block I 160

realized it was a deeper cold than that. As a sleeper suburb, there were already signs of

activity; practical sedans with great gas mileage were beginning their commutes to Los

Angeles, probably too early for work, but early enough to beat the traffic. The recovery

center wasn’t far, a few blocks. Halfway between the center and the house, if you took

the most direct walking route, was a liquor store and a coffee shop in a run down strip

mall caddy-comer to the hospital. Both were closed.

At IERC, I was buzzed right in from the foyer since no one was manning the front

desk. I tried to walk quietly down the hall, even though the patients were either comatose

from trazodone or fidgeting awake in bed (probably the former, but considering the tolerance and resistance most of us had built up to sedatives over the years and, for some, decades, an argument could be made for the later). A nurse was standing by the nurses’

station, keys in hand, waiting to escort me out to the back patio, and let me know that she was already out there.

Joni had our chairs to facing the sunrise, an ashtray for each of us; mine on the right armrest and her’s on the left (because she was a lefty, a witch, and should have been burned for it). “Howdy,” I said while sitting and extracting my pack from my pocket,

“How far behind am I?”

She glanced down at her ashtray, “Two. I’m so glad you came.”

“I’m not going to fuck you,” I said.

“Jesus. Good morning to you too.”

“I mean it.” 161

“You think highly of yourself don’t you.”

“I just don’t want there to be any confusion about what this is.”

She took a long inhale, studying, “Because I’m old?”

It was totally because she was too old, “Because I need a good friend more than a

good fuck.”

“I’m only forty (this was a lie. A few weeks later, she fessed up that she was actually forty-three, and then much later I was at her hospital bedside when the nurse

collected her information, including age, which was forty-seven, making her current age forty-six),” she raised an eyebrow, “and I’m only just forty. My birthday was last week.”

“Forty is the new...” I cleared my throat, “forty.”

“Well, I want to die,” she stubbed out her clove and her entire presence changed.

“I don’t know how I’ll get through another day. The rejection is too much.”

“Alright. Fine. It was weird, I get it.”

She lit up, exhaled, “I need a friend too.” Her voice softened and she closed her eyes for a second too long, “I need a family.” She held out her hand for me to take it.

After I let it hang there between us, she realized what she was asking with this innocent gesture and pulled it back, “Shit. I’m sorry.”

“No. No, here,” I held my palm out. “There’s so much goddamned hand-holding going on here. Come on, gimmie.”

I took her hand and was transported.

I was in the body of a man, a huge man, a man so huge that for a second I thought 162

I was standing on a chair. I was outside on a narrow bridge. I had to protect the retreat, a man alone could do it here, on this day and in this place. The Saxons, that English trash, came out of nowhere. The others weren’t ready, but I was, fitting and testing my armor for tomorrow’s battle. We were told tomorrow, it was supposed to be tomorrow. They arrived early, cresting the ridge on the opposite bank with the morning sun. I liked waking up early. I liked seeing the stars dissolves in the colors of the horizon. It was good that I beat the sun every day, especially today. This bridge was narrow. They would be syphoned down to two or three across. I could fight two or three at a time. Fight two or three at a time for hours. My brothers could retreat to a rallying point, regroup, and attack. We would sing and drink to this day when we were together again in Valhalla.

The advancing footmen did not run, foolish of them, the mass might be able to knock me down with a charging shield wall. Swarm over me. They had their swords, their spears at the ready, testing the air before for nisse or mar a. The fools should have rushed. I tested at the grips on my axes, balanced in weight though one had a longer reach and a smaller blade. Even swings were less tiring. One weapon cannot be favored over the other. Concentrate on using the surroundings. Focus on stamina. On this day and in this place.

They were nearing. I breathed deeply. I closed my eyes. I prayed to Odin-son for lightening.

I opened my eyes and roared. The hoard before me yelled back, the frontmost men began to charge, but were only able to gain a few steps of momentum as I met them. 163

I swung the axe in my right hand, taking off the head of the right-most soldier before landing in the shoulder of the man next to him, nearly severing his arm. With the axe in my left, I swung up from below as my adversary recoiled with his sword, splitting his chin in half. The next rank of Saxons stepped over their fallen and lost four arms and two heads for it. Two came next, trying to coordinate their effort, one losing a leg and his manhood with a low sweep, the other his insides for raising his shield to block a high feint. Four came next, but four across was too tightly pressed together for any of them to properly swing a weapon. I pressed the advantage, splintering two shields, removing two heads, gutting the one on the left, and kicking over the last of the four who was screaming at a spouting stump where his hand once was.

I felt a quick shove against my shoulder, knocking it back only a little, and saw a feathered bolt embedded in my flesh still quivering from it’s flight. I growled and snapped the arrow off. No more child’s games. I bellowed a deep thunderous battle cry, a roar heard on both banks of the river. I attacked, crushing the skull of one of the fallen as

I rushed the column of footmen. Blood and bone followed, each swing of my axe crushed or crunched. Enemies lost limbs, stringy tendons and veins snapping as the dead weight of an arm or leg or head fell to the planks beneath us. I carved through rank after rank.

Berserker.

Eventually, time began to slow and my breathing became heavier, ragged. After cleaving a swordsman from shoulder to hip, I looked down to see a tube of white and pink sausage bulging out from my side. 1 grunted, pushing it back in. The Saxons still 164

came. They were still fresh, still breathing. Another arrow, this time in my leg. As I looked down, I glimpsed polished metal between the planks of the bridge. Someone was under the bridge. The pike came up from beneath before I had time to dodge it, stabbing up between my legs, through my innards, and lodging there. As the pikeman below the bridge pulled down, I was pulled down to my knees. They came then, those one the bridge, with renewed vigor and strength in numbers. Still I swung, sweeping legs and crippling knees. Another short shove, this time in my chest. I looked up from it. There was a hammer. An iron hammer, dull and flecked with divots coming down on me, seemingly suspended in air while moving closer and closer still.

I finally pulled out of it, a little more disoriented than usual. I was there a long time. She squeezed my hand, a reassurance, “You okay?”

“No. Yes, of course I’m okay. They’re not usually that long. You—”

“Stop. I don’t want to know,” she said.

“Really?”

“Absolutely. It’s not part of who I am today.”

“It was pretty badass though.”

“I don’t even want to know thatV she held up her hands.

“Okay, okay. It’s in the vault. Never to be spoken of again.”

And we never spoke of it again. For nearly ten seconds.

“What’s it like? I don’t want to know what you saw, but the thing you do.. she paused, “thing. We should call it something. You said it went on for a long time, but it 165

wasn’t even a second here.”

“I don’t know what to call it, I’ve only ever really explained it to my parents so I never had to name it.”

“It needs a cool name like flashing, or jumping, or quantum leaping, or—”

“Or Jeff? We could call it Jeff.”

“No. Emphatic no,” she mulled verbs over to herself. “So tell me more about it.

The experience of it in general.”

“It’s like watching a really violent movie, but instead of seeing it and seeing the experience within a box on the other side of a room, you’re inside the characters experiencing their experiences, sights, smell, tastes, touches, but not so much hearing.

Usually their thoughts drown out any real sounds or they’re hyper aware of the other senses or there’s so much blood rushing through them that they just can’t really make out sounds very well. And then I’m snapped out of it as if nothing happened,” I inhaled, “but there’s residual feeling. When I jump into someone who was hanged, I still feel the noose around my neck when I get back.”

“Phantom pain.”

“Yes, exactly, but without any real pain to claim as my own.”

“That’s bullshit. All that pain is yours. You die every time,” she leaned forward.

“What does death feel like?”

“It’s different each time. Sometimes the violent was are the most...” I searched for the right word, “I don’t want to say peaceful, but I think the body uses adrenaline to 166

not feel anything. One thing is always the same though: it’s always a surprise, even when they know it’s coming, there’s this little idea that’s drowned out by the other ideas they’re thinking, a sub-thought, a feeling that rises up in the last breath: surprise.”

She was looking at me.. .not quite like I was freak, but definitely like I was something unique. I suddenly didn’t want another procession of questions, I was being evaluated. She noticed, “I used to get up early like this when I was a kid. It was the only calm part of the day, especially once the dinky-doo,” she twitched her nose like the actress on Bewitched. “It was nice. Peaceful. I can’t sleep past five when there aren’t any drugs in my system.”

“I’ve never been an early riser,” I said. “It was one of the things I hated the most about being a cadet. The early mornings. And after I left there, college and then during the wilderness years in SF, dawn was when I went to bed. When the world was waking into marriages, jobs, and lives they hated.”

“And now it’s when you wake up.”

“Two days in a row. Weird, right?”

“That’s where you draw the line for weird?” she said. “Wilderness years, huh?

You think you’re out of them? And be honest. I’m not going to tell the staff or anything.”

“Honestly.. I weighed whether or not I wanted to trust her, to be honest. “I honestly don’t know.”

“Me neither,” she said. Her clove crackled in the silence afterwards.

I broke the spell by clicking my lighter, lighting up, “So, um, I was trying to piece 167

together a bit of the past week or so and I wanted to ask you a question about how you checked in. Your family dumped you at the curb?”

“Not literally. They walked me in and hung around while I did my intake interview. Why?”

“I don’t remember how I got here. I thought my dad checked me in, but then when I think back on my dad in the ICU it’s wrong. And I talked to my mom last night.

He’s definitely in New Zealand still, that’s where he lives, and my mom told me it wasn’t her either. Some sort of hallucination maybe.”

“You checked yourself in. They may babysit you through the process, but you signed yourself in on your own. The paperwork has your signature on it, I guarantee that.

They can’t legally admit you otherwise. After a couple of days here, I started asking the same questions and I made them show me.”

“I could have sworn my pop was there.”

“Then it was probably Angelo. He tell you or show you what he does yet? He’s like us, kinda, he can use projection on other people. Like make you see what he wants you to see.”

“Jesus. That’s fucking terrifying.”

“Nonononono, he uses it for good now. Like in therapy. It’s only for helping out in roleplaying and stuff like that. He doesn’t use it for anything else.”

“Except for tricking me into checking in,” I said. She opened her mouth to argue, but I cut her off, “I know, I can leave any time I want. Let’s just...” and I gestured 168

towards the almost sunrise. I was done talking, the day had come.

Schedule of Cigarette Breaks: A Day at IERC

7:50 am (optional) — After the morning recovery meeting, there was a ten minute break.

This smoke break was optional because the meeting was optional (unless you wanted coffee). Most of us who could walk and form words (and this was harder during detox than you might imagine) wanted coffee, got our coffee, endured the meeting, and shuffled to the back patio where cigarettes are consumed. The outpatients arriving from sober living offsite often circled up or formed small groups in the parking lot outside the center before groups started where there were also cigarette butt receptacles.

8:55 am — Following the morning book study where we read out loud from and talked about pertinent addiction texts, everyone relocated to the back patio area. Even the nonsmokers who came along so they wouldn’t be left out of any gossip or shop talk.

Outpatients left the patio chairs open for inpatients, many of whom were enduring detoxes severe enough to inhibit their motor skills. On rainy days, we huddled underneath the narrow overhang that hugged the building. A few patients who had brought umbrellas could partially shelter up to four people. We held our lit cigarettes under the umbrella, protected from the rain, like herds of bison or elephants circling their young after spotting a predator, our bodies pinwheeling out from the center.

9:55 am — Following the the Family of Origin lecture, a lecture about the complications of dysfunctional families that often included activities, we returned to the patio.

10:55 am — The rotating roster of counselors who handled the rotating discussion topics 169

conducted in the ten o’clock hour varied depending on the day of the week. One counselor in particular liked to hold us as close to 10:55 as possible (the other counselors usually let us leave when the big hand was on the ten), often ending his lecture at 10:53, holding us for the remaining two minutes, and making us all look at the clock and count down the seconds together before we were dismissed to “practice our disease.” He wouldn’t talk, just hold us there. His adherence to the five minute official break rule left most of us the ability to only smoke one cigarette instead of the preferred one and a half.

If you smoked regular length cigarettes you might be able to suck down one and a half, but few of us preferred regulars over 100s (why, why, why would you not want as much tobacco as humanly possible for your dollar?).

11:55 am — Lunch. Finally. The blissful ninety minute oasis where we would smoke, eat, smoke, and then smoke. Cafeteria tickets were issued at the counselor’s office after the guest group speaker finished his or her presentation in the previous hour on any number of topics ranging from nutrition to the biomedical chemical processes of addiction and human anatomy. I liked this daily group because it always felt a little more like school than the others, but around 11:35, the clock gained a beckoning presence.

Lunch and cigarettes. I would have an hour and a half to socialize, smoke, maybe work ahead on my assignments so I would’t have to do them when I get home, allowing me free time to stay current on Lost (it was season two, a pretty dull season in hindsight, that was airing that winter/spring. But I had so many questions about that hatch, that still unseen monster, and that Anna Lucia). After collecting our vouchers for free lunch, we 170

outpatients exited IERC, and in three to five steps from the front door to the parking lot, everyone in our group would have a little cloud of smoke hanging close above our heads like the little raincloud that followed Charlie Brown around. We walked slowly through the parking lot and across the street and then through the hospital’s parking lot, entering through the main entrance. Inside, we lined up at the sanitation dispenser for Purell, near the sliding front door. There was a little peer pressure here; once one of us used the

Purell, others followed the example and I doubted it was because my peers suddenly started caring about their health and were taking a protective measure. From there, we cut left down a hallway, skipped the crowded elevator, and took the stairs to the cafeteria in the basement. Our food vouchers were good for exactly $5.75 worth of credit to spend on a main course, a side course, and a drink. If lunch cost more than that, we paid out of pocket. Lunch rarely cost more than that. It was hospital cafeteria food so I ate a salad everyday. However: the cafeteria served coffee. Because salad was so cheap and because

I didn’t get anything else, I doubled down on coffee — one to enjoy with my lunch and one to take away. After lunch, I could go back outside and have another cigarette or six while working on my assignment for men’s group.

2:55 pm — The second most satisfying cigarette of the day. The first one of the day is of course the most satisfying, the only one that ever gave me a buzz anymore rather than simply quieting the nagging beast that needed feeding. Considering the regularly scheduled emotional upheaval of men’s group (the most confrontational and physically taxing group of the day), the five minute window we had afterwards was a little vacation. 171

3:55 pm — We were more or less unsupervised during arts and crafts hour. There was a counselor there, but she allowed us to do whatever we wanted; beading, drawing, playing

Apples to Oranges, or working on our next assignment, which was often a rewrite assigned in the hour before. There was a lot of socializing and chatter, not entirely unlike our ninety minute lunch hour. The 3:55 smoke break was the closest we had to what I imagine a normal smoke break for normal people might be like, where the emphasis was on conversation and continuing previous conversation rather than shotgunning tobacco as fast as humanly possible.

4:55 pm — We had to exercise. I’m sure it was for some weird legal insurance reason that I didn’t know about (and can’t be bothered to research). Exercise group was managed by a nice lady, older cougar type who was ridiculously upbeat. No one wanted to be there, but we accepted that this was part of what we were told to do. I liked the upbeat personality of the lady, even though I hated what we were doing, because she always had the sweetest encouragement for all of us and for one patient in particular:

Crossed-arms Guy, who would cross his arms while everyone else was doing sloppy jumping jacks, and frown, offering short lazy kicks instead (Crossed-arms Guy hung himself six months after being discharged, and I heard from one of the outpatients I ran into on a weekend that the exercise lady cried when she found out). Anyway, the exercise was preposterously low impact — none of us were short of breath and none of us even approached a rosy, flushed glow from minor exertion, so the post-exercise cigarette was not as wonderful as it might have been had we actually applied ourselves. A counselor 172

once pointed this out to one of us, who then relayed the information to everyone, and then there was a moment of contemplation among the chain-smoking collective of chimneys until someone said, “Yeah, but then we would have to exercise.” No one wanted to exercise.

5:55 pm — This hour was a rotating group that varied by day of the week. Often we would watch a video about addiction, sometimes we’d get a speaker, but on Wednesdays, we held the group where we divided up the chores around the center that outpatients would be responsible for. Someone was in charge of emptying ashtrays, someone was the

“sheriff’ (responsible for calling everyone in off the patio for the next group. The position was more of a walking alarm clock than an enforcer), and I was, every week, volunteered to set up chairs for a particular group either before or after my cigarette. I didn’t mind because the cigarette and a half that I smoked during each break needed to stop happening and here’s why: I would smoke my first, and then make it halfway through the second before we were called in to group, I would then flick the cherry out or scrape it across my shoe, returning the unsmoked half to my pack. It made the rest of the cigarettes smell like burnt tobacco, which was unpleasant. Setting up the chairs only gave me time to smoke a single Winston Light (I switched in treatment from Parliament Lights after listening to a guest speaker give a talk on the additives in most cigarettes and was determined to smoke an additive free brand, but because American Spirits were so expensive, I settled on Winstons) (which taste good, like a *clap**clap* cigarette should). At 5:55, we gathered around the counselors’ office again to receive our dinner 173

tickets, worth a dollar more than lunch at a sweet $6.75, a price point that could include dessert. I still had a salad, but I added a fruit cup which included honeydew, cantaloupe, grapes, and watermelon. It all tasted like watermelon because watermelon is the golden retriever of the fruit cup kingdom; seems bright, happy, and upbeat and then sheds big smelly nasty leavings all over the fruit cup carpet, furniture, and clothes. After dinner, we didn’t go back into the center right away. We tended to linger around the front entrance in the parking lot, especially on Wednesday nights. Wednesdays were the weekly alumni meetings where recently discharged patients within the first year of their recovery returned for an aftercare group and chips. Chips that were not for snacking. Recovery chips were like poker chips with a little time increment stamped on it of 30, 60, 90 days before moving up to 6 months, then one year, then 18 months, and then annually from then on up to thirty (no one ever collected a chip for 30 years at the alumni meeting, even though the chip carrier had a couple rattling around inside it. We were told it was important to keep those high number chips in the tray for inspirational purposes) (even though the only person who ever had a chance of seeing and being inspired by the existence of a thirty year chip was the individual responsible for handing them out) (but we did manage to gossip about it) (thirty years clean and sober sounded more like bullshit than a target to aim at anyway). Wednesday nights meant that people like us, people who were kind and who understood in a slightly different way than the counselors understood, would join our ranks for the evening. They listened to our worries and frequently gave us prime info on assignments; what the counselors wanted to hear so we wouldn’t have to 174

redo any of them, which was as fun as one might imagine it to be. These weekly visitors were also new people to watch, to collect stories from, a connection to the outside world.

These returning alumni were very much like the cool older kids in junior high school, but way kinder — so maybe more like the older siblings of your next door neighbor. Having a chance to linger in the parking lot with them for fifteen minutes or so before the alumni group started was highly valued, so on Wednesday nights, all the outpatients would rush through their meals to get to the parking lot.

6:55 pm — Because the alumni were hanging out for another hour for a special group that none of us were a part of (until we were discharged), we had them for another short burst of time at 6:55. The alumni would join us on the back patio; however, the women would occasionally feel compelled to huddle around the younger, newer ladies.

Especially the twenty-somethings who were walking skeletons kicking something speedier than coffee. Nothing was ever said about it openly because nothing ever happened. But the women circled around the wisps, just to help them feel more comfortable.

7:55 pm — Last cigarette break before freedom. The seven o’clock hour was always a literature study. Once more we would read from recovery related texts and ask questions about what exactly was meant in certain passages and how it was applicable to our lives.

The counsellors would trade off leading this group, and relate personal stories about how the circumstances of a particular passage applied to their lives. This was where I often heard Margo discuss Pinky and the Brain. 175

8:55 pm — Freedom. I chain-smoked on the drive home. Fred always was there to pick us up, those who didn’t feel like walking. Once we got home, we would linger in the garage, smoke some more, and settle into the energy of the house. Sometimes we did our homework together while waiting for the shower to free up for the next resident. Often we just watched TV to have something to not think about while we waiting for our psych meds to kick in.

We Are No Different From Anyone Else

“You’re no different from anyone else here in treatment,” Angelo said. “We’re here to talk about case specific issues that can’t be discussed at group level with the other patients. Once you leave and start attending meetings on your own, you’ll encounter that there are just some things, aspects of who you are that you do not discuss publicly. I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept.”

I nodded, not truly familiar, but I guessed what he was talking about. We were in the outpatient “lounge,” which really wasn’t much of a lounge as much as it was a small room with a circular table in the middle of it and tall lockers pushed against three walls.

Angelo, myself, and Joni were seated around the table. It was just after eleven in the morning. We were having our special “pain management” group — my first time in attendance.

“Everyone here has some misery that they’ve been hanging up their substance abuse on. For some, most really, it’s some sort of grief or loss. For a lot of folks, self- medicating chronic returning pain away is a solution. These are the type of excuses that 176

we tell ourselves so we can get loaded, for relief from the agony of whatever the hell we’ve got in our lives, when really all we are is alcoholics or addicts whose disease has finally manifested itself and kicked into high gear. You ever done group therapy before?

Anyone explain to you how it works yet?”

He directed most of this orientation talk at me, only occasionally making eye contact with Joni, probably out of courtesy, “No, sir.”

“Don’t sir me, my name is Angelo and I’m a drunk, just like you. Here’s how we do it: imagine a big rock, a rock so big that you can’t life it alone, but with another person the two of you can lift the rock. That’s group therapy. We talk about our lives, our worries, our addiction, and the process of getting through today without picking up our drink or drug of choice. Tiny miracles happen in groups. People reconcile who they are and what cards they have, and don’t need to go out and get loaded. In this group and only in this group will we discuss our abilities and how to live with them through coping mechanisms rather than hide from them or suppress them or whatever your deal might be.

Questions?”

“Why did you put that scene with my father in my head when I was in the hospital? I know he wasn’t there. Why did you trick me?”

He glanced at Joni who shrugged, “I’m glad the two of you are talking, and I’m glad you have one another. You’re right, it was a trick. I manipulated you and it was wrong and I can firmly commit to never do it again without your permission. If you are unable to trust me from here on out for that reason, I understand.” He didn’t actually 177

apologize and certainly didn’t show any regret for his actions. In fact, his shoulders squared a little more firmly than they were before.

“But why?”

“To get you in here. To see if I — we could.. he scratched his nose, “Jennifer from Phoenix House called me, told me about you and how I’d be hearing from you, but I never did. Then the hospital called when they found my card in your belongings. Since there weren’t any family members present, I improvised, hoping that you’d join us here rather than go back out (“going out” is what we call relapsing) (relapsing is what we call getting loaded again after multiple days of continuous sobriety). I didn’t want to lose track of you. I didn’t want you to die without getting a chance to see another way. And I also didn’t think you’d sign yourself in without a gentle nudge.”

“Thank you for apologizing. I forgive you.”

“I didn’t apologize, so don’t say you forgive me. I made a commitment to not do it again. There is a significant difference, as you will learn while you’re here with us,” he put a hand up before I could argue (and I wanted to). “There are going to be a lot of things that will be new to you. It’s a process, not an end result. Be open to learning, and be okay with minor course corrections. Okay. Other questions?”

I had many, “Some of the other people who work here seem to hint like they know what’s going one with us, like who we are. What do I do if they ask me question point blank?”

“First off, they don’t really know, they just speculate. And I don’t tell them. It’s a 178

rare occasion when I’ve had to ask management to deal with them, and then the issue was always quickly and quietly resolved. They won’t ask you anything point blank. If they do, refer them to me. Any of the patients ask you anything, you tell them you’re in pain management — which is true, that’s what’s on the schedule — and if they ask more, you refer them to me. No one is curious enough to make a special trip to the counselor’s office. Don’t lie about it, but don’t you dare tell anyone about what you two and myself can do. The last thing we need is a bunch of detoxing addicts running around, terrified of psychics in their midst. The staff, my colleagues — we don’t need that either.”

“That’s big of you,” Joni said.

“Here we go,” Angelo slumped back in his chair.

She turned to me, “If you refer one of the other counselor’s to Angelo, you really should expect him to do precisely jack and fucking bullshit about it,” she was really fuming, her upper lip playing at a snarl.

“You’ll have to excuse us,” Angelo said, “We’re still settling after a situation that happened last week—”

“His ‘colleague’ made a pass at me and he didn’t protect me. He didn’t raise a finger.”

He did raise a finger j ust then, his index finger, subconsciously or intentionally,

“You finish your assignment about that yet?”

They stared each other down. Angelo’s face tilted forward and his eyebrows went up as Joni’s chin stuck out, tilting her face up. It was when Angelo crossed his arms that 179

Joni got up and stormed out of the room.

“What just happened?” I asked.

“I told you,” he exhaled, “We’re settling after a situation.”

“What was the situation?”

“None of your business, unless she wants to tell you about it. You can find out about it when we discuss it in group without her getting too.. he searched for the next word, but couldn’t find it. “How are you coming along on your assignment? You shake everyone’s hand yet? Your housemates?”

“I thought it was just to do when I was here,” it sounded like a weak excuse, even as I was saying it. “Like holding hands during group prayers.”

“Resistance,” he leaned forward. “I thought you were willing to do whatever it takes while you’re here.”

“I am,” I said. “I guess I just didn’t understand it very clearly.”

“How many people did you touch?”

“Two. No, three counting Joni this morning.”

“The sooner you get it over with the faster it’s done. We have more important things to move on to,” he picked up his binder off the table and pushed back in his chair, our group was ending.

“What could be more important than this.. .thing?”

“I’ve got another assignment for you. I want you to write down as many things as you can think of that you’re grateful for,” he stood up. “A big ass long list.” 180

“When’s it due?”

“When it’s done. You can present it in men’s group or evening group. You’ll figure out how assignment presentations work as you move along. The other patients will help you, show you how to do it,” he gestured towards the door. “It’s time for you to go to lunch. Go get your voucher.”

On Group Therapy

Here is a list of significant details about the process of group therapy:

1. Lots of dramatic changes can happen to people by working on self-evaluation assignments, sharing them, and receiving feedback. There’s a shift in perspective and attitude that settles in a person afterwards, ranging from relief to rage. My fellow patients were always kind and loving, gentle rather than displaying the hard edge to their lifestyles and personalities, the respective identities that brought us all together. We were liars, cheats, thieves, people with secrets, convicted felons, street folk, trophy wives, abusive husbands, lost children, and I felt more at home, safer, with them than with any of the “safe” twits I encountered in any professional or academic careers (especially in writing school, writing school was a dark time). I saw a fifty year old man, a retired Crypt boss with old school hardness and face that could melt granite into a spreadable condiment cry with a confused young man as he came to terms with his sexual orientation. I saw a thirty something woman, who spent more days of her life incarcerated than free, rub the shoulders of a sobbing housewife and identify with her story, saying

“you’ve spent more time in prison than I have.” I saw an entire group turn on a counselor 181

to protect an octogenarian with tinnitus from devastating feedback he was receiving about his sixty-year marriage to his recently deceased wife being a decade sprawling manipulation. Moments like this, that happened often over the course of any given day in treatment, honestly made me proud to be a human being. I don’t often feel proud to be a human being. In fact, witnessing such moments of clarity and discharging of emotional baggage might have been the first time I ever encountered what it felt like to be proud to be a human being.

2. We held hands at the end of each group, a benediction of sorts. Holding hands meant something different for me than it meant for the others, but as my counselor suspected, once I touched every patient, experienced their deaths, I could move forward and experience a sense of community in the energy forged while praying at the end of each group. It was a whirlwind. At 8:54 that morning, I was in a muddy foxhole that barely extended above my head, waiting for the gunfire to slow, and thinking about my childhood sweetheart and how she would sleep safely that night, at 10:56,1 was fleeing in the tall Mongolian grasses from light cavalry, moving as fast as I could as they mowed down my father, my sister, and then at 10:57,1 was in Ulster, staring down the barrels of a firing squad, waiting patiently for the boom and fire, oddly at peace while I waited, humming a few bars of the drinking song, “Clancy Lowered the Boom,” at 2:55,1 was on a Spanish galleon in the lower hold, steadfast at my post as the wall splintered and ripped apart, and seconds later within the minute of 2:55,1 ran screaming through the gates of

Athens, a warning before, 4:53, when I pounded my spear against my hide buckler, 182

daring them to take the well from me until 7:54 and 7:54, where I fled from the devil

Alexander’s army of screaming monsters, and was lined up with my neighbors against Li

Wei’s garden wall and listening, looking straight ahead, as instructed, and hearing the gunshots and sensing the bodies collapsing in my periphery. And then the first day was done.

3. While group therapy is magical and transformative and a process of bravery and courage to be cherished and so on, it was also extremely repetitive. At least the roster of patients rotated, as each of us came in on different days and were discharged at different times in our tenure at IERC, so there was always a new and illuminated epiphany taking place, sometimes hourly. During first couple weeks, I’d listen and learn, I’d pay attention and discover the hidden meaning of emotional concepts that were muddy and unclear; like taking responsibility for half an argument instead of all of it, or the true meaning of trust (apparently, it was given and never earned. Who knew?). But the information would begin to repeat itself, sometimes hourly in groups, as the roster of patients rotated. While we were each delicate, unique snowflakes learning the language of the heart, we were all still fucking snowflakes hearing the same thing over and over and over. Just to make sure it stuck.

4. We all wanted something, but not necessarily from one another, at least that’s how we came in. Treatment is a strange place to find yourself in. You know you’re there for a reason, a single purpose, and the purpose that you claim is to stop doing something that you can’t stop doing. But if you listen, you can hear what others want underneath the 183

regurgitated response, the recited tone and intonation, of “to stop drinking and using and learn how to live a clean and sober way of life.” Most people checked in to get their loved ones off their backs, some were court ordered, a few of us had nowhere else to go.

Everyone’s purpose, their real purpose, varied, but we had the correct memorized response down pat. And because we had that perfect answer always ready, we flew that flag as often and as high as possible. We wanted to be the best at recovery, at least on the surface, because the social dynamic of adults who started using in their teen years (for the most part) were rebooted back to the age when they chose to pick up rather than grow up.

It was like junior high school, but not as comfortable. There were clicks, popular patients, pariahs, etc, all formed within the constructs of group therapy, each of us offering feedback about a person’s life choices and attitude. We could only get so much from one another through this process and frequently got this look on our faces while someone talked some crazy ass bullshit: the brow wrinkled, the lips tightened, and the head tilted slightly forward as if pantomiming a disappointed teacher or librarian with spectacles perched on the tip of his or her nose. That look, which everyone in treatment gets at some point during the day, can best be summed up as: holy shit, who is this crazy asshole and why in the hell am I here anyway — this has absolutely nothing to do with a.) fixing my marriage, b.) fixing my relationship with my kids, c.)keeping my job, d.) staying out of prison, e.) keeping temporary shelter over my head. You wonder why you want to be the best at being sober, at offering feedback, of being crowned King Shit of Fuck Mountain.

Which seems contradictory to the kindness patients showed one another, and it was. But 184

it’s after that realization happened that I became compassionate. I still drew a firm line with others, and my fellow patients responded the same way.

5. The facility had four counselors on staff, a gaggle of nurses and orderlies on overlapping shifts, three of which had certification in addiction medicines who also served as counselors in a pinch, and a few higher ups who handled administrative stuff and occasionally ran a group or two. There was a doctor on staff whose practice was across the street, a psychologist who came in for three hours three days a week, and a psychiatrist who came in on Wednesdays who none of us ever saw — weird, right? There was also a rotating roster of interns, and in the forty days I was in treatment, only one of them lasted longer than a week. The counselors were all very, very good at their jobs, finding the correct balance between aggressive intervention and gentle soft-spoken secrets, the keys to reconciling the monster within. They were alarm clocks for the soul

(Regurgitating their wisdom though, is something that I’ll shy away from here. I don’t want this story to read like a self-help novel, and if that’s too late, I’d like it to read less like one. If you’re really interested in learning more about what happened in groups every day, I strongly urge you to torpedo your life with drug and alcohol abuse. Tear everything down with addiction so you can start over. I can’t recommend it enough. In fact, I have a lot of trouble trusting anyone who has never destroyed their life at least once. If you never clocked any missing years, how could you ever know what you’re missing?).

Veterans of the Steve Rogers Vocational Training Program

Here is a list of significant details about Tim: 185

1. Tim attended and actually graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in

2002. He was a second lieutenant stationed in San Diego. I asked what his job was, and like so many of the people serving in the Air Force, it was primarily bureaucratic office work. It had something to do with managing the people who did the ordering for and resupplying of the base’s office supplies. He was also a huge fan of this “amazing” new

TV series that had just started broadcasting called The Office. When this American version rolled out, I needed to tell anyone who would listen, including Tim, that I was a fan of the original BBC production, preferred it, and that there was a significant difference between the two (there isn’t, there really isn’t). On Thursday nights, the house

TV was reserved for Tim. I didn’t quite understand the appeal of watching a TV show about a boring office if you worked in a boring office, but to each his own. He was also reading James Frey’s Million Little Pieces at lunch or on the weekends. The controversy surrounding this book blew open while I was in treatment. Patients and counselors alike didn’t understand what the big deal was, why the story was so widely and viciously reported on because a) the drug addict lied and over-dramatized his experience to make a buck, how totally shocking, and b) seriously? That’s what the public thinks getting clean is like? James Frey is like the drunk guy at the barstool next to you who begins dictating his theories on Big Oil, Big Pharm, Wall Street, or the BBC version of The Office. You play along with this guy because a) it’s entertaining, or b) he’s drunk enough to start yelling at you if question him. Anyway, Tim preferred his entertainment to reflect his experiences, however tangentially. 186

2. Tim was the star pupil in men’s group. Everyone nodded and really listened to his feedback whenever he spoke up. One counselor, the evangelist who believed in intense confrontation and deconstruction, would nod sagely and point in Tim’s direction and frequently comment that the thing he just said is why he loves having these groups (of course, it had nothing to do with the fact that he was by paid to have these groups). I totally saw what Tim was doing. It was the same thing I was doing: watch and listen and then apply the ninja-like quick-on-your-feet analysis to prioritize and execute a response for maximum approval. Every over-achiever, even though I was long since retired, could do this, and every single cadet at the AFA learned this skill in the first year of training, if they hadn’t already picked it up in childhood. Cadets were required to memorize and recite a tiny little book of useless fucking facts about the Air Force and regurgitate them in no particular order depending on who was screaming in your face. Seriously though, the book was like four-hundred pages, tiny print and tiny pages so you could fit it in your pocket and always be memorizing. As a cadet, I learned how to target in on the expectations of the primary authority figure in every scenario, the proxy commanding officer, and manage how best to the tap-dance for gold stars. That’s all Tim was doing.

And I was doing it too. In his shadow.

3 .1 saw Tim again, three months after he left treatment and returned to the military. He was back in IERC, in detox, recovering from a horrific relapse that shattered his right femur and half of his car. We spoke briefly one Wednesday night when I returned for alumni group. He mentioned that his last stint in rehab was his last chance to “straighten 187

up and fly right” and he didn’t know what would happen to him this time around. He was

gone the following week.

Tim and I were in the garage of our sober living at the end of a long day. I

finished my assignment, holding hand with as many others as possible, and I was given

instructions to make a gratitude list. Tim was exercising while I was studying the pink

lines of spiral notebook paper (the very worst kind of paper — it sounds like a zipper

farting and leaves those little chads all over the bottom of your backpack or briefcase)

laid open before I me. I was chain-smoking, which helped the writing process, and Tim was doing his nightly routine of sit-ups, pushups, crunches, flutter-kicks, squats, and whatever the fuck those big stupid steps were supposed to be called (I can’t remember). I recognized the exercise routine, it was standard military issue. I decided at the wise old age of eighteen and a half on the day of my discharge to never do any of them ever again.

His face was reddening, and his shirt was dampening, an unimpressive display of athletic prowess, if you asked me, but my vantage of his ritual would have been the envy of all the ladies (the straight ones) from the recovery center. Tim was loved by the ladies; he was tall, muscular, and had all his teeth (having good teeth is usually more important in recovery dating than whether or not the significant other is actually clean and sober).

Tim was coaching me between his big stupid steps, “Just make sure you start each thing on your list with the exact words, ‘I am grateful for,’ and then write down the thing.”

“Why are they so specific about that? Isn’t it obvious when you tell them that 188

you’re reading a gratitude list?” I asked.

“They want you to hear what you say over and over again when you read it out loud. Like brainwashing. Indoctrination. You know, like when you had to stand in the halls of — which one were you in? Sijon or Vanderberg?”

“Vanderberg, man. I was in squad seven,” the cadet wing was housed in two large dormitories: squads one through twenty were in Vandenberg Hall and squads twenty-one through forty were in Sijon Hall. Each structure was the length of two city blocks, six stories high, and painted yellow for some reason.

“Yeah, right. Okay, so like when you’re in the halls in Vandy,” the cadets nicknamed it this, I had forgotten about it until he mentioned it, “and you had to regurgitate Schofield’s quote.”

I still have nightmares about reciting Schofield’s quote: “Major General John M.

Schofield's graduation address to the graduating class of 1879 at West Point is as follows

— ‘The discipline which makes the soldiers of a free country reliable in battle is not to be gained by harsh or tyrannical treatment. On the contrary, such treatment is far more likely to destroy than to make an army. It is possible to impart instruction and give commands in such a manner and such a tone of voice as to inspire in the soldier no feeling but an intense desire to obey, while the opposite manner and tone of voice cannot fail to excite strong resentment and a desire to disobey. The one mode or other of dealing with subordinates springs from a corresponding spirit in the breast of the commander. He who feels the respect which is due to others, cannot fail to inspire in them respect for himself, 189

while he who feels, and hence manifests disrespect towards others, especially his

subordinates, cannot fail to inspire hatred against himself.’” Upperclassmen and officers

could require a cadet in their first year to stop whatever it was they were doing and recite this quote, or any other knowledge from the tiny book they were required to carry around

with them. The shitty thing about reciting this quote in particular was that some upperclassmen would require an introduction, others wouldn’t, and some required a unique introduction, some variation on all that text contextualizing the actual spoken text.

I was of course lucky enough to often be quizzed by two upperclassmen, simultaneously, who required different introductions. One of many fun games they liked to play, generally ending with pushups for most, and late night visits for me.

“What was it that they assigned you?” I asked.

“An aftercare plan,” he was on his back doing flutter-kicks now and I didn’t see his face, just two sneakers bobbing up and down around the comer of the couch. “It’s a written report of what I plan to go do once they finish up with me here and I go back to

San Diego.”

“Jesus. You’re leaving already?”

“Probably. That’s usually how this goes when someone is at the end and about to

leave.”

I stubbed out my cigarette and turned the fan by the table on, “We’ve barely got to know each other.”

“Yeah, it’s a bummer,” his feet were upside down now, toes pressed against the 190

concrete floor — pushups, “but you know how it is; being in the military is like making tender love to an eight-hundred pound gorilla. You’re going to do what the gorilla wants until the gorilla is done with you.”

“They’re calling you back?”

“That’s the only reason I can imagine why I was only here for six weeks.”

“I hope everything’s okay, I mean, I hope this doesn’t mean that we’re invading another country (in 2006, the United States was invading two).”

“Highly doubtful,” he stood up and started stretching. “Probably there was some bullshit going on with base politics. Someone didn’t get their paperclips or something, holding up everything for the, I don’t know, fucking food ordering.”

“How long does it have to be?” I asked.

“Oh, treatment’s normally two full months, often it’s longer.”

“No, I mean the assignment.”

“As long as it needs to be,” he said. “Try to get more than ten. If you get to twenty-five, stop.” He lit a cigarette and smoked while he stretched, pulling his foot up behind him like a flamingo. It was a well-practiced move.

“I hope whoever they stick me with is as good a roommate as you.”

“You’ll be fine,” the cherry at the tip of his Marlboro bounced up and down as he switched legs, talking out of the side of mouth, “and you’ll get used to the revolving door of that place. People coming and going. Joni’s keeping a list of everyone who comes through and plans to keep in touch with them all. Maybe share the list when she’s done. 191

We’ll keep in touch.” He cracked his neck and stubbed out his smoke. “I’m going to grab

a shower.”

“I’m going to keep working on this. Then I’ll clean up too,” my medication was

starting to kick in, one of them anyway, and I felt the first wave of otherness in my head

and behind my eyes from the new prescription. I could expect the next wave, from the medicine that KO’d me, in about forty-five minutes, well after lights out.

My Gratitude List

1.1 am grateful for my life and surviving my overdose (This was a lie. I was pretty

ambivalent about sustained breathing, eating, shitting, and sleeping).

2 .1 am grateful for my parents (Total bullshit).

3 .1 am grateful to have a roof over my head (Legit).

4 .1 am grateful for a warm bed (Again, legit).

5 .1 am grateful for plenty of food so I won’t starve (The hospital food was truly awful, but it was free. Split the difference on this one between honesty and bullshit).

6 .1 am grateful for having the tools and coping mechanisms to get and stay clean (I

didn’t believe this, that I could get and stay clean, but I included it to give the appearance

of willingness to the staff and my peers).

7 .1 am grateful for this opportunity to get my life and my future back (Flip a coin; heads

truth, tails false).

8 .1 am grateful for Converse sneakers (True).

9 .1 am grateful for the typewriter I found in the garage at sober living (True). 192

10.1 am grateful for Goldfish Crackers (Very true and a primary source of sustenance).

11.1 am grateful for my education (Knowledge is power).

12.1 am grateful for all the books I haven’t read and fallen in love with yet (You know, numbers eight through twelve should have priority over numbers one through five).

13.1 am grateful for having a good childhood (Meh. Technically, it was a great childhood, but does anyone ever really believe that their childhood was good? I mean, childhood is a brutal fucking place, not some lofty idyllic decade of romping through fields and forests without a care in the world. There’s danger, real danger, brutal fucking danger, that comes in the form of saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, wearing the wrong thing, and being the wrong thing. Children are cruel to each other. It’s

Thunderdome without the amenities).

14.1 am grateful for traveling to New Zealand to visit my dad (This was actually quite cool. It was in these trips that I fell in love with flying, especially as I got older and wasn’t supervised all fourteen hours of the flight. I read comic books, always comic books, as my special flying ritual. Scrooge McDuck comics during the first couple trips

— I was nuts about the Duck Tails cartoon show that was broadcasting at the time — and then Marvel arcs as I got older — Frank Miller’s run on Daredevil is one of the great high water marks of modern American funny books. Of course, my love of flying didn’t end up working out quite so well, but still, a neat thing for a kid and teenager to experience).

15.1 am grateful for all the new friends I’m making (I liked them well enough). 193

16.1 am grateful for the sense of community and feeling like I finally belong (I felt like I was still an outsider).

I am grateful for showers (I was and continue to be really grateful for showers).

KHANNNNN!

I went to the future again.

I was surrounded by technology that was, literally, light years beyond anything

I’d ever seen, read, or imagined. It was doing magical things, that’s the best way to describe it, magic. Matter seemed to be created right in front of my eyes as a blistered hand waved and pulled across the surface of a wall, pantomiming sculpting in thin air as the wall bubbled and changed, following the directions it was somehow receiving from the hand. It was a human hand, belonging to the man I was in. He needed to do something that I did not understand because he was thinking about things I couldn’t even contextualize let alone conceptualize. The barrage of feelings and images in his mind’s eye seemed preoccupied with preventing purple fire, what I presumed to be some sort of explosion. I had no idea what made purple fire. I clearly understood that wherever the hell this seemingly empty box of a room was located, the purple fire would be here soon.

His thoughts seemed to gravitate around some other images, showing me a vessel in deep space. It looked nothing like any space ship I’d ever seen in movies or on TV; it was a loosely bound bundle of cylinders, rotating in orbit of each other, constantly moving together like clockwork might, and held together by some sort of force field. There was no propulsion system either. The sculpted piece of wall shifted again into an organic 194

looking three-pronged joystick thing, a cross between a video game controller and a three-fingered glove. It then merged with his fucking hand, like he and part of the wall melted together into one thing. And then his mind’s eye burst into colors and shapes and designs I had never seen before. It was an overwhelming and unrelenting onslaught of information represented graphically. It was beyond language and numbers. He understood it though, especially the colors, which had priority over the shapes and designs. And these colors were more complex than anything I had ever seen before; they were combinations of three or four different colors combined like those spotty afterimages you see after you rub your eyes too hard. I didn’t know if the purple fire explosion he imagined happened or not because just then he was thinking about a woman, who would sleep alone that night, but still be alive to sleep. He thought about their quarters, and their bed, and how he would sleep next to her, wrapped around her body while she held his hand tightly between her breasts as they drifted off to sleep. And then I was back in the hospital cafeteria. It was lunchtime.

Joni was watching me closely. I nodded. Everything was a-okay, or okay enough.

I felt a hand on my back, high on my back where a fingertip made contact with my neck just above the collar. I nodded and smiled in agreement to a joke or something. I was too disoriented to remember what was said. The joke and the hand that touched my neck, belonged to Johnny, and here’s a list of significant details about him:

1. Taking more prescribed prescription psychmeds than anyone else in sober living,

Johnny would smoke Marlboro 100s in the garage with wide eyes, too wide eyes, leaving 195

visitors the impression that he was loaded. The house, and Banjo Fred, the senior resident, knew better. Johnny’s permanent wide eyes were a little unsettling, especially since they were a fixed component to every expression: smiles, frowns, and the entire range in between. You wondered if he was constantly surprised, experiencing something for the first time every time. He would zone out (appear to zone out), staring far away, but was always listening closely. He was quick on the uptake too, and could surprise you with his contribution which then really did surprise you because you couldn’t help but think he was catatonic because everything about Johnny was signifying exactly that. He lived in present tense.

2. He was the trumpet player for a fairly popular ska/swing band in the 90’s, popular for the six months in the late 90s when such music was momentarily everywhere. I won’t name the band here because you would remember them. And during this time he was selling opiates and benzos to then TV stars, low list at the time, but fairly well known now. I won’t tell you their names here either. Johnny would drive his suburban, red and rarely clean, across the border to pick up thousands of pills and deal to the outer orbits of his circle of friends and his bandmate’s circle of friends whose names I won’t mention here.

3. Nine months after meeting Johnny, his pancreas failed. At his funeral, his ex-wife, a meth addict who while high tried to club him to death with a skillet, nearly successfully

(broken nose, broken ribs, hairline skull fracture which we were often assured, by

Johnny, had nothing to do with his thousand yard stare) was there. She sat in the back by 196

herself, quietly weeping, and paused as she proceeded past the coffin with the other mourners, dropping a folded up piece of paper in the casket. Goodbye letter? IOU?

Apology? One last go fuck yourself? It’s hard to tell with meth addicts. They tend to get some crazy ideas while dismantling kitchen appliances and digging holes in their backyards.

4. Johnny had one of the best drunk stories, and I heard a lot, being well into my 20s and having hung out with the people I hung out with and then in treatment, where everyone only has drunk stories because we were all always drunk. He was in Mexico with some friends, probably one of his supply runs, and drunk, deeply drunk in a dance club. There was a mariachi band playing on stage, and everyone was dancing, mingling, etc. Johnny told me that he told one of his friends that yes, they could leave, but first he had to go use the bathroom. On his way to the bathroom, Johnny encountered what he believed to be a pine tree there in the middle of the club, “and it was just a pole, mano, like an exposed pole that was holding the roof up. But I thought it was a pine tree. And since I needed to pee and since nature’s bathroom was right there, something in my lizard brain thought it would be okay to just whip it out and pee right there. So I did. And let me tell you, it was like a movie what happened next. The music stopped and it got silent, pin-drop silent. I looked up from the pole, and it was a pole now, and the band on stage was looking at me with their mouths open and everyone in the club was looking at me. So I finished up, shook it off, and said ‘What? It’s not like I took a shit.’ And then the band guys sort of looked at each other and like nodded and shrugged like they saw my point and one of the 197

guys waved at me and said, ‘Sorry.’ I shit you not, heh, ‘shit you not/didn’t shit,’ anyway,

I just waved back and said ‘It’s alright.’ And they started playing again and everyone went back to whatever they were doing and we left.”

Johnny was pretty funny so whatever he was bonding over with me, causing him to give me a bro-slap on the back, was probably pretty good. And I faked like I was enjoying it too. Lunch continued for everyone, bantering, preoccupied with gossip about other patients or counselors, talking about assignments. I just picked at my giant plate of salad greens that I covered more or less entirely in table salt and pepper (my sense of taste was a fickly bitch back when I was taking 45mg mirtazapine, 15mg depacote, and

0.5mg colonodine).

After fifteen minutes, the table began to thin in population as patients left one or two at a time, scattering to get a cigarette or make a phone call or work on an assignment or just relocate to the back patio at the center to gossip some more. The conversation turned darker, juicier, as topics shifted towards the person or people who just left. This part of lunchtime never really lasted long; it was hard to trust relative strangers with shit- talk, especially since the next day they might be shit-talking you with someone else. The forced intimacy of group therapy combined with the explosive personality shifts of the recently clean and sober made for rapidly shifting alliances. I hung around, patiently watching the clock, waiting for the sanctuary of the cafeteria. No one ever stayed here to do their homework. After eating, a smoker only wants one thing. As the last two women,

Merry weather and a young Asian looking gal who was actually Spanish (she went back 198

to Spain often to visit her relatives still living in the Pyrenees foothills and shared with me that during her most recent visit she became obsessed with milking the cow for the family), pushed away from the table and gathered their trays, I pulled out my notebook, pretending to get to work on my next assignment. Of course I wasn’t alone. Joni was hanging around too.

“What did they give you?” she asked as I clicked my ballpoint pen. Rapidly.

“Twenty positive affirmations about myself.”

“That’s are a hard one. You’re actually going to do it right now?”

“You want to talk about what you saw?”

“You looked different from when you touched me. Your eyes rolled up so I could see the red veins on white,” she leaned forward, elbows on the table. “It only lasted a second or so, everyone else missed it.”

“Good,” the last thing I needed was gossip spreading about how I was actively using and trying to hide it. I weighed whether or not I wanted to actually get into it. I did not, but I also had the impression that she wouldn’t leave me alone until I gave her some information about my flash-forward, “You ever see Wrath o f Khan?”

“What?”

“Wrath o f Khan. Star Trek 2.”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“I was like that. Like the ending, but not any different from anything else and nothing I can’t handle.” She eyed me for a second longer than I was comfortable with so I 199

smiled and it was completely fake.

“If you want to—”

“I’m fine,” I said. “I just want to get started on this. I need all the time I can get to work on it. I don’t really like much about myself, you know?”

“I’ll give you some space. Maybe we’ll talk later,” she reached across the table and rubbed my forearm, “Hang in there.”

How to Pretend You Can Stand Yourself

The next morning I made a small pot of coffee. I sat down at the table in the garage and opened up my little spiral notebook and stared at the blank page. I wrote “20

Positive Affirmations About Myself’ across the top margin. I stared at that for a while. I wrote the number one on the first line followed by “A positive affirmation about myself is.” I stared at that for a while too.

Two cups of coffee and four cigarettes later, I considered drawing some stars or hearts on the page. For motivation. It’s not that I was blocked, I didn’t believe in writer’s block. I felt that if you sat down and concentrated and waited, the words would come.

The thing about this assignment, about why I was blocked, was that I knew I was a bad person. Lying in the assignment to just do it would have been fine if I were writing anything else but this.. .1 needed to find something here, honestly find something, something worth doing all this recovery stuff for, find something worth fighting for, but a single refrain kept worming through my head, “You’re a bad person, you’re a bad person, you’re a bad person.” I turned the page and wrote at the top “List of Ways I’m a Bad 200

Person.” I would just get it out of my system.

1. I’m a liar.

2. I’m a really big liar.

3. I’m a thief.

4 .1 cheat.

5 .1 don’t believe people are good.

6 .1 don’t trust anyone.

7. I’m lazy.

8 .1 drink too much and do too many drugs.

9. I’m a pervert.

10.1 have hate in my heart. I hate things.

11.1 use people to get drugs and sex.

12.1 am not grateful for things.

13.1 expect more than I deserve.

14.1 only care about myself.

15.1 care more about impressing people than being good.

16.1 don’t believe in God.

17. I’m lonely.

I set my pen down and lit up another. That last one wasn’t really an example of how I’m a bad person, so maybe I should stop. And now that I’ve listed the ways I’m bad, I could focus on the exact opposite and find examples of how I’ve been good and 201

then write that down as a positive affirmation. I looked at number one: “I’m a liar.” I turned the page back over to my affirmations list. I stared at the blank spot after “myself.”

I looked at the clock on the wall above the washer and dryer, a cheap battery powered thing. It was going on 5 AM. Joni might still be out on patio at the center, the sun wasn’t up yet.

I gathered my shit for the day and headed over. They let me in and she was still smoking in our usual spot, my empty chair beside hers.

“Hey,” I sat down.

“Hey,” she pronounced the “ey” really long, dragging it out until her throat began to stutter. “I wasn’t sure if you were coming.”

“I wasn’t sure either.”

“You don’t like me anymore?”

“I’m just going through something,” like how I jumped into the future again and there was a dream prophecy and I have no idea how I’m supposed to write an assignment about how I’m a good person when I’m quite clearly not.

I think she understood, “I understand. You want to talk about it?”

“Not really,” and we sat in silence for a few minutes before I remembered to ask her how she was doing.

“I’m okay,” she said. “I’m a little scared of an assignment I have to do.”

“What is it?”

“Sexual inventory. I have to do a complete as possible record of sexual partners 202

and why I fucked them.”

“Jesus. That sounds awful.”

“It is. Angelo told me my preoccupation with his colleague has given us an opportunity to explore the subject.”

“That’s how they keep you down.”

“Huh?”

“The Man, that’s how they keep you down.” I was really only half kidding at first, but then I started rolling. “They make you think that something’s your fault so you won’t be a whistle-blower.”

“I don’t know,” she seemed troubled, confused. “Maybe I was wrong. I don’t know today. Let’s talk about something else.”

Something changed her mind, the shift was strange, but she said we were done talking about it so we were (we totally weren’t). “Tim’s leaving this weekend.”

“I know. Sunday. They’re finalizing his discharge today (it was a Friday) and he’s hanging out until his ride collects him. Takes him back to base. Back to real life. You’ll be getting a new roomie.”

“Probably. I hope not. Yeah,” I stubbed out one and lit another. “You know, both of us being cadets and then roommates and being in this place together.. .1 thought the coincidence of it would lead to something more cathartic. Like I’d reconcile some shit from my past with him or through him. But nothing, like, profound happened.”

“The realization might come later, they keep saying that in groups. Some of the 203

realizations are retroactive and don’t spark for months or until years later,” she inhaled.

“Coincidences are God’s way of maintaining anonymity.”

“Cute. You get that off a t-shirt?”

“No. Actually it’s something I heard as a little girl,” she raised her eyebrows. “I believe it.”

“God is a fabrication, like the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy. It was invented by the haves to keep the have-nots in a state of complete obedience (I told you we weren’t done talking about The Man).”

“You’re young.”

“What? To understand the delusion I—”

“Just no.”

I leaned back in my chair, not really aware that I had been sitting forward. I calmed down a little, and was surprised that I was calming down, that I had gotten worked up in the first place. But I still needed to say just one more thing (I always needed to say just one more thing), “It’s brainwashing.”

She actually smiled, a legitimate sincere smile, “Yeah, well, my brain needs washing. That’s what I’m here for. Look. I don’t want to argue with you. You out of everyone here I don’t want to argue with, okay? We’re both in a state this morning for whatever reason. It’s been a long week, a really long week. Fuck, they’re all long weeks.

Let’s just be okay with one another here right now okay?” The sun was starting to peek over the San Jacinto mountains, as tandem pink chem-trails formed and dissolved high 204

above, “I’m glad you came today.”

20 Positive Affirmations About Myself

1. A positive affirmation about myself is that I like the sound of people laughing.

2. A positive affirmation about myself is that I’m a good writer.

3. A positive affirmation about myself is that I’m a good cook.

4. A positive affirmation about myself is that I’m able and willing to help people.

5. A positive affirmation about myself is thatl have love in my heart. I’m loving.

6. A positive affirmation about myself is that I work hard at things I care about.

7. A positive affirmation about myself is that I’m a good student.

8. A positive affirmation about myself is that I can draw pretty well.

9. A positive affirmation about myself is that I’m good at sex.

10. A positive affirmation about myself is that I know the difference between right and wrong.

11. A positive affirmation about myself is that I didn’t drink or use today.

12. A positive affirmation about myself is that I got up this morning with willingness to learn new things.

13. A positive affirmation about myself is that I miss people when they’re gone.

14. A positive affirmation about myself is that I know everything there is to know about

Star Wars. Everything.

15. A positive affirmation about myself is that I could run six minute miles when I was a cadet at the Academy, at elevation. 205

16. A positive affirmation about myself is that I always side with the underdog.

17. A positive affirmation about myself is that I can work.

18. A positive affirmation about myself is that I am not cruel.

19. A positive affirmation about myself is that I didn’t kill myself today.

11. A positive affirmation about myself is that I love the movie Cool Hand Luke.

Chili’s. We Go to Fucking Chili’s

It was Friday, the first Friday at the end of my first week. The weekends were mostly ours to do with as we chose, though we still had to attend meetings on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday morning was reserved for chores around the house. Other than those requirements, we were free to do as we pleased. I planned on spending that evening watching TV. I just didn’t want to think. I needed the box to think for me, to feed me with stimulus until it was time to take my medication and pass out.

I settled into the living room couch, sinking a few more inches than I expected, and repositioned myself as comfortably as possible. Tim was sprawled out on the other broken down sofa reading A Million Little Pieces. I asked if he would mind my turning on the TV. He did not.

Lost was being repeated that night from Wednesday’s episode, but it was a really strange version on the episode, with all these little pop-up bubbles giving behind the scenes information or pointing out clues that a casual viewer might miss. I didn’t really care about that stuff too much, the continuity of the series or the textured references to pop culture and spiritual dogma. The series had so many strange and beautiful moments 206

in it that were fascinating to me, people moments. In the midst of all this mystery on the island was this group of average people who were just caught up in it, each a little lost in their lives. Whether the clues that were popping up onscreen added up to anything (ten years later, I can report that they did not) in the larger narrative didn’t really matter to me.

I just liked that something was on the air that was like The Twilight Zone and The Outer

Limits. It was awesome.

“What’s this show about?” Tim steepled his book on his chest and was watching with me. “I’ve heard people talk about it.”

“Airplane crashes on a magical island. Weird shit ensues.”

“Any good?”

The doorbell rang. Tim looked more settled in with his feet up than I was so I hopped up to see who it was. Joni and a few ladies from sober living were bundled up in sweatshirts, denim, and sneakers; nothing fancy just the clothes that they brought to treatment. But their faces were meticulously done up: fuschia eye shadows and globby black eyelashes outlined their eyes and their lips burst forth from coats of foundation and concealer in bright reds and pinks. Their frosty breaths and cigarette smoke glowed in the porch-light.

“Hello. What are you doing here?” I asked.

Joni spoke for the group, “We’re here to take Tim, you, and anyone else who wants to go with us for a celebratory goodbye dinner.”

“Did the staff let you leave the center or did you escape?” 207

“Weekend liberty. I’m allowed out with supervision,” she gestured to the gals behind her. “You going to let us in or what?”

“Actually, I can’t. It’s after seven. There’s a no women curfew in effect until tomorrow morning. But if you want to hang out in the garage that would probably be okay. You can smoke in there,” I said. Of the four of them, two had cigarettes going. “I just have to let Fred know.”

“Yeah, cool, do that. And go get dressed, get Tim, and get anyone else who wants to go.”

“Yes ma’am. Where are we going?”

“Chili’s.”

My shoulders deflated, but she didn’t see my disappointment because the ladies were already drifting towards the open garage around the corner of the front walkway.

Chili’s was a leg in a trifecta of culinary evil that also included TGIFridays and

Applebees. These are restaurants you go to with people when you’re mad at them. They are populated by families sharing awkward meals, silently chewing in a public display of amnesty, by couples on mediocre dates, each looking past the shoulder of the other, by cheap businessmen telling their servers that they only need the drinks menu, or by starving people who literally have nowhere else to go. These restaurants are not happy places though the gaudy decor and bright lighting attempts to convince you otherwise.

Chili’s is the worst of the three. I mean, come on, what’s with the blooming onion? It’s this thistle monstrosity sitting on your plate that’s so poorly designed that when you try to 208

pull a leg from it you only get a sleeve of batter leaving the onion flaccid and unused. It’s a heart attack salad.

So I got Tim and told him there were some ladies to see him. I roused the rest of the house, starting with letting Fred know who was in our garage. I didn’t get dressed, I didn’t bother, I was going to vegg out on the couch. I might not even wear pants. I went out to the garage to wave them off and tell them to have a good time and not do anything that I wouldn’t do, etc. Tim, Johnny (who was on Team Restaurant), and the other ladies were apparently waiting for me. Joni gave me elevator eyes, annoyed. She turned to the group, beaming and chirping, and said, “You guys head over and get a table. We’ll be just behind you.”

And they did. She turned back to me, “You’re going.”

“But I don’t want to go,” I said.

“Put your shoes on.”

“But it’s Chili’s.”

“It’s the only restaurant within walking distance. Don’t be a snob.”

“This is going to be a thing if I don’t go, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Alright,” I sighed. It didn’t take me long to put on my shoes, grabs my smokes, and a coat. Fred reminded me to close up the big garage door and that curfew for everyone was at eleven. I locked up and we were walking in the chilly evening.

“Alright, so why is it so important that I go?” 209

“You need involvement, and I feel great, and it’s my first taste of freedom since

Christmas,” she put an arm around me. “It’ll be fun.”

There is No Better Phrase to Describe Us Than "A Motley Crew"

The restaurant staff pushed three table together right in the middle of the main dining room to accommodate our party of seven. We were myself, Joni, Tim, Johnny, and three other outpatients I haven’t mentioned yet, Catherine (fifty-two year old female who recently transitioned from male to female. Her drug of choice was beer, so much beer),

Lisa (thirty-four year old female, perpetually glued to Catherine’s hip. Her drug of choice was weed), and Lennie (seventeen year old female who was desperately in love with Tim.

Her drug of choice was cocaine, chased with vodka).

Three of us were on either side of the combined tables with Tim at the head. Our server came with waters and volunteered to clear the crayons away that they leave on the table for children. Chili’s, at least in Hemet, was one of those places that leaves crayons on the tables for kids to scribble on paper place-mats. We unanimously refused to let her take them from us. As smokers, we each needed something to fidget with to feel more at ease during the evening. By the time we left the restaurant, every place-mat was covered in red, blue, green, and orange illustrations of dicks, boobs, and any number of stick figure representations of sexual positions too filthy to have been included in the Karma

Sutra.

We made some awkward small talk while each of us scoured the menu looking for something to order. There was cheese on everything. Why was there cheese on 210

everything? Who eats this much cheese? Lisa ordered a virgin daiquiri and we all simultaneously without prompting began to mumble the words “trigger, trigger, trigger,” which promptly evolved into big smiles and louder chanting. The server didn’t understand and the rest of us ordered Arnold Palmers or ginger ale. After taking our orders and our menus, the server left and Joni spoke up, “Okay. Here are the rules for the game: everyone puts up ten fingers. We go around the table and take turns confessing to something we’ve done. If you have also done what someone else says, you put a finger down. When you’ve put all your fingers down, you’re out of the game. Last finger standing gets the chip basket.”

While the game sounded like it would be full of juicy confessional information, it was actually very stagnant and pretty boring. We were all in group therapy together and the stuff we already knew about one another, the shocking stuff anyway, was comprehensive. Lennie put a finger down for each of the first ten questions, probably to look cool in front of Tim. We all quietly accepted it and even teased her about how surprisingly devious she was rather than confront her about how it was impossible for her to have gotten laid at Hootie and the Blowfish concert. Lisa was eliminated next on confession fifteen “I joined the mile high club twice on the same flight with different partners.” She and Johnny shared a private toast at that, but I doubt it was the same flight.

Catherine and I were both eliminated on the same confession shortly afterwards regarding sexual partner quantity. The entire game more or less revolved around sex, or least each of us contributed to making sure that was the case. When Johnny confessed to having a 211

woman ask if she could take a dump on his chest and him allowing her to do so, Tim put down a finger and the entire table hooted and laughed. Shortly afterwards, a family of four, adult kids out with their parents, dressed in pastel shirts tucked into khakis, asked to be reseated elsewhere.

The food arrived and it was terrible.

As we were leaving, I caught Johnny giving the bar a forlorn look, a sense of longing on his face. He snapped out of it and we went into the night air, walking the few blocks back to our sober living houses, the women’s house being two blocks around the comer past ours. Joni would of course go back to IERC. As we approached the nearby liquor store, Johnny announced that he needed cigarettes and would catch up with us.

Joni linked her arm through his and said, “Oh, that’s a good idea, I need cigarettes too.” Which was a lie. She never needed cigarettes.

“I could use some more cigarettes too,” I said.

Johnny set his jaw and seemed on the brink of working another angle to separate himself for the herd, and then deeply exhaled, “Yeah, good. That’s good. Let’s go get cigarettes. I want to get the taste of Chili’s out of my mouth.”

“Me too,” I said. “Fuck that place. I mean seriously: fuck that place. It’s not okay to name a restaurant Chili’s if you can’t actually order spicy food.”

Up ahead Lennie squealed at something Tim said that we couldn’t hear. She reached up and squeezed his arm, a flirty squeeze. He would be gone on Sunday night and Lennie would be a mess, crying on the shoulders of her housemates all night. I did 212

not envy Catherine and Lisa.

The Week of Three Roommates

With Tim gone and back to his real life in San Diego, there was an open bed in my room. It’s a strange thing to listen to social workers and counsellors discuss space availability in terms of beds available. They don’t say whether there’s room in the groups or if the population of the facility/residence has a certain capacity; they determine availability in terms of beds. Beds as a unit of measurement.

The first roommate arrived on Sunday night within hours of Tim’s vacancy. He was a Pittsburg Steelers fan and was still talking about their big Superbowl win three weeks prior. He liked cheese pizza and smoking crack. Unfortunately, he liked smoking crack a little more than he liked cheese pizza and was gone by Monday night. It was too bad because he had a luxury SUV and it would have been nicer to commute to the store and around town in that automobile rather than Fred’s clunker.

The second roommate wore a red baseball cap and talked like a cowboy even though he hailed from Laguna Beach; bom, raised, and spend all five decades of his life in Orange County. He arrived on Tuesday and made it all the way to Thursday when someone reported to Fred that their mouthwash was gone. The empty plastic bottle, along with two other empty bottles — glass with the labels peeled off but looking suspiciously like the shape of the bottles that Smirnoff came in (because vodka follows mouthwash as morning follows the dawn) — were found stashed under his bed. Red Baseball Cap was bounced back to detox and eventually did move back into the house a week and a half 213

later.

The third roommate came in on Friday morning from the treatment center. He was in his fifties, gay, and had a prosthetic leg. He kept calling me his little duck. Apparently, he had his relapse planned before checking himself into treatment with a small sack of heroin powder stashed in his prosthetic. He was waiting for the right moment, once he was out, to enjoy the feast after so much famine. When I asked him why he didn’t ditch the baggie at check in he told me how just couldn’t part with it, it was some of the best heroin he’d ever purchased. And he wanted to wait until he was out anyway. I saw his point, good smack is good smack and being loaded in treatment sounded pretty fucking awful. They gave him the option of returning to detox but he declined.

After the bed opened up again on Saturday night, it was filled on Sunday morning by Glen. Here is a list of significant details about one of my roommates Glen:

1. My roommate for four and a half weeks before the siren call of crack called him out

into the night. He left the way he came, on a bicycle loaded down with his personal

belongings. A dense backpack on his back, a sleeping bag/roll tied off under the seat,

and four grocery bags full of clothes balanced on either end of the handlebars. I saw

Glen six months after he left in an Albertson’s parking lot. He didn’t recognize me and

asked for seven dollars so he could get a shower. I said, “Glen, it’s me from sober

living.” He focused on my face, recognized me, and said, “Oh, hey. So can I have

seven dollars for a shower?” I didn’t give him seven dollars, I only had a twenty. I got

a call from him less than a year later; he was clean, in Blythe, working at the treatment 214

center where he “finally got it” with other desperate cases (repeat relapsers).

2. Glen slept as often as he could for as long as he could. He claimed he could lucid

dream, but I thought he was just severely depressed (we all were). Afternoon sunlight

spilled through the blinds of our room’s western-facing window daily, baking our

blankets and pillows. Glen slept in the stuffy heat, naked except for his white briefs

and athletic tube socks, stained from washing with unmatched colors. I would find him

sleeping through Saturday, deflating breaths liberated through a wild sandy colored

mustache, the only hair on his completely bald head besides his eyebrows, also blonde.

I never saw him shave his head and I never saw stubble.

3. Home Depot Guy (I can’t remember this housemate’s name and he looked like the

Home Depot’s advertising mascot) collected sweetener packets from the hospital

cafeteria table and brought them home to use in his coffee. Coffee is sacred to a

recovering drunk or junkie, cigarettes too, and I was no exception. I ran out of sugar

mid-week when making a trip to the market was difficult because we returned home

late from the treatment center. The next morning, for my coffee, I raided Home

Depot’s sweetener supply. I took six packets, sweets helped curb cravings. The

missing packets were noticed. The following morning, I did it again (the stakes were

high, because coffee) leaving Home Depot with only one packet of sweetener. I was

absent when he found the lonely yellow envelope and was told that he flew into a rage

(flying into a rage was not uncommon for any of us) accusing Glen, and only Glen of

stealing the boosted Splenda. Glen, I was told, did not argue, deny, or in any way 215

contradict his accuser, and later that day, I was told, he collected his belongings and

left. I heard “he was a hopeless case anyway” more than once that weekend. I didn’t

said a word to anyone.

4. Glen was sweet on another outpatient, admitted for overdosing on rubbing alcohol and

perfume once the vodka was drained. His crush developed as such crushes in such

circumstances do: instantly to the point of obsession. One day, wondering if he ever

had a future with her, he constructed a ouija board out of scraps of paper and laid them

out on the kitchen table. Recruiting me, we both pushed a piece of paper around as

Glen asked questions about his lady love. The sincerity of his questions and reverence

towards the whole ordeal kept my opinions about ouija boards contained. I had never

used an ouija board before and Glen had to teach me how to push the paper cursor in

the middle towards other scraps of paper in a wide circle with numbers and letters

scribbled on them. I kept crumpling the cursor from pushing too hard at first, but got

the hang of it by pushing down towards the table and letting Glen steer. Even so, he

wasn’t getting the results he wanted, really any results at all. He suggested that it was

probably the layout of the scraps of paper or the quality of wood in the table and

definitely not a cosmic sign that he should abandon his quest. Not once did he imply

that my awkward participation could be at fault.

So Sunday morning, after signing the paperwork with Fred and dropping his stuff off in our room, Glen joined me in the garage. He offered me one of his cigarettes every time he lit a fresh one, an affectation that never went away over the weeks I knew him. 216

After about an hour of chatting and smoking and drinking coffee, he grinned at me and declared that he knew we would be great friends.

Letters

Joni stubbed out the rest of her clove and exhaled into the dawn air. The sky was violet, crimson, and magenta. It would rain later. Red sky at morning, sailor take warning.

“Let’s open up a special investigation firm. Like private eyes but specific to helping people make choices about their future,” I said.

“So I’ll be doing all the work,” Joni said.

“No, no, not at all. How about this: we help them make choices about their futures to help them resolve their karma?”

She lit another clove, “My letters to my youngest are being returned to sender.”

“Really?”

“No, I’m shitting you. Yes, really.”

“You know what I mean, you know what I mean,” I said. “So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t think there’s anything I can do.”

“There is. My mother did the same thing with my dad’s letters when I was really young. He collected them and saved them for me. When I went down to visit him years later, he gave me a shoebox full of sealed letters with my mom’s handwriting scribbled across each one,” I inhaled, remembering. “It made a huge difference. That discovery, the 217

record of being loved. When I was old enough.”

“You don’t talk much about your folks,” she said.

“You are correct,” I said.

We watch the rich red sky turn into a grey overcast morning.

“Storm’s coming,” I said.

“You are correct,” she said.

I Lose My New Friend

I was with everyone in the hospital cafeteria and we were just finishing lunch, settling into the gossip and bullshit portion of the meal. The early eaters and the fast eaters cleared out and second cups of coffee were purchased by those who remained. I was sitting next to Joni and witnessed what happened next.

It was Margo.

Like gazelles on the Serengeti, the heads of everyone at the table suddenly became very alert and instinctively turned to see Margo walking towards us. She assured everyone to keep eating, smiled even, and closed the distance to Joni. Of course, no one was assured or kept eating, there was a feeble attempt at small talk by some who wanted to pretend they weren’t listening as carefully as possible. Margo crouched beside Joni’s chair and spoke low, but not so low that everyone couldn’t hear (in hindsight, I think this might have been intentional so everyone there would know how committed to their privacy the center really was, regardless of what was about to happen). “There’s a police car parked outside the treatment center with officers looking for you. They have a 218

warrant for your arrest.”

“Jesus,” Joni said. “Did they mention what for?”

“Something to do with your youngest.”

“I love my son and have never hurt him,” she frowned. “Intentionally anyway.

What’re they saying I did?”

“They didn’t. Here’s the deal: we’re a confidential wing so there’s no way were giving up any information to them about you being a patient here. We’re protected from disclosing anything to them by law. You should stay here until they leave. Take an extra long lunch. I’ll be here with you and can go back and forth from here and the center to check on whether they’ve gone or if they’re waiting for you. Okay?”

“It’s Eric,” her voice lowered. “He must be getting something on file just to get it on file. He’s going for full custody of our son. My son—”

“I need you to be calm,” said Margo.

“I am calm,” she said. It was true, she was smooth ice. “This thing. This warrant.

Is it going to go away?”

“No.”

“Is it going to stick?”

“I don’t know that. You know that. But because you’re receiving medical treatment there’s a record of taking action to change you life. You got a good lawyer?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” 219

“Okay,” Joni took a deep breath and stood up. “The sooner it’s done with, the

sooner I’m back, and the sooner we get back to it, right?”

I was looking up at her, Margo too, “You don’t have to go, you can do this once you’re done here with us.”

“But I will have to deal with it eventually. You’ll have a bed waiting for me when

I get back?”

“I will make certain that we do,” Margo said.

Joni turned to me and smiled, resigned. She ran a hand through my hair, “Hang in there little brother.” She addressed everyone else at the table, “See you guys. Don’t get loaded until I see you again.” And she walked out of the cafeteria with Margo.

Later that day, Margo took me aside in the hallway and asked how I was doing. I was okay, a little worried for Joni but mostly impressed by what she did. Margo was impressed too, “That was some next level shit. I wouldn’t have done that. I wouldn’t have even waited them out till they were gone. I would have gotten the fuck out of Dodge as fast as I could get my ass moving. Goddamn. You come talk to me about it if you need to talk about it. Okay?”

I agreed that I would and went to the next group.