Iowa

Distracted that hot summer, you’d done the minimum to prepare for college in the fall. At the last minute you ended up accepting the lone invitation you’d been lucky enough to receive: from a miniscule liberal arts school in Mt. Vernon, Iowa. It had fewer students than your apartment had tenants. Sure, why not?

Arrived at Cornell you firmly believed it was the real you who showed up: the intellectual poet, able to drink and fuck all night and write about it the next day. Students and professors alike would be captivated by your artistic soul. You’d have a diverse peer group, one that would appreciate you in all your complicated glory.

You almost pulled it off.

Not surprisingly, you adored collegiate academics, taking to literature and philosophy like a fish to water. Math sucked but you’d always hated that subject anyway. Besides, you were going to be a successful writer. You’d pay an accountant to count all your money.

You wrote sordid poetry, reveling in how it provoked your less sophisticated classmates. You were a provocateur, like Bukowski. Now here was a role you could relish.

Despite coming from the big city, you enjoyed the smallness of the school as well as the town. In Mt. Vernon there were only two bars, one for the students and the other for locals, mostly farmers who wore their dirty tractor caps with pride. Having had ample experience navigating dichotomies, it was easy sliding from one base to the other. In many ways, you preferred the local atmosphere, basking in its authenticity, developing a growing appreciation for real women who worked for a living as opposed to the entitled girls who didn’t.

Alas, the good vibes would be short lived. Turns out many of the students were not as keen about your iconoclast personae as you were. Rather than changing your game, you glommed onto a pair of likeminded outsiders: a super rich Mexican named Ricardo and a fellow Chicagoan, Billy from the tough streets of Bridgeport.

In your eyes, you were The Three Amigos! The Three Musketeers! Others undoubtedly saw you as The Three Stooges. But so what? As a trio, you reveled in the virtue of your minority status. Applying it to captivate the virtue of others. The Three Amigos created a makeshift gambling empire, taking bets on horse races tallied from the newspaper. Drunk and high, The Three Musketeers stole a car in Iowa City and for good measure rolled it straight into a pond in the center of campus.

These acts endeared you to no one. But it was your seduction of a pretty coed that ultimately caused you the most grief. A tiny campus, word spread fast that you’d taken advantage of this poor girl. Soon, you were blackballed from parties. A footballer threatened you, claiming he’d kick your ass if he ever saw you with her again. Not an issue as women no longer wanted anything to do with you. In your dorm’s bathroom someone composed unflattering graffiti about you, highlighted by an equally demeaning portrait. You had long hippie hair, a sleazy mustache and an earing. Behind you was the skyline of Chicago, lest anyone be confused.

Clearly, you’d overstayed your welcome.

Next year, you would attend the University of Wisconsin in Madison, a far bigger, famously liberal, more edgy environment, where your kind, whatever that was, could flourish.

Juice

The summer after you finished high school. Having recently moved into a small apartment, stressed out by her own demons as well as yours, your mother indicated you find someplace else to live. She’d found evidence of your partying in the basement and could not take it anymore. Never mind you were still a minor in the eyes of the law. You had to go. Jesse was already camped at your father’s townhouse so that was not an option. Naturally, you chose living with a small time drug dealer you’d met in the park. You could not legally sign a lease but “Juice” had been more than happy to take $500 dollars under the table. It was a win-win. He’d even given you the flat’s lone bedroom, preferring the living room because “it was bigger.” Far from the threatening stereotype of a drug dealer, Juice was about as odd a character as you’d ever met. African American, he was also albino, which made him whiter than you. He had pink eyes. And he had lots of drugs, which in turn attracted lots of women.

Your mother met Juice only once but you will never forget her stunned expression, upon seeing this pink-skinned, black man whose apartment you now shared. Akin to a spit take, like something from the popular TV show, Laugh In or more appropriately, The Odd Couple. But mom was a bohemian and Juice was on his best behavior. The arrangement was allowed to continue. Not that she could have prevented it anyway. For the record, your father wasn’t made aware of your exotic roommate, only that you had one.

Those two and a half months became one long weekend. An array of females came to see Juice for pot or acid, often staying to tryst with you. Or they came specifically to fool around with you but later stayed to cop from Juice. Thus, you both shared a symbiotic relationship. Many things could have gone terribly wrong that summer, and arguably should have. Yet, from what you recalled it had been a total blast.

The Lizard King

Long, curly hair framing an impetuous, sensuous face; a chunky, beaded necklace clinging to his lean torso like the serpents he so often rhapsodized about, this was Jim Morrison in his prime. The photograph, taken by Joel Brodsky, captured the iconic rock star on one of the last days he would ever look this good, before degrading into a bloated, bushy alcoholic. A beautiful man who had it all, Morrison would be dead in four years. According to the photographer, Morrison was blind drunk during that photo shoot in 1967. You couldn’t tell from the pictures. He looked alive and virile. The camera had lied.

Not long ago, you discovered an old picture of yourself, shirtless playing table tennis in the backyard of your father’s first California house, in Santa Monica. Tanned and lean, with long brown hair, you were also wearing a beaded necklace. Was this your Jim Morrison moment, where you looked as good as you ever would? You remember not feeling that way. Like Morrison, you’d been a chubby kid. Those insecurities were still there even if the pounds weren’t. You recall being proud of your lean body but frightened by it as well. New skin or not, you trembled inside it. You looked cool but would never feel that way.

And just like your hero, you would become an alcoholic. You’d also written your share of bad poetry.

Goddess of burning urination

Clap Trap, A small-breasted nymph

Groveling for lust you succumbed

To pumping her indifferently

In this city of women

You lay dregs and drunken exceptions

Routine masturbations

Are cock and ball hand me downs

You’ve forgotten the rest, thankfully. It lies buried between sheaves of old papers somewhere in the garage. But the photograph brings it all back: summer break from college, visiting the old man in California. Looking at it now it’s tempting to think that this was the time of your life. Yet you remember that trip to LA as anything but.

The first night, borrowing your father’s car, you’d gone with your brother to Hamburger Hamlet, supposedly a cool place, according to your dad. You remember him telling you not to stay out late or bring home any chicks. He’d winked. You can still remember the envy in his eyes. Oh, to be young again, he said loudly as you paraded out the door.

But the evening was a dud. You were too young to order beer and you certainly didn’t pick up any women. You didn’t even speak with one. Entombed in a leather booth, you and Jesse tried valiantly to look like you had it going on. In a half hour you were done eating. It was painful. The sun hadn’t even set. You couldn’t go home now. Your dad would be so disappointed. The two of you decided to drive into Hollywood and check out the strip. You smoked a joint and turned up the music. But no amount of posturing could hide the fact that you were a couple of clueless teenagers in their dad’s Honda. You’d spent the rest of the evening killing time, waiting for it to be late enough to return home with a semblance of your dad’s fantasy intact.

to be continued

The Endless Friendless

Chasing friends was humiliating and losing them even worse. Yet, the pattern of loss was real. And you were the common denominator. Was Sarah right? Were you too sensitive? Are you an asshole? Your estranged brother seemed to think so. The letters from your father had been unequivocal.

It wasn’t just old friends. There were the people you had helped professionally. And now, when you needed a lifeline, they were ghosts. One man, call him James, lives only 5 miles from you. He runs an agency in San Francisco, whose parent company you’d gotten him the job at.  When his career had been faltering, as well as his marriage, you recruited him to Chicago and made him a partner. You saved him. James knows you need work and he knows what you can do. Yet, he’s not called you once.

Why?

You have beaten this horse to a pulp in therapy. You shared about it in AA. You discussed it with Sarah, your father, the man on the moon. Endured their subtle damning explanations, pointing at you.

People in the fellowship like you. What do they see that no one else does? Like most, you present the best version of yourself in AA. Was that it? Still, had your second best really been that bad? Enough to alienate Tom, Peter, David and James? Maybe your mother’s theory would explain this great mystery. You sure as hell couldn’t.

Your mom has been talking non-stop, about the harrowing and narrowing life of a 77-year-old woman, living alone. Brave yet often frightened, rarely lonely but leery of isolating, doing the best that she can. She’s thrilled that you called. She loves you. Goodbye.

Paragraphs from the Edge

ONE

“Hi sweetie!” your mom warbles. Abruptly, she asks you to hold on while she adjusts her hearing aids. A clattering of noises the dog yipping and she’s back. “Sorry about that!” Like always, her voice wavered between desperate and defiant. “These new hearing aids are supposed to fit my ears but they keep falling out.” She’s having a rough week, dealing with health issues, a sick dog, and the even sicker tenants at her assisted living facility. The theme was incontinence, to one degree or another. In the process of telling you about an old man who peed his pants in the elevator the call drops. Maybe she inadvertently pushed the wrong button. When she calls you back you do not ask her to repeat the story. You got the gist of it. Getting old sucked. Twenty-five years her junior and you were experiencing it for yourself. Bad eyes. Trick back. Chronic Indigestion. How long before either of you are pissing on elevators?

TWO

A chubby kid, you had no choice but to accept lesser status among your peers. It was the price of entry. Still, you once considered David your best friend. Sometimes he treated you shoddily. Other times he was nice. You were like his overweight girlfriend; he only hung out with you when no one else was around. You hated this injustice but you believed in the friendship. Underneath the bullshit you were certain David liked you. Came a morning you rapped on his door. You knew he was there. His bike was on the porch. But it was his mother who answered. Is Dave home, you asked? She replied he’d gone to the movies. It was a lie. You could hear him telling her to get rid of you. After that, things were never the same and the same hadn’t been that great in the first place.