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 Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing

Continued from previous post…

Even though it was only a few blocks from your father’s house, the next day you both drove his car to the coast. The Missing Persons song on the radio was accurate: Nobody walks in LA. Surely, the beach would provide a better experience than the previous evening. After all, this was sunny California! Girls would be everywhere. You’d have your pick. After trudging across a massive expanse of empty and hot sand, you dropped your towels a short distance from a group of teens playing volleyball. Their hair nearly white from the sun, they seemed like exotic creatures. You dared not approach. You lit up a joint, hoping maybe one of them would notice and invite you over. Didn’t happen. You decided to go for a swim, feeling foolish when you discovered how cold the ocean actually was. Nobody swam. Nobody walked. You didn’t understand California at all.

The whole trip was like that. You felt naïve and alone. Jesse’s up and down moods made it worse. You had hoped the West Coast was where you’d finally fit in, where everything would click. By the week’s end you couldn’t wait to go back to a frozen Chicago, the devil you knew.

You would return to LA many times, first to visit your father, and then for work, shooting commercials. Even then, with a great job and an expense account, a room at the Beverly Hills Hotel, you still felt inadequate and uncomfortable.

Refusing to accept such miserable feelings you chased the life you weren’t having. By then you were drinking and snorting cocaine. Many nights you sat in your opulent room, doing lines and watching pornographic movies on cable. Sometimes you’d go to the hotel bar and get loaded, fantasizing about the bombshells and starlets you would meet there. This too, never happened. Even the expensive hookers left you alone. What the hell were you doing so wrong?

The teen-dream photograph beguiles you today because everything about it belied the truth then. In fact, you had trouble sleeping. You got drunk and high almost every night, and hung out with a crowd your father had correctly labeled as losers. You looked like a winner in that photograph. Yet, under the studly veneer was rotting milquetoast.

Ironically, as a child it had been the other way around: you were a smart inquisitive kid trapped in a soft, unappealing body. Getting both aspects right has been a lifelong struggle. Unable to reconcile the two you began dividing yourself. You were either the smart kid who enjoyed learning or the defiant teenager who got high all the time. The chasm grew wider with each passing month. By senior year in high school, you were two different people, with distinct and offsetting personalities: the double life of an alcoholic.

This was not to say you didn’t enjoy life or were depressed. You did and you weren’t. But you would constantly appease one personality at the expense of the other. Neither side ever developed completely or properly.

Though you eventually would lose the weight that insecure fat kid was always close by, rendering you sensitive and shy. The vulnerability was not lost on your peers, who found myriad ways to exclude you or take advantage. When you finally started getting noticed by girls, nothing ever clicked. You were as scared to be with them as turned on. They could tell, you just knew it. Oh, how you wanted them to think you were cool. But you had no idea what they wanted from you.

You could hold your own in school, got good grades, impressing your teachers. But to your peers it was a different story. Your long hair and concert tee shirts said one thing your report cards another. The smart kids could smell the cigarettes and marijuana on your denim jacket and deemed you a stoner, seldom inviting you to their parties. God forbid you showed interest in your education to the burnouts.

And so it went. Desperately trying to belong to one group or the other, never finding your place in either. You were like one of those hapless characters in Dr. Seuss’s story, The Sneetches. Were you a star belly or a plain belly? You had no idea.

You were not allowed to attend high school graduation because you’d been caught wearing shorts on the last day of school. You weren’t the only senior to have defied this rule but were unique in telling the Principal to fuck off when he busted you. Deeply upset, your mother viewed the ban as further proof of your increasingly reckless behavior. For your father it came as a relief of sorts; he wouldn’t have to drop anything more important in order to attend.

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.