Brattleboro Stories
Book | Memoir | 30 hr read
A bipolar software engineer and writer cycles through seven inpatient stays at the Brattleboro Refuge psychiatric hospital after a suicide attempt, forming intense bonds with fellow patients (Faith, the oppositionally defiant bipolar woman who once jumped through a glass window onto a security guard; Spots, the self harming mental patient he falls for; Grace, the heroin addict with the perfect face and the handful of Skittles), while his psychiatrist Dr. Meggs delivers a skeleton diagram of his psyche that traces his humiliator/humiliated patterns back to potty training abuse; after discharge he ricochets through Portland (kicked out by his sister), Baton Rouge (three years with racist uncle Rusty and alcoholic aunt Susan in a house where the phrase "nigger pussy" is thrown around in casual conversation), and Nashville (manic episodes, police at the door, cops called by doctor emails), accumulating diagnoses from bipolar I to schizoaffective disorder and a tardive dyskinesia that leaves him horizontal 23 hours a day. Content warnings: suicide attempt, graphic suicidal ideation, psychiatric institutionalization, alcoholism and drug addiction, racial slurs, sexual content, childhood abuse, family dysfunction at industrial scale. "You should never bargain with the devil. But the thing is, she seems to be bargaining with me."
And to this day, the events that followed all seem like a distant dream. But the dream was real and was to change our lives forever. I kept asking Clarence why our world seemed to be collapsing and everything seemed so shitty. And he'd say, "That's the way it goes, but don't forget, it goes the other way too."
—Quentin Tarantino in True Romance
Brattleboro Vermont
1
That's the way life is. Usually, that's the way it goes, but every once in a while, it goes the other way too.
Things had been going a certain way for me since I was born—I had a neglectful, abusive father and I massively did not fit in with the kids from my school.
Then, around the tenth grade, things went worse—I had figured out how to survive the social experience of school, and how to thrive in terms of grades, but I hadn't figured out my own emotions..I broke down crying in computer class and when my teacher asked me why, I didn't know. Because everything is so meaningless? I sobbed. He told me I needed therapy.
And around the time I was twenty-seven, things got worse still—I stayed awake for one week, terminally high on my own mind, programming, watching The Truman Show on repeat, undulled by massive amounts of potato vodka, until, sleepless, my mind crashed, I called a suicide hotline, and cops came to my house and handcuffed me and drove me in their police cruiser to the psychiatric ward of a hospital on the outskirts of LA.
Doctors monitored me for a week, interviewed me for eight, ten hours, and finally told me they didn't think alcohol was the root of my problem. No. I had to stop drinking of course, but according to this panel of psychiatrists, the root of my problems was I had a major mental illness that reduces your lifespan by a full decade, that kills one in five people by suicide (that's twenty times the rate at which people kill themselves generally)..also, an illness that's incurable, and that this disease is why my entire adult life was fucked (my word) socially, financially, and at work. This disease, they told me, doubles my risk of dying early from "natural causes" (their words)—things like heart attacks and strokes and aneurysms and just about any other thing that can go wrong with your body and kill you—if you're bipolar all those things are twice as likely to happen to you. Not only this, but I'd have to take medicine the rest of my life to help manage this disorder.
They let me out of the hospital. I still thought I got taken there because I drank too much—if I hadn't been drinking I wouldn't have called the suicide hotline. It didn't occur to me that other people I knew drank at the same level and it never caused them to feel suicidal. But I stopped drinking, took my pills, went back to work, and forgot about everything those doctors said.
And forgetting that I had that illness, and running out of my mood stabilizer due to the insurance companies, my life sank. It sank like the Titanic, baby!—and for my sinking I had lots of guests and fancy tablecloths and cupcakes and candles and dancing and drinking and drugs, and it all sank way down to the bottom of the ocean.
Almost everyone at my sinking party died. I tried to kill myself—literally tried to take my own life.
I haven't worked a single day since that suicide attempt—I'm no longer a brilliant software developer, at least not practicing. I lost all but a couple of my friends. I destroyed relationships with just about everyone in my extended family. I haven't had a girlfriend in years, so I'm no longer a brilliant lover of women, either—at least not practicing. Everything normal and good and happy went away. And all that's left now are the relics that I'm putting in this book.
But even though usually that's the way it goes, in 2011—as Tarantino had promised me when I watched True Romance—sometimes things go the other way, too. And in the kernel of my suicidal catastrophic collapse of a life, from the tiniest spark of myself that was left among the ashes, slowly, slowly, over a period of years, things started going the other way for me, too.
I had never heard of Brattleboro Vermont, until I was living with my mom in Buttfuck Pennsylvania. It was ok at first, then we started getting in meaningless fights. I wrote three books at her house. I lost twenty pounds. I got over the stress of the latest in a decade-long series of jobs that to me were a cross between a monster truck race and every medieval torture device ever invented..rolled into one. The people working in these places may as well have been eating lysergic acid and watching Looney Tunes while they typed their computer programs. I was in LA; Ohio; New York; Tucson; Buttfuck PA. Then, instead of moving for a job, I decided on a change of location to help cure my ills.
In 2011, I move to Brattleboro Vermont, population 11,765 (plus one). I live there a year. This is what happens.
2
The first thing I saw was a Craigslist ad for a house in Vermont.
No, go back further.
I did a search on "places that are good to live for writers" and Burlington, Vermont came up. Something about the isolation and horrible weather and gobs of coffeehouses were supposed to make Burlington one of the top 10 best places for writers to live in the US.
But there was something before that.
I saw a filibuster in 2010 of lone Bernie Sanders, standing in the halls of congress, talking, and he was one of the first politicians who made sense to me in my life. So I was predisposed to like Vermont, to think Vermont was filled with people who made enough sense politically to elect this nut job.
Then I saw the list of best places for writers to live.
Then I researched Vermont.
Then I found Brattleboro. Even thought it only has eleven-thousand people in it, Brattleboro is the second-largest city in Vermont, after Burlington. The Wikipedia page said nudity was legal there until recently. The people were liberal. They had more bookstores per capita than any city in the country.
There was a picture of a waterfall right in the middle of town.
Craigslist revealed a listing that stood out for being the only one with pictures—and the pictures were just of a cracked and peeling porch—but I looked at that porch for hours and imagined myself sitting on it and getting a job in town and walking the less than a mile walk the ad promised in blistering cold into Brattleboro, working some meaningless job, going home, and loving every minute of it because I'd be in a place my family had zero access to me, where I could finally get some peace, where the harshness of the weather would keep random crime to a minimum. (If you've ever lived in a major city, you know the first nice day of spring always comes with a rash of homicides.) I wanted to be, like I imagined I was in Tucson, somewhere so out of the way that no one was likely to visit me—ever.
That was my first introduction to the house on high street—the Craigslist ad, the photos of the porch. It was the porch that really sold it for me. Walking along the side of some state highway into town to work my job, waiting tables at some restaurant, and walking the two blocks back in blistering Vermont winter cold—that's the kind of thing that gets me excited, living somewhere that requires more fortitude than found in the average person, hence the average person would be less frequently encountered.
I bookmarked the Craigslist ad with those pictures of the porch and looked at it five times a day, just feeling how right it felt, in my intuition, in my bones. It was right. I wrote the people in some Ft Collins, Colorado house I was considering and told them I'm was going with the house in Vermont.
I guess I ought to tell you that I had lived with my mother for a couple of years after—I hate the word breakdown—but after having gotten to a point in Tucson where I couldn't take another step forward. I had stopped drinking and eventually got eleven months sober at my mom's house, but I couldn't find a job back in Tucson, the IRS was taking money out of my account, my job had put me on half pay because they lost their funding, and I couldn't pay the rent.
The mail carrier had some problem delivering my mail to the mailbox in the lobby of my apartment—sometimes I let it get too full and instead of being persistent, the mail carrier stopped delivering mail to my box altogether, even when it was empty. It was my fault—I just don't think about things like checking mailboxes as a normal course of mind—and because of this I missed an unemployment application, which, if I had gotten it and filled it out, would have provided me enough money to pay my rent temporarily while I continued to look for a job in Tucson.
But I never got that mail until months later.
I was stuck: I couldn't go any further, I couldn't move another inch—I couldn't take care of myself. A mentally robust person, an adaptable person, would have bought some nice clothes and found a job as a waiter (as my mom suggested) but I had no experience with that and to me, to my mind, every idea was impossible. As I have done many times—as I have had to do because I am maladaptive—I gave up my home voluntarily and became someone else's guest..or, one time, I became homeless.
I explained all this to Mom over the phone while I was in Tucson and she was in Pennsylvania and I mentioned the idea of me coming to live with her.
"Well," she said, "that sounds like your only option."
I drive to Mom's house, changing a flat tire in the desert. The boot was underneath all my stuff which was packed neatly in the trunk, so I had to unpack all my possessions on the side of an Arizona highway, get the boot, hunt around for a tire iron—I think that's the first time I ever changed a tire.
It was Sunday so there was no place open to get new tires.
I stayed in some 100-person town in a little hotel for one night, fantasizing about working at the grocery store and living in my car while I saved money to rent a room in one of the family houses there. But the next morning I bought four new tires and zipped through LA to empty my safe deposit box, which I had stopped paying for. I tried to sleep in the parking lot of a casino in Vegas but it was too bright and I felt too exposed. I drove all night into Utah and saw scenery that blew away even New Mexico. I got out of my car and read a plaque about settlers trying to live in this river valley and even they had found it too hard, so they moved on.
I'll never forget the sign at the trailhead of that overlook in Utah with its text that clearly suggested one "STAY ON DESIGNATED PATH." A human being, one of the most intrepid explorers in the known catalogue of living creatures, standing before a valley of infinity beauty, with some hardly visible path cut into it, and a sign that suggests that when you walk, you walk in this tiiiiiiny little footpath cut into the vastness. I understand it from a conservationist point of view—and if that's how you're viewing this sign, I suggest you switch over to my analogy because it's a lot more fun. A human being..who stays on the designated path..is dead.
Please look at that picture. If the absurdity is not clear to you, stop reading now. This book is not for you. I'm serious. Go watch Chopped! or HSN or something.
On my way across the country, I sleep in the back seat of my car at rest stops and become quite comfortable with it. The first few nights I fear getting killed by assholes but several nights in I feel safe as a baby in her crib.
My axles, which had been a problem since between San Diego and Los Angeles, are now so bad they're lurching me into the next lane as I drive outside of Cleveland. So far I haven't lurched into another car, but once the lurching is so severe that I can't control my vehicle I pull onto the shoulder and call a tow truck. A state trooper stops, uses the opportunity to run my plates, and, finding nothing, makes himself completely useless by small talking with me about where I'm going and where I'm coming from. I know, sitting between Bub on one side and Bob on the other side of the tow truck cab, that once I pay for the tow I won't have enough money to pay for whatever is wrong with my car. They tow me to a garage—a guy they say is the best in the city. I call my sister Joanne in New York and she wires me the money. I pick it up in a convenience store filled with liquor—I mean not just a little liquor..this store is like the Cadillac of liquor stores—but with four months sober I didn't drink, I used the money to fix my axles and drove the next day to Mom's house.
The first two months I was at Mom's house I slept and watched cable. Mom said I was in bad shape. I was. I had so much anger built up at the last twelve years of my life, which I viewed as wasted time doing software for criminal corporations and getting nothing of substance in return, culminating in my last job, where I had the most freedom and did some of my most interesting work, but for a company that fell apart due to a friendly but fraudulent boss.
My mom suggested I write a novel. I had written one seven years before but I took her suggestion and wrote a character that on the outside was an eleventh-grade girl with a highly stylized tongue and a hatred for her life and classmates, who on the inside was a thirty-one year old, bitter, suicidal, murderously hateful ex-computer programmer who had a lot to vent about how jaw-droppingly stupid had been the corporations he had worked for and the people they were made of. I had a lot of anger right at my fingertips and I funneled it into Things Said in Dreams.
I wrote three books while I lived with Mom. After I wrote the second, a story about camp counselors Camp Lake, I didn't think I had any more books in me, so I moved to New York to be homeless. I packed a bag and abandoned my car in a Manhattan parking garage. My plan was to find a homeless shelter to live in while I found a job—within a year I would be programming computers again. That's not what happened. What happened is that within an hour of being in New York, I relapsed on 11 months clean (by drinking) then found myself doing subpar coke in Washington Square Park, then crying uncontrollably into a payphone to Joanne, who rescued me again, coming to the payphone where I was still bawling, yelling at people who passed by, just: broke down. Joanne let me sleep on her floor, took me for a nice picnic lunch in Central Park, and I drove back to Mom's house.
Oh yeah Joanne had to give me money to get my car out of the parking garage because I spent it all on coke.
Why did my mom allow me to attempt this? Let her son move to New York with the intention of being homeless? Does that sound like a safe and reasonable plan to you? Maybe when your flailing adult son is living with you, different kinds of plans start sounding reasonable. She took me back in.
I applied to Cornell's architecture program because I liked the architect character in Chris Nolan's Inception. The ridiculous mismatch in my admissions essay and general thinking about architecture and what Cornell's typical student is and wants and what role Cornell plays in that was like the difference between an ant and an elephant.
This is me in the architecture building, talking with one of their professors:
"I think of architecture as interface, especially visible in a kitchen or a bathroom. The environment specifies buttons you can push, and those buttons change your reality. People are a species who massively change their environment. We don't live in forests anymore, even though our houses may be in forests. We are a species who looks around us, at sticks and snow and beetles and snakes and says: I'd like to have a jacuzzi right there."
This architecture professor sets his pen on the table.
"Let me tell you something about the average Cornell architecture freshman. They just got out of high school. What they want to do is build a skyscraper—that is their goal in life. They want to design a skyscraper. For the eighteen-year-old mind who comes in here, that's what they're looking forward to. This is a five-year program. They spend five years in that wood shop downstairs building models. That's what the program is. And at the end of that five years..maybe..if they're lucky, they get an entry-level position at a New York firm. But I don't think you would be happy with an entry-level position at a New York architectural firm, no matter how prestigious."
"I would never take such a position."
"Right. I just think there's a quicker or a more direct route for you to take to get to where you want to go."
The professor leans in.
"And these kids—who want to build a skyscraper?—they're never going to."
"No?"
"No. Their whole lives will be spent in that New York architectural firm wishing they were the one building the skyscraper, but for almost all of them, it will never be the case. But it's important for them to believe that they will..or else they would never finish the program, they would never work in the company, etc."
"So you take kids who want to build skyscrapers and allow them to labor under the lie that they're going to get to do that once they get this degree when actually that is nowhere near the truth."
"Right."
"I think this meeting is over."
Lol. Fucking Cornell. That's almost the exact conversation I had with this guy and that's how the system works, kiddies, in a lot of professions.
3
I got some of my spirit back after my New York failure and my sobriety failure and my failure to find a program at Cornell where I could use my skill and intelligence to learn to do something useful. And eventually I set up my unemployment (which I could have had going for a long time if I had just done the paperwork) and I researched cities that would be good for writers.
And I found Brattleboro.
And I found those pictures of that porch on the house on High Street.
I email the contact on Craigslist and someone rather amazing writes back, someone named Tooler. She was pretty concerned that I was on the same side or at least sympathetic to her side of the Israel-Palestine issue. I assured her I was, and we left other details by the wayside.
I scheduled a trip to meet Tooler and her partner.
From New York I take The Vermonter, which I'd always wanted to take because I mean it's "The Vermonter"—it's gotta have like the coolest train name ever. Just like QT in Four Rooms, "When you're drinking champagne, you say you're drinking champagne. When you're drinking Cristal, you say you're drinking fucking Cristal." Well when you're on a train, you can say you're riding a train, but when you're on The Vermonter, you say you're riding the fucking Vermonter. Anyone can take some commuter train to Jersey—only certain people ride The Vermonter.
Here's what I see out the window: the trains and car lots of New York, houses, open fields, the tall white building with gold towers looking like something from another century, then increasingly snowy, half-land half-water fields, then it gets dark, and there is more and more darkness between smaller settlements. Most people get off the train, then I make my Brattleboro.txt journal entry—riding and writing on the Vermonter—Amtrak's train, as they say, "to Vermont and points north."
Here's what I write:
December 15, 2010, 4:52pm
I'm in a new place now, seeing land I've never seen. On the train to Brattleboro Vermont. Reminded that the past is only stories we tell ourselves. Ready to embrace my life, ready to not be poor, ready for my books to sell. Ready to walk, live, meet, love, explore. Ready to let myself let go of the past, of what I might remember, of the stories I and we have told ourselves about family and country and company and success and failure and school and everything we've known. Ready to feel there is great time and space before me, to know that my life will be long, that I am young, and will be now for a while! That every time I thought, and think, that this has been the end, I have been wrong. Ready to forget the past and carry only a very small set of packages forward, just a few people, just a few abilities, just a few expectations—simple ones. To be itinerate, to fall in love, to fall in love with the people I meet and the work that I do. To allow myself to heal and move on, and most of the healing has already happened. To let myself grow healthy physically, to love company, to allow my beauty to be, to do what I want for my own sake. Learn one thing about life every day, not more, not less (usually). Trust, enjoy, simplicity. Stop trying to know the meaning behind, stop being afraid, stop worrying, stop holding back, stop trying to pretend something other than what is (when it comes to the truth). Forgive myself for everything that has come before, bless myself with oblivion..quiet, distance, presence, simplicity of now. I don't need to tell anyone anything I don't want..don't even have to tell myself anything I don't want, about the past especially. I am an adult, I am alive, I am ok. Bless myself, in this moment, on a stopped train in Massachusetts, with the freedom to live in the now, to forget about the past, to feel ok and present and to love myself and love the moment as if I were the lightest being in the world, new, owing nothing in the way of karma, owing nothing to anyone's ideas of me, including my own. I don't have to explain anything, I don't have to remember anything, I don't have to delve into anything, I don't have to return to anything. Change, oblivion, peace. And then I allow myself the ability to actually love. Change, oblivion, peace. And then I allow myself the ability to love. I am new, here now, nothing need have come before.
And then the conductor is announcing Brattleboro as our next stop, and saying to please move to the front of the car, people—front of the car. I close my MacBook and put it in my bag. All I'm traveling with is a backpack. My hat, my gloves, my coat—all insufficient for the cold that sinks into me as I step off the train.
I meet Tooler and Issa at the house on High Street. Tarps are everywhere, ladders.
"Abby's still painting," Tooler says, pushing out her hand, which I shake. "This is Issa."
Issa shakes my hand.
Tooler puts her hands on her hips and looks around.
"We don't really like the colors..do you?"
I look at the living room, walk into the kitchen.
"No," I say. "Is she colorblind?"
Issa cracks up.
"I mean these colors are like..almost..but not quite..right," I say. "Like that salmon color..if it was the deep orange color in the girl's bedroom in American Beauty..have you seen that movie?"
"Yes but I don't remember that color..but I know what you mean. Issa and I were thinking of going into town and getting a beer, do you want to come with us?"
"Yes," I nod. Yes. I've got a good feeling about these two right away.
We sit at the only table in this bar in downtown Brattleboro. And we drove—even though it was only two blocks away—Tooler wasn't about to stay in that cold any longer than she had to. Her car was a Subaru station wagon, old as sin, fucking..cassette tapes everywhere..a giant hookah apparatus.
"I only smoke shisha out of here so if the cops ever stop me there's no pot residue. Do you smoke shisha?"
"I never have, but I'd love to try!"
Issa squeals, "We have ourselves a shisha virgin!"
"I just think," Tooler says, "driving..and smoking shisha at the same time..is—"
"The height of luxury?" I say.
And she says, "Basically, yes."
So we're at this place called I think the City Cafe, at a table in the window and we all order different sandwiches and trade them around so everyone gets a taste. We talk about the Israel-Palestine conflict most of the meal and they seem satisfied that I am sufficiently informed on the subject. The girls drink beer. I drink pineapple juice—such a transparent sign of an alcoholic: I won't drink around you at first, because then you'll know I'm an alcoholic. But you can't hide it: the inability to drink one drink and stop is just as sure a sign.
"So that's a nice haircut," Tooler says, of the strands of hair that are sticking out of this scarf/hat thing that I fashioned on the walk to the house.
"It's more of a lack of a haircut," I say. "I haven't had a haircut in like..years?"
Anyway, she reassures me she likes it.
I start to loosen up.
These are not people who are gonna judge me for looking like an animal who just stepped out of the motherfuckin' bush.
"So is Zha your real name?"
"It's my legal name. I changed it from Matthew Temple to Inhaesio Zha about ten years ago."
"Cool. Tooler is also not my original name."
"Nice, nice. Are you gonna tell me what your other name was?"
"Maybe when—or if—we get to know each other better."
But it was a when. It was already a when. I could tell they liked me and I knew I liked them. Everything from here on out was formality.
We laughed.
They each had a second beer.
One day, months into the future, I saw Tooler's legal name on a piece of mail but I forgot it almost instantly—she was always Tooler to me.
After dinner we stand awkwardly on the street saying our goodbyes and talking about the house, guardedly, because they haven't made their decision, but it looks good for me. They tell me they met with someone else but didn't like him—got a bad feeling. Then we all admit it's too cold to be standing here talking and we wave goodbye and Tooler and Issa go their way, back to paint the house, and I go mine, back to the Latchis Hotel.
I see the bar below the hotel, see it crowded with women and men, and there's an empty seat at the end of the bar. A brown-haired female bartender even sees me standing in the cold and holds out a hand to the seat, inviting me in. But I smile and wave and walk the other way. I had been mostly sober for eighteen months and I didn't want to start drinking again so I waved and smiled at the bartender's invitation and walked away.
I crossed over Main Street, down a hill, across the railroad tracks, and walked halfway across a bridge connecting Vermont to New Hampshire. My hiking mountain—one I had seen on the map and gotten excited about—this mountain was in New Hampshire, just across this bride. I stopped halfway across and put my hands in my pockets. Up there, it was the kind of cold that burns the skin. Fast wind across the path of the river, blowing right through me, through every article of clothing I was wearing. I'm standing on the bridge reflecting and a guy walks by.
"Is there a bar up here, I think it's called the Red Room."
"I have no idea," I say. "This is as far as I've been in that direction."
It was like Gatsby, even though I couldn't give him directions, now "I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood." I was no longer the newest person in Brattleboro. The difference, of course, is that I had no idea where this bridge would take him. He continued on, already drunk, lit with spirits and the illusion of warmth they carried. I don't know how long he walked, but from what I learned once I moved to Brattleboro, it was a long walk that way before you got to anything at all, and what you got to was a GameStop and a Walmart—there was no bar up there.
4
The next day I tried to leave Brattleboro and go back to my mom's house. At the tiny Amtrak ticket counter I spoke with a stationmaster.
"I'd like to buy a ticket to Stamford."
"Do you have a reservation?"
"What do you mean, a reservation?"
"You need a reservation."
"I never needed a reservation before. In New York when I buy a ticket I just buy the ticket and that's it. No reservation."
"Well that's New York. This is Brattleboro Vermont."
I smile.
"What do I need to do to get a reservation."
He sets this old-style phone on the sill between us."
"You can call 'em. But you ain't gonna get a reservation."
"Well, should I call them, then, or not?"
"I mean, you can try. You might get one."
"Do you have the phone number?"
He hands me a card with the number on it.
No luck. I call them, but I can't get a reservation. See, in New York, this train might have 10 cars on it..plenty of seats for everyone. But by the time the train gets to Vermont and points north, it has two cars..not enough seats for everyone. So you need a reservation and a ticket. I put up with some stereotypical northeast gruffness from the telephone operator and made a reservation for the next day. My ticket was still good. And now I'm stuck another day in Brattleboro. With limited cash. A hotel that made me leave a hundred dollar deposit because I wasn't paying with a credit card. I only brought so much cash with me so I did some quick figuring in my head and figured out that I'd be ok. I could make it to tomorrow morning..and then I'd have the hundred dollar deposit so I'd have, as my sister says, "a little walking around money."
"So when did this whole reservation thing get started?" I ask the stationmaster as he's shitting his chihuahua in the Amtrak parking lot. "You used to be able to just buy a ticket and get on a train."
"If you want to know what it really is," this guy told me, "it's some post-9/11 bullshit, Department of Homeland Security, you know, terrorists on trains..it's just a bunch of bullshit. Know that no-fly list?"
"Yeah."
"They got a no-train list, too, it's just so low key it doesn't make the news. That reservation..that's just a chance for the Secret Service to check up on your social media accounts and make sure you ain't havin' no rooftop parties with Mohammad Al Jazoo, you know what I'm saying?"
He's laughing.
"What's your dog's name?"
"Oh this is Empress—'cause she my little empress."
I pet his dog and walk off.
I guess I'm naive, but I didn't think Amtrak and the Secret Service were checking my social media accounts when I made a reservation to ride a train. I went with the theory that this was a small town with a small train and it filled up quickly because there was high demand for the seats. Amtrak's reservation system had nothing to do with 9/11 or The Patriot Act. It was just, you know, supply and demand. But I'm probably wrong.
I rented my room for a second night at the Latchis hotel.
I got a haircut—one of the best haircuts of my life. This woman at a ten-dollar Genericuts made me look like a skater from Orange County—everything but the tan. I looked way cooler than I actually am.
Feeling good, go back to my room and use my MacBook and the hotel's internet to work at getting an online job. I'm in chatrooms and some collaborative programming environment showing off my stuff but the former/marginally famous CEO (of a domain name you would have heard of) turns out to be fraudulent..just like the last remote supposed superstar CEO I worked for at Mom's house. I get hooked up with this guy who talks the talk and makes it sound like we're going to take over the universe together as father and son. Then I look at the code. It's unworkably messy—worse than even what I'd seen at Mead Research. I had to test an audio signal coming out of a speaker at his house in Nevada, while I was in Pennsylvania unable to hear what I was testing. I finally quit, he never paid me..just another in a long string of CEOs and businesses that were not exactly above board, but not quite criminal enough to get noticed by the law. No one cares about billing fraud or payroll fraud or not paying employees anyway..they're just part of business. Anyway this interview for a purportedly sweet software job with this millionaire boss over chatrooms in my hotel room went as usual with these sorts of things. The guy wants me to do the work for free..saying he'll have a bunch of guys do it, submit their work, and he'll pay whoever does the best job. No thank you. He probably never pays anyone.
I figured doing programming work for free was more expensive, net-net, than drinking my ass off, so I went downstairs to the bar next to the Latchis.
I sit on a stool at the bar.
(Let's just cut forward about four hours.)
There's a guy named Will sitting next to me.
We're talking about smoking crack.
Will is saying things like, "You have to smoke crack every once in a while."
And I say, "But then stop."
And Will and I would look at each other and laugh and point at each other.
You can't smoke crack all the time. (Then you're a crackhead.)
But you have to smoke crack from time to time.
This was the essence of our conversation.
The bartender was looking at us and shaking his head.
"You want a cigarette?"
"Yeah."
So me and my new friend Will, the artist's assistant, go outside in sub-arctic freezing fucking cold temperatures. He assembles rollies in fingerless gloves, sharing with me while we each catalogue all the drugs we've done and how much each one fucked up our lives, with a special emphasis of respect for this last aspect.
Some hot girls bum rollies from Will.
They're like fifteen.
We keep them at a distance. We talk to them, but we keep our little space separate from their little space. Contrary to the shit guys talk, every thirteen-to-fifteen girl is not out on the town scouring the sidewalks for old men to fuck. But contrary to that, you do have your fifteens who wanna get fucked and they don't care if you're thirty-three or thirty-eight. Will and I stayed away from those girls.
But we looked and we talked shit, and they talked it right back, about going up to my hotel room and could we get them some alcohol and they were all dressed for Florida—fishnets and short-sleeved shirts and Will and I were like these girls must be from out of town. But that's not it—girls dress like that in any weather just to get your attention. It's a life-threatening occupation.
I tell Will about this jackmonkey who was refusing to hire me earlier because I didn't know Ruby and I was like: Did you read my résumé? It doesn't say Ruby anywhere on there.
"The guy's like: It doesn't make much sense for you to lead our Ruby team if you've never done Ruby before. And I'm like: Read my fucking résumé. I'm not a Ruby programmer. I'm not about to become a Ruby programmer. And the guy's like well you're the most experienced developer in my résumé pile so I want you to lead this Ruby team. And I'm like: Read my lips. No new taxes. I'm not learning Ruby for you. Fuck Ruby. There's too many programming languages now anyway."
"Ready for a drink?"
"Yeah."
And that was pretty much our night. Drinks. Crack. Cigarettes. Dope-looking fifteen year olds in miniskirts hanging by the door to a bar they can't get inside. Will had a certain night he stopped in Brattleboro on the way home, so for a while I'd always meet him for drinks on that night.
"So where are you girls from?"
"We're just passing through."
"Anyway tell me about the bear."
"Right," Will says, flicking this sparking rollie cigarette butt across the street. "That's why I have the gun. My wife and I drove here from fuckin' California, man. Now our house is—up that mountain—"
Will is panting telling me the story. The air is so cold it's hard to breathe.
"So we're at the end of a very end of a..very very end of a street..it's not even a street..it's just a dirt road..it's not even really a road..and one night I come out on the porch to smoke and there's this bear on the porch."
"Black or brown."
"Black. There's no brown bears around here."
"So wha'd you do?"
"After I shit myself?"
"Did you have your gun?"
"No I hadn't bought the gun yet. I bought it after this incident. So I look at this bear..and he looks at me..and we're both like: this could be a situation here. The screen door was still open. I backed the fuck up as slowly as humanly fuckingly possible and I pulled the screen door. Then I pushed the wood door. And I locked that fucking shit and went back to bed!"
"Have you seen him again?"
"No, I bought that stupid gun and that is the first and last time I have seen a bear in Vermont."
"He prob'ly knows you bought the gun."
Will laughed.
"One more drink?"
"Sure," I say.
He's the one that's gotta drive.
I had read somewhere that David Mamet lives in Vermont, I assume when he's not in California, and I remember this stately picture of him sitting in an old house, at a wooden table, smoking tobacco from a pipe. I imagined that David Mamet and Will were neighbors, and that Will's bear showed up on Mamet's porch from time to time.
We drink, Will leaves, and I'm sitting at the bar pulling out a crumpled piece of paper from my pocket and flattening it. It says:
(vt trip)
$500
11:33 am
51 new york >> brattleboro
88 latchis hotel >> (802) 254-6300 wed
- 100 deposit
$40 dinner
$60 brattleboro >> stamford 12:31 >> 5:28
$700
Ross .. apartment
Bobby .. xx
2:00
he's the guy I have the application for
Will
[email redacted]
The next morning I got sushi as a special meal—talking with the server about dance since my sister's a dancer..she knows the exact train I'm catching and the exact time it comes without me ever saying a word..she can just see it on me.
"The 12:31?" (Smile.) "Yeah. Don't worry, your order'll be ready on time."
She laughs.
I do the same thing.
"I mean you gotta have train food. And the craft cart—it's a joke, right?"
"No," she says, "I do the same as you, get a box of spicy salmon or maybe a rainbow roll and I sit by the window—do you sit by the window?"
"Always. Planes too."
"Good, or else we we gonna have to stop this conversation."
"Yeah, you just sit there and watch Vermont go by and eat your sushi and then before you know it, you're in a different world."
"You like New York?" she says.
"Love it."
"Me too."
"You gotta have both, don't you?"
"I mean for a full person—which I can tell you are—you gotta have the city..but you gotta have the mountains too."
I smiled, and I nodded (the genuine kind) and I thought, I could marry this girl. I mean how high of a bar are you gonna set for yourself? Someone who's pretty and can carry on a conversation with a stranger, someone who sits by the window and loves the skyscrapers of Manhattan as well as she loves the mountains of Vermont?—That's good enough for me. I could be happy with that. And for the few minutes we shared before I left her for the Amtrak station, I was.
5
I went back to Bowmanstown, where I'd been living with my mom. We drove to Philadelphia and met up with my sister Joanne. On the drive to Philly, Mom thought she saw a UFO in 4m sky. It looked like a star to me but we later found out it was Saturn, or some planet, that had come close to the Earth that weekend.
The three of us flew to New Orleans, where we met with my little sister Leona, and I got to see her holding her baby, my nephew Daniel (I'm an uncle!!) for the first time. That's a beautiful sight, friends, seeing your baby sister holding her baby boy. It kind of gives you an idea of one of the things that's going on down here on this planet.
Then we went through a grueling process of Leona lecturing the car rental company on having the wrong kind of car set—she had called ahead and requested a safer model of car seat for her baby. I can't argue with that. But it did involve hours us of sitting in the car rental parking lot having occasional conversations with employees who basically told us it wasn't going to happen. My littlest sister Leona got mad at them for not doing their jobs (and you don't want Leona to to get mad at you—she was diagnosed bipolar because when she took prescribed antidepressants she went ballistic (she went manic) and going manic when you take antidepressants is an automatic diagnosis of bipolar disorder, because people who don't have bipolar disorder don't get high or manic off SSRIs, they just get less depressed). Anyway you don't want Leona to get mad at you because she will tell you off in a very cruel and creative style only shared by my mother. And by me.
Also, that night, we did this thing that is sort of a family tradition, which is to get caught up in some intellectual or logistical problem and forget to eat, thus lowering all of our blood sugars and making us all less able to solve the problem we are working on—in this case, locating a safer car seat for Daniel. I think ultimately Leona just sat in the back seat and held Daniel rather than use the inferior car seat. Totally less safe than using even the sucky car seat, but none of us questioned her. It's her kid, she's the mother, and, yes, she gets to set the rules.
We drove for at least forty-five minutes trying to find an acceptable restaurant. Mom was driving. Joanne in the front passenger seat, me and Leona and Daniel in the back.
I was just looking at this child, this infant, and he was so beautiful—I was easily caught up in the miracle of this new life who was related to me and would someday talk to me..it's just overwhelming.
When we did find a restaurant that fit all current diets (gluten free, meat only, omnivorous, and others), the restaurant was a disaster. The waitress spilled a whole pitcher of water on our table. Daniel was thrashing around and knocked over my pasta (which I had added extra chicken and other extra ingredients to).
As the waitress was cleaning that up, she kept saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," and we felt bad for her and said, "It's ok, don't worry about it," and then she left and like an hour passed and they never brought me another dinner. I finally asked and the waitress said she thought when we were saying, "It's ok," that we meant Don't bother making another one. I went without dinner and they gave us a coupon for a free entree for the our next visit—by that time the kitchen was closed. I took the coupon for a free entree from a restaurant that I knew we would never be coming back to and I was like: This is going to be a hell of a family get together.
We stood in the parking lot for half an hour while Leona tried to get Daniel to stop crying before we got into the car. Mom wanted to get to Baton Rouge as soon as possible so that everyone could get to sleep, and she said she didn't mind us being in the car with Daniel crying. Joanne agreed. I agreed. But Leona insisted on getting him quiet before we got into the car.
Leona, I love you, but you should be aware that you are a very bossy person, not really a team player, more of a drill sergeant. But hey, I respect what a mother wants to do with her child. It doesn't have to make sense to me, you are the expert on how you're going to treat your child. And Leona, like us all, now, years later, as you approach thirty, you're cooling off.
We drove to Baton Rouge, said hi and goodnight to my aunt Susan, and all went to our respective rooms.
For days I sat around my grandmother's house, occasionally visiting with my grandmother, aunt Susan, uncle Bob, my immediate family, and a lot of the time I sat on the back porch looking up through the lattice at the sky. Even though it was bone cold in Brattleboro, it was warm in Baton Rouge. We didn't do much. Watched movies, ate out, and everyone sat around and marveled at the baby Daniel!! We each held him. A week later Joanne, Mom, and I were back in Bowmanstown. Leona and Daniel were back in Portland. And my grandmother, aunt, and uncle were left with their quiet house once again.
When I was sitting on that back porch in Baton Rouge, one of my favorite places at my grandmother's house, I thought about my creative life and what I wanted to do. And, as is typical of me, I wrote down my thoughts.
Things I want to do in my life.
(Make worlds, yes; we've settled on that general paradigm)
I want to make a book that's so sick in the way that it draws you in, in the way it affects you. Probably I will have to do this several times, to satisfy myself that it's done. So at each point, make the most diabolic one I can, the most beautiful one, the strangest one, the most horrible one.
I want to make a game that people give up their lives to play. A game that's so intoxicating, that creates such bliss in the players, that they spend their whole lives playing, and have made a good trade.
Maybe start with a diabolical RPG
Then make ^%
That's what I want..ridiculous is an adjective I use sometimes, but right now the appropriate word I think is "sick". I want to make stuff that when you read it, when you play it, when you go into it, it's—and not in a moral way, not in a values-oriented way, but in the sense of its construction, I want to make stuff that is very far down [up/along] the scale of "what the fuck"..stuff that is sick.
That was me in BR, spinning out sick, ridiculous fantasies about my future, writing it all down for you to decipher decades later.
And this was me in BR, escaping the family, needing a minute of my own, borrowing a vehicle and driving to the closest bar to the house. There's a bar right there, a two-minute drive from where my grandmother lives. I go into the darkness, buy a pack of cigarettes, and drink gin and tonics until my alibi of finding some taco dinner won't hold up.
I try to drive back to the house and find it's much more difficult than driving to the bar. I drive forever in both directions on the main street, turn around, repeat, and I finally find it, the side street that leads to my grandmother's house..and the street is right next to the bar I was drinking in, Ms. G's. I mean right there. I didn't have to go anywhere.
This is a good illustration of family dysfunction, trivial though it is. Everyone in my family thinks that bar is called Mr G's, even though they've lived three blocks from it for fifty years and it has a huge sign over the door that says Ms. G's. My aunt Susan and I have even drank there together, walked under the sign that says Ms. G's to go into the bar and walked under it again to go out. And yet, if I refer to that bar in conversation, and I call it Ms. G's, someone in my family will correct me. "You mean Mr. G's?"
I used to correct them and say, "Please, look, the next you drive past that shopping center, and see what the sign above the door says."
But no one feels the need to do that. They stand their ground, remind me that they've been living here for fifty years and assure me that as long as they've been here, that bar has been called Mr G's.
I told you it was trivial—but I think it's a good example in the way people's thinking is essentially flawed. Sometimes when we feel completely certain, certain enough to correct someone who suggests an alternative, we are actually wrong—and we have absolutely no idea.
Back in Bowmanstown, my stuff had been packed for weeks, from before we went to Baton Rouge..everything I owned in a couple of Rubbermaid tubs and a few cardboard boxes.
Mom says that when Joanne and her and I got home from the Philadelphia airport late at night, I was like, "I want to just drive right now, all the way, through the night!"—my Mom's point being that my life is filled with plans like this, surprises, feelings, and wild executions.
Instead, Joanne and I chilled at the house for a few days and watched TV. I showed Joanne some movies she hadn't seen that I thought were must-sees, notably The Edge, which David Mamet describes as his script about "two guys and a bear." Joanne had read this article in Vanity Fair about the making of the movie and I realized, when she was summarizing the article for me, that she was talking about The Edge, which everyone, including Mamet, seems to regard as a colossal failure. And while I understand that it's not a masterpiece of a film, it has a pretty good survivalist story and I knew that Joanne would benefit from watching that story, as I had—her uniqueness, like mine, automatically casts living in the world as a story about survival of the individual, of the individual's mind and what it contains. We watched it and she said, "Thank you for showing me that." I knew she needed to see it. And I'm always up to see it again.
We showed our mother Blade Runner, which she didn't get. She said she could see why others considered that a great movie but it wasn't for her.
We also watched Dark City, one both Joanne and I like.
In general, we lazed around the house, ate food, watched movies, watched Ancient Aliens on TV (which sent my mom into a miniature fit every time they suggested that archaeological finds might put a new spin on the history found in the Bible). Mom is a minister, and pretty cool theologically (so cool that if I said how cool, she'd probably get in trouble with some of her churches) but she does not like anything having to do with UFOs, aliens, and especially not the idea that what we call deities might be the same thing as what we call aliens. She tolerated us watching it while she typed her sermon in the next room, but after a while we switched to Bear Grylls—we didn't want to frustrate her, especially in her own house, our own mother—but she finds Bear Grylls ridiculous too. I mean, who wouldn't—the guy is like, "This is one of the most venomous snakes in the world," then he picks it up and eats it.
We waited a couple days and then I drove Joanne to New York (Harlem). I dropped her off at her apartment and picked up some old drawings of mine. I made trips around the block in the snow while pedestrians cussed at me for not moving quickly enough.
"Honky motherfucker, can't you see this is a sidewalk?!"
Stuff like that.
One example is probably sufficient.
Joanne ran up and down to and from her fifth-story apartment to bring down framed drawings and a see-through green tube which held many more drawings I had done with graphite sticks. There was nowhere to park. A homeless man shoveled out a spot so I didn't have to keep making the block. Joanne and I hugged goodbye and I told the homeless man I didn't have any money but I gave him the sandwich I had planned on eating on my way to Vermont. He looked happy, and I was happy too—the last few times I tried to give homeless people food when they asked for money, they declined, fucking up my innocent view of homeless people actually being hungry instead of just wanting money for drugs.
When I was homeless the only food I wouldn't eat was food that had a sermon attached to it. Like: sit here and listen to our pastor preach while you eat this meal. Or: sit at this table in the park and eat while we try to stuff Christianity down your throat. No thanks—I'd rather starve. Being an atheist is not why I'm homeless, asshole. And if you think "following Jesus" is why you have that eight-thousand-square-foot house in the suburbs, the swimming pool, the Mexican maid, the power job, and the seven-figure income, then you are mistaken—Jesus is not your god, but rather Anthony Robbins.
I wave goodbye to Joanne on the streets of Harlem, fumble my way back to the highway, and head north. This is me driving to Vermont, to live—this will only happen one time in my life, my first drive to Brattleboro in my busted-out Toyota Corolla. I mean even with the new tires and the new axles (which were two years old at this time) that car had radiator problems and problems I can't even describe except in the company of a mechanic but it's mine and it's been with me since Los Angeles and it's wonderful.
Beautiful, beautiful, the freedom of driving alone.
Up through the small states.
Night falls.
And eventually I get there: Brattleboro. It only has two exits, it's that small, and I didn't know which one to get off on so I took the first and winded through basically the only road and soon I was in downtown, excited beyond excitement to park my car in the municipal garage and think: I am in Brattleboro. I made it.
I was so excited.
I thought of how wonderful my life would be here. Standing in the parking lot, I called Tooler.
"I'm here, I'm downtown, I can't believe it, Tooler. So, look, is there sometime tonight that would be best for me to meet you at the house?"
"Well I'm still at work, but Issa's home. She can let you in and I get off at seven so I'll see you in a little bit!"
"Alright!"
"Welcome to Vermont!" Tooler says.
When I ring the bell Issa is out beside me and with a few words, in the dark, we're moving my things inside with military efficiency. Issa was no dainty girl—a real worker. We unloaded that car in less than five minutes. Of course, the cold and the dark was a factor—we didn't want to be hanging around outside that time of night.
Once Then Issa disappeared into her room.
I looked around my room. No curtains. Spare wood planks with nails sticking out of them strewn on the floor, and my six boxes of stuff, including an inflatable mattress my mom bought as a present for me and had delivered to the house on High Street. My mom has taken care of me so much. I looked at my hand weights. I was gonna do it in this room, work on my body, write my books, be independent, be healthy; I was going to make my life work here.
I'm starting you out slow, but some of you might be mad about this book, especially if you're in it. You might not think I represented you fairly. You might think I'm wrong. You might be mad.
You might be mad about my Tweets, my speech, my language, my dialogue. Because in this book when somebody gets fucked, we're gonna say somebody got fucked. And especially in dialogue, look, you're saying it, I'm just writing it down. So you might want to put this down if you're squeamish.
But you know what, I spend so much energy adjusting myself to you all, and it's wearing me out. So from now on I'll be doing less adjusting to you and you'll be doing more adjusting to me, if you want to interact with me at all.
6
Tooler got off work. She came directly to the kitchen and was uncorking a bottle of wine with her scarf still on.
She leans across my door.
"We doin' this?"
Tooler and I sat in the kitchen and split a bottle of red. Issa was not in the mood or too tired or scared or whatever. But Tooler and I had a grand old time. The fridge was full of whites. The counter was flush with reds.
"Where did all this come from?"
"My dad owns a bar," Tooler said. "Drink anything here. It's all community property. You do drink, don't you?"
"Yeah I drink."
Tooler gives me a look.
"Yes, Tooler, I love to drink, I just didn't want to look like a lush when we first met because I really wanted this place."
"Oh I know. I can read you like a drink menu. I could probably guess what you drink just by talking to you."
"Ok. Guess."
"We have to talk more first."
"You're gonna be sorry you offered me all these bottles to drink."
"Why, are you gonna drink 'em all?"
"The red ones, yes!"
Drinking with Will had opened me back up to the good life of drinking with strangers in bars and making friends that way. I had some wine with my sisters at the Christmas trip to my grandmother's in Louisiana, and of course I made my secret trip to Ms. G's, getting completely fucked and meeting a couple who tried to convince me not to move to Vermont, but to stay in Louisiana because they were under the impression that the friendliest people in the world were in the south, especially Baton Rouge, and that no northern state, even venerable Vermont, could possibly compete in friendliness. I didn't have the heart to deflate their infectious local pride (which Baton Rouge has in spades) by telling them that I'd been all over this country and, even though everyone has a different style, the whole country is filled with friendly, loving people. Even New York City, which gets the worst rap about rude and unfriendly people, is filled to the brim with totally friendly, totally conversational people.
I have to admit that I am a part of the equation here. I can find friendly people in a graveyard, buried in their tombs. Everyone is friendly person who I decide to be a friendly person—who I decide to be friendly to. And I'm friendly to everyone who a) I don't know yet, b) respects me, and c) isn't trying to hurt me or work against me. I can count on one hand the people I'm not friendly to: my uncle Rusty, my tenth grade math teacher, Joshua French, the so-called Chief Software Architect from Optimistic Solutions, and..I think that's it. You've got to be a serious dedicated full-time professional antagonistic fuck-up to get on my bad side. Even my dad, who has hurt me with his neglect and abuse and total absence from my life, I don't put on this list. He's doing his best. His best just sucks. But he's not going out of his way to hurt me—that's the kind of person I can't be friends with. I think that's rational.
I'm telling Tooler about the night at Ms. G's.
"So I get a call from my sister Leona and leave the bar, and once I find my way home, I then then totally irresponsibly drive my pregnant sister and my cousin—"
"That's totally irresponsible."
"—I know!—and my other sister to Walmart."
"Did you tell them you were drunk?"
"No! I hid that shit. I was like focusing twelve-thousand percent of my energy on driving within the lines and not inciting any police encounters, because these days, you're not worried about a DUI."
"No."
"You're worried about getting your head blown off."
"Even if you're white."
"Even if you're white. These motherfuckers these days..it's like they're trained to kill as many people as possible on each call. They used to have quotas for parking tickets. Now they have quotas for skulls!"
"Want more wine?"
"Mmm hmm."
And Tooler and I worked our way through a bottle of wine and broke any housemate ice there might have been but there wasn't because Tooler was cool as shit and she didn't seem to mind me too much either.
"I gotta take a piss."
"You want to split another bottle."
Standing, I smile at Tooler.
"Another time, housie, this has been great though."
"Alright. I'm gonna check on Issa."
Tooler went to the master bedroom and closed the two of them in.
I went inside the bathroom, which (as with all Vermont houses) was off off the kitchen. They keep all the pipes together to help prevent freezing. About the first half of the time I spent living with Tooler and Issa, I peed sitting down because I was mortified that one of them would find my pee drips and decide they didn't want to live with me. This is was ridiculous. Tooler was a total dudebro. Back home she had a man cave. Still, there was the box of maxi pads somebody had left out on the counter, a reminder that there were vaginas nearby, though probably not vaginas that wanted anything to do with me.
I wanted to fuck Tooler.
She described herself as genderqueer which is kind of like someone asking you what kind of vehicle you drive and you saying you drive a truck—it could mean practically anything. I didn't know if she was straight, lesbian, bi. I imagined scenarios where we were in the bathroom at the same time, one of us come in to get the Swiffer WetJet and we end up with her on the counter with her legs spread and my hands between them, kissing her pale neck and her grabbing my cock.
I didn't think these things in a predatory way, but I did think them. Tooler's an electric human being—how could I not be turned on?
That night I went to the coffeehouse (this was before we had internet at the house) and I Tweeted about a cute girl I saw, wishing I could meet her, or someone, anyone. I sat there, lonely, surrounded by lonely people, all on their laptops, and somewhere in all the tragedy and chaos of my twenties I had lost my playfulness, my innocence, my fearlessness who can say hi to a girl and not be so delicate that I fear the consequences.
The next morning, fresh snow blocked in the cars—that would be Tooler's Subaru and the upstairs neighbor's car. I came out of my room to see, in the background, landlord Abby and upstairs neighbor shoveling snow so our neighbor could get to work and, in the foreground, Tooler and Issa slunk down below the window line so that no one would know that they were there. My housemates were in their early twenties. I was in my early thirties. I laughed and they giggled and I put my boots on and went outside to help shovel.
I introduced myself. Our neighbor's name was Maggie. We shook hands with our gloves on.
Abby handed me a shovel.
"You shouldn't be out here. Isn't your car parked downtown?"
"Yeah."
"Are Tooler and Issa in there?"
"Yeah, there in there."
"Well I don't want you to have to do this work?"
"It's ok. It'll help me wake up," I said, and I slammed a shovel into some enormous pile of snow.
That day, Tooler bought us a couch and the three of us moved it into the house through the new snow. I spent the evening sitting cross-legged on the wood floors helping Tooler and Issa make posters for their Palestine protest in Amherst the next day. In the beginning it was fun and games between us all, sitting in the living room coloring in posters for the right side of the Israel-Palestine conflict, drinking, telling stories of our youth—which was kind of funny 'cause the two of them had a lot more stories to tell than I did, I think because at 23, all your wild stories are fun and wild, and by 33, you've had a lot more time for a lot more life to happen to you, and your stories are still wild—in fact they're even wilder—but they're not all fun.
7
It just massively snows the next day and undoes all our work shoveling the driveway. I start to see Tooler and Issa's point. As Issa hysterically laughs:
"It just keeps coming!"
And she's right. I've been in Vermont two days and I can see that. Maggie wants us all out there as a shoveling crew each morning shoveling the snow that is just going to fall again the next day? Forget that.
Also, this isn't just snow. I thought I had seen winters in Pennsylvania, Ohio—these are on a different scale. There's a huge block of ice that fell right outside the front door—I'm talking two feet long on each side, solid, clear ice. Thankfully no one was there when it fell. Six-foot-long icicles hanging from the windows and the roof. The front steps were completely covered with six feet of snow. To leave the house I had to put cardboard down over the snow to go over the front steps to the sidewalk. I mean that block of ice—if it had hit you when it fell—it would have killed you instantly.
And I guess I'll tell you this, not because it's lewd, not because it's lascivious, but because it's one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard.
That second day in Brattleboro, late afternoon, I was lying in bed not sleeping, just resting, and I hear the distinct sounds of a woman's pre-orgasm grunting and cooing and abortive moans. And I quickly realize that what I'm hearing is Tooler get off in the next room, with Issa, in their bedroom. They have forgotten that they took on a roommate and that he might be home, and they've left their bedroom door open.
Tooler's cumming sounds excite my brain. I'm wondering how they could have possibly forgotten I'm in the apartment with them—my door is open, my light is on. There's no way for me to leave without embarrassing them and so I do the best I can think of—pretend to be asleep. I'm lying in my inflatable bed hearing Issa make Tooler cum, and hearing Tooler cum from Issa fingering or licking her or whatever she was doing made my dick hard but I didn't masturbate right away. I might have that night—I don't remember if I did.
But if I did it wasn't to any image of the girls—it was to Tooler's sound, the sound she made when she came. I repeated it over and over in my head so I would never forget, and I never have—it was like a bird cooing in heaven—withholding, building, releasing—that most excellent exhale. I wish I could feel the pleasure she felt, as a girl, the very female shape of it. But I was privileged to hear her cum—the sounds were so quiet and simple and true. Sometimes I wonder if Tooler knew I was home.
I fantasized about having sex with Tooler, trying in vain to figure out by myself what queer or genderqueer meant in her case, and if it meant she liked dick, too..and I knew at her age she wouldn't have fucked that many people and I hoped it would have been soooo long since she had fucked a man.
I came to Vermont to hike. That's part of why I picked Brattleboro to live in, because right across the river in New Hampshire there's a little mountain called Mt. Wantastiquet, and beyond Mt. Wantastiquet is a tiny body of water called Indian Pond, and ever since I saw that on Google Maps, I thought: I could live there. Live in the city, yes, but have my retreat to the woods. I love to hike, it calms me. Soon after I arrived in Brattleboro I attempted to climb Mt. Wantastiquet. I wanted to cross it, see Indian Pond, come back—that was going to be my regular hike.
But my first few times going over there I couldn't even find the trailhead! Eventually it turned out I was staring right at it but these weren't trails like in Ohio, with a nice big sign telling you where to go. There was a path there, but you had to find it yourself, and with snow covering everything there was no way for a newcomer to know what to do.
I managed to have an all day hike anyway, across the side of the mountain, creeping through the woods one step at a time, without snowshoes, looking out for bears, eating my snack intended for Indian pond, drinking water and reflecting. I climbed down the side of an icy portion of a lower mountain when I knew it was a very dangerous decision, but I didn't have money for equipment or a friend to hike with—I've done solo camping in mountains, woods, desert, urban areas, many times for the same reason: I don't have anyone to camp with.
I had friends when I was younger—a few times I had a real crew—but now we're scattered to the wind. We used to talk on Facebook, but I deleted my Facebook to avoid the drama, so now we just don't talk. Maybe in text or a call, twice a year, with at most two of my old friends. Now I don't have any close friends, so I hike in areas with bears, poisonous snakes, and worse. I've climbed to the top of Arizona mountains and slept there alone, looking down on the fighter jets cutting through the sky. Solo camping in Arizona is limited to one day due to the water you have to carry.
I am sweaty, bruised, cut, and euphorically high by the time I get home from my first day hiking in Vermont.
Tooler sees me as soon as I come in the door.
"Where have you been all day?"
"Climbing the mountain. Well, I couldn't get to the main mountain, so I climbed a side path. Still, some interesting formations. It's not too bad if you stick to a path where someone else with snowshoes has been before you."
"You don't have snowshoes?"
"Nah, but I got these."
I tap my boots together. A pair of Skechers sold at the mall, one-inch tread, zipper insoles. Made strictly for fashion but the best pair of boots I ever owned. Still own them. Still hike in them.
"Where I want to get is Indian Pond. It's over Mt. Wantastiquet. You should come with me sometime."
Tooler shakes her head and slowly backs away. Issa comes in the room.
"Hiking?" Tooler says.
"Yeah," I exhale.
My cheeks are still red.
Issa says, "Tooler doesn't hike."
"No?"
"Well, it's not about hiking. Neither of us like nature. We're more city people, you know?"
I say, "Is this true?"
Tooler smiles, shrugs, and Issa breaks out laughing.
"So you like to hike?" Issa asks.
"Yeah. That's why I moved here. So I could have a place I could hike to from my apartment door. Nature makes me..well it calms me down about fifteen minutes into being in the woods. I used to hike and camp all the time in Ohio. One time my friend Shringara and I, we went on a Shamanic journey—that's what we called it anyway—and I guess it was, you know, I thought less of it at the time than I do now, but we fasted for a week, we didn't camp in a campsite, we went way up into the woods near Athens, Ohio far away from any paths or roads. We didn't see anyone the whole week we were there. And we fasted."
"For the whole week?"
"Yeah. Five days. Well, we had a box of raisins."
"You lived for a whole week on a box of raisins!"
"Yeah! And we drank tea every day. We got into a routine: sleep, wake up, go to the lake, get water for tea, bathe in the lake, bring the water back up to our campsite, make a fire, make tea, and then we'd sit and talk all day. It was amazing—of course we missed our friends—but it was amazing to be away from the expectations of others, even others we loved. There's an oppression, created by all the mundane and unseen expectations of every person around you, and sometimes you have to get away from your mom or your dad or your lover to feel what's really you, apart from them, you know?"
"Sounds deep."
"Hah. I guess it was. We learned a lot of lessons. Then we did mushrooms on the last day!"
"I bet that was intense after not eating for a week. It was. It was the first time I ever did mushrooms."
"Was it scary in the woods?"
"We weren't scared, no. It wasn't the safest thing to do, but no, we weren't scared—we felt connected to everything."
On our first night together in the house, when we split that bottle of wine, Tooler and I talked of so much cooking we would do (to impress each other, naturally) but Issa finally came into the kitchen and smirked. With one hand she covered her mouth so we couldn't see her laughing and with the other hand she pointed at Tooler and through her laugh said, "Tooler doesn't cook!"
Then Issa doubled over, laughing, out of control.
It was true, for all our first-night wine-drunk cooking intentions, neither Tooler or I were any good in the kitchen. Issa made up for both of our good intentions with a handful of meals throughout the year that the three of us had together. We always smoked shisha and drank and had a good time when we did this, we just rarely did it.
Tooler says, "Do you ever drink beer?"
"Not really. But I used to sit at this awesome hamburger place in Tucson—Lindy's—and they'd lock the doors so it'd just be me and the two waitresses and the cook and we'd watch Superbad and eat hamburgers, chili tots, and I'd drink PBR."
"Ewww!..PBR?"
"What's wrong with PBR?"
"It's nasty. Why did you drink it?"
"Because it was the cheapest beer they sold."
"Come on, I can tell just by looking at your hat that you have more style than that. Matthew Temple..buying something because it was the cheapest option available. Bullshit."
"What? It was on tap, and it seemed like a local-type beer, like what the locals drink?"
Tooler shakes her head at me.
"You don't think it's a beer of the people?"
"I think it was a beer of the people..that's been co-opted by hipsters who want to be part of the local scene, and by doing this, they've made it no longer a local beer."
I exhale. I wish I wasn't being politically analyzed by my housemate right now.
"Are you calling me a hipster?"
Issa laughs.
"You?" Issa says. "No, you're not exactly a hipster."
"But somehow I co-opted this beer..maybe I just like the taste of PBR or the logo or something? Is everything a class struggle or can I just be someone who drinks Corona and PBR because they're light and they're the only beers I can stand."
Tooler comes close to me.
"I'm sorry, did I hurt your feelings?" she asks.
"No," I say, but it's a lie.
I go to my room and sit down on the inflatable bed. I start to cry.
Tooler is at the door.
"Oh no!" she says. "Matthew, I'm sorry. I'm just explaining my theory on why white culture takes over a local spot or a local drink and then suddenly more tequila is being sold in the US than in Mexico."
"I know," I say, wiping my tears. "I'm just very sensitive. I'm used to being criticized and you're right, it is co-opting for me to drink a beer just because I perceive it to be the local beer. But when do I cease to be a tourist and become a local? I'll never be Latino but I've lived in Tucson three times, Lindy's is like a home to me, I mean I've dated both their waitresses, been over to their house—
"They're housemates?"
"No, they're sisters."
"You fucked a pair of sisters???!!"
"Well, I liked them both."
Issa is standing next to Tooler now, laughing.
"Did you like one of the sisters better than the other, in bed?"
She cracks up. She's clutching Tooler's shoulder to keep from falling over.
"I bet you liked the younger one because her hoo-ha was tighter!"
Tooler pushes Issa off her and Issa falls on the floor, hysterical, pointing a finger at me and covering her mouth with the other.
Tooler says, "Matthew, I'm sorry—"
"No, you don't have to be, I'm overreacting. I'm just very sensitive today."
Silence. Then Issa says:
"Let's go down to Whit's, and we'll all drink PBR, and we'll all be happy again!"
"I'm not drinking PBR," I say.
And Tooler says, "I'm not drinking PBR, either."
"We'll all have whatever we want, and everyone will be happy, happy family, then we come back here and smoke shisha!"
I can't help but laugh.
Tooler grabs my hand and pulls me up from the bed.
"I'm drinking gin," I inform her. "Which I'm pretty sure is from Europe so I'm going to be co-opting someone."
I look at her to see if I hit her too hard.
"Oh it's ok. I like a man with a little bite. I'm going to be co-opting the Walsh myself."
"And we'll all be like family," Issa says.
And we were. For a while, we were. We cared for each other like brothers and sisters, except that the sisters were lovers. And slowly they learned that too much wine was no good for me, and that I cry at the oddest remark, and that it had nothing to do with them, and they learned pretty much everything about my mental state, which was even then best described as fragile.
Issa cooked this, Issa cooked that, Egyptian specialties mostly, always amazing flavor. I was shy about eating with them the first night we had family dinner—I made dumb excuses like I didn't want to disturb their dinner together, but they were so friendly and nice to me..more friendly and nice than I can be when I'm in my worst mental states..they came to my room and told me I had to eat with them. It was just the generosity I needed to have shown to me, to remind me, after many terrible years, how to do it myself. After two bottles of wine between the three of us, they ask:
"What did you and your friend..Shringara?..learn in the woods?"
"Shringara, yes. It means love and laughter and sometimes I just call her Hasya which is the laughter part because that's a part of her we like to say I know better than anyone else. That I know that she is laughter. But what did we learn? Well, we learned the story of the fire."
"What's the story of the fire?" Tooler says, pouring herself and I more wine.
"In the woods," I say, "every day, we did two things. We went to the lake to get water and we made a fire so we could boil the water and make tea. And then we sat there all day and talked. And like I said before we came to many realizations about our friends and expectation and how sometimes if you want to change you have to leave your home town. A prophet is never recognized in his home town—have you ever heard that?"
"No."
"Well that's kind of a common saying. A prophet is never recognized in his or her own town. But the real realization we had was about our fire. So we spend all day building this fire so it can heat us in the dark and boil our tea and all this time we're thinking we need our fire. That camping trip would have sucked without a fire—any camping trip would. But then, after a while of looking at this thing that wad the center of our whole world, we realized that yes in one sense our fire is serving us—heat, light, safe water—but that in another sense we are serving our fire. Look at us: all day we roam around the woods gathering sticks and feeding them to the fire. It is an entity, that because of what it gives us, has convinced us to give it all it needs. We feed our fire and our fire and our fire feeds us. We need our fire and our fire needs us. Without us, there would be no fire. And without the fire, after a while, there would be no us! So you see it's not so simple as you needing me and me not needing you in return. We feed each other so we can feed each other. That's a different kind of connectivity than either of us was thinking about before."
I take a drink of my wine.
We all share a moment because these beautiful people appreciate my story and I appreciate their listening, and taking me in even though I'm a guy, and feeding me food I've never eaten before.
Issa says, "I'm having a cigarette."
"I'll go with you," I say.
"You will??!! Tooler hates cigarettes."
Issa and I go outside and smoke in bitch-insane Vermont cold. We're both shaking but I feel at home. With my free hand I pretend I'm smoking and when I exhale the steam from my lungs comes out looking almost exactly like cigarette smoking. I do this regally.
Issa cracks up.
"Vermont smoking," I say.
She laughs.
"These motherfuckers don't even have to buy cigarettes."
I Vermont-smoke once again.
Issa follows suit, acting silly with me and then she's going in.
"Can I have another one?"
She gives me one and I smoke a second, alone, thinking, ruminating, letting it all echo around inside me as deeply as possible, as I am wont to do.
One time the two women came home with a large package, obviously meat of some sort.
"Guess what this is!"
"You'll never guess."
"He'll never guess."
"Just tell him what it is."
"Well it's what we're having for dinner tonight so I hope you like it."
Tooler laughs.
I stand from my laptop, which is at my "desk" on the floor.
"I'm interested, Tooler—you've got me interested."
"Yeah I know I've got you interested."
She gives me a definite look.
"But back to the subject at hand!" I say.
Issa opens the brown paper wrapper, then a clear plastic bag. She reaches inside and pulls out something red and beefy and places it on top of the brown wrapping paper.
"I still don't know what that is."
"It's—ready—one, two, three—cow heart!!"
Issa cracks herself up laughing.
"We wanted to know something about you, Matthew."
"Yeah," Issa says, "we wanted to know something about you."
"What."
"HAVE YOU EVER HAD COW HEART BEFORE??!!"
I laugh sardonically.
"No! Where did you buy that?"
"The grocery store. Welcome to Vermont, man. They just sell this shit in the meat section. You wouldn't believe what else they had."
"Please don't tell me."
"So are you up for it?"
I look skeptically from Issa to Tooler.
"Can we open a bottle of wine to go with this?"
"Oh yes. Issa will take care of the..heart..and you and I will drink wine. Is this arrangement ok with everyone?"
(It was.)
Tooler and I got tipsy and chatted up the motherfucking stars—we were great talkers.
That night I ate cow heart with Tooler and Issa. It's quite wonderful—just a tough beefy flavor with the added joy of knowing you're eating an animals's heart.
After cow hearts T+I got out the hookah and we smoked shisha. I had never done this before, but it was pleasant. They had a method of chilling the hookah water with ice cubes so the smoke you get is cold..divine. Tooler holds up her glass of white, I hold up my glass of red, and Issa holds up her water.
"A night of firsts," Tooler says.
A night of firsts.
8
Issa escaped Gaza through a tunnel to Egypt..or something like that. It was this claustrophobic, hours-long climb and crawl through a tunnel in the Earth. She had to pay to go through, and that was a lot of money..but along the way, inside the tunnel, there were children with Uzis asking for more money..and she had to give them more money if she didn't want to die in the tunnel at the hands of an 11 year old.
Luckily she did have some more money on her and she was able to pay her way all the way to Egypt, which is where she met Tooler, an American on a study pass. From Egypt, Issa escaped to the United States with a fake passport, which she showed me proudly. I hugged her—'cause hey—she was lucky to be alive.
Tooler went through a year of work taking Issa to meet with New York lawyers and getting her classified for political asylum. At their request, I wrote a letter of recommendation for Issa to be used in court. Tooler got Issa asylum, and as soon as she did, Issa broke up with Tooler and moved to New York City—Queens—met other Egyptians who owned blocks and blocks of property and shops and because she was Egyptian, she got a sweet job at a restaurant/coffeehouse the first day she went there. They even gave her a sweet apartment of her own that was only one block away from her job and told her not to worry about the rent—she could pay that later. See? It is possible to live in New York, to find affordable housing—you just have to know people.
9
Brattleboro has less than twelve thousand people. The town is circled by a long road which goes up into the mountains and down again back to the river, intersects a bridge that crosses into New Hampshire. The whole of those thirteen thousand people live within that circular road, that you can ride your bike around in less than an hour.
There are various neighborhoods: there's the area with the hospital at the south end of town, then the shopping center with the Dollar Saver—when I first get to Brattleboro, the first full day I'm there, I went shopping at the Dollar Saver and thought: I could get a job here, it'll be perfect. Then there's the prestigious High Street, where Tooler and Issa and I lived. Then Elliot Street. If High Street was quiet, Elliot Street was loud. If High Street was calm, Elliot Street was wild. If High Street was legal, Elliot Street was illegal. Even though they were just a block apart, rents were cheaper on Elliot, it had most of the bars in town, most of the drugs and drug dealers and homeless people using restaurant bathrooms.
In the summer, Elliot Street had all the high school kids and junior high kids hanging out bumming cigarettes from adults (like me) and dressing as provocatively as the law allowed. When day drinkers came outside of their bars for a drink, underage girls who couldn't drink would bum cigarettes from men twice their age—more than twice—and they didn't take them for free. They flirted and stood way too close and rubbed themselves on you and didn't even care—I would have given them a cigarette for free but if some sixteen year old wants to step into my personal space (and do a special move where she steps to me and her breasts touch while she looks like she's kissing me but really she bites the burning cigarette out of my mouth, our lips touching, while she stabilizes herself by grabbing onto my arms) just to get a cigarette into her mouth, not minding if her fucking half-visible butt cheeks rubbed against my cock..well..so be it. She wasn't psychologically hurting me and I wasn't psychologically hurting her.
But Brattleboro, other than having an overflow of hot teenagers who mostly disappear to other states by the time they're twenty, has has three grocery stores, one Burger King, one sushi restaurant, one Thai restaurant, one burger cart, one yoga studio, one massage and acupuncture center, one pizza place. When Joanne came to visit, she said it looked like a movie set: like those fake streets they have at Universal Studios that get used over and over in movie after movie, but everything dressed up and shot at a different angle so the same set looks like a hundred different cities.
I guess the one thing Brattleboro has more than one of is book stores—when I moved there, the word on the street was that Brattleboro had more bookstores per capita than anywhere else in the US, including every college town in existence. And that might have been true. There were five or six within the very center of Brattleboro, each one with its own character and specialty. It may be true that Brattleboro had more bookstores per capita than anywhere else in the country—but if it was true when I moved there, within a few months it was longer true, because the fire came, and burned out large parts of downtown, including three of the bookstores, so I'm sure that pushed us down on the list of per capita bookstores.
I called my sister Joanne walking down High Street just after moving to Brattleboro and just after a phone conversation with Dad that just devastated me in his lack of care or belief in or understanding of me.
"I've been so hurt by him for so many years and I've given, now that I count back, five years telling him that I want a relationship with him, and him just dropping the line. He never calls me, I always initiate, his email communications (as you know) are never about feelings or people, they're always about his job and where he's moving to take a new job and how the job is going and what he's doing for his job. You remember that time he picked up the phone and didn't even recognize Leona's voice and when he did figure out it was her, he didn't have time to talk to her because he was busy with work stuff? He was expecting another Leona—not his daughter, but a work Leona."
"Yeah, I know," Joanne says.
And I said to Joanne, "I always trick myself or blame myself into thinking that I'm cutting off contact with him—when the reality is that he cut off communication with me a long time ago. And I say I'm thinking of stopping reading his emails because they always make me feel bad about myself and there was that therapist, when I was living with Rishi, who said I had some very complex ways of determining whether I should be around such-and-such a person, and my therapist suggested this metric instead: look at how the person makes you feel. How do you feel when you're around Rishi? Around Dad?"
"Well that answers it right there," Joanne says.
And I say, "It does, doesn't it."
We talked for a long time more as I slowly walked down the steep hill of High Street, leaning against concrete walls, taking a few steps, trying to keep warm as we examined our childhood, the idyllic period with Mom when it was just the three of us and we took weekly trips to the library, everyone treated each other well, and that was a heaven of upbringing until about the third or fourth grade when we realized almost no one else lived that way—the world was full of not only large-scale war, but that on a small scale, everyone was sick and lying and cheating and didn't even experience joy within themselves. Our lives had been joy and bliss from the moment we were born. And, as such, we were perfectly ill-prepared to live in this world. And we are both at odds with it to this day.
We also saw that we had the perfect upbringing for artists: one parent (Dad) who, no matter what we did, would always disapprove or ignore us. And one parent (Mom) who, no matter what we did, would approve and pay attention to us. It's the perfect family system for producing artists: as a kid, we internalized Dad's hate and disapproval, which was perfect for enduring long periods of mass disapproval from people about your art—our dad had inadvertently given us an innate immunity to hate and criticism. We could survive our whole lives never getting published, hired, awarded, galleried, approved, paid, or in any way loved for our art and we had the stoicism to continue doing our art with absolutely no encouragement until the day we died. Equally important, we had internalized Mom's unfailing, sometimes baseless, love for anything we did. So right next to Dad's disapproval, inside of each of us, was Mom's voice telling us she loved us no matter what. It created a personality that at least Joanne and I share that truly doesn't give a shit if you try to break us down with negativity, and which has an unending, internal source of self-love and approval for whatever we do.
Way more than most people, Joanne and I a) truly don't modify our action based on hate and b) are happy with ourselves and what we make, innately, based on a trust of our own internal barometers. No one can tell an artist what to do—the expression of a highly-developed point of view is maybe the most central feature of what makes an artist, an artist.
I felt better after my conversation with Joanne. I had cried a lot. But I felt lighter with a commitment to a new position with respect to Dad.
Joanne said, "Did I ever tell you something?"
"What was it?"
"I was maybe two. No, I had to be older than that. But it was in the Dallas house. You know that game where a little kid counts to a hundred..and the adult keeps track for them because it's too much for the kid to remember?"
"Yeah."
"Well I played that game with Dad."
I hear Joanne crying now, my little sister somewhere in New York City, telling me this story, crying.
"I remember I had already said 17 but I asked him anyway and he said I hadn't said it. So I said 17 and then asked him if I had said 17 and he said that I had not said the number 17."
"He was fucking with you."
A sniffle on her end.
"He was fucking with a little kid. What kind of mentality?"
"I don't know, Joanne—he's a sick person."
Sniffle.
"Yeah."
I say, "Joanne?"
"Yes?"
"Do you remember the end-hall closet?"
"What closet was that?"
"Smell of leather, shoe-polishing cabinet with brushes and varnishes and maybe some kind of box in the back, beyond the coats, with something unknown in it, something we couldn't know at that age even if we looked at it—"
"Matt."
"Yeah."
"I remember it."
"Yeah?"
"I just don't want to talk about it."
10
I walked to Abby's office and met her for the first time formally. She worked as an accountant. I went to sign the lease.
We shook hands without gloves.
"Nice wall colors," I said.
"Do you like the ones at the house?"
"Oh yeah, they're great," I lied.
But the statement about her office wall colors was not a lie. She told me she had picked those, too, and my mind twisted at the fact that she had chosen such deep jewel-tone greens and grays for her office and such cheesy carnival-circus colors for the house we were renting from her.
I sign the lease.
"Do you want any references?"
"No."
"Do you want a deposit? I brought cash."
"Just pay Tooler, she already took care of it."
"Do you want to know anything about me? My work situation? Anything?"
"No," Abby said.
In LA you could never get an apartment like that. In the frontier lands, places like Vermont and Arizona, there's still more freedom, computers and records don't control every interaction, and basically a smile and a handshake will do ya. But after what Abby put up with from me, I'm sure she does background checks now, application fees, proofs of employment, all that.
Because eventually in this story will come a time when I'm unable to pay the rent, and it will kill Abby's finances for a short time. She'll need to pay for oil for the house so everyone living there doesn't freeze to death, while she and her daughter live in a hut, basically, that doesn't even have running water.
Yup, people like me—people with mental illness—we mess up all the normal people's lives, who are just trying to work and make money. And what's wrong with that? If Abby could somehow extract the two thousand dollars I owe her, out of my body somehow, she'd want to, and I'd let her! But, I mean, without unemployment benefits, without a job, without disability, where does this mystical quantity called money come from?
Work, obviously.
But when you've got a disorder—a misshaping of your brain—that makes you try to kill yourself, work is not an option. You can't work while you're in a mental hospital, and if you tell anyone you're suicidal, or swallow a bottle of pills, that's where you'll be. And whether it's legal or not, after you get out of the mental hospital, if you tell your potential employer in a job interview that you spent time in a mental hospital..most of those motherfuckers aren't going to hire you. Of course you know this so you make up lies for the gaps in your employment history: your dad was sick and you had to take care of him, you were writing a book..or you just flub the dates of your surrounding jobs and make that gap disappear. If you're mentally ill and you have no family or friends generous enough to just pick up the tab of your life, you will be homeless. Some people get disability. As of now, five years after the events of this book, I have been trying to get disability, in the various states I've been living in (depending on which family members could stand to endure the infinite difficulties of having me around).
I'm moving again soon, because I live with my Mom and she's moving, and I go where she goes. So I have to transfer my disability application to a new state, and hope that someday I am approved. And let's be clear: that money will not be enough for me to live on. I'll still be a dependent of my mom for the rest of my life, I guess, unless I go live in a tent in the desert. But I can't take care of myself. I shake, due to psychiatric meds I've been prescribed. I clench. I can't cook safely—I can barely screw the cap for the laundry detergent back on. So if I "get disability," it's not like I'll be buying Lamborghinis or a house or even renting an apartment. That'll just be money so that I can pay for my own medical expenses—instead of Mom having to.
When you live in a society that had use for you for most of your life, from the time you were born until you were maybe thirty, and all of that time you were genetically predisposed to having a major mental illness, and around the time you were twenty-three a catastrophic life stressor (according to current bipolar theory) kindled the disease within your head, and in addition to being smart and weird and fun and an infinitely employable programmer, you become really weird and an alcoholic and you quit jobs for no reason that anyone else can understand, you do a lot of things that no one else can understand, like mail your entire spice rack to a New York art dealer along with tons of original artwork—no note—just fuck it I'm having fun I'm sending art to an art dealer hahaha!
Then your life becomes a series of "flying leaps" as my mom calls them. Moving to a new city with no money. Quitting my hedge fund job to living in a tent in my friend's back yard in Arizona. Getting back into the work world for a few years, then getting out. Getting fired for the first time—before that I had always quit. Becoming homeless—which if you're romanticizing it, don't—it's almost completely a dead end in this country if your bank account goes to zero.
I mean that's the basic game. Everyone does it. Almost everyone talks about the glamour associated with your bank account being at the high end. Hardly anyone talks about what happens when you are not just living paycheck to paycheck, but when you actually have zero dollars and zero cents.
Everyone dumps you.
You get evicted (the first time is the most exciting).
You come home one day and the locks are changed and there's yellow caution tape all over your door and a neatly typed and printed notice that says the property has been repossessed, then it lists your name and the amount of money you owe the apartment complex so that all your neighbors can judge you for not being a movie star or a famous director yet.
Then that's it.
You live in your car until your car gets towed because you can't pay the parking pass, or you move into a crack motel—a weekly rate motel with bed bugs, roaches, giant cracks in the wall, a prison-quality cage that encloses the manager, who you pay in cash, for the right to feel like a degenerate for living in a motel where ninety-eight percent of the occupants literally are smoking crack with their disability check, which somehow they were able to get—while you are quickly understanding the end of the bank account game that nobody talks about.
When you actually stop drinking because the thought of being homeless is harder than facing your emotions without alcohol.
And eventually comes the day—the zero dollars and zero cents day—when your mind is clear as a glass bell about the entire spectrum, now, of the bank account game.
You've made one-hundred k as a software consultant for Mead Research—you had that experience, you know what it's about. Now you are walking down a desert sidewalk looking for a homeless shelter (see my other memoir) and you know what it's like at the bottom of the game. The homeless shelter won't take you. You're sleeping in parking lots. It becomes clear (as the glass bell, previously mentioned) that if you have no money and you're not working to make money for someone else, someone who does have money that society wants you dead.
That sounds extreme, but it's the absolute truth. Many these days say that the US isn't a society at all—it is solely an economy. They are right. Those are the people that when I was twenty-four working at a hedge fund toting my copy of Atlas Shrugged, I thought were crazy. I thought their liberalism had corrupted their rationality but once you've played both ends of the bank account game you realize those motherfuckers were right.
We are not a society.
We don't have room for everyone.
The French overestimated us when they put Emma Lazarus' poem on the Status of Liberty. We are not a society, we are merely an economy, and if you, for whatever reasons, are not working to make the rich richer, this economy wants you dead. Yes. You read me right. The US is not a society of human animals, it is an economy controlled by superhuman, nonhuman entities—at the very least our corporations—and when you cease to serve those richer than you, the economy prefers that you quietly die.
And I have huddled freezing in the middle of Tucson nights, thinking that if I can never be reconnected with the economy, that it was rational for me to kill myself. And I have reveled, in my own idiotic drunkenness, by sleeping in the most urban areas of Los Angeles even when I had an apartment, even when I had a job, because I had reached the saturation point of my disillusionment with all the jobs I'd worked for and bosses I'd made rich, and no one's opinion of me was worth a grain of sand.
I would be the one lying under ferns in Hollywood as sexy date couples passed me and looked at me, drunk, in ratty clothes..and I would be the one laughing at them.
I liked to dress as casual as possible and scandalize upscale bars like The Hungry Cat by making their door girl with her little black dress look me up and down and tell me with her hardened LA eyes that you've gotta dress up to come here and she would open the door for me and I'd inform her I'd be sitting at the bar and I wouldn't just sit at the bar, I'd hold court.
I'd make friends with every bartender, every server, every patron—even the door girl was smiling and laughing and stopping by every time she passed the bar to make sure I had everything I needed. Fucking right I had everything I needed. I'd spend five times what anyone else in the place was spending, buy two-hundred dollar bottles of wine, drink one glass, and give the bottle to my server to take home and enjoy with his girlfriend. I don't think I'd call that having fun—I think I'd call that disgust.
Disgust with the fact that one year I could be homeless and one year I could sit at a bar and collect phone numbers on napkins, meet a girl on Christmas Eve and wake up with her in bed, both of us making stupid jokes about being each other's Christmas present while my cock slowly fucked her on the morning of the twenty-fifth and while her cunt hugged me so warm and tight like only a girl can do.
Walking into The Hungry Cat in sandals and capris which all my super-straight friends were not shy in telling me they thought they made me look gay..that was disgust. Sometimes when I went in there I had spent the night outside, in a secret place between the Cinerama Dome and the ArcLight Cinemas. I'm sure I looked horrible, by Hollywood standards. The door girl would never date me, for example—I would need to drive a car costing at least seventy-five thousand dollars and wear suits when I went out to drink. Bitches like that don't move to Hollywood to become movie stars—they move there because the men have money. They want to live in a house with a pool—and their high-school sweetheart from Oklahoma is never gonna be able to provide that. But if she has a decent body, then that's what she provides. And arm candy is worth a lot of money in LA. But to me it was just a childish game where I forced The Hungry Cat to let me sit at their bar because I spent a lot of money and I was making the point (to who?) that as long as I raised the amount of money high enough, they would let me do whatever I wanted in The Hungry Cat.
Two years earlier I had been homeless—zero dollars and zero cents homeless—and now, because I walked into an office certain days of the week and listened to a foolish, hurting man (my boss) display his ego, daily, with as much spectacle as Cirque du Soleil (but with none of the beauty)..because of this odd sort of counseling function I performed for our self-proclaimed Chief Software Architect..and because I did some programming that was as easy for me as wiping my nose..I had enough money not to be homeless, and to obliterate my delicate bubble of higher consciousness with a constant stream of alcohol and other drugs.
Anyway I signed that lease in Abby's accounting office in some tiny town in Vermont and was glad I was through with all that LA bullshit.
11
This is how the first few months went, taken from some forgotten blog.
March 20, 2011, 1:33am
I need a plan,
a general template for what I'm doing now, with fixed parts and variable parts. I'm living in Brattleboro, I'm not moving from here until I'm rich from books. I'll find a grocery store job, exercise, get low-income assistance for health care if possible, and I'll slowly write books and submit books and live and stand self-respectingly while I let my authorship develop. And I will commit to being able to write, whether I "publish" or not, and I'll joy in writing, at the rate and in the ways that I joy.
March 1, 2011, 6:32pm
Trying my hand in a combination of computation and psychology, in person, at the Spirit MeetUp in Brattleboro Vermont. Setting up the room now, making posters and diagrams, meeting Mike, Michelle, and Cat, and generally trying something new! If you're in Vermont stop by, starting around this Friday, and for a small price you'll get something that functions like a tarot reading, but that under the hood, is all computers and math. [This job never worked out, by the way. If I told you exactly why I'd probably get killed. Let's just say my bosses behaved erratically due to consumption of exotic substances. Fuck it. They were meth freaks.]
February 19, 2011, 4:42pm
Hiked Indian Pond
Six hours overall. Had a little conversation with god, and god with me, atop Wantastiquet. Wind blowing, me screaming at the wind, that sort of thing. We made demands of each other: each told each other what we need. I need reminding, because I forget. I need money enough to travel whenever I want, pay my debts, have a house, have tools for doing what I want to do, and money to pay people to help me with my projects. God needs me to do the work: hike, go to NA meetings, eat right..whatever it is that I know will move me, I need to not be complacent about those things at all: I need to do them.Some thoughts from today:
No one is with me. No one is on the same journey as me. I'm the only person who hiked Indian Pond today. No one came with me. No one else from Brattleboro hiked that today, or I would have seen them on the trail. I sat by that lake alone, I walked there alone, I came back alone. But more than just literally: there is no one on my path with me, there is no one writing the books I'm writing or living the thought life I'm living. There is, hence, no one qualified to give me advice on how I walk my path, because there is no one else who can or will walk it. So don't take advice from people who don't know about me, and don't sway onto someone else's path for their benefit. I have my own path, my own way, and I am on that path and in that way for unique reasons and due to unique hungers. We can occasionally keep each other company, for a moment, but I am separate, I am by definition the only me, the only one on this path, and it is sensible for me to cultivate and maintain and fully inhabit my own, as no one else can.
The scope of a day is the appropriate scope in which to think, as a human. I learned this profoundly a few months into recovery in Tucson, then somewhere I forgot. You can plan a day. You can live a day. You can not-drink for a day. That's all you can do, pretty much. So live within the scope of the day. In a day, live that day, plan that day, schedule that day, and get that day like you like that day. Then stop. And when you have the chance, do the next day that comes. Anything outside of that is inappropriate, and crazy-making. Don't plan five months from now, and decide that I'm going to be rich, or decide that I'm going to be homeless. Plan today, the time that I am awake, and live that, do that, and don't do a thing else. This is a recipe for sanity.
Whatever is your church, spend time there. Wherever it is that you worship, spend time there. If that's in front of a keyboard programming, then be in front of the keyboard, programming. Spend your time worshipping. Whatever is worship to you, spend your time in the corresponding church. For some that may be a stock exchange. For some it may be a church. For me, today, I am reminded, it is outside. It is in nature. That is my church. That is why I came to Vermont. Spend time in the place that gives you cause to worship. That's a recipe for seeking your spiritual self.
And also: maybe a little RPG thinking would help me. Like, today I earned the "Hiked Indian Pond" badge. My character did. By doing something. No one else earned that badge today. No one who doesn't hike Indian Pond ever earns that badge. Those badges, whether I think of them that way, whether I post them on "Minutiae" or not, are real. Maybe thinking of them that way a little more would help me to quantify and understand what I am doing, to put a finger on the work I do that goes into the changes I want to see.
I'm incredibly thankful for this day. That mountain is beautiful. From a certain point, walking, I was talking aloud, thanking god for allowing me to live today, for giving me the chance to do so, and I get some credit for living it the way I did =)
February 9, 2011, 1:35am
It's 10°F
Cold walk from the house to downtown Brattleboro. I bundled up. The new wool coat did well, but in this cold my arms were getting chilly by the time I got to the church. Been sitting at the homeless shelter about every other evening. Today I'm doing the 1am-7am shift. I'll reward myself with breakfast from the deli in the morning, english muffins with sausage, egg, and cheese. And for whatever reason, my computer is working with the church's internet tonight, so I'm posting from there.
Selfishly, this is a great job for a writer, at least it was while the internet wasn't working. There's nothing to do—or very little, usually—and you have to sit here for six hours. That's ass in chair right there. Most nights I've come here I've written. I probably will tonight, after this post. I took the last day or two off from writing, from doing anything productive, and just relaxed. I needed to give myself a break. Feedback I got about my last volunteering made me realize I was being too hard on myself. I'm volunteering at a fucking homeless shelter: you can't do that wrong. So what if it isn't a holistic solution; I'm not Superman, I'm not even the director of this shelter, I'm just one hand making one cup of coffee at a time. I don't have to feel bad about that. In fact, it's inappropriate for me to, for my sake. I need to beat myself up less; not at all if I can swing it.
I'm going to work the days I signed up for in February, then re-assess. I need to get a job, myself, sometime in the next..I don't know..while. I've got to take care of myself, so I don't end up in here. Have been putting out feelers, submitted a résumé last week to a fairly local tech business. We'll see.
I was on Twitter there too much for a while. I drank some, after not-drinking for a while—and when I drink I drink too much. I was feeling beholden to my family, like I owe certain people a return email or a proactive birthday wish at a faster rate than they give to me. It was wearing me out, so I stopped. I don't owe my parents a check-in. They're doing fine, in their lives, and I'm doing fine in mine. It's uncertain how tomorrow will unfold, and that uncertainty was getting me down more than it needs to, in light of that other quality of tomorrow: that it's not promised. Imagine how my dead friends would encourage me: do you think they'd think it was wise for me to use a single one of the days I am given—days more than they were given—to worry, to feel sorry for myself (or angry with myself?) because I don't have a paying job and am not fully actualized as an artist, as a scientist, as a thinker? I don't think they would think that was a good idea, or the most grateful way to approach today—a day I've been given, a precious thing.
So I'm giving myself a break. Not drinking—it's better for me this way. Not beating myself up for not having satisfied societal demands on my own servitude to capitalism. I mean: anyone who's paying attention knows that our world is fucked up at the moment. Ten years ago I could make middle-class money doing software consulting in the US. Now..not so much. I feel in my own mind that the projects I've done recently are significantly more valuable, they better use my gifts, etc. than projects I did in my early twenties. That I've made less and less money along that same string of time is, I don't think, entirely dependent on me. I don't want to be 100% nihilistic in every moment of every day, but I think a touch of nihilism is needed, to be realistic, in this day and age. It may be the case that things I do make me enough money to someday be able to get out of debt, buy a house, feel secure enough to decide I am capable of responsibly having children, etc. etc. I hope that's true. I'm open to that; I think I'm ready for my life to go better. Or it may be that in six months, I'm sleeping on the floor in this church, because I never found a job. But you know what: I'm going to give myself a break. I'm a person, a valuable life, I happen to be wildly creative and industrious in a few different ways, and whether I deserve to (or just get to) self-actualize as a fuller expression of a human being, or whether I don't, I deserve not to hate myself in the process.
December 27, 2010, 7:29pm
Moving on
Going to Louisiana tomorrow with my mom, both my sisters, and my nephew Daniel. I'm looking forward to meeting him in person for the first time..so far our relationship has been over Skype.
When we get back from Louisiana I'm moving to Vermont.
In Louisiana it will be my grandmother, my aunt and her husband, and maybe their son. We will eat crawfish if they haven't been damaged too much by BP. I hope they're ok to eat as that's a family tradition. I'm looking forward to seeing my grandmother, and everyone. It's a treat that so many of us will be together.
I miss my dad. He's out of the picture. He's still alive, but he just does other things now. That's hard for me; really, at 32, that's the hardest relationship for me to ponder. I love my dad, I know he loves me. Our love, somehow, at this time in our lives, doesn't translate into civil contact. He is estranged from his ex-wife and 2/3 of his kids. Dad: you're a mystery to me, a painful one. I am sending you love and wishes and, yes, shaking my head a little. If I had kids I wouldn't treat them like you do. I respect you and wish you the best. And I miss you.
In Vermont I'm renting a room with masters degree students/political people. They seem cool. We have a house close to town in Brattleboro.
I'm looking forward to Vermont. I'm going to write at first, then find a job, probably, and settle in. Work has been dicey for the last year—I haven't had any. Lol. Jobless recovery. Well, I don't need anyone's permission to be productive, and I always am. Going to work at finishing my NaNoWriMo novel, and continue looking for a literary agent. I can write, and you should do what you can do, so I'm doing that.
The thought of a week with extended family stresses me. Of course everything will be fine, and we'll all enjoy each other's company, but it's always stressful too. I don't have as much anxiety about it as I would have had 5 or 10 years ago, though, so that's a blessing of age. I think I know now that connections between people are limited, so more and more I can accept their limited—and wonderful—but limited—and wonderful—nature. We're not here for all that long anyway so you just forget about perfection and enjoy the communion that exists.
I think 2011 is going to be a great year for me—2010 has been. I want to write, meditate, meet new people, and hike. And eat. I walked through the grocery store in B-Boro and the beef and cheese selection looks amazing. Here's to a year much like this one—creative, connected, and happy—with these mods: thinner, published, and richer.
I waste so much money in restaurants. If I'm not careful—or even if I am, I might end up homeless in Vermont. And even knowing that, I took myself out for a nice dinner and drinks before I came here to volunteer. What the fuck? If I volunteer here when I have money, if I ever do someday, I'm still going to eat out..I'm not saying that I don't deserve to eat in restaurants just because these people are coming to us at this desk asking for weak sandwiches.
But maybe I should give myself a better chance..not spend so much, spend slower, spend smarter, while I am poor, living off unemployment. A handful of times since I came here, I've blown too much money on a meal or bar excursion. Being here is so depressing, it makes me want to drink when I leave. It really does. And I might do that. My hope is basically to solve my own money problems by making more money. But I could be more frugal, in this time, could live simpler and cheaper, for sure. I do that kind of spending to address some hunger within me, that I don't know how to quell.
If I came here to volunteer a lot, this might be excellent writing time. It might be. I could write my book here, which I had considered before ever seeing what the actual volunteer experience was like..but it's true, being here and seeing it, that I could write my book here, in the night. I look at my own life and I see (for example) a laptop that I have no means to replace if something goes wrong. To me that seems like lack, like tenuousity, like scarcity. Because I would like MacBook Pros to be disposable, so that I never have to worry about losing mine, or something going wrong. But the fact is I have a working MacBook Pro..tonight. So I should use it tonight. And I am.
But that's the thing. We are doing something useful for these people, even though it's not permanent, it's not at the root. But still: one night of not freezing to death is worth something. It is. As is, in my life, one day of writing. One day to live: what a privilege! Can I see it that way, see it that way every day? I think I mostly do, but I could see it that way more.
I don't have to work out tomorrow today. But I can do what is possible today. I mess up there, a lot. I worry about tomorrow, today, and I don't do what is possible, today. I could do better, there: don't take on tomorrow. Take on today. I could leave tomorrow alone more, and address today better. My spending and drinking are symptoms of this, are wrapped up in how I do this: I could manage my time and my energy and my expenditures, today, much better..and part of that is leaving tomorrow alone, today, and doing today better than I would have otherwise. I'm afraid to do that, sometimes. And it messes me up. Because really I'm making tomorrow much harder by not living today in the better ways that I know how.
I have a bank account here. I don't need to fuck that up. I have the lack of stress and recent history of not-drinking that I need in order to quite easily not-drink to any degree that I want. My life isn't really tragic right now. It's not perfect, it's not even stable, it's maybe even tenuous. But it's not tragic, and it's not in immediate crisis. It's maybe one step away from crisis, from devastating financial ruin, but it's not there right now. And I don't have to help it get there. It might go there anyway, or it might not. But I don't have to help it, today, to get there faster.
I definitely don't want to fuck up my bank account. I don't want to be drunk all the time. I don't drink responsibly, I don't. Sometimes I can do it to a fun level, but sometimes I go too far. And I hate myself for it later. I don't have to do that to myself. It's actually a choice. I can totally choose never to do that, never to feel that way. And it's that Gene logic this girl from Tucson: Why am I feeling this? Because I want to. Because I want to feel this way. Because there's some part of me that lacks that experience, and wants it, misses it, requires it.
I think I'm ready to require something else.
To receive something else. I think I'm not needing to explore anymore the need for self-hatred or self-loathing due to terrible acts. I did need that, I did want that, I did require that. But maybe I require something else now. Maybe I'm ready to receive something else now.
I hope so, I think so, but it's hard to let go of your self, but you need to, to make room for the new self to come into. And I think just like with other people, you have to make room first, then into the empty space, only once it's empty, can new things come.
With the drinking thing, one of my main things is I just need to further develop my other activities..so that I tend to think of other things to do. I've made some progress along these lines with some hiking..but like today..I just went for a drive, for no reason, around B-boro and outlying areas. It was great. Sometimes I just need to do something like that..just take a walk for no reason or just call someone, or drive.
make room first, then into empty space, once it's empty, may new things come
12
Vermont equals snow. The streets and sidewalks are taken care of for you, but you've got to shovel your own driveway—as discussed. We continue our pattern of Maggie angrily shoveling the snow all by herself or sometimes with my help while my housemates who actually have a car in the driveway hide inside slumped down on the couch so Maggie wouldn't see them and they didn't have to shovel the snow. Maggie would even bang on our door and no one would answer it. We'd just leave her there in her own fury about no one helping her shovel. Even I got tired of Maggie's insistence because she had such an angry work-ethic attitude that frankly it reminded me of my dad. Most of the time I hid in the first-floor apartment with T+I and we let Maggie work out her demons with a pair of shovels and a driveway of waist-high Vermont snow.
Oh that's a funny thing about Vermonters that if I don't mention here I'll forget to mention at all. You know how they Eskimos have like a thousand words for snow? Well, Vermonters have at least thirty. After it snows, locals stand around in front of their houses talking about the snow..like..its characteristics, it's deviations from the predictions, and the estimated time to get back to normal. This is not a short conversation. I'm talking, like, two grown people having a half-hour conversation about the snow.
Where was I? Oh. Yes. Maggie getting mad because we never helped her even though she was shoveling like every day. I shoveled with her like seventy-five percent of the time, basically because I wanted to fuck her (let's not start lying to each other at this point—we have a long way to go). Anyway you know, I imagined scenarios where I shoveled out her car and she offered me a cup of tea before she went to work and we fucked. Basic, simple stuff like that. Maggie had that kind of purity that someone like me wants to corrupt. I mean I want to make the bitch blush when we fuck. But part of it was I am a genuinely empathetic person and I can't stand to be around people who are doing work when I'm not, so my instinct to help had me going out there picking up a shovel and helping that girl get to work even though I knew Maggie and I were never going to fuck.
Still I am a very sexual person and I can sense things about people's sexuality (and other aspects about them—it's not just a sexual thing). Maggie was no virgin, but she looked like she'd never had an orgasm with someone else, and I wanted to be the first to give her one. I really can tell a lot about a person sexually just by spending a few seconds around them—even perfect strangers. Maggie was definitely the repressed type, but just through cultural training, not abuse—she was a girl that if you said the right things to her in the right order and did the right things to her in the right order, she'd hatch from her downy chick shell and grow into a full-fledged freak in a matter of about six minutes—My fantasies about Maggie were always in her apartment: stepping inside the door, kissing her, and putting a hand up her shirt and a hand down her panties.
But I'm a simple type, too. Just collaboratively shoveling Maggie out of the garage and waving at her as she headed down High Street to go to work..that level of satisfaction is enough for me. You know? The idea that we're not all individuals but really an interconnected web, one giant organism—I believe all that.
Setting up a bank account was difficult.
I needed to get money orders to send to Wells Fargo so I could open a bank account (I owed money to my California bank, had overdrawn it with fees for lots of money) so I was in ChexSystems and I told the woman who was acting as the representative for the Brattleboro Savings & Loan that I was trying to turn things around, be right with all the appropriate systems, and she said she could see I was sincere..as if what she thought of me mattered. It was like this exchange of approval where the bank gets to give me the nod that they recognize I'm trying to live within the system, and they make a value judgement on me that that is good, in a good and bad sort of way. I am trying to get out of ChexSystems: I am now a good person. I was in ChexSystems: all that time I was a bad person.
So I had to get money orders to mail to my bank in California before I could set up an account in Brattleboro. I drive to the Walmart right across the bridge to New Hampshire in terrible raining ice to get my cashed unemployment check turned into money orders.
"I've had a hard time of things. I'm trying to turn it around. I'll mail those money orders as soon as I can get them. I really want to have an account here."
"Well, we should get a notice from ChexSystems in thirty to sixty days, so keep checking back and we'll see if we can open that account."
It's funny how when banks and other companies need money from you, they need it right away, but when they owe you money, it's going to take them thirty to sixty days. Somehow their computers run at different speeds depending on which direction the money is flowing.
Standing in the post office filling out my unemployment claims with lies about jobs I'd applied for. At first I gave the truth about where I'd applied, but after a few times, I'd applied for all the places to work within walking/driving distance of my house, everywhere in Brattleboro that would possibly hire me. You have to put down three jobs a week that you applied for—there are only about thirty businesses in Brattleboro. And almost all the stores there are mom and pop stores or one-owner stores and they can't afford to hire anyone.
I had assumed Walmart would be my surefire place of employ and I applied there the second or third day I was in town. But, as Walmart does, they abandoned that location and moved farther down the road..away from Brattleboro..and there was no longer a Walmart just across the bridge into New Hampshire where Brattleboro people could walk. It was only a matter of months before my car was undriveable. The Walmart was a real blow to my survival. The critical item that I could only buy at Walmart were the prepaid phone cards that worked with my particular piece of shit phone. I never drove to the new Walmart in my own car—I think I was just afraid to drive that far into New Hampshire, that far away from what I knew. A normal person would have just driven up there and got a job, but to me it was a cataclysmic event that the Walmart moved. It scared me. I felt like my world had fallen apart a significant amount. I didn't have appropriate tags on my car (and hadn't for years) so I didn't like to drive places that were far from home. Getting Vermont tags was on my list of things to do but I was scared to do that, too. I was scared they would deny me the tags or that transferring the title or insurance or whatever would cost me more than I had and they would confiscate my car at the DMV and I'd lose my car earlier than expected. So I just let my tags stay, and stay, and stay, and the likelihood of me getting to my DMV todo list item got smaller and smaller. I think it's inertia. Anyway it affects me real bad sometimes and I just have to stop walking—like I literally stop walking in the middle of the sidewalk and I can't proceed. Does anybody out there understand? Anyone?
Before the Walmart moved, I went there and bought a writing desk for thirty dollars, a folding chair, a lamp, some candles that were on clearance, toilet paper, and refills for the Swiffer that Tooler had gotten for the house.
The weather on the way back was the worst weather I've ever driven in. I rolled down my window so I could scrape the ice that was accumulating while I was driving. It was sick.
I hiked around the base of Mt. Wantastiquet but I still couldn't find the entrance to the trail that went to the top of the mountain—even though later I realized it was staring me in the face. So I hiked along a trail that cross-country skiers used—flat and along the base of the mountain, gentle ups and downs, half-frozen waterfalls six feet high flowing down the side of textured rock faces. Evergreens. Moss growing in near-freezing water. Half an hour on that path was enough to clear even my mind of every single one of its worries.
13
Tooler was a student. Tooler had friends from school. Tooler invited about 20 of her friends over one night while I was—as usual—in bed early. They were drunk and tried very graciously to invite me to their living room party by banging on my door and asking if I was awake.
I was listening to the Wagogo soothing song on my laptop, but even that wasn't enough to get me to sleep with this party going on right outside my door. And—tell me this—why do drunk people talk louder than normal?
All I had was the universe of their voices, and you could tell there were some cute girls out there. I debated going out there, jumping into it, drinking with them, flirting, talking loudly, but I don't know I was 33 and I didn't want to party with a bunch of 23 year olds. I just wanted the Wagogo soothing song to put me to sleep so I could get up early and hike.
This is how their party went:
"Let's say when you get your line busted you have to take a hit of shisha. An extra-large hit. Do you have any alcohol in the house? Real alcohol?"
"We have wine," Tooler says, nonplussed. Actually, no, blissfully. She's like perfect two-beers drunk.
"I want shots," says the cute-sounding girl.
"I'll walk you to the store and we'll get you shots," Tooler says.
"I don't want to walk in that fucking weather. How about every time you get your line busted you have to lick.."
"Whoah!"
"..no hold on! Hold on! I'm not finished yet."
"Ok, what do you have to lick?"
"The unspecified body part of the person who busted up your line."
"Why don't we just play the game with regular rules."
"No, bitch, I wanna get laid."
"You're welcome to have a threesome with Issa and I."
I can imagine Tooler raising her beer along with this invitation.
"No offense, Tooler, but I want dick."
Remarks like this make we want to leave my room. But in the end, I don't care if whoever that is out there wants dick or shots or what she wants. I'm a curmudgeon. I'm a decade older than her. I want to sleep. I want to hike. I've had tons of pussy and I hope I have tons more, but it's really not the motivating factor in my life right now.
I thread in and out of sleep, always waking to the party in the living room, which consists of drinking more beer and adding bizarre sexual rules to some board game that I don't think I've ever played.
The next day Tooler says, "I hope we didn't keep you up with your party."
She's watching me get on my hiking gear.
"Oh, no, I went to bed early, I said."
"Have you ever played this game ZibbleDeeZurk?" she asks.
I say no.
"You should play it with us some time."
"That sounds like fun."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
Tooler looks me in the eyes.
I look her right back.
Whatever. I'm sure Tooler knew I was lying—she was just polite enough not to press me on it.
When I left the house, I went to church, just because I thought that would be a way to meet people—even though I'm an atheist who hates church with all his heart and soul. I was also scoping out the church that houses the homeless shelter that I would soon be volunteering at. I don't really hate church with all my heart and soul—I've just been so many times that it's become pointless to go any more.
This church had about six people in worship. I felt bad for them. They gave their pastor a special gift—an envelope—and I was like: I don't even think this bitch is getting paid.
I was kind of lost with the hymnals so I just looked around the sanctuary during the songs. There was stained glass everywhere except at the top of the wall that faced the street, where there was a huge round area covered with plywood. I figured they were doing some sort of construction. The youth choir sang and I couldn't take my eyes off this one young teenager who was singing. She sang louder than the other three kids like she felt the need to carry that whole motherfuckin' choir even though they were only singing to six people—she just had that kind of energy I'm wired to pay attention to, and to reach out to.
At the fellowship time afterward we ate nasty sugared cookies and drank sour coffee. I sat at a table by myself and this young teenager from the choir sat down across from me and was flirting with me hard core and some of the adults tried to rescue me (or her, I'm not sure) by sitting next to us and trying to draw her fire (yeah, like in Star Wars, motherfucker) but I mean this little Lola was all over me, asking personal questions like why this was my first time at their church and where did I live and when was the last time I kissed a girl. Not do you have a girlfriend? but When was the last time you kissed a girl? Then she accidentally kicked me under the table and even though on a desert island I would have behaved differently, in real life, I excused myself. She asked if she would see me next week and I started to think maybe this wasn't flirting but the best new member outreach team in the history of the church.
I told her I'd see her next week but I never saw her again.
I go up the street to a restaurant that serves breakfast. Check out their menu outside. Go in and unwrap myself from my scarves and hats and neck warmers and set my hand weights on the floor next to a bar stool. I sit down.
This big guy, big belly, tall, gray beard, looks down at me with this smirk like he knows I'm new to Vermont if I need all that gear to go outside and go to a restaurant for breakfast.
But he doesn't say anything about that.
He says, "You want a drink?"
"Sure, how about a glass of wine."
"You wanna see a list?"
"Nah, just something red."
He brings me a glass of wine and the breakfast menu.
"Your Philly omelette looks good."
"Out of Philly steak."
"Ok, how about any other kind of omelette."
"Out of eggs."
"You're fucking shitting me."
"No. Wild series of events. I can tell you all about it if you want."
And some woman in the corner, walled off with a toddler playing, says, "Don't tell him about it."
"That's my wife," this guy says.
"I figured that out," I say. "How about just the best thing you can make with whatever you've got back there."
"I can make a burger."
"I can eat a burger."
"You want blue cheese on it?"
"Oh, I have walked into the right place today," I say, knocking on the bar.
"How do you want that cooked?"
"As rare as you'll make it."
"We'll make it as rare as you'll eat it."
"Good, 'cause some restaurants have you know like limits and they won't make ground beef rare."
"This is Vermont, son, you can have your burger any way you want it."
"Ok, extra rare?"
"Extra rare it is."
The guy goes back to his computer and types it in.
"You don't seem like a bartender."
"I'm not. I'm a restaurant owner. And I'm thinking of getting out of that."
"You don't seem like a restaurant owner, either."
"Well I used to be a psychiatrist."
"That's more like it."
I sip my wine.
"How can you tell?"
"Just the way you talk."
"Well I gave up that shit!"
The woman in the corner says, "Calm, Butchy. He's a customer."
"Well he doesn't seem like a customer," Butchy says, peering at me.
"Why did you get out of psychiatristing?"
"I got out. Because I was tired of hearing people's stories."
"Now you're a bartender. Same thing."
"Ah! Ah! See!" he says to his wife. "This motherfucker walks in here and you are the only person to get—he is the only person to get—my wife doesn't even get that. We're selling the bar, baby. That. Is. It. After this guy eats his hamburger we're selling the bar. What's your name?"
I reach out to shake.
"Matthew."
"Butch."
"Is that your real name?"
"Who are you, a real-deal mindreader?"
He tells me his real name but at this point I've forgotten what it was.
"So why do they call you Butch?"
He puts one elbow on the bar.
"You're not gonna believe this, but when I was a kid I was a bully. I used to beat up kids and they called me Butch. Then even my mom started calling me Butch."
"A bully. Who became a psychiatrist. Who became a restaurant owner."
"Former."
"Hey!" says the wife.
"Almost former," Butch whispers to me. "You want another glass of wine?"
"Yeah."
"So what about you, you always drink wine with breakfast?"
"No, but I'm looking to start."
"What's your story?"
"Ahh..computer programmer trying to be a writer."
"You've come to the right place. This is a good place for writers."
"How'd you find Brattleboro?"
"I Googled good cities for writers to live in."
"No shit."
"Yeah, Google's got your number."
"Are you afraid a million other writers will do the same search and come here and flood the market?"
"I think the weather will deter most people of any profession from coming here."
Butch nods.
"That's part of why I like it," I say. "Not a lot of riffraff."
"Oh we have riffraff. But I know what you mean. And you're right. It takes a certain..fortitude..to live up here. It's almost too rough for me."
"How so?"
"My ankle! Slipped on this fuckin' ice!"
"Butchy!"
"What? He don't care. He's not a customer. He's a cool guy. Shut up. We're talking, me and Matthew. This guy is a computer programmer—he ain't no idiot. He knows how to put together all the ones and zeros to make your iPad work so give this guy some respect, ok? And all I said was I slipped on that fuckin' ice!! For what it did to me I wish there was something worse I could say about it. Anyway."
"What happened?"
"What happened?? I told you what happened! I slipped on the ice coming out of our house now I got pins here, here, here. It's still bruised! And I slipped two winters ago. What kind of shoes you got?"
I was about to tell him but fortunately a guy came out with my food.
"See that blue cheese? This is Chad. This is Matthew. Chad I can trust with anything in the restaurant and he's an excellent cook so I can guarantee you're gonna like that burger."
"Thank you, Chad."
Chad nods and leaves.
"You want another glass of wine? After that one?"
"Sure."
"I'll go ahead and pour it. New glass, new glass."
"No, no, bring the bottle, I'll finish this one. I don't want to waste a glass."
"Listen, Matthew, this is my restaurant and if I want to bring you a new glass, that my business. Am I right?"
"Yeah. But we're friends now, and I'm asking you, please, to use the same glass. If you use a new glass it makes me feel like you're keeping me at a distance."
Butch looks at me sideways and nods. He brings the bottle over, pours me a glass of red, and sets the bottle by my plate.
"The rest of that is on me because you, young man, have made my morning."
His wife yells from the corner, in a heavy east coast accent: "Now let him eat, you've been talking his ear off since the kid walked in."
I eat.
I drink.
We talk some more.
I see that he's still wearing a brace on his ankle and walks unevenly due to his slip on the ice. Butch talks about how sidewalk ice is one of the principal dangers of living in Brattleboro and I later learn this is true. He asks me about my weights and I tell him I carry them while I'm hiking to build my arms.
More drunk than I'd intended to be when I started my hike, I reluctantly left Butch and his wife and their baby and their cook and I went back to Wantastiquet. But I still couldn't find the trailhead to go up the mountain, so I walked the trail that followed the river, used my hand weights, alternately walked and ran, and by the time I was done I had that cardiac high that I always associate with the hour after soccer practice as a kid.
The next day, determined to hike Wantastiquet, trunching over the bridge in deep deep snow hardly walkable because my car insurance and registration had expired. They were expired before but I no longer wanted to risk it. On this insane walk across the bridge in snow simply too deep to walk in without snowshoes, me thinking I'm doing ok but actually this being a mentally ill, financially poor person going through extraordinary measures just to spend some time in nature—I couldn't legally drive to the base of the mountain, I had to walk there from town.
One out of a thousand people would have taken four steps across that bridge and turned around. I'm not trying to impress you by saying this. It wasn't bravery, or skill, or composition or talent that made me keep going. It was a resounding "FUCK IT" that ran through my brain, that didn't care if it took an hour to get to the base of the mountain—I had nothing else to do. Also, I've believed since I was young that I deserved to suffer, and because of that, I am able to endure avalanches of pain that would make most people simply pass out and die.
So I made it across that bridge.
My feet and my legs from the knee down were soaked in freezing water.
I kept hiking.
I hadn't even made it to the base of the mountain.
Part of the reason I moved here was to hike Mt. Wantastiquet and I was going to hike Mt. Wantastiquet.
And on this, something like my fifth attempt, I found the trailhead. It was right next to where I had been hiking all along, just impossible to see because the entire trail was covered in snow!! But I found some snowshoe tracks and used them as my guide, and in a matter of hours I was on top of that mountain.
Now, maybe mountains do nothing for you.
And I'll admit, the ocean, the desert, these are more powerful geographies for me.
But even if you're not a mountain person, you've got to feel the glory of standing atop even the smallest of mountain/hills.
This one gave beautiful views looking south, west, and north along Vermont's mountain scape. I stood on some rocks at the top and believed, for the first, time, that I was really in Vermont.
I was exploring like I planned.
I was doing it.
I took a picture of myself in a warm hat, happy, happy as I'd been in ages. To see the look on my face, in this one picture, is a gift to me every time I look at it. To see me happy, hiking, smiling. I look content, I look at home, I look..right. When I look at that picture the feelings come back to me and I think what a gift..what a gift to have felt that way for a few seconds or a minute. Thank you so much (whoever, whatever) for this gift of life.
At the top, I was peaceful, alone—I finally felt like I had got some quiet—something my mind desperately needs. I see a bird—a hawk maybe. I call out and it swoops down to check me out. I think, at the top of that mountain, after my hike, after my brain has had an hour or two to clear itself of noise.
Later, when I hiked Wantastiquet, I didn't always hike the trails. You learn when you go to Vermont that snowy places have a fifth season: they don't just have winter, spring, summer, fall—they have a season that comes between winter and spring, and that season is called mud. Everything melts and all that snow is no longer snow, it's water and dirt and mud. So I hiked in the snow. I hiked in the streams, walking atop the rocks. Those were the best trails because the real trails were all mud.
I sprinted down the mountain through the forest off the beaten path, saw people below me on the trails, stopped, hid from them, went again, stalked the other hikers, controlled my breath, waited, ran, hands moving with the trees and feet befriending the ice—and at that point I was no longer human, but a creature of the mountain.
Maybe it was a bad omen that it happened—maybe it was way more than a bad omen—but a huge fire broke out in the center of Brattleboro in a building that was apartments on top and about half the walk-in businesses in town on ground level. Everyone came out to watch. People lost their homes. A firetruck soaked the entire building from the top and let the water flow down though the apartments and shops—water damage ended up costing more than the fire. You couldn't walk downtown—Main Street was closed off. The while town stood there while half of Brattleboro burned.
A guy I would meet later, a drinker who lost his apartment in the fire, fell down some stairs after a night of heavy drinking that followed his apartment being destroyed. He suffered head damage—his thinking was affected, he was in the hospital. The husband and wife owner of the bar where he had been drinking did everything they possibly could for him so he wouldn't sue them for letting him drink too much, and because they cared, limiting him after that to two beers a day.
It was a mess. A third of the town's apartment dwellers displaced..bookstores, restaurants (including Butch's)..all destroyed.
And you know what the cause of the fire was? Someone in one of the apartments was putting up decorative lights—a string of lights like for Christmas—and they used a staple to attach the lights to the wall.
14
Tooler and Issa went to California for the weekend. I went out drinking. Some guy behind me shouts:
"Because it's your birthday!"
I turn around. There's like five guys.
I say: "Tequila shots on me."
"Seriously?"
"Seriously. Is it seriously your birthday? Then I'm seriously buying tequila shots for you and your friends."
"You wanna see my ID? It really is my birthday."
I'm tapping on the bar.
"I don't want to see your ID. What if you show it to me and it's not your birthday? Then we won't get to do tequila shots. I have absolutely no interest in this not being your birthday."
This guy puts his arm around me and yells:
"THIS IS MY NEW BEST FRIEND!!"
He sits on the stool next to me.
"Your logic seems to be fucked up on the surface but when you follow it to the root it makes perfect sense. In other words, a paradox. I'm Aaron. I'm a quantum physicist."
I shake his hand.
"A quantum physicist. What does that entail?"
"I could explain it to you, but you wouldn't understand," Aaron says.
I take five minutes to explain the work I've done to him and his friends are going crazy waiting for us so we can all do Aaron's birthday shots together but by the time I'm done explaining the outline of what I know about the world, Aaron is clinking his shot glass with mine and saying:
"I knew this guy would understand!"
We all do our shots.
"Now let's go," his friends are saying.
"We can't go now."
"Why not?"
"Because. It's not every day you meet a computer scientist who understands the fundamentals of quantum physical interaction. You guys, this guy has invented quantum systems that demonstrate the emergent properties I try to explain to you every day but here finally someone comes along who actually knows what the fuck I'm talking about."
"I thought you wanted to meet that girl..Darling Nikki?"
"Darling Nikki can wait," Aaron says. "Unless you want to come with us to Inferno."
"Why not," I say.
I slap a card on the bar and soon we're trunching up Elliot Street in the goddamn freezing cold and I meet Darling Nikki and Darling Nikki is nice in a weird angular but very sexual way. Every look from her oozes sex and she calculatedly doles these out to me, Aaron, the bartender, everyone in the goddamn motherfucking place. We get smashed, everyone buying shots for everyone and it's as if I knew these people for years.
"I want to smoke," Darling Nikki says.
At that, the hive of gentlemen following her organize to construct or locate a place for Darling Nikki to smoke pot, because if Darling Nikki gets to smoke pot, then whoever made that happen might get laid by Darling Nikki. That's just the way it works. Well, that's the way the hive of guys perceives it works.
Aaron has weed but no pipe.
Someone has rolling papers but they're at his house in another town.
The convenience store is closed.
No one even has a place we can go to smoke.
"We could go to my house," I say, remembering Tooler and Issa are in California.
"Yes. Yes," Aaron says, grabbing my arm. "Do you have a beer can, a straw, a hot glue gun, and a washer like from a bicycle?"
"I don't know about the glue gun but I can hook you up."
"Yes!" Aaron shouts—a crazy motherfucker even crazier than me—I know it's a bad idea already.
Aaron talks the three blocks up High Street and we are all freezing our asses off—this is a painful journey even with the promise to smoke weed and a one-sixth chance at boning Darling Nikki's angular little pussy. He talks about quantum physics (which he knows nothing about, by the way). Everything he says is generalities, stuff you'd pick up from a 3rd grader's introductory pamphlet on quantum physics. I hate myself for inviting these people to my house and the Vermont/arctic temperatures are sobering me up faster than a DUI.
We get to the house. Everyone but me Aaron and Darling Nikki splits instantly because the house isn't well apportioned enough.
"You only have one couch?"
"Pull up that bed from my room," I say. "There's plenty of room."
But they make up excuses for why they suddenly have to go and they must have really wanted to go bad because that meant walking back down those three blocks of High Street in mean-ass temperatures.
One of Aaron's friend's actually says, "I don't believe you only have one couch."
I look at the guy as though I'm holding a gun to his head.
"Just sit on the floor if you're so disappointed."
The guy is über offended.
"Nobody else offered their place to come and smoke," I say.
"Yes," he says. "Thank you. But I do have to work tomorrow."
"Alright, well, nice meeting you," I say, mentally cataloguing him for execution at the next possible interval.
So those guys leave. It's just me Aaron Darling Nikki.
Aaron tells me he knows a tech place up the road who's hiring. He'll get me their info. It's a done deal. He never sends me the info. It's all just talk to get down Darling Nikki's pants. He wants to come across as the guy with connections, the guy with the upper hand—he's getting me a job. I wouldn't even be able to live without Aaron the quantum physicist holding my leash.
Then he attempts to construct a bong from an empty beer bottle, a straw, and Elmer's glue.
It goes horribly.
Darling Nikki and I start making eyes at each other.
Then Aaron gets his bong going and the bong may have been weak but his pot was not. It was what my friend Tatiara might have called the bomb-funky hallucinogenic weed. Weed that'll knock you off your ass. I mean you'll be trippin' off one hit of this shit and then you realize you've had like 15 hits.
Aaron Darling Nikki and I stood in front of this poster of Tooler's for like an hour. It was in the kitchen and I can testify that that shit was trippy when you were stone cold sober. But tripping, especially on this weed, you had a tendency to convince yourself that this poster was meant to be looked at on this particular strain of weed. There was all kind of body positioning between me Aaron and Darling Nikki which I let Aaron win. As I said before I was 33 and I truly didn't give a shit if Darling Nikki spread her angular legs and let her cunt be fucked by some crook-dick wannabe quantum philosopher or whatever the fuck this tooth-chipped asshole was pretending to be. I wished I had never bought that birthday shot because I just wanted to be in bed, sleep off the tequila and Wicked Witch weed and do something simple tomorrow, like hike Indian pond.
The three of us stood there looking at Tooler's picture, torrentially stoned.
Darling Nikki leaned into me.
"Is this this interesting when you're not high?"
"Yes, sometimes I can't even leave the kitchen because I'm tracking down all the subtle references built into its intricacies."
Darling Nikki gave me a special look and I thought she wanted to fuck me and in retrospect probably the only reason we didn't fuck during my year in B-boro was that I was psycho.
We all started to sober up so we drank Tooler's white wine. I got so drunk off so many different things I had to duck into my bedroom closet and throw up in my boots. I found myself lying on the wood floor of my closet unable to move. I heard the sounds of Darling Nikki leaving and Aaron futilely trying to keep her there and me knowing that he was an amateur because anyone could tell that she was leaving that house no matter what. Their conversation and Darling Nikki leaving and the satisfaction that Aaron didn't get to fuck her are the last thoughts I had that night.
I woke up the next day under the most unfortunate of circumstances. Aside from the fact that I was face down in a pool of my own vomit in my Skechers. No. The circumstance I refer to is that when I left my bedroom, Aaron was still there, sleeping on the couch.
I wanted this motherfucker out.
Last night was a mistake.
Aaron was the lynchpin of that mistake.
I showered, hoping the motherfucker would hear me and get the idea. When I came out of the shower Aaron was sitting straight up on the couch trying to smoke some more of that crazy weed out of what I now saw was a soda can. Poor Tooler. Not only was her white wine wasted on me and a bunch of Brattleboro degenerates, but we used an entire can of her girlfriend's Coke to make a bong.
"You want a hit?"
"No."
"You have anything else to drink?"
We drank Tooler's last bottle of white wine. Totally useless: I wasn't going to get a buzz of a half bottle of wine and I don't even drink white. This fucker just wanted to get a buzz before he left. Yeah, how horrible it would be if he had to walk home sober.
If you were careful it might kill you.
I kept waiting for him to leave but this braindead asshole just kept talking and talking and I just waited and waited and said nothing and tried to be as boring and as least interactive as I could be so he would just leave!..which that asshole finally fucking did.
When Tooler and Issa got back from San Francisco they told me, excitedly, that they had smoked some pot. I told them that, symmetrically, I had had some people over while they were gone and we had smoked pot too! We all decided that Maggie probably couldn't smell it so it was probably ok that I had smoked in the house. I was flush with anger at myself that I might have endangered our living situation. I apologized to these fine women, my friends and housemates, and they both comforted me and said don't worry. But I don't think any of us were really into pot—I only remember one time, later, when they were smoking pot and I was freaking out (naturally) because I was brainwashed by AA to think that if I inhaled some second-hand pot smoke I would have to re-instate my sobriety date. AA tickles my OCD. It's not good.
Walking to my shift at the homeless shelter in the middle of the night. There being ice and snow and no one being out and it being very quiet. Me appreciating the features of my Woolrich jacket, which was already one of my favorite possessions I had ever owned.
I volunteered at the homeless shelter at that church I went to that one time with the flirtatious new member outreach committee. I learned that that plywood-covered opening at the top of their sanctuary's front wall was what used to contain a Tiffany's stained-glass window that the church sold to keep its doors open to offer service to the community..hosting AA meetings, renting space to Brattleboro Pastoral Counseling, and mostly, running this homeless shelter.
Oh yeah: running the homeless shelter meant sitting at this desk in the room where all the homeless people slept on the floor, refilling snack foods, making coffee, and that's about it. Officially.
But once you're there a while you learn the people, and you learn that there's more food in the kitchen than your trainer told you about, and then maybe your job involves heating up some leftovers for somebody who gets hungry at three o'clock in the morning.
The men sleep downstairs. The women sleep upstairs. Them's the rules.
But you tell me what you would do when after lights out a wife from upstairs comes downstairs to cuddle with her husband on a cold floor for most of the hours of the night. They're not having sex—they're both fully clothed! They're not even kissing. They're just some 40-year-old mentally ill homeless people harmlessly spooning because in this marriage, there is no marriage bed.
Well I had a position on that and my supervisor disagreed.
She said, "You're not suited to work there because you care too much about the clients." (Instead of holding them at a distance like the others who worked there did, calling them "they."—"They're usually pretty good."—"They usually keep to themselves.")
In my fantastic mind, volunteering at the homeless shelter would be a perfect job for me. But it's a terrible mismatch because I am too sensitive for it and I am unsatisfied with the level of care we were providing. I wanted to solve the problem..when the purpose of the shelter, I learned, was just making sure people didn't freeze to death tonight. That mission did not paint a picture of the world that I was happy with, even if it painted a picture of the world that was true.
I broke the cardinal rule: I made friends with the clients. I can't help it—I make friends with everyone. I started going there drunk, going outside to smoke with the patrons. And yes, I let that married couple sleep together even though it was against the rules.
I knew, every night I volunteered at the homeless shelter, that if Dagny Taggart lived in Brattleboro she would be among them. If she lived in the real world outside of Atlas Shrugged, here in Brattleboro where there are no corporations to rise to the top of, where almost every business is owned by a married couple and they have one employee..she would see that this is a very hard town to even get a job in—and no one would have a need for someone with Dagny Taggart's skills. Dagny sometimes walked me to the shelter, down High Street, snow swirling in the streetlight. I used to say that I didn't have a girlfriend, my girlfriend would be Emily Brontë, and mostly that's still true. But while I lived in Brattleboro, if I had had a girlfriend, my girlfriend would have been Dagny Taggart, and she would have frozen to death if me and the church who sold their Tiffany's window weren't watching over her. See, Dagny Taggart would have no power if she lived in Brattleboro in 2011. All her upstart-ness and get-up-and-go would have been worthless and she would be freezing her bones off in the cold, smoking rollies with fingerless gloves, shuffling inside the church and coming up to my desk, embarrassed to be homeless and hating herself for having to ask my help to get a cup of coffee.
I write a blog post about what a shitty person I am for not single-handedly saving all the homeless people in Brattleboro, about the futility and short-sightedness of what we're doing at the shelter. My friend Eglentyne pointed out: (in my words) how self-disparaging I am, I even give myself a hard time for volunteering at a homeless shelter. She said there's basically no wrong way to do that. But even helping the homeless, for me, is an opportunity to beat myself up. That's messed up, man, and totally unnecessary. I don't need to give myself such a hard time. I'm ok, I'm an ok person, I'm not horrible.
Here's an excerpt of the post:
I think what bothers me about this is that we're not helping, we're not solving a problem at its root here. We're doing exactly what that damn flyer said: we're just helping people not freeze to death tonight. I can't say I find that very satisfying, but I guess I'm not here for my own satisfaction, am I?
And here's what my friend actually said in reply:
I wish I could say something to help with your sadness, Matthew. Living one more day, helping people survive one more day, that's not a trivial thing. We don't know what will happen on that next day, but being there to breathe, to have an opportunity or to make a choice is a good thing. You just being there, being you, that's a good thing too.
15
Whit's. Whitman's was a bar on Elliot street.
There could be no Whit's without the Professor.
The first time I went there I was looking for a place to drink by myself, where I wouldn't meet anyone or see anyone I know (which is straight-up impossible in a town this size). I went as far up Elliot Street as I could before the shops ended and it went dark (which was three blocks). The last bar on the street was a hippie bar and than turned me off infinitely.
So I went back one bar.
And that bar was Whit's.
And that was fate.
I went into Whitman's—a play on the owner's first name, Whit, and of course the poet Walt Whitman. And the bar had a literary theme: ancient books on high shelves and placed behind the bar where the would create atmosphere while being out of reach of drunk people who would likely destroy them. The full name of the bar was Whitman's.
But I was telling you about the Professor.
The first time I walked into Whit's, I case the long three-sided bar with booths around the outside of the building. A large handwritten sign over the register that says, "CASH ONLY." I sat at the farthest end of the bar, farthest from the door, in the very last seat, by a video poker machine that no one was playing. The only other person down there was an old man looked about 70 or 80 years old.
A redhead bartender about 45 comes up to me and she's got this smile like a game show host. She's the only one working this rather large bar and she's like a sniper picking off unarmed muskrats—I mean, she owns the place. She literally owns the place but in terms of control, she owns this motherfucker—you can just tell, from the first time you meet her.
"Whatcha havin' honey?"
"I'd love a gin and tonic."
"If you're drinking gin," the guy next to me says, "you might try one of these."
"What is that?"
"An anemic martini, but with vodka. Gin is such an American drink. Vodka is much more..international."
"I'll have a gin and tonic."
The bartender goes to make my drink and this relic next to me continues talking.
"You know there was no vodka in America before the First World War. Or was the Revolutionary War? I can't remember. But gin is the quintessential American drink, while vodka is of course from Russia. Before the Civil War, Americans only drank gin. Only after, when the trade routes were modified, was vodka imported to this country. And now Americans mostly drink vodka—a Russian drink—and you have to look far and wide to find a gin drinker like yourself."
"I wouldn't say you have to look far and wide."
"Yes but would you not agree that vodka is more popular here? I mean, just look behind that bar. Sixteen flavors of vodka—only five or six gins. You're not having well gin, are you? Jill, hold that drink. We want to upgrade his gin to something real."
"No," I say. "Well gin. Well gin. I'm drinking incognito tonight."
"Well you're not doing a very good job of being incognito."
"No?"
"No. It's Brattleboro Vermont, my son. You can't be incognito."
He holds out his hand.
"I'm—Well, it doesn't matter—"
Jill is back with my drink.
"We call him the Professor."
I pay her in cash.
"Nice to meet you, Professor. I'm Matthew."
"But of course you are."
And the Professor turns straight ahead in this seat and sips his martini.
I drink and I hope that my conversation with the Professor is over. I just want to get drunk and be alone—I mean, honestly, is that too much to ask? I exist, and I am aware—hyper aware—and I would like to dull this hyper awareness for a few hours before I go to sleep. That is the sole content of my objective.
But no.
The Professor keeps talking.
"I'm pretty sure it was the Civil War. Or Prohibition. Which is your country is pretty much the same thing."
"Where are you from?"
"Romania. Or Slovenia. I'm too drunk to remember."
"How many of those have you had?"
"Two or three."
"He's had six," Jill says. "And if he bothers you, let me know."
"Gin was a nigger drink, at first," the Professor continues. "As soon as vodka came in, only the higher classes drank vodka and the blacks drank the old American drink—your drink, gin—because it was considered low class one vodka came in. All the Americans—I mean the white Americans—switched from gin to vodka like rats swimming from a sinking ship to a seaworthy one."
"It sounds like you're insulting my drink."
"Not at all, Matthew. I am saying that gin is the original American drink."
"Well you have a funny way of saying it."
"Let me ask you something."
I dread whatever this is going to be, but I say, "What."
"I noticed you used the restroom earlier. Did you wash your hands?"
I laugh.
"Yes, I washed my hands."
"Before and after?"
"Just after."
"You must wash before and after," this old man says. "The reasons are obvious. I surely don't have to go into them with someone of your intelligence."
"You don't really know anything about my intelligence."
"Au contraire! I know you're not the typical Brattleboro trash that walks in here." (He whispers "trash.")
I'm starting to really wish I was sitting somewhere else.
"What do you do, my young friend?"
"I'm not really in that talkative a mood."
"I've offended you. I'm sorry. I am a very offensive person, I know. I apologize. Drink your drink and I'll leave you alone."
So we both sit there in silence and sip our drinks. The bar is full of couples mostly, mountain-looking people with hats and beards and newspapers and tattoos. It's like Tucson, where a beautiful woman will be with a rough-looking guy, not LA, where everybody has to be shaved and smooth and rich as simple precursors of love.
"So what do you do?" the Professor asks.
I laugh. I look at this guy.
"I'm an out-of-work computer computer programmer, if you must know."
"What type of computer programming?"
"Genetic algorithms, AI stuff."
"Oh so you really are smart."
"No, I just had a lot of practice."
"Bullshit. You aren't programming genetic algorithms if you don't have a good head on you."
"Well, technically, you could teach a stupid person to program a genetic algorithm," I saw.
"Yeah, technically. But we're not talking technically, we're talking actually about you. What do these genetic algorithms do?"
I set down my drink.
"Let's say you're on BestBuy.com, and you click around looking at a few items. These algorithms—these systems—decide what to suggest to you over on the side of the screen. They figure out what you're likely to buy along with whatever you think you're looking for."
"That's an interesting way to put that: whatever they think they're looking for."
"Well, yeah, the most interesting search result, if you think about it, isn't what you know you're looking for, it's what you would love to find but never knew existed."
"Mmm."
"So these things are used in search engines and Nielsen ratings and shit like that."
"'And shit like that.' Why do you do that? Make yourself sound stupid so you fit in? You're talking like a nigger now."
"Hey!"
"You don't like my use of the word? 'Nigger' was a perfectly acceptable word to describe what you call 'black people.' So was 'negro.' "
"Well it's not acceptable now."
"In some subcultures in inner city black neighborhoods it's acceptable between black people."
"That's a long way from here."
"There's nothing inherently racist about the word. Nigger. Nigger. Nigger."
I hold my hand up.
"Jill. What is up with this guy."
She says: "Professor. You're driving away my new customer!"
"Fine, I was just making one of the finer cultural points."
"His thesis is that 'negro' is acceptable language in twenty-eleven."
"Professor, you want to move over a seat? You want another drink?"
"Yes, please. Same glass."
"Same glass."
"If you don't mind."
"I don't mind," Jill says.
The Professor says he'll have another as well.
"You're cut off. I never should have served you that one."
I'm thinking, as I drink my second G&T, that I'll leave after this one, but I don't even make it all the way through my second drink because the Professor, now with a seat between us, continues talking about the role of slaves in gin production and rare strains of viruses carried by the juniper berry and how when these strains of virus came in contact with human skin they created snail-like patterns in the backs of negroes that were considered a distinctive mark of beauty among American slaves.
I leave my drink on the bar and walk out.
I mean that guy made me so uncomfortable I almost never went back to Whit's, thinking I could avoid him. But suddenly every bar I walk into, the Professor is there. I close each door and walk out and find another bar but then he comes into that one. For me the Professor is like Visa—he's everywhere you want to be. Eventually I suck it up and do go back to Whit's because it's my favorite bar in town. I like Jill. I like the shape of it. I like the vibe. And I learn to take the Professor's constant admonitions to "wash your hands before and after" I go to the bathroom. The thing about the Professor is he plays a killer push/pull game. He says the most horrible things that you think I can't be associated with this guy but then he gets under your skin and you start to like him because he isn't standard Vermont mountain fare—he is actually a multi-educated former college professor and you can actually carry on a decent level of intellectual conversation with him (if he'll let you.)
I hated the Professor the first time I met him.
I kind of liked him the second time we talked.
Then I hated him again.
Then I saw that within each conversation with the Professor, I would go through periods of hating and loving the man—and that's how we all felt about him.
Introducing Jill: this motherly figure—half-hot, half your mom—super friendly, just welcoming as hell, but she had this look, and when she gave you that look, it meant you had one toe over the line and you best back that toe up before Jill backed it up for you. Only twice did I see fights in Whit's, and I wish you could have seen Jill and Whit jump over the counter and shut those motherfuckers down in the span of seconds. You don't fuck around in Whit's. You just don't. Everyone knows it.
They even have this strange rule: there are candles spaced evenly all around the bar. They're at the back, farthest from the customers, but they're still on the bar. And you don't notice this at first, but there's a sign on each candle that says Don't touch the candles. And if you touch the candles, and Jill sees you, you quickly learn that this isn't a just-for-fun rule, it's a hard-and-fast rule:
Don't. Touch. The. Candles.
What happens if you touch the candles? You don't want ti know—just don't touch the candles.
"Jill, why can't we touch the candles?" I asked one day, when I had made friends with her and we were close enough that I could even ask the question.
Jill stops pacing the bar. She looks straight at me.
"It's because sometimes drunk people like to play with the wax and they knock the candles over and burn themselves and they could start a fire, etc."
"Oh, I thought it was some mystical thing like if you touch the candles you drain the life energy out of them and that drains some of the life energy out of Whit's and then the bar wouldn't be as cool or something."
Jill puts her hand on mine.
"Matthew, I'm not sure what world you're coming from, but no, it's because if drunk people spill wax on themselves through no fault of mine, they still might win a law suit and then there would be no more Whit's for you to come drink your gin and tonics in."
I smile.
"Oh," I say. "I thought it might have something to do with an ancient spell cast by a black mage—"
Jill cracks up.
"Are you just fucking with me?"
"Yes," I say.
"Good. 'Cause if not we do have the Refuge right down the road I can send you there."
"No, I'll stay here and drink."
"Good." She touches my hand again. "We like you here."
Jill and I talked about lots of things 'cause I like to talk and Jill had nothing better to do. I remember one time she was telling me why it was so empty that day.
"No," she said. "Again, you're associating this with some cosmic phenomena. This isn't the weather. Are you listening? Let me tell you something. Today is the thirtieth. Are you following me?"
"I might need another drink to keep up with such detail."
"I'll get you your drink. Anyway. Today is the thirtieth. That means that all the people on checks" (disability, retirement, unemployment) "are out of money 'cause they drank it in here the first three weeks of the month and tomorrow..all these seats will be full again because everyone will have money again. Uncle Sam!"
She makes my drink. As she sets it in front of me she says:
"See, you've made your money."
And I kept quiet about being on a check—the only reason I was drinking here was my unemployment check. I hadn't made my money. I couldn't even find a software job—I gave up on that back in Pennsylvania. I was just eking it out like everybody else—but don't tell Jill. She assumes I made my money, I'm set for life, just because I obviously don't work because I'm in here drinking seven days a week..but also because of my demeanor: I don't look like or act like I'm on a check. I'm gregarious. I'm proud. I own a MacBook. I make my money last all the way through to the end of the month. And, generally, I look like and act like I'm king of the fucking world, which as long as I'm in a good mood and have a hundred dollars in my pocket—I am. To Jill, I'm entirely different that those people she talks about being "on a check" even though that's exactly what I am.
This is at Whitman's: A couple who looks like they just met for a drunk fuck; at a bar. That's what they look like. It's like they're doing all the flirting and tentative finger touching that works up to a first fuck, with shots and drinks to help them along. But the observer of this little play (of which I am only one) quickly finds out they're married, and this is what they do: come to Whit's and re-enact their first meeting. It's a whole thing. Playing Billie Holiday on the jukebox. They way she was sitting, the cigarettes she smoked; her old-ass blue panties and dress.
On a napkin I write:
interesting idea: the rate at which compression, reduction, elimination, leads to clarity, concentration, benefit, value..versus the rate at which nothing can be contained in something less, at which reduction loses meaning..there must be some common factor there which reflects the optimal rate of a syntax, of a medium
I raise my hand to Thomas.
"Can I get you something?"
"Yes," I say, struggling to get my ideas down. "Another napkin?"
The first time I day drink at Whitman's. I'll never forget. I'm the only one there and Whit is tending bar. I drink six gin and tonics, one per hour, on the half hour, and Kip and I talk, I write poetry on my computer on Twitter, and everything is nice and orderly. I even say something to Whit about how I'm trying to manage my own drinking and he says it looks to him like I'm doing just fine and he doesn't have anything to say to me about it.
After a while Jane is there, too, for part of it—my other day drinker, partner in crime. I met Jane the first time Tooler and Issa and I went out for drinks, at some underground bar that closed. I saw Jane working, cleaning behind the bar, then she and I were smoking in a stairwell, and we talked right away. She was beat up, deep wrinkles, missing teeth, but my kind of girl right away 'cause she could smile and she didn't mind talking to a stranger. Then I would see her around, at Whit's and other bars. She drank like me, like I always had in LA and in Tucson, moving from bar to bar throughout the day so no individual bartender would know how much I'd had to drink.
Jane was my little Dagny Taggart—what DT would have become in Brattleboro—a model who everyone, when she's not listening, says was beautiful in her day, then a hooker, now an alcoholic on a check who sleeps in her car, paying for a permit in the six-level parking lot in downtown (smart, maybe that's what I should have done instead of renting a room in a house..maintain my car and live in it, pay a parking permit instead of rent). Yes, in secret, in my mind, Jane was Dagny Taggart—but not the fake one from the book—the real one, what Dagny Taggart's spirit would have become in real life.
I was a newbie at Whitman's for a while.
Flash forward to months later:
Drunk off Scotch, carrying a snifter out of Whit's, drunk off my ass, launching the snifter over a three-story balcony drop so far I never even heard it crash.
The next time I went in (which was the next morning one minute after they opened) Kip asking me:
"Do you remember walking out with a snifter last night because I saw you?"
And I almost said no but then it all slowly came back to me.
Kip said, "Look around your apartment to see if you find it."
And I said, "I'll look."
But I just left an extra twenty on the bar to pay for it. And Whit never guilted me about it. I felt bad and didn't mean any disrespect (and I told him this) but he said, nah, forget about it, you paid for it.
I wanted to punish myself with guilt and think about how Whit might have possibly interpreted my actions. Whit just wanted to even the books and move on with business, which, of course, was the business of drinking, cahooting, smoking, playing music on the jukebox, meeting people, hooking up, and drinking some more.
16
I kept working at the homeless shelter, drunk. I'd drink wine at my desk at home from 8pm until 11:45, when I had to leave to make my midnight shift.
In the afternoon I wrote. I wasn't in any kind of productive book cycle, but one day before I started drinking (with drinking as my reward), I wrote the introduction to Penny's book and shared virtual cigarettes with her across the pond through email exchanges, coordinating our cigarette breaks while we both wrote. She's a poet I had admired for years, and a fledgling friend, and it was an honor to write her introduction.
In it, I said things like:
Penny Goring is fearless.
It was in PUSH BUTTON PUSH that I first noticed her lists. That whole piece is a list of call/response or prompt/response pairs. The prompts could be auto-generated blog prompts, or questions on an admitting test to a psych ward. To present such a thing is a bold move. We're always trying, in writing, to invent forms clever enough to elude our audience, such that the audience will, for example, receive the arc of a three-act play without our ever saying "Here begins Act III." We're trying to hide the form—we don't need to. A beginner learns the list. An amateur tries to distance herself from it. A master uses it unashamed.
And I said things like this:
For some, Penny's language may be too frank, too sexual. If you're bothered by the idea that poetry might mention cocaine or tell you "How to get a tampon inside", as in Darklings, then you're probably still living in the 1800s, and Emily Dickinson will frighten you. I take for granted that contemporary poetry, as with contemporary anything, doesn't cater to those squeamish about reality—about the realities of contemporary times. So: if you need moral hand-holding, fuck off.
Otherwise, turn the page and read some of the best poetry I know of. From the technical Thus Spake Nebuchadnezzar to the graceful, simple, loving House, Goring is real subjects and bright words. PUSH BUTTON PUSH is daring, and a personal favorite. Darklings deserves a whole introduction itself—and all the attention we can give it. Marc Nash calls it "astonishingly brilliant"; I echo that. To write these poems took a mind whose language I can begin to speak about and the experience of a life I couldn't claim to, but I feel certain that you will not find poetry this good, from another writer, for a long time.
Yeah, I hyped that shit 'cause it deserved it.
Then, with Penny's intro written, and with my bottle of wine just outside the frame, I'd video chat with my friend Ashley on Google video and help her and her friend write their haunted house screenplay. I had difficulties with this, I think because by that point my writing had become so much a part of me and had become such art for me that spending time writing a genre piece, even for my best friend, was no longer something I could feel good about doing. My involvement in the project fizzled. But look at me: writing an introduction to a poetry volume, helping my friend with a screenplay..I was like a productive human being or something.
And around 11:45pm I'd walk through empty snowy High Street in my Woolrich jacket, always snowflakes visible in the street lamps. I'd do my 12am-8am shift at the homeless shelter. I was drunk during the first hours of my shift and all night I wrote the beginning of what I thought would be ::HARD, my next novel.
I thought about levels of drama, levels of story.
For instance, like a sitting at a desk (versus sitting on the floor) there is a level of art which is there, which is required, which functions, to make you forget about a whole level of questions..so that your consciousness takes on this other set of (desired) problems. Do you know what I mean?
It's like, instead of thinking about your back, and your body, once you have a chair, your consciousness thinks about a whole other set of things..that is the purpose of a chair. And in art there are similar functionaries whose purpose is to elevate you so that you can safely, mindlessly, and comfortably consider a different set of problems.
I thought about feedback I had gotten from literary agents on my previous books, specifically Things Said in Dreams. I tucked all these thoughts neatly away in a document titled journal.txt:
I think Gina Panitierre is wrong about TSID having an unsympathetic narrator. "I don't want to die today. I don't want to die," she says. There is a high degree of real victimization of her. She talks rough about it. But that insane world that GP thinks is too much..that is realistic, that is the normal, a quite real/real-world normal..this narrator is just the reaction to it. That warping, her warping, is normal given the circumstance.
Plus, I don't think it would be right to tell a story about bystander evil without the main character being the bystander. Without that, how is there an issue to present, that can then be discussed? The evil has to happen in order for there to be a reaction. Otherwise, nothing happened. Right?
The only other, or the primary other, option that comes to mind, is to have a story where the character encounters many small bystander evil situations, where others are the evil, and then she herself makes the right choice on a larger bystander issue..I think that's an acceptable route, in general, but I think of the two main options (my way in TSID, and this option described here), my way is stronger.
I had my own cigarettes and went out to smoke with the clients and they spoke of a revolution that was coming because Americans (like them) had been pushed too far. They weren't about to organize the thing, but they seemed certain it was coming. Jane was with them, this fellow day drinker from Whit's and every other bar I went to, was homeless, I learned.
After a few hours I sobered up and it was extremely difficult to stay awake. Most of the time I wrote through it. Several nights I asked my partner if I could leave early, if they could take the rest of the shift by their self. It wasn't long before I emailed the director of the program and told her I was very sorry but I was an alcoholic in the middle of a relapse and I couldn't work the homeless help desk anymore. It was weak to email her instead of calling but I didn't have enough self esteem to call her with that message. I couldn't think about homeless people anymore. I was excited to meet friends at Whit's, especially Justine. And I wasn't about to try to stop drinking.
17
Justine.
I wanted to have her.
I wanted to undress her.
I wanted to push her down on my bed, her bed, any bed, anywhere, and smell her and bite her and rub my lips and my fingers and my cock over every inch of her body.
Then I wanted to fuck her, cradle her head in my hands and overwhelm her small body with smells and tastes and touches until her eyes were looking up at me pleading me to make her cum.
I wanted to hold her there and see and hear her at the height of her feeling, know my cock was inside her when her whole body felt..I don't know..let's just call it the enlightenment of the gutter.
And I wanted to rub my cock inside her vagina until the rough walls and textures of this small-bodied young woman made me shake and shoot and grab her tight—her head against my shoulder—as I came inside her.
That's what I wanted from Justine.
That's all.
I met her at Whit's.
She was sitting with her boyfriend and she went out for a smoke and I shamelessly, idiotically, forwardly, absurdly just got up from my bar seat and followed that female human being outside and said:
"You look like someone that I'd like to get to know."
And she laughed and said:
"Do you want a cigarette?"
And I said: "Yes."
And Justine blushed, and, blushed, and blushed, and I was glad she got the idea.
I wanted to unzip her jeans and suck on her pussy right there.
I was crazy about that girl.
She was so feminine, so sexual to me, and I didn't really care who knew it, her, her boyfriend, anyone at Kips. Every time she went outside to smoke a cigarette I interrupted whatever conversation I was in and followed her. Sometimes we smoked her Parliaments, sometimes we smoked my Kamels. Justine would always ever only smoke a half a cigarette. She'd tuck the second half into the beams supporting the awning covering Whitman's door.
I went from being a potentially creepy male who totally fucking insinuated myself into her situation, to being her smoking buddy. When she went outside, she'd stop at my seat and put her tiny hand on my shoulder and say, "You wanna smoke?"
Then we went from being smoking buddies to being friends, and I met her boyfriend and we became friends, but if Justine needed more cigarettes she would leave her boyfriend at the bar and I would walk her across the street to the convenience store. We would both be be drunk—me and her and her boyfriend drank together, bought each other alternating rounds—but there was trust there enough that her boyfriend trusted me to leave the bar with his girl and she trusted me enough to make a cigarette run together.
But Justine had a boyfriend. And they were tight. My only real chance was that Whit and Jill were swingers and Justine's boyfriend had a thing for Jill, so if he and Jill hooked up, that would give Justine a pass to go outside the relationship and I hoped if she did, it would be with me.
But unlike some parasitic fuckers who make themselves a nuisance because unless they have actual sex with someone they don't even see the point of a relationship, I was happy to be friends with Justine and her boyfriend and special smoking friends with Justine. Spending a few minutes with her smoking in front of Whitman's was time spent in heaven for me, I admired Justine so much.
Let's put my Justine obsession aside for a second, though, and paint a fuller picture of Whit's. The music. You had to play the right music at Whit's. Nina Simone's Sinnerman was played at least once a day in Whit's—it was the song of the bar. Then Billy Joel—because Thomas liked Billy Joel (especially New York State of Mind). If you put on the wrong music, people knew you weren't a regular. Like one time I put on some Fatboy Slim and I was nearly kicked out of the bar. It just isn't done. Whitman's customers are very particular about their music.
Thomas, Whit and Jill's only bartender, had a remote control and if someone played something too offensive, he would just skip the jukebox ahead a song and restore peace to the galaxy.
Thomas invited me to play chess once.
I beat him the first game, but he never stopped smiling.
He was just sizing me up.
We played a second game and he beat me in like ten moves.
Thomas told me about his parents.
About how they died in a fire started by his mom's cigarette. He got insurance money and wandered between Brattleboro and New York City for a while. He tells me his dreams of New York, his memories of times there. He makes it sound like he grew up there but I later learn he's really from Brattleboro, born and raised, Brattleboro High, the whole nine. He says his mother "gave" him New York City by taking him on a trip there once. (And, I fill in the dots, that's why after his parents died, he spent so much time there.)
Thomas invites me for a whiskey-drinking night, a gentlemen's trip around some of the better whiskeys Whit's stocks, in his opinion, and we do it. We take our whiskey tour nice and slow, talk at length about Thomas' obsession and love for New York City, down to the bars that he drinks in and the streets that he goes to. A bar isn't just a bar to Thomas, it's the poetry of the carved wooden decorations above the doorway, inside, on the walls, above the bar, below the bar where nobody ever looks. And I fall in love with Thomas a little bit that night—he's a writer, a drinker, and a poet of life, someone who, like me, isn't just there for the main event. Someone who sees the intricacy of whiskey or wine or making love with the woman you love.
He tells me of a time he passed out drunk in the Amtrak station in New York and woke up without his bag—now that's a setup. No money, no ID, in Penn Station, New York City, you don't know anybody—you're fucked.
He tells how he got the job at Whitman's: he just showed up and didn't take no for an answer. Jill later tells me the same story. Says she didn't want to hire him but he had decided he was going to be the bartender at Whitman's and he just started coming to work every day, helping out, tending bar, and (as Jill put it) "We had to start paying him!"
Then I guess it was my turn to share and I openly cried at the bar when I told him about my girlfriend who died when we both took ecstasy. I don't tell everyone that story but I kind of figured I owed it to Thomas since we shared the experience of having our favorite people up and fucking vanish into the dust of the universe. So Thomas and I had that in common, and maybe that was one of the reasons the universe threw us together. I told him I had been to a mental hospital in Los Angeles. That I might have bipolar. We covered a lot of ground.
"I'm glad to be on this side tonight," Thomas says, grabbing the bar.
And Jill is serving us.
And when I think about Rebecca I just let the tears flow. I look at her, I look at Thomas, through wet eyes with no embarrassment and no apology. Because, no offense, but when you've been what I've been through, there is no embarrassment and there is no apology. We're way past that.
One night I ask Thomas:
"You know where I could get some coke around here?"
He nods at a guy in a booth. I won't describe him further so that when he reads this he won't freak out and come scouring the globe trying to kill me.
But when this guy gets up to leave I go outside Whitman's and as he's putting his hat on I say:
"I heard you're the guy to ask if I wanted to buy some cocaine."
He flips out.
"Where did you hear that?"
"Well I can't tell you that, can I!"
"Never, never approach me like that. That is so uncool."
"Ok, I'm drunk. I'm looking for some coke. If I'm asking the wrong guy, then that's that. Have a good night."
I start back inside Whit's.
"Hold on."
"Uh?"
"You're talking to the right guy. You just freaked me out, with the way you said it. You know. Get to know someone first."
"I'm sorry I scared you. Ok. I'm sorry. But if you play a risky game, expect to take some risks."
"You're freaking me out again."
"Hey, you got freaked out because people know you're the guy to ask. No offense, but that's either a function of how you operate or of how fucking small this town is."
"Yeah, probably the latter," he says. "I'm gonna give you my card. I'm a manager. Talent?"
"Ok. You're a talent manager in Brattleboro Vermont?"
"Shut up. Just email me sometime."
"Alright. Thanks, man."
And he's off. And I'm hopeful. Maybe get some coke sometime.
One night, sitting with a skeleton crew at Whitman's—in a snow so huge that only the hardest of the hardcore drinkers were out, and only the hardest of the hardest core bars were open—all watching some huge machine that even natives had rarely seen: a huge chute that pumped snow off the street into the open-top boxcar on an 18 wheeler. This thing was equipped with huge lights so the crew could see what they were doing, and it worked like a motherfucking charm: they scraped the snow right off Elliot Street and vacuumed it into this boxcar. We stood amazed.
We really become a family, those of use who went to Whitman's every day. I was there when Thomas and his girlfriend announced their wedding. They pulled out a huge photo album of each of them as children that one of her aunts had put together and Thomas and I thumbed through each page together, not even just for his girlfriend's satisfaction. Sometimes I'd be keeping Thomas's girlfriend company while she waited for him at the bar, waited for him to get off work. Thomas's girlfriend doesn't drink, and I'm not attracted to her, I just can't stand to see my friend's fiancée sit alone at the corner of a bar drinking waters. I bought her lemonades and milk while I drank my G&Ts and I even slowed down a little so her company wouldn't be drunk while she was sober. I 'd just talk to her about things—anything—ask her about her life, shit like that. I can talk to a stranger on a bus for three states before there's a moment of silence, so I sure as hell could keep Thomas' girlfriend company while she waited for him to get off.
Thomas thanked me later for keeping his girl company, saying that he trusts me and me saying yeah, me keeping her company is really something I'm doing for you—not me, not even her—and Thomas holds my face in his hands and says he knows and that I'm a beautiful person.
And then there was the day Thomas demonstrated to the Professor how many shots were in six martinis. Thomas felt he needed to show the Professor how fucking drunk he was, visually. So Thomas begins setting the appropriate number of shot glasses on the bar and I think it was something like three shots per martini so Thomas had the whole of Whitman's watching while he lined up 18 shot glasses across the bar and said:
"From now on you're limited to three."
"Three martinis? Then I won't come in here anymore."
"Then don't come in."
"You don't have the power to do this. Wait till Jill finds out."
But Jill and Whit backed Thomas up. They said he had the right to choose who he served and how much he served them. In fact, when Jill and Whit heard about stunt with the shot glasses, they were thrilled—they didn't even want the Professor in their bar. Sober, he was an ok guy, but one sip of one martini in him, he instantly turned sexist, racist, even certain kinds of -ists that I'd never before witnessed. He is to this day the most offensive person I've ever met. No one wanted to sit next to him once he started drinking because no one wanted to be associated with the remarks he made. This man's speech and opinions were unimaginably despicable. They were erudite and fascinating, grotesque and unbelievable, and yet insulted every slice of humanity that was sliceable, especially the slice of class. The Professor was absolutely the most classist American I've ever met.
18
Here's a major event, and the fact that it's a major event will tell you a few things about me.
One time right when I moved to Brattleboro I drove drunk to go get Wendy's after drinking at Whit's. Driving in ice and snow to get there just to feed munchies. Feeling terrible about it and swearing I wouldn't do it again..and I don't think I did. That wasn't the event.
The event was mostly walking home up the icy hill after a night of drinking, a walk I took many times to pass out in my bed, Tooler and Issa long sleeping in their room.
But here it is, here's the event. Here's the thing I still think about after five years have passed: one night, coming home hungry because I didn't drive drunk to go to Wendy's and there was no food to buy in Brattleboro, I ate a slice of Tooler and Issa's pizza, totally standing in front of the refrigerator, totally drunk.
I debated it before doing it, but was overcome by hunger and my conscience was dulled by drink. I ate that pizza and went to bed.
I felt super guilty about it afterward because of who it meant that I was: imperfect, stealer, out of control..an alcoholic? I didn't feel horrible about eating one piece of pizza—I felt horrible because I went against my morals.
Issa didn't know where it went but Tooler said I bet Matthew had the drunk munchies.
"You're right, D, I had the drunk munchies and I fucking couldn't help myself. I was like compelled to eat a piece of your pizza. I'm sorry, dude."
"I don't give a fuck. You're welcome to my leftover pizza anytime."
"Yeah, but I took it without asking."
"I fucking know I don't want you to wake me up to ask if you can have a slice of freezer section pizza! Do that shit and I'll be pissed as hell."
I felt like I was on the executioner's block and I couldn't get my executioner to drop the blade, and I'm kneeling there looking up and the ghoul like: Drop the motherfucker!
And my executioner is like: It's no problem, dude!
But I stole. In my mind, and in actuality, I stole, and I felt awful because I took without asking..and it was an indicator of my alcohol problem—that was the real pinch of the thing.
That was five years ago, and I still feel guilty about it. Tooler and Issa have laughingly forgiven me, years and years ago, and they probably haven't thought about it since then. But I still think about it like it was yesterday, and I still hate myself for doing it.
Maybe it's even more twisted than stealing or being an alcoholic. Maybe I know that one piece of pizza doesn't matter, to Tooler Issa or me..but I'm using it as a way to hate myself, to think I'm a piece of shit, to think I'm a loser—because that is the true underlying need.
Stray memory of a psycho.
I saw this thing recently on your chances of meeting a serial killer. Forget what the answer was but I think one of the closest times I've ever come is meeting this guy in Brattleboro who just wasn't right.
His name was Vic.
He just gave off this vibe.
He seemed to be helpful, like I met him in the bar and when he found out I didn't have a job he offered me snow-cleaning work with him. But it was just going to me and him. Like we would hand out flyers and hope people called us back. But whatever, that's good work in Vermont, so let's give him a pass on this one.
Then he'd invite me to his apartment to eat a rotisserie chicken he was cooking, but I never took him up on it because something didn't feel right. He starts a rotisserie chicken, leaves the house, goes to a bar for some drinks, then goes back to the chicken? I couldn't tell if he was gay or just weirdly friendly..or..most likely..a stray motherfucking serial murdering motherfucker.
I was pretty sure it was the last.
Like if you went into his house to get a whiff of that rotisserie chicken, you'd never leave with your brains intact.
That was just the feeling I got.
I know I'm imaginative—some would say psychotic—but I'm also very intuitive and I feel extremely good about my decision never to go with Vic to his apartment. I'm sorry. There was just something about his face.
Something always seemed suspicious.
Something always seemed wrong.
Something always seemed off about him, so I deleted his number and never ever took any calls from him. I avoided him in the bar as much as possible. I was hoping the borough of Brattle would add those little safety kiosks like they have on college campuses but these would be for reporting a possible serial killer.
But even though to my mind Vic seems like a possible serial killer, really, he was most likely just not socialized the right way and this meant I had to stay away from him. He seemed like just the type to start a successful American business—just enough of a sociopath, just enough disregard for the human—to be successful here.
I saw the upstairs neighbor, Maggie, out with her boyfriend on Valentine's day. Let's just call her boyfriend Larry..or Frank. Which do you prefer, Larry or Frank? We just need a name to indicate he was a dumb football-loving all-American piece of shit. How about Mick? Maggie and Mick—that works.
Anyway Maggie had Mick up to Brattleboro from wherever but she had to work so somehow it fell to me to babysit Mick while Maggie was off organizing tours for National Geographic or whatever she did. So he's a guy, right, I figured he couldn't say no to hiking a mountain and he didn't. He had come the day before and I was fucking glad for Maggie as this was the first company she'd had in a month and a half of me living in that house. So I hiked Wantastiquet with Mick's boring ass. I would have rather hiked alone—no—I would have rather hiked with a Roman slave walking behind me chanting, "All fame is fleeting," and showing a slideshow of my dad verbally abusing me as a child. But I was stuck with Mick. He was one of these quick hikers who don't stop to look at the newts growing in the little streams you cross. He stepped right over snakes that he never saw. When we got to the top I had my usual spiritual moment while he droned on about some trivial bullshit which I'll be getting to in a second. But trust me, this guy was a bore. Perfect for Maggie.
So I return Mick to Maggie when she gets home from work and I go out to dinner. I wanted a steak so I went to the only place you could get a steak after the fire and what do you know, Maggie and Mick are at the same restaurant as me. I saw the look on their face like how sad, Matthew's dining alone on Valentine's day and I was like don't feel sorry for me, I'm going to have a much more enjoyable dinner than either of you tonight.
I sat, I ate my steak, I drank my wine, I talked with my waitress, I wrote in my notebook, and I didn't have to impress anyone or please anyone and I didn't know of anyone nearby who would make better company for me than myself. There were no games, no expectations, no disappointments. True, there was no sex after, but there were still surprises—in general I make an excellent date for myself..especially on a hyped-up day like Valentine's Day. I was thirty-three years old at this time—impressing someone else for sex was not on my list of things to do. Enjoying an extra-rare steak, a glass of chianti—much higher on my list of things to do. And if you think it bothered me being the only table of one on the ultimate date night in a restaurant packed with tables of two..well..then you don't know me at all. Couples looked at me with pity—the men did—disdain even, perhaps as a defense, like underneath they were threatened by an unmatched male. Their women made eyes at me and I politely smiled and nodded, then looked the other way. I do what I like and I flirt with who I like.
I'll tell you a story. I was once at dinner with my friend Ashley and I sent a note to a teenager having dinner with her parents—the girl was looking at me and I was looking at her and there was obviously some connection. The note said, in crayon, on a piece of the paper table covering, You're cute. Her parents were obviously disturbed (I was twenty three at the time, she was maybe sixteen) but the girl wrote me back and sent it by the same waiter who had delivered my note to her. Hers said, You're cute, too. And we left it at that. We didn't fuck. I didn't ask her for her number. But Jesus Christ, if a post-pubescent girl is flirting with me, and I like her, you better believe I'm gonna flirt back. Flirting is safe when you're with safe people. I agree we shouldn't violate underage kids, but it's silly to deny when there is sexual energy across the eighteen-year-old line.
Maggie and Mick arrived after I was seated and left before I was finished with my meal. Days later, Maggie confided in me that she'd had a horrible time. She'd had the steak, too—it was horrible. She'd had a glass of wine—it was horrible. I didn't say what I was thinking, which was that both of those probably had less to do with the food itself and more to do with the person sitting across from you..and even more they had to do with the person sitting in the same seat as you, breathing with the same lungs as you, and thinking with your same brain. If there was any flirtation in her telling me her Valentine's date went horribly, I didn't care—I'd fantasized wild encounters with Maggie but when she got up close and personal, she was just..boring.
Back to Wantastiquet. The hike to the top. Maggie's dull-as-bone boyfriend talking about all sorts of unreliable sports minutiae and waiting till we got to the very top of the mountain and I was having my spiritual experience to ask me if I heard them fucking.
He didn't phrase it that way. (So timid, so young, so sensitive and embarrassed..believe me, friend, in ten years you won't care if anyone heard you fucking, it won't even be worthy as a topic of conversation. But to you it's still like you think it's some big secret that you stuck your dick in Maggie on Valentine's day—hello!, you're her boyfriend, that's what we're all expecting you to do!)
Anyway so he says something like:
"Matthew?"
"Yes?"
"Are the rooms arranged the same on the first floor as they are on the second floor?"
"I don't know 'cause I've never been in Maggie's apartment."
He explains the layout of Maggie's apartment. Where the bedrooms are. Where the kitchen is. Where the bathrooms are. I'm like looking over the sweeping mountainscapes of southern Vermont and this 20 year old is sneaking around the edges of a question I could see coming before we started our hike.
"So..did you..hear anything last night?"
"What like an intruder?"
"No."
"Like what? Was some homeless person sleeping in the foyer? Sometimes they come in for warmth when we forget to lock the outside door."
"No. Did you hear..so wait..is Tooler and Issa's bedroom under the front right corner of the house?"
"The front right corner as you look out, from inside the house?"
"Yes."
"Yeah, their bedroom goes across the whole front of the house."
"So where's your bedroom?"
"Um, you know the stairs that go up to Maggie's apartment?"
"Yeah."
"My room is underneath that. I mean my closet is literally under the stairs."
He didn't seem to understand so I said:
"Like in Harry Potter."
"Oh, good," he said, exhaling heavily.
I thought we were done and I was back pondering the hugeness of the space when Mick is like:
"How thin are the floors? Do you ever hear Maggie moving around or walking?"
"No. The only thing we ever hear is when she vacuums."
Which was a total lie. The floors were paper thin and we could hear every step Maggie took, every flush of the toilet, every onion she chopped—every time she wiped her vagina with a square of single-ply toilet tissue we could hear it. But this guy was going to freak out if I told him that and I was enjoying the quiet of my mountains.
"Tooler and Issa are out of town by the way."
"They are?!"
"Yeah they're in like California doing some political action that's going to make it harder for police to murder black people."
That shut him up.
I had fantasies of fucking Maggie but she was so straight laced she would never go for me and in the middle of the fantasy she always did something so incredibly boring and neurotic (even for me) that I had abandoned trying to get off to Maggie long ago, at least semi-realistic versions of her.
I hardly ever saw her but I did knock on her door once to smooth things over between her and the downstairs apartment about the snow-shoveling problem. She was quite angry and I tried to sooth her. I often used her laundry detergent when I was poor (read: spent too much money drinking at Whitman's). I never flirted with her—in actuality I just wanted things to go well at the house.
Issa and Tooler were indeed out of town, but each evening Mick was in attendance at the house—once the night he arrived, once the night of Valentine's Day—I heard a thumping coming from Maggie's apartment—and it didn't sound like vacuuming. It sounded like Maggie getting her uptight pussy fucked by her no-frills boyfriend who could hardly carry on a conversation with me during an hour-long mountain climb. But the thumping continued and went harder and louder and then was the sound of Maggie cumming—a heavy-duty orgasm from a woman who hadn't had dick in a long time. I was glad she came. It was a pleasant sound, but controlled, like the rest of Maggie. I wanted to buy her a vibrator, the really nasty kind with the pronged clit stimulator and the rotating anal beads.
Maggie seemed like a nice person, a sane person with a degree and a good job and a much more stable mind than the one I'm operating with. But she didn't seem like she was exactly sucking the marrow out of life—you know what I mean?
Whatever. It's not my place to judge.
19
I made a commitment against driving drunk. I made a commitment against stealing Tooler's pizza. I settled on getting steak grinders from a pizza joint called Frankie's, which was right across the street from Whit's. The first time I went in there I asked for a cheesesteak.
"What's a cheesesteak?"
That's what the register person said to me: What's a cheesesteak?
Honestly I was speechless. I thought about going into a history lesson on how not too far from here there was a city called Philadelphia and in that city a common food was..
But the owner/cook stepped in to help.
"They don't call 'em cheesesteaks up here."
"What do they call them?"
"A steak grinder."
"Oh! I'd like a steak grinder, then."
"It's weird, I know," says the cook, the owner, Frankie.
"No," I say. "Different places, different names."
"You'll like ours," he says. "If you like a real Philly steak."
"Alright, that sounds like a challenge."
Frankie smiles. Frankie lives across the street from me. I learned to love Frankie real fast.
The register girl, who is like a young 15, says:
"One steak grinder, then? You want a large or a small?"
"Large."
"Anything else. Chips? You want a soda?"
"Nah I'm good."
"What would like to add?"
"I just want steak, grilled onions, provolone, and banana peppers."
"I can tell you're from Philly by the way you order," Frankie says.
"I used to live there."
The register girl half-turns to Frankie.
"What's a banana pepper?"
"You mean a pepperoncini," Frankie asks me.
"Yeah."
"We don't have any."
"You got jalapeños?"
Frankie smiles, nodding his head largely. Old guy. Bald. Gray beard. He's already making my sandwich.
"Can you make it double meat?" I say.
Frankie gives me the thumbs up.
"So what's your name?" I ask this little register girl.
If I was fifteen I'd totally be all over her.
"Clear Waters."
"Nice name."
"I have hippie parents."
"I guessed."
"You look like you've done drugs," she says.
Then she looks to Frankie and shrugs.
"What? He does."
"I have."
"What ones?"
"LSD. Mushrooms. Ecstasy. Mostly I like hallucinogens but I've done about every regular drug there is."
"Like what else?"
"Heroin, coke, crystal."
"I would never do crystal meth."
"Good idea. I used to say the same thing myself."
"I know. But it's different once you get out in the world. I'm planning a road trip."
She looks at Frankie.
"It's ok! The job is temporary! I know you're leaving!"
"No, I just didn't know if you minded me talking about drug shit with customers."
"Of course, is good, you make friends, you talk about whatever customer wants to talk about."
"Well I guess it's ok since you brought it up," she says, raising herself off her seat by leaning on the counter.
"I'm pretty sure you brought it up," I say.
"No it was you."
"I would never bring up a hardcore drug conversation with someone half my age, trust me."
"You don't look bad for being twice my age."
I laugh.
"Thanks. Anyway we're prob'ly gonna do drugs on my road trip. Can I have a cigarette?"
I'm playing with a pack of Kamels. I hadn't realized it.
"Frankie, do you mind if I take Clear Waters outside for a minute and I'll come back and get that grinder?"
"Just bring her back in roughly the state that you found her."
"She'll be pristine. We'll be right outside your door."
When I was a kid, Nintendo had this saying: Now you're playing with power. And, when a 33 year old talks with a 15 year old, you're playing with power. You both are. And most people are too coarse and too eager and not specific enough in their thinking to figure out the difference between playing with power and abusing power. The 15 year old is going to abuse power: that's ok. It's not ok for the 33 year old to abuse power. But it's ok if you can find moments where two people in a potentially dangerous situation can safely play with each other.
Clear Waters and I had a cigarette, talked straight-up about all the drugs she had really done that she didn't want to talk about in front of Frankie, asked me about the drugs I had tried that she hadn't, listened to my grand revelations and my brief warnings, then she said:
"I've heard sex on ecstasy is the bomb."
"It is."
"You've done it? With a guy or a girl?"
"A girl."
"I heard it just like blows all your senses."
"That's pretty much right."
And we talked more. It doesn't matter. What matters is that she gave me her perspective and I gave her mine.
Then we put our cigarettes out and went inside.
That's the last and only night I ever saw that girl. I hope it's because she went on a road trip and never came back.
I held up my steak grinder, wrapped in brown paper, as I left Frankie's, as my way of saying goodnight and thank you to Frankie and Clear Waters, and I walked my steak grinder up a back street, crossed over to High, and got home to eat alone in my Harry Potter apartment. I was prob'ly watching some movie on my laptop—that's all I ever do. It was a lonely ritual for me.
I did write this in my notebook that night:
something else I don't often consider, that I should:
if I have, in all likelihood, youth on my side
that: I am fairly young and attractive..that I have time as an asset
I'm not saying I could have fucked that girl who was the cashier at Frankie's. I'm just saying: teenagers will still talk to me as though I'm in their realm, and through some serious American brainwashing, that makes me feel better about myself.
Mostly, though—and if you know me you know this is true—I don't give a shit about the teenager working as a cashier at Frankie's. I would never even try to be with her because she's uninteresting to me (as a mate). But what is interesting to me is having time to write—living long enough that I get to write my books, to tell this world what I think about itself. That I care about.
And that was how I felt at 33. I'm 38 and I still feel the same way. Talk about an obsession. I shun the larger part of life to sit in front of a computer and try to make tapestries out of the web of sin and life that I know so little of.
And maybe this, as a goal, for writing:
Write something that causes someone else to fall more in love with the world
As a goal, for life:
Myself, to fall more in love with the world
Let's go back a little, before Valentine's Day and Maggie's no-frills pussy getting fucked by her no-frills boyfriend's no-frills dick, before flirting with that little 15-year-old road tripper at Frankie's. Rewind a little, back a few drinks, back a few nights of drinking, and to this text entry where I try to talk myself out of drinking altogether and psych myself up to write another novel.
February 7, 2011
I need to give myself a break. Get in touch with my spirit, with some esteem-able acts. I have to stop drinking again. Haven't gone so far back down the drinking path that that will be difficult—not too difficult. But I definitely have started drinking again, and done it too much, done it to the point of making myself feel bad. I'm going to take the next few days and months and just live simply again in that way, just don't do it, don't drink. Take a walk around the block instead, if I feel like drinking. Hike instead. Or get out the weights and work out my arms. I want to be thinner, I want to lose weight so my body does less work on a moment-to-moment basis. I feel better when I'm sober..and I am a worthwhile person, I deserve to feel better. And, simply, oddly, amazingly, and confoundingly, I am the person who can make that happen. That needs to be a basis of my hierarchy of needs and accomplishment. I have so many things going for me, and I have challenges, too. I don't want to spend my life struggling with that; I want to spend my life in other domains, learning and struggling with other things! Make room, Matthew, make room Zha, the space of sobriety in which my mind has a chance to think and feel and explore in peaceful ways. I am more optimistic when I'm sober; my mind has a better chance to imagine how wonderful my life could be. Do that, please; have some foresight and some broad vision into how I can be happier, simpler.
Consider, my self, my friend, my family, that you are in a unique position to do something—and do that. That I am uniquely created, suited, to write the book I'm writing now..that there is value and meaning and purpose and ok-ness in that. Feel good about myself. Cut myself some slack, but do the right things. Take right action. Make right action. Love myself, like I would love the person I cared for most in the world.
It's ok to be serious. To be fun, yes, but I'm a serious dude. Thinker, worker. Remind myself that they way I am is ok—it's good! I don't need to dumb myself down with alcohol so I can fit into social situations, so that I can meet people and talk to people. It's ok to be myself, my true self. Remember that, Matt, Zha, and be ok with..me.
Here's what you do: for February, just write 2k/3k/day on ::HARD, get back to not-drinking, not-smoking, and give yourself a break. Pay March rent, and in March, look for a job. In February, do the overflow shelter days I've committed to, but don't necessarily do this again in March. I may need to get on a regular sleep schedule, for myself, and work on my own life during that month and months beyond, so that I'm in a better position to help.
And: give yourself a break on writing. This isn't public NaNoWriMo drill. Write in private, don't pressure yourself to show what you're working on to anyone, ever. Make your life so that it sustains itself through work that I can do (non-writing work) or already-written work, and write for pure joy, for the foot of a lamb [my way, since high school, of saying] for no reason, at my own specification (none other) and at my own pace (none other). Don't rush, don't expect that it will be shown to anyone else, ever, just do it for my own sake, with my current/new projects—give myself the peace and freedom and simplicity of that.
And give myself a break with Twitter, and blogging, and Dad, and even Mom. I don't have to report shit. I don't have to check in. No one is watching, and no one needs to watch. I can do my life without telling anyone about it. Talk with Joanne on the phone, keep up with Leona, but I can give myself the peace and privacy of just living my life, being in my own space, etc.
(I don't have to report in =)
Yeah, and I like this: getting in touch with creating for my own sake, for creation's sake. Forgetting about publication and showing fellow writers and readers my work. Think of writing a book as an activity that a single person does with himself, for his own enjoyment. Hold it that way as long as possible, maybe until I'm done writing books, maybe for years..store up multiple book projects before I ever re-enter the showing-stuff-to-people mode. That's a happy, creative place to be. Maybe I stay there forever, and periodically release an animal from the playpen..look at writing more as a general project I do for myself, from which a book escapes once in a long while, not as the main thing having been done there, but as a small portion of what has been. That might be fun.
And now let us consider how I failed, and how many times I have failed. How many times have I written myself notes like this, and how many times have I gone back to drinking? For reasons that the current version of our narrator doesn't understand even as well as I do now (which is not that much), I always return to drink, to drug, to maniac behavior.
I am insane. I have few friends. And it has been that way a long, long time.
I stopped drinking for my sister's visit. That, at least, I could do.
Joanne came up from New York for the weekend. We pretty much watched The Deadliest Catch the whole time, which was pretty much perfect. Perfect speed. Perfect level of mental commitment. Perfect level of immobility.
We ate sushi. It wasn't as good as Monster Sushi in New York or sushi in LA but it's fucking Brattleboro, what do you expect? Just be glad you have sushi at all.
Joanne and I got coffee (for her) and orange juice (for me) and breakfast sandwiches (for both) at Walmart when it was still at the base of Mt. Wantastiquet, sat for a long time talking, then climbed the mountain in deep snow via the short path (that would be the more vertical path with fewer switchbacks). I let her choose.
Joanne, years later, when I was retelling this story in some family setting, admitted that to her it was less like hiking and more like mountain climbing..but we did it, and not unexpectedly, Joanne's stoic self did not complain once as we hiked that mountain.
It was priceless to enjoy the view as brother and sister.
Joanne had to pay for everything that weekend since I didn't have my unemployment check yet—I felt horrible, just one more data point on the already-full loser older brother graph. I enjoyed the break from drinking—once I stop I don't miss it. I enjoyed the break from random bar company to spend time with one of the few people in this world who truly loves me. For a moment in time, I wasn't so out there—alone—Banished to the Moon, as I had felt in my two quarters of college, many an age ago.
When I think of Joanne I think of rain, of the sudden rains in Philadelphia where we used to live together. Random guys who jump out of nowhere to sell you an umbrella that's so cheap you end up with twenty or so of these semi-disposable umbrellas thrown down just inside your door. And yet, when you leave the house you never take one with you, and you end up buying another, just to keep dry for a few minutes of a sudden rainstorm.
But deeper, I think of rain, when I think of Joanne.
I think of rain when I think of siblings, best friends like Mike or Rebecca. And I think of rain as a symbol of grief. Mike and I developed a whole psychology of grief embodied by rain one night on ecstasy and I will never forget that night or the things we said.
I go back and back and back to the symbol of rain for grief, watching those men on The Deadliest Catch in constant rain, freezing their asses off and the cold part never comes through the laptop screen adequately.
But the wet does.
Joanne and I, as children, sleeping in a tent next to Mom and Dad's tent. Camping in some woods in the south somewhere. Louisiana or Arkansas. Dad checked on us once in the night with a flashlight and asked how we were. We cheerfully said we were fine. Did he just take our word for it? Did he open his eyes and take in the actuality of the situation?
They checked on us the next morning and a river was running through our tent, our sleeping bags were right in the middle of it and we were totally soaked. But that's how stoic we both were, even then, how cheerfully indestructible we were. We wouldn't have complained if there had been a dinosaur in our tent or we were sleeping on a bed of snakes.
We grew up the child of an eternal optimist (Dad) and do you know what happens when you are so closely influenced by an eternal optimist? You become post-optimistic, you don't even pay attention to the evidence anymore. You could be piloting a two-by-four through the Bering Sea with a cloth napkin and a cigarette lighter and think everything is fine.
We also grew up knowing that any misspoken word from us could cause the Wrath of Mom and we had to comfort ourselves during our childhood. Our parents were emotionally unsafe. We knew when we could speak and when we couldn't—and, in some metaphorical tent, throughout our childhood, Joanne and I were clinging to each other for dear life..not from rain, but mostly to protect us from our parents.
20
Tooler asked me about the cats.
"I know you're allergic, but.."
"I'm not that allergic," I say.
"So can we get them?"
She had her hand locked in a clasp and was jumping up and down like a little kid—what could I say?
"Sure," I said, "as long as they're your cats. I don't want to have a bunch of extra work to do. I mean, I'm focused on my writing. Not that I won't help some..I will, I just—I'm not some creepy bastard that's gonna refuse to feed the cats when they're hungry, but—I'm sorry, I'm sounding like a real asshole right now. I'll help, ok. I'll do whatever has to be done."
"I understand," Tooler says, and in the same breath tells me she and Issa are going on vacation for Issa to meet Tooler's parents, so I'm going to be with the cats during some of the of their first days on the planet.
At first it was wonderful. Tooler and Issa named the cats Bongo and Bola—which Issa only much later told me means cock. And then, after it was wonderful, it was just shit-smelling fatness from a litter box that Tooler and Issa never cleaned. Issa insisted they were Tooler's cats and she didn't do anything to help with the litter box. I don't know why they smelled so bad except to say that other houses where the cats really stank were houses where the rest of the house wasn't clean. We didn't take out the garbage often enough so Bongo would drag trash all over the kitchen. They didn't even use the litter box—that could have been part of the problem. One night I woke up to piss and when I stepped on the mat in front of the toilet my heel squished right down into three logs of cat shit neatly laid there like a gift. Bongo was a very sexual cat. He would sniff Tooler's underwear (only Tooler's) and he would drag them into the living room to play with. That wasn't a problem per se but it was just the general added chaos of the house. I couldn't live like that.
And at the beginning it was wonderful—they were so small they needed us to feed them from bottles and it was sickly how they could hardly walk..but the smaller, sicker one (Bola), after months of beating by the gray kitty (Bongo), the small one ended up being the alpha kitty, crazy, always attacking the gray one, doing parkour-like acrobatic moves involving the wall, leap-frogging Bongo so that suddenly Bola was attacking from the front instead of the back. This seemed like some kind of omen or lesson or warning to me: that the cat who is beat up most in the earlier parts of life will grow up to become the much greater bully in later life. I mean at the beginning they were so tiny we all thought they might not survive. We were feeding them just drops from a bottle.
Oh and that panty-sniffing cat, Bongo, reminds me of that night when Aaron and Darling Nikki came over? Remember when asshole was trying to make a bong out of a soda can? Well the other three who left because I didn't have enough couches and someone was going to have to sit on the floor or god forbid an inflatable mattress..right..those three..before they left they went into Tooler and Issa's room after I told them not to.
I said, "That's my housemates' room."
But they went in almost because I said this and picked up the girls' dirty panties from the floor and danced around and I thought: what is this? Disneyland? You think this is a movie set created for your enjoyment or do you think two real people live here? And it came back to me: finally, after asshole left and it was just me, putting the furniture back in place and washing my boots in the shower. Washed the vomit right out of those motherfuckers.
Anyway, we got cats.
And one of my clearest memories, one of my key memories from Brattleboro, is sitting on this one bench in front of a public office building just down from the post office after a night or more of drinking and debauchery, deciding to stop drinking, not actually stopping, and going all the way to the edge with my funds and making it just to when my next unemployment check came and making it through not drunk driving and not getting arrested or dead from doing some illegal drug and now I had money in my account again—enough for a reasonable person to live on—and feeling safe and relieved that I made it through one more episode of self-imposed chaos..I survived myself!
Sitting there after coming from the post office and getting another unemployment form I filled out (lying about searching for jobs because there were no fucking jobs) and mailed. Then going across the street to deposit my check. Then going to my bench where I sat there like an astronaut who had been to space and was back on solid ground, like a whole-self sigh of relief that I made it through to this point.
Can I get to a place where I don't harm myself, where in the moment I can act in ways that are holistically healthy? Can I not get there—can I be there now? Maybe that's an angle of being in the present moment..that Buddhist idea of not-striving..of being here now..of not-hoping and not-trying for what I might become, what enlightenment I might reach..but being here now. Maybe I am here now =)
I would think that on that bench, and with my continual resolutions not to be a maniac in my life, for a few minutes on the bench I had peace.
I went drinking on St. Patrick's Day at Whit's just out of curiosity. Real drinkers quite vocally refer to New Year's Eve, St. Patty's Day, The Fourth of July..as amateur nights. Normally a real drinker wouldn't even go to a bar on those days. We don't like to see normal people drink—it's disgusting.
I mean green beer? Beer in general. Serious drinkers drink liquor and we drink about six times the normal person drinks. Normal people don't get wild when they get drunk—they just get stupid—and there is a difference.
When I walked in, Whit's was completely full of no one I'd ever seen before..a completely different crowd. Every seat was filled. People were elbow to elbow. There were placemats on the bar. Folks were having these ridiculous conversations about church and work and God—all the stuff a real drinker lives life to avoid.
Kip controlled the jukebox from behind the counter and he was playing country gospel "hits"—if there even is such a thing. I ate a patty melt and drank a bottle of chianti in eleven minutes flat and I was out of that place like I was escaping a fucking nuthouse.
I don't do New Year's Eve parties, either. I hate champagne, for one. If I'm at a New Year's Eve party and someone hands me a glass of champagne, when the clock strikes twelve I raise my glass and toast with the best of them—but when the glasses chink and everybody's kissing, I'm the guy finding a plant or a sink or a window to dump that shit out in.
Normal drinkers don't understand alcohol the way serious drinkers do. You know those people who say, "I don't drink to get drunk." Yeah. You wanna avoid those people. Alcohol is a drug, and the only reason to drink it is to get drunk. Have you ever heard anyone say, "I smoke pot—but not to get high." No. No one ever says that.
And you holiday drinkers, you people who don't drink to get drunk—take it from a real drunk—you're doing it wrong. Throw that glass of champagne out the window, get yourself a bottle of something strong, watch depressing movies on Netflix till you pass out, alone, face down in your bathroom—ringing in the new year. That's how real drinkers do it.
My old girlfriend pegged me early as an alcoholic. She said, "It's pathetic that you drink alone."
I said, "You drink just as much with your friends."
She said, "That's different—I'm drinking socially."
And I said, "I think it's pathetic that in order to drink, you need the validation of your friends. How sad is that?"
As far back as my early twenties, I was an alcoholic. My girlfriend knew it—I did not. And I would not for many years.
I kept trying to have the perfect last drink. There was a supermoon and I stared at the moon that night. I knew I had to get serious about my writing again. I changed my Tumblr picture to one that accentuated my aggressive bangs and I guess made me look like a writer. Back then, unless I was actually writing a book, I never had the feeling that I "was" a writer—in fact I never have that feeling now. It's just an accident that I'm doing this—I do it because it makes by mind feel good. Like Faulkner said, "Don't be 'a writer.' Be writing."
Looking up at the supermoon, swearing this'll be the last smoke and the last drink before I got back to doing something useful.
My air bed developing a leak..waking up in the night on the floor feeling like this is just one more thing..sleeping with my ass on the floor..by morning all of me was on the floor. Ordering a new bed and in the mean time sleeping on the floor on top of a couple of blankets. Then my piece of foam arrived..Tooler thought it was impossible that I could be comfortable on that thing but I have a long history of sleeping on slabs of foam and I thought I was living in the lap of luxury. This time I even bought one that was four by six instead of eight by six in an acknowledgment that I wasn't going to be having any female visitors over—I was officially celibate with the purchase of that narrow slab of foam.
I get an email from the CEO of a top-notch company in Los Angeles that I applied to like a year ago. I really wanted to work for this company. They wanted a text-only résumé—which I thought was really cool—and I made them a sweet-looking text-only résumé with links to some amazing stuff I'd done and I sent it to them. That was back when I lived with my mom in Bowmanstown, Pennsylvania. But I never heard back. Then a year later, when I'm not even looking for tech jobs anymore—I've totally given up on that—this CEO emails me and says, Our bad. We misplaced your resume. But I LOVE your skill set and the projects you've done and if you'll forgive our tardiness I'd like to video chat with you at your earliest convenience.
Uh-huh. At my earliest convenience. My earliest convenience was twelve months ago. But the company was so cool I Skyped him.
Yeah. We loved each other.
We asked each other all the right questions.
We created that perfect balance of professionalism and comfort.
But the conversation ended something like this:
"I'd really like to join your team.."
"I understand."
"..but I just rented this house in Vermont and.."
"..yeah, I would make the same decision myself."
"..So I think I'm gonna stay here and work on my fiction."
I turned down a job making one and a half times what I'd made before (and I'd made a lot) to bum it in Vermont and write my fifth novel on an unemployment check. In the past, I mean up until last year, I would have taken the job, but I finally learned something about those jobs, which is this: the money they pay you, goes away, and you're left with nothing. You don't own shit, except your valuable experience. With writing, I was working at something that resulted in me owning something—worthless as it may have been in a monetary sense—I was creating works for which I owned the copyright. I was doing something for myself. For the first time in my life I was doing this. And somehow, a copyright on a book that no one was reading, no one was buying, but that I owned, felt a lot better than working my ass off and giving of my considerable mind to companies who weren't even giving me stock.
I ran a few errands.
(Which for me meant going to bars.)
I went to the Inferno and had a well gin, neat, my last drink for a while. Fifteen weeks later I went back in there and said hi to the owner and I was still off alcohol and he said:
"Are you still not drinking?"
He remembered that I had my last drink at his bar. There was something about doing this somewhere other than Whitman's. It was a private ritual of stopping and starting drinking that I can't tell you why, but I just wanted to do on my own, in private, and the Inferno in the daytime didn't have just a few customers..it had no customers.
And the bartender stood in front of me and said:
"Are you getting back into the game?"
"I'm getting back into it," I said.
And he said, "Good, I hear you're a tech guy. After this drink maybe you can help me fix that."
He pointed to his 1980s jukebox.
"I doubt I can help you fix that but I will take that drink."
The guy smiled and he poured.
21
But that was fifteen weeks later. For the many weeks previous I had been writing. And when I write I don't drink a drop. I stop drinking completely. I write every single day. I write on a schedule. That had become my general practice starting with Things Said in Dreams. I drank when I wrote my first book. Since then, I always wrote sober, just because I happened to be in AA when I wrote TSID. There were exceptions: one extremely difficult day of strategic drinking during mURdEr cLuB cANDy to make one of the drug-taking scenes more realistic. What was extremely difficult about it was drinking that one day and then stopping, but I did it, and it made the scene—no way I could have written that scene sober.
Brattleboro Vermont.
I write ::HARD.
It's the only book I write in my year in Vermont.
I had a manic breakdown after I finished writing.
But boy was it worth it.
Each day I make the next day's food so in the mornings I don't have to stop writing to cook.
I think of that quote from Walk the Line. The record producer says to Johnny Cash, "If you was hit by a truck and you was lying out there in that gutter dying, and you had time to sing one song.. One song that people would remember before you're dirt. One song that would let God know how you felt about your time here on Earth." What song would it be? I feel that's the question that one's work, that my work, that this particular book of mine, should answer—no question less.
To answer that question with ::HARD, I am on a schedule for more than a hundred days where I wake up, shower, write, eat, write some more, am done by noon, and I meditate for the rest of the day. These are perfect days. I am hypomanic, which means just a little bit manic, but I control it with not drinking or doing any other drugs, maintaining a regular sleep pattern, and with writing itself. Writing several thousand words a day comforts my mind—it massages it into a peaceful state just like running relaxes the body—and it allows me to keep my brain from further escalation, but also maintain a little bit of the manic fire which helps me write two-thousand words—or three-thousand words—in just a few hours, for a hundred days in a row. I wrote ::HARD without a single break.
My first idea for that story, for a story called ::HARD, was a story that's just a kid trying to get to school. I wanted to write this because people seem to think that things are great in this world, and I still have a bone to pick with that, an ax to grind..to me it seems like the perpetrators are the ones sitting around laughing and eating well, drinking, etc. and the people they're harming are the kids, the country, the outcast. I think people need to hear messages about how fucked up things are. Oh yeah: so in this story, it would be ridiculous, hero-style: like the kid has to fight tanks and stuff just to get up the street..he's got ridiculous elements in his way, and at the end we learn that all this fucking kid is trying to do is get to his classroom and open a book. It would be superhero, comic book-ish, totally over the top. But I discarded that idea. And I had even more ideas for that book that I threw away.
I think a lot about a book before I start to write.
I will write true to myself. I will write what I want to be there. Part of my target is creating something that resonates with other people. To create crack. I totally disagree with writing to genres and especially marketing demographics in order to achieve this, but I am interested in choosing characters with the intention of placing them well, placing them such that they will be crack. With some distance from it, I think TSID's character does this well. Some literary agents may disagree. And I may be wrong. But so far that character seems to work for people..they read it, they say it's brilliant, they post sentences from it to their Twitter. I do think there is something magical about the narrative monologue in first person. It is a substrate appropriate for what Mamet talks about: showing on the screen someone that the audience member enjoys imagining they are.
I thought about my old friend Julian.
Story of a musician who hasn't played a show in years, he stopped, and the people around him who swirl around, and finally he plays a show again
travel story
desperation
homelessness in Austin
call it:
Up Against The Sky
It would be:
part of a larger piece..The Reminding..aspects of people's lives
finding what they lost
reminded of what they forgot
And someday later I would try to write that story. Or a:
story of a family with two adopted children
and someone who commits suicide
a serious story about a family, and a special child
Maybe I should have thought more about that note, abut a special child who kills himself. It's all right there, always, the ending is buried in the beginning and it's so plain it's slapping you in the face with a large trout—but you have no idea.
During this time when I was waltzing around with the idea of writing this book, it was so cold outside they had advisories not to go outside at all. It was 20 or 30 below. You couldn't stand outside—but I stole seconds here and there fully dressed in my baddest hiking gear standing two feet from the house, talking to Penny across the ocean and coordinating our cigarettes. I went to the back porch and at 20 below the cold didn't feel like cold anymore, it felt like death—like death and complete stillness and total utter absolutely motherfucking quiet.
I was psyching myself up to write, building up my mind with other people's advice and some of my own.
Keep it guttah, keep it grimy.
Don't ever forget that.
Write for an audience of two: the lowest god and the highest devil.
And keep it guttah. Keep it grimy —Busta Rhymes
You haven't gone too far.
You haven't gone far enough.
And one day I was done psyching myself up, I was sober enough, and I started writing ::HARD, like a monk, no alcohol, only trips outside to the grocery store, meditating after writing, making writing a meditation, with my strict daily schedule which involved afternoon play sessions with the growing kittens, I stayed in the zone for a hundred and seven days or something like that.
I rewarded myself for my every day writing with a weekly massage focusing on the hands. I started with chair massage but Libby talked me into a couple of table massages. It had been a while since I'd had a massage and I was afraid I'd get an erection while she had me lying on my back because I was attracted to this masseuse sexually, which is a little scary.
But we talked and I discovered I was attracted to her holistically. Libby is one of those people who if all I could do was follow them around as their angel, and I got to be with them even though they would never know I was there and could never give back to me, I would do it, because I liked them that much. I liked Libby that way—she was a special person, a gifted person. She was a one-in-a-lifetime person, my massage therapist, Libby. I continued liking her as a man likes a woman but mostly we had the most amazing and clear conversations about pain: pain that means something's wrong, like kidney stone pain—or birth pains, she says, which are hard but don't send signals to your brain that something is wrong. I always enjoyed the several types of pain she gave me when she massaged me. In fact, Libby was so good, the other massage therapists at their shop always had Libby do their massages. She was that good. I will say, with all the massage therapists I've ever met, which is quite a few, that Libby..well..it makes me glow to think of her skill. She sings, too, she told me. She may have other aptitudes. But she has mastered massage, and in her twenties or thirties, she's the most accomplished massage therapist I've encountered. In heaven, it will certainly be Libby who gives massages.
I came back from a massage one day, easily walking the sidewalks which were no longer ice, and Darling Nikki was out jogging High Street. She acknowledges me with such a warm smile and wave that I have to examine my own head to see what part of her seeming-sexual welcoming is real and what is in my head—though it gave me a nice small-town feel just that the person I saw out jogging was someone I had met before. I waved back. And that continued to happen all the while I lived in Brattleboro—seeing familiar people everywhere—and that comforted me—it created the impression that the world was small.
I only went out one night while I was writing ::HARD, and that was to go bowling with Tooler and Issa. They invited me in the morning and I declined, then later in the day I asked them if I was still invited. I wanted some sociality.
We met friends of theirs, a couple, and the woman was so beautiful in this Winnie Cooper from Wonder Years sort of way..just..perfect symmetry of face, nothing visibly freakish or brilliant about her, but she was intelligent and constantly funny, kind of like she had a team of writers feeding her dialogue.
She was married to this dumb-as-nails guy and she was pregnant with his baby and I had this feeling of disgust all night that someone so pretty and normal and caring and mother-like would choose to be with this guy whose obvious only strength was his education—a bunch of political theorists he had choked on like dicks. In reality, I didn't know much about him, but usually my intuition is spot on, even after meeting someone for a few seconds. I spent four or five hours with this guy and hated him—I thought he wasn't good enough for Winnie (or whatever her real name was) and I tried to put myself inside her mind to see what attracted her to him. To me he was undeserving, boring, rude, a simpleton with a stable job and a house and a Subaru and that's probably just exactly what all the Winnie Coopers of this fucked-up world really want.
It's not sex and conversation—it's financial stability so they can have babies. And those kids are going to grow up with the dullest dads imaginable. Winnie Coopers never go for guys like me. To a Winnie Cooper, I'm an uncouth, unstable, insolvent wannabe artist who will fail at art and fail at life and she doesn't want to be stuck with someone like that when she turns forty. I'm too unpredictable to raise a family—me and Winnie Cooper agree on this one.
Anyway I caught as many secret glances of her as I could all night and just wished and wished that some sequence of events would unfold where I would get to fuck her. I bet she wears plain panties—white with a white little gusset—and I wanted to fuck her in such a way that the next day she'd go out and buy some sexy ones.
Even though most everyone was drinking, I stayed away from the alcohol. At one point, going to the bar to buy nachos, I saw Tooler and Issa looking at me and I wondered if they thought I was getting a drink. But I don't drink when I write. If my wife asked me not to drink, if my first son did, I'd probably tell them to fuck themselves. But for a novel, yeah, I'll sober up real quick and I'll stay sober till that fucking thing is done.
When I finish writing the book—and back up the first draft in like three different places online—on the day of and after the last period of writing, I go downtown, my first time leaving the house before noon in months, I call Joanne and she is proud of me. I wander around downtown in a late snow talking with my sister for an hour.
I'm happy.
I even mention to Joanne the idea of continuing to write—starting a new project right away—just for the calming effects writing has on my life.
But I don't do that.
I lose control of the wave of hypomania that I wrote my book on, and without a rigorous daily schedule, mania takes over. It chips away at my mind bit by bit by bit. In six months my entire life in Brattleboro will be destroyed.
22
I start drinking again.
And I get manic in the summers.
I kept getting massages from Libby after I finished my book.
Do you know what mania is? Well you can look up a medical dictionary definition, but, please, allow me to save you the trouble. Mania is the time I was so irate I flipped out at a Burger King drive-through because they wanted to sell me packets of ketchup. Each meal came with two packets of ketchup and I wanted four. So I flipped the fuck out and told the window operator, his boss, her boss, and everyone within earshot that their ketchup policy was Texas rancher bullshit and this Burger King didn't deserve to stand. I wished them earthquakes, fires, floods, plagues of rabbits. Yes, I screamed at them that I hoped rabbits fell from the sky and punctured the windshields of their cars, squeaked their business to a halt, and they all had to find other jobs working at real Burger Kings, BK's that just give people the condiments they need. Then I proceeded to lecture them on how giving people the condiments they requested was a way to build customer satisfaction and a regular clientele..all the while the store manager was politely asking me to, "Please pull forward so that you're not blocking the line, sir." Sir? I'll stick that sir up your motherfucking ass.
You're not going to find that in the medical dictionary, nor in your Google searches for "mania"—but that's what mania is.
I got my first drink from Inferno—a neat gin—and that guy's jukebox was still broken.
I got a massage from Libby.
And then, even though I could have kept it reasonable, had one drink, and gone on with..whatever people do when they're not drinking (I wasn't much sure about this quadrant of activity)..even though I could have done that, I didn't.
I walked out of the new age massage dojo, turned left, and like a robot walked 50 feet up Elliot.
I decided to try Whit's again.
The decision to continue drinking after being sober for months was a child's puzzle in my mind. I may have toyed with it, but I knew what I was going to do. The weight of that decision, though, was not a weight a child could handle. Mostly I concerned myself with what my drinks would be, as if that would help me drink reasonably somehow. Maybe if I just buy one bottle of chianti. Maybe if I just drink G&Ts. But none of that mattered. I was stepping onto the edge of the well, and some dark spiral invited me to take a step and take a step. I didn't have to make the decision all at once—just one drink at a time. And as much fun as I had at Whit's before, Whitman's Act II was a much better show for me.
Now, every day, there was a guy named Mike, drinking at the exact opposite of this long-ass bar to where I sat. He drank weird drinks consisting of mixtures of beer and liquor. We yelled at each other across the distance for a while, then eventually I moved my seat out of the dark corner by the video poker machine and right over to where Mike was, but where he was on the short end in the other corner, I was now just around the bend of the bar on the long end next to him.
"You wanna smoke a butt?" was Mike's refrain—did I want to smoke a cigarette.
I bummed from him for a while but eventually started buying packs of Kamel's again.
"How do you smoke those things?"
Kamel Reds. The most beautiful cigarette in the world.
"I don't know. I just love 'em."
"I notice you smoke Parliaments with Justine."
"I'd smoke dog shit with Justine. I mean if a dog came up this sidewalk and shat right there I would lean down and smoke that shit with Justine."
Mike and I were drinking buddies because we went to the bar at roughly the same time. I went when they opened—noon. Mike went as soon as he could possibly leave his job, which I understood from experience was a moving target that got earlier and earlier the more one hated one's job. At first he got to Whit's art four, then three, then two-thirty. That was when I could reasonably expect Mike to arrive at Whit's, at which point we would match drinks, alternate cigarettes, walk across the street to get more cash, and stay as long as Mike could possibly stay, this last variable being determined by how many times Mike's wife had called him at the bar asking where the hell he was and when the hell he was coming home. I mean, she knew where he was, but she asked anyway. I never, ever met Mike's wife the entire time I lived in Vermont.
And also now there every day was a girl named Walsh. She had red hair, freckles, she was acquaintances with Mike and Jill and Whit and Thomas knew her, but she never talked to me. She sat next to Mike and drank like somebody who has a life they want to forget—just not as beaten up by life yet as Jane, the homeless former prostitute I told you about? Walsh kept me at a distance but she would sit there and let Mike and I buy her drinks while Mike and I chatted up the fucking ceiling. Walsh would roll her eyes at our old-man jokes (Mike and I were in our early thirties, Walsh was 25) but, you know, she knew the value of her smile and she would flash me one sometimes.
Eventually the three of us arrived at a sort of equilibrium where no one was flirting with anyone and we were just there to drink. The three of us—me Mike and Walsh—became the day drinkers of Whitman's. Walsh was a pre-school teacher, by the way.
And sometimes the Professor would grace us with his presence but with a hardcore day-drinking bloc like Mike Walsh and I, the Professor could never start the fire of one of his bigoted conversations—it would always be snuffed out by the drunk takedowns of one or all of the other three day drinkers there—and any one of us could take on the Professor, drink for drink—there were no lightweights there.
"Walsh, I bet you don't know the history of the name of the country you were named after," said the Professor.
And I said, "We're drinking—no history lessons!"
"Anyway," Walsh said, "I wasn't named after a country. I was named after one of my father's high school girlfriends."
"I bet your mother liked that!" the Professor says, raising his martini.
"She did! They were all friends. Don't try to start a fight where there isn't one! They just liked the sound of the name."
"Well I will drink to that," the Professor says. "You have a beautiful name."
Mostly Mike and I controlled the conversation, with—the classic bar conversation—talk about work. When things got too heated between the Professor and Walsh, Mike would look at me like a Muppet and say: "You wanna smoke a butt?"
And sometimes Walsh and this guy named Manny and I would go to Walsh's house and do cocaine, looking out over her windows at the river, and it was awkward because me and Manny both wanted to fuck Walsh, but Manny pulls me aside one night and says, "She's into you, man—you should hit that." Walsh must have had the best view of any apartment in Brattleboro. You could see the train tracks, the river, the bridge, the mountain.
When I say I wanted to fuck Walsh, not only could she drink like a champion, not only did she not give a fuck about the rules and do coke and binge-watch Simpsons, but while I was packed away in my room writing ::HARD, she lost like ten or twenty pounds, so she was just the right amount of skinny now and wore shirts that showed her belly and her beautiful belly button, which was an innie. I wanted to fuck her without a condom then pull out and cum all over her belly, filling her belly button with cum.
Mike and I stand outside chain smoking just to avoid the Professor and I would tell him stories about my old work in California:
"I mean I yelled so hard at this guy that I never went back to that Burger King, even though before that it had been my everyday spot."
"And why was this that you yelled at an innocent Burger King employee?"
"It's the motherfucking condiments, man! They wanted to charge me extra for ketchup and barbecue sauce and I refused to pay it and I flipped out at them for not giving it to me."
Gave them the unrighteous smackdown, for sure—totally uncalled for.
"I'm going in," Walsh says. "You two can figure this one out by yourselves."
"So?" Mike says.
"So," I say, "like, this Burger King thing was totally insane. I don't know what happened to me. I might have threatened them. I was paranoid for weeks about them knowing my license plate or what my car looked like. I thought they were gonna call the police I was like telling them I hope they lose their jobs and their business goes under and a plague of rabbits cracks their windshields. Just shit like that, man."
"Did you ever go back and apologize?"
"I never went back at all. I never even took that exit on the highway. I might have made some death threats, I don't know."
"You need to chill out, man."
"Yeah, well that job sucked. I needed to get out of these. And after I drove through that BK window, I called Joshua—this fucking faggot who's supposed to be my supervisor and I gave him the unrighteous smackdown over the phone. I became the devil, man. He said come back to the office and let's talk about this. I said I'm not coming back to the office..go work it out with Peter (who was the boss) but I said Joshua you are unacceptable, your behavior toward me from day one has been totally over the line and you know it. You're technically unqualified for your job—"
"You said that?"
"Yes and I said Joshua, you know it. You won't use my expertise because you have an ego problem. Joshua is like, 'Matt—' and I'm like Just shut up and listen. You go downstairs, you work this shit out with Peter, but the way you treated me this morning is the last time that's gonna happen. Do you understand that? No answer so I'm like: Joshua, do you understand that? He says, 'Yes.' I say, 'Good. Now fuck you. I hope you heard that.' Joshua is like, Maybe you should calm down and think before you say anything else. And I'm like, 'No, Joshua, fuck you.' Fuck you for being such an asshole toward me from day one of this fucking company. And you can tell Peter I said that. In fact, I'll tell him. If I ever hear another unkind word from you I will fucking hurt you—don't ever forget you heard me say those words."
"Damn."
"I hang up that phone and go to Red Robin, order drinks and appetizers and burgers and more drinks and I ignore all calls and texts from Joshua and Peter—and there were many."
"Did they fire you?"
"No. They needed me because I could program stuff that no one else there could program. But Joshua was a real moron: when I would go drinking with him on these pseudo-company outings, he would explain to me his theory that somewhere out there was the perfect appetizer that would 'soak up' the alcohol so that if you ate this mythical appetizer while you were drinking, you would get less drunk."
Mike laughs.
I continue. "This wasn't just a theory he had while he was drunk, either—he discussed this with me in the mornings when he was completely sober. I hate to be the one alcoholic in the room to suggest this, but: why not just drink less alcohol? Because that will have the desired effect of you getting less drunk."
I shake my head.
Mike's latest cigarette is done.
"One more?" he asks.
But you know what my answer was gonna be.
He holds the door open and we go back inside Whitman's for another drink.
23
Libby seeing me outside Kips smoking on her walk home. About their whole naturalistic crew and how I fancied being a part of it, everyone who worked at her dojo of healing, to me they seemed like perfect friends, even though I was on a different path—the path of base culture, of cigarettes and alcohol and cocaine and learning what people say in bars so I could write about it.
I wanted to be seen as pure by Libby, wanted to magically be part of their community, but I'm not pure—far from it.
I developed a spiritual crush on my massage therapist. Didn't want to be with her..wanted to be like her..or what I imagined her as being. Wanted to live healthy and be spiritual, even though that's just not me. I always like people like that, though, who seem to spend their lives on a meditation cushion. I relished Libby's and my conversations about different kinds of pain—who else did I know I could have that conversation with?
I had a crush on the whole crew who worked at that holistic healing center—in my fantasy world they were counterparts to all my old Ohio friends even though my old Ohio friends weren't spirit and health people, but druggies like me. Me and Libby were on entirely different tracks and it hurt me that it was so.
Libby seeing me smoking outside Whitman's right after she had given me a massage and I felt like I was letting her down, showing her that I was really someone lesser than who she thought—though most likely that judgement was in my head and not in hers. She was an example of how I wanted to be—I wanted to be healthy, sober, doing something useful for the world and getting paid enough to live, rent, eat (because that is the only way this economy knows how to show that it considers you worthy to live).
Libby smiled at me though and I nodded and she walked on by.
I got sick (which is always depressing). I was still jobless. I had drank too much and had no money to pay the rent. Manic after writing ::HARD, I think about becoming a male gay porn video artist on the web, but I'm fat in the belly and skinny in the arms, my cock is not a cock that some stranger could fetishize. Me as a male webcam model would be like trying to jerk off to a misshapen starving turkey..like if a turkey was one of those Somalian kids dying with flies all over their body and only one eye still working—imagine some gay dude trying to get off to that and you have some idea of what it would be like to try to get off to me.
I browse around. The opportunities for women abound—if I was a girl I'd set up a sheet as a background and a sexy-looking bed and stick cucumbers up my ass. Cash would be rolling in. In my spare time I could earn my degree. But I'm not a woman and my body's worth nothing to sell. I only have weird mental talents that require acrobatics of matching and placement to monetize—acrobatics that I cannot do at this time. A programmer is worth nothing in a small town—the only place my skills are worth money is in an especially large or especially innovative company. There are none of those in Brattleboro. And my writing? It's probably been saving my life mentally, spiritually since about the fourth grade—and starting five or six years ago, it's given me a sense of meaning and purpose in my life—which to me is priceless. But in terms of money, in terms of value to others, it's worth nothing.
Fuck, maybe I'll stick a cucumber up my ass anyway—just for fun.
One day at Whit's, drinking dangerously close to my rent money, I ask Mike how old he is.
"Thirty-one," he says. "Why."
"You're younger than me?"
"Why? How old are you?"
"Thirty-three. Fuck. This messes with my whole conception of the day drinkers—excluding the professor. I'm the oldest of the day drinkers?! Shit, I gotta get my life together," I say.
"You thought since I'm balding that I was older than you," Mike suggests.
"Yeah, I did. Fuck."
"Nope," he says. "Only thirty-one."
"I feel like I have to be all wise and shit now when really I'm just a degenerate drinker on a check, unpublished writer, loser, freak—"
"Don't forget drug addict," Mike says.
"Thanks, I won't."
Mike has a wife and a house and two cars and tens of thousands of dollars in the bank. I'm destitute, in debt, living off an unemployment check—and by living I mean barely maintaining a few loose relationships and drinking everything but my rent money.
Mike buys my next drink.
"You've been a good friend to me," he says.
"Thank you," I say, and I genuinely nod.
After Mike went home, I acted like I was going home but instead I went down the hill, turned left on Main Street, and went to Butch's bar (which was re-opened after the fire—he only had water damage). I think I mentioned I used to do this in Tucson—drink at one bar, then move to another, then another. Do three to five different bars in a day, that way no one bartender knows how much you're drinking. And if they do know, they can at least pretend not to know.
When I drank at LA, me and my film school buddy and apartment mate—whose name was also Mike—stopped driving to the nice convenience store and started driving to this ghetto convenience store that looked like you were going to get shot every time you went in. It was within walking distance—I mean it was about a two-minute walk from our apartment. But we drove there anyway, both of us together, each of us alone. Sometimes one of us would make up to three trips to that same convenience store in the same day and it was the same guy—the owner—who was always working..always. So this guy knew exactly how much we drank.
Mike's girlfriend and my old friend Courtney noted when all three of us dropped the pretense of buying regular-sized wine bottles and just went for the big fat honking Sutter Home's—merlot, cab, we didn't care. We'd buy two big bottles. "Tastes like shit but that's only the first glass," was Courtney's wise philosophy. She was right—after the first glass it didn't matter what you were drinking—it all tastes the same. One time we found Courtney face down on the dining room floor sobbing and yelling at herself. There was an empty bottle of Hpnotiq on the kitchen table, which I had bought. After that we disallowed Hpnotiq from the house. One time Mike went to the convenience store right before they closed—his second trip of the day—and as the owner was wrapping Mike's bottle of Smirnoff in a brown paper bag, the owner just looked at Mike with a sad face and shook his head.
So that's why I went to Butch's bar that night after Whitman's—I didn't want anybody shaking their head at me, thinking about how much I was drinking. Butch wasn't there, but his second in command was, a sober bartender prob'ly sixty years old with a shaved head and a wife and a plan one day to open a bar of his own.
I hadn't been there in months but he remembered my drink and didn't even ask—he just made me a gin and tonic with Bombay original.
We smiled and shook hands.
The only other person at the bar was this guy singing loudly with one earphone in his head, mixing music on a MacBook he had propped in his lap. He was a wild drunk. We talk. Go out for a smoke together. Decide to hang out. Etc. Like every other single guy I meet in Brattleboro, this guy claims to be a DJ and I'm like, whatever, everyone with a MacBook is a fucking DJ just by virtue of the software that it comes with.
"You wanna hang out?" he says.
I'm drunk enough to say yes.
So we walk through bone-drenching cold to this guy's house, which is only a few blocks from my apartment.
We drink—I have no idea what.
We do a bunch of pharmaceuticals—I have no idea what, I just wanted to escape myself, you know, and alcohol doesn't always do it but the company of some strange insane Vermont DJ starts to do it. Standing in the cold on his front porch smoking cigs on top of all the alcohol and pills and talking about moving in together—that starts to do it. And then I learn that this guy is a counselor at the Refuge—the mental hospital in town—and I'm like, wow, this guy is counseling little kids in the daytime and at nighttime he's just monsterchomping prescription pills and showing strangers (me) these wicked remixes of Charlie Sheen "winning!"
I was bangin' seven-gram rocks
That's how I roll—winning
I have one gear: GO—epic winning
Are you bipolar?—I'm bi-winning!
Win here, win there, win win everywhere
It was like every drunken night with every drunken stranger: you go from being complete strangers to best friends in five minutes and then you hang out and maybe fuck for six hours, then the next morning you're strangers again.
I figured after he got me blackout high and said I could sleep in his bed and told me the pills would make me feel, "real relaxed in a few minutes" that we were going to do something sexual like at least suck each other's dicks but I just passed out on in his bed while he was still putting together the world's next great Charlie Sheen mix.
When I woke up there was no sign that anything sexual had happened, which was kind of disappointing even though I'm not gay. Dude was zombie state next to be in bed, so I left and walked the cold walk home.
Tooler and Issa were all excited that I hadn't come home.
"We figured maybe you hooked up with someone."
"Well, I went to this guy's house—"
"Oooooh!!"
Now they were really excited at the fact that their housemate might not be 100% straight himself.
"But nothing happened."
"Awwww."
"But we already decided that he's coming over here tonight—I hope that's ok."
"Oh, yes!!!"
They were more than happy to facilitate me possibly getting laid. When he did come over, the four of us sat on the house's famed porch and smoked shisha and drank a little and then Tooler and Issa disappeared into their room and dude and I hung out on the couch but nothing happened. He had even less of a gay vibe than me—fuck, I was just desperate for any kind of attention I could get. It wasn't even really sexual, what I desired—it was more like intimacy.
24
Hypersexuality is a textbook symptom of bipolar mania.
It was me flirting with Jill, me seeking out a sexual partner that would be unusual for me (the Charlie Sheen DJ), it was me wanting to have sex with most every little piece of pussy I came across, whether they were straight or gay or what.
Jill and Whit's had an open relationship. Justine's boyfriend flirted with Jill, and I flirted with Jill, too. Jill was telling me the story about how she first discovered that Whit was colorblind. I was so drunk I don't remember exactly what words I said to her but I know I asked her if we could think about arranging a time when we could spend some time alone together and—you know—fuck.
Jill raised her eyebrows and said:
"Yeah, we can think about that."
That's part of what I mean when I say I get manic in the summers. Flirting with Jill was certainly a manic thing to do—Jill's old enough to be my mother.
This is another part of what I mean when I say I get manic in the summers: meeting some drug dealer in Whitman's and making a commitment to buy, crazily, even though I didn't have enough money to buy from him since I had drank it all that night. I had to sneak out of Whitman's under this drug dealer's nose and take the back streets home so he wouldn't follow me and figure out where I lived. Then I avoided Whitman's for days.
I'm a magnet for drug dealers. They can find me and I can find them. Instantly. Any town. Any culture. I can just look at you and tell if you can get me drugs. And the reverse is true. If you're a normal person, and you don't do drugs, you won't be able to tell that I do drugs. But if you're a drug dealer or a drug addict, you can just look at me and tell that I'm your customer. I can't explain it—but it is true, undeniably. Drug people can just recognize each other like animals of one species know what animals are of that same species.
A few days later I get paid again, figure it's safe to go back to Whit's. First I get shitface drunk. Then I meet some guy in Whitman's and then I'm meeting him in the grocery store parking lot, crossing the creek bridge to buy "coke" and "ecstasy" from this shyster. Getting home and it not even being cocaine or at least it was the shittiest cocaine I've ever tried—worse than Washington Square Park cocaine—and the "ecstasy" doing nothing to me. I laid in bed feeling terrible, hoping the ecstasy would kick in, hoping my roommates won't knock on my door and see me sweating my ass off—the only noticeable effect these drugs had on me.
Just pretend I don't exist.
Just pretend I don't exist.
Drug use is a textbook symptom of bipolar mania. The uninformed think that drugs give you mental illness. Buy by and large that isn't true. Those people aren't doctors. They've never read textbooks on bipolar disorder. Half these people don't even know what mental illness is. They think homeless people ("bums"), drug addicts, alcoholics, and anyone who acts crazy is all just one big entity of fucked up that they want nothing to do with. They don't know the difference between schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder. If they have a relative who's sick, they just hold them at a distance and "send their love."
Fuck 'em.
If you've ever done drugs in your life, they are certain that the drugs are what caused you to be "crazy."
They don't have the imagination or the knowledge to see that it's actually the other way around. People think their politics are why they got to where they did in life—like if they're successful in business, if they're a millionaire, they think it's because of their republican "values." They never imagine the reverse could be true: you became a republican because republican values suit the life that happened to you.
You're not sick, so you don't need health care, so why should anyone?
Uneducated people think the same way about drugs and mental illness. Yeah, smoking crack for twenty years is going to fuck up your brain—but that's not the same as mental illness. Doing drugs doesn't give you bipolar disorder—bipolar disorder (by the current most popular theory) is something you are genetically predisposed to that is kindled by traumatic life events. So two twins, where one has bipolar disorder, the other one won't, necessarily.
There's lots of science that says that bipolar people are more likely to drink and do drugs (especially alcohol, cocaine, and sleeping pills) than people without bipolar disorder. There's no science that says any drug causes bipolar disorder. It's genetic—you get it from your parents.
But your dumb-ass sheltered narrow-minded white college-educated uncle who works for ExxonMobil—he doesn't care about science—unless it's petroleum science. All he cares about is pretending that he's more of an upstanding citizen than you because you're a crazy drug addict even though he's the one taking blood money in exchange for destroying the planet.
The reason people are so attracted to the idea that illegal drugs cause mental illness is that if that were true life would be so much simpler: just color within the lines and nothing bad will happen to you. Ehhh..sorry..not the way it works. The rain falls upon the good and the bad equally—I think it says that in the Bible.
And me seeking drugs when I'm manic isn't theoretical. It's me straight-up asking a girl at a bar if she has coke and her looking at me, nodding, saying yes, wondering how I knew that of all the people in that bar, she's the one who could get it for me.
But I can just tell.
That one girl asking for a ride at Inferno and me saying maybe but I was drinking, her being all flirty, then I gave her my keys to go pick up her friend and I'm walking home that night and see she parked my car in a different lot (one where I got a ticket).
The handle to roll up the window is broken.
The car smells like cigarettes.
This is from some fat crackhead in Inferno promising me she could get cocaine if I drove her home. Somehow I gave her my keys to run an errand or something, she came back, I told her I couldn't give her a ride and when I left the Inferno I saw she had moved my car from the stacked parking lot to an open lot—that was where I got the ticket.
And there was an open baby diaper with shit on the hood of my Toyota.
Did that bitch change a baby while she was out here??
Or was that some random crackhead, unrelated to this fat crackhead, who was just walking by and said I'm gonna change my baby on the hood of this car.
And I'm like what was I thinking? So I drunk drive the car across the street to the proper lot.
She says she knows where to get cocaine, which I want, but she never comes through and I just spend all night waiting for something that never happens.
I see her later at a drug dealer's apartment and then, much later, begging for change outside Whit's, looking like she has no place to sleep anymore. There's your quick arc of the crackhead.
And thinking of LA, and mania, and that Burger King where I yelled at the window and that stupid job at Optimistic Solutions. Learning to drive the one- or two-hour drive home from work. First night I did it, I stopped in a parking lot somewhere and called Shringara, to help me cope. Second night I stopped at Red Robin and ate and drank to chill myself out, drove home drunk, slowly with the rest of the traffic, and finally made it home.
After that, over a period of months and years, I learned to put the moon roof down on my old-ass BMW, smoke cloves, listen to my Wu-Tang, and chill the fuck out. When I got to work in the morning, I parked in the last row of the lot, as far away from the office as possible, turned my music up, and smoked one or two more cloves just to chill out before I went to work.
That was me time.
That was something I didn't know about before.
25
And I think of me and Thomas' whiskey tour, from cheap to expensive, each of us sharing these tragic stories and I realize that it's possible for a person to be so influenced by an event from their life that they define themselves by the story they tell themself about that event. And it makes no sense. And we don't have to do it. We can let go. Those stories don't define us—we're actually much bigger than that.
I'm walking down High Street—it's fully summer now—and the street is filled with parked cars and I'm wondering and wondering why and then I remember—cow parade!!!
It's actually called The Annual Livestock and Farm Machinery Procession or something idiotic like that but all the locals call it "cow parade" and I've been looking forward to this day for a while.
"You mean they just parade cows down Main Street and a bunch of people watch?"
"Yep. They walk cows down Main Street and that somehow constitutes a parade in Buttfuck Vermont."
"Are you gonna be there?" This is me asking Walsh.
"Fuck no. I'll be as far away from that as possible."
"Doing what?"
"Washing clothes at my mom's house."
"You won't come to cow parade with me?" I whine.
"It's not the 'with you' that's the problem, just so you know," she says. "But fuck no. You won't catch me within a mile of downtown on cow parade. All these out-of-towners, Vermont hicks that want to come see a tractor drive down a street so they can check out the fucking tractor engine. One tractor engine is like another tractor engine. Am I right? Am I right?"
"I have no idea. Maybe I could come with you to your parents' to do laundry."
"No. Go. You've got to see it once."
Well, I was going anyway. I ain't that pussy whipped by Miss Walsh—I actually have to get some pussy before I get pussy whipped.
Cow parade is exactly what everyone said: a bunch of out-of-towners clogging up the sidewalks and grassy hills along main street for about four blocks while people literally parade cows and sheep and pigs and other livestock and tractors and other farm machinery. Yes, they drive farm machinery down the street and sixty-year-old farmers get hard-ons. Remember, this is Brattleboro Vermont, population eleven thousand. I took one look at it and decided to move on with my day.
I saw Abby, my landlord.
She told me my check bounced.
Fuck. It was only a matter of time with me.
I told her I would get her a new one asap and she said ok and she didn't seem too worried about it and we walked on.
But it made me feel like a piece of shit.
I went from upstanding citizen, deserving of enjoyment, to penniless loser in 19 seconds. I hated myself for mismanaging my money, or just for not having enough, or whatever. I don't know. I'm not a money guy. I don't balance checkbooks—never have. I just spend and have fun—to me that's what money's for.
Darling Nikki was there with her dad, serving sausages. Nikki had on a blue checkered apron and the way she was sticking this fork into these sausages..well..everything Nikki did was sexual. This isn't just my imagination—she designed it that way. Every body position, every inflection, every facial expression..designed to make you think you were in bed with her right that minute. You've hear the phrase bedroom eyes? Darling Nikki had bedroom everything. I went up to say hi and she leaned her head back and shook her hair like she was in a shampoo commercial. Then she laughed and put a fork in one of the sausages and I was like fuck this I have to get out of here. I didn't want her to have any power over me, and every second I spent imagining her having sex, she had power over me.
I saw a guy walking a pig.
But that was normal. He lived in Brattleboro and always walked his pig.
I wanted to go to Whitman's after cow parade but they were closed that day and I found myself feeling mad at them because I couldn't drink in their environment right at that moment. Entitled much? I went into the convenience store across the street and stood there for twenty minutes looking at the alcohol options. Everything bored me. I bought nothing and went home.
You know what it was? I wasn't going to Whitman's primarily for the alcohol. I was going for the party. There was no party, and I'm not saying I won't drink alone..but I didn't that day. Kips being closed depressed the fuck out of me. I had to deal with the sunshine and the house I lived in and all the facts of live in Brattleboro that Whitman's helped me daily to avoid.
Then Whit's decided to close on Sundays in general. Every Sunday. As in: I couldn't drink at Whitman's on Sunday at any time of the day. Previously they had moved the Sunday open time from noon to three. Now there were zero Sunday hours. Motherfucker. Hell to those of us who drank at Whit's seven days a week. It was almost like they were trying to send a signal to the four of us that we needed to occasionally sober up. Me, Mike, Walsh, and the Professor.
And Mattson. Fucking Mattson.
As Jill called his type: bonus people.
Because as long as someone would buy him a drink, Mattson would tag along, even when the ownership, staff, and regular day drinkers didn't want him there. Mattson ruined Whit's for me more than the Professor did. Both of them would talk your ear off, each in their own distinct style. But I was why Mattson was there—part of the reason anyway—because I would buy that bastard a drink out of pity (or the Professor would), so it was always worth it for Mattson to stop by Whit's to see if any of his patrons were there.
Also I was majorly fucked up financially at this time. Picture this: me driving to the food bank and getting food, my car breaking down in their parking lot. Me, barefoot, feeding the engine coolant to get it started for a little longer, just enough to make it back to the house, unload the food, and park it in the cheaper lot I was using now.
When you get food at "The Walk-In Center," you answer a bunch of their questions, about what services you're there for, then about your living situation, income, drug addiction, then (believe it or not!) if you're a vegetarian or have certain ingredients you can't eat. You go from feeling like a cultural degenerate to a diner in an upscale restaurant. I mean if you have a gluten allergy these people are not going to give you food with wheat in it..lol..also the experience of going there for the first time is a little rough. The other clients are hanging out on the porch looking like they just walked out of the Vietnam bush and they know each other and are all friendly with each other, but they don't know you. You're a newly-needy citizen. You still have a car so you imagine they think you're not really all that needy even though it's a beat-up car that barely runs. Anyway you walk the gauntlet of these guys hanging out on the porch and they are not friendly when you say hi to them. They're sizing you up, for what purpose, I have no idea—but I feel like a Nickelodeon character tossing cheerful greetings to the inmates as I walk jauntily down death row.
Then, to make my bounced rent check situation worse, I see Abby, my dutiful landlord, out and about in bars a few nights in a row when I have never seen her out before the entire time I've lived here. I owed her money and I was still going out drinking. In my mind, I didn't have enough to cover rent, so I figured I might as well drink the rest. But Abby never gave me a hard time or even said hi: she was like the queen bee in these places, guys all over her buying her drinks and trying to get in a little conversation. By contrast I was always by myself, one guy on a stool, drinking to get drunk. What are the chances, even in such a small town, of seeing her out three nights in a row. I felt like a schmo.
And here's how stupid I am: I even sent @slashleen partial payment for using her Don't get aids! joke/Tweet in my novel, even though the phrase has been used before and was so generic I didn't have to pay her money to use it. But her Tweet is where I heard the joke and I felt a duty to support the artist I was borrowing from. I wished I could send her more then but pledged to send more later when I could (and I recently did, five years later). And that's great, I'm supporting the arts, giving credit where credit is due, but it exemplifies how I was taking care of others when I didn't even have enough to take care of myself.
But that's my style, I guess: another internet purchase I made the same day was for Eldon, a drawing of a unicorn from Blade Runner. I knew the artist, and I will cherish that unicorn forever.
I was killing my bank account at the ATM to go across the street to Whit's and drink. This is how it went for me at Kips, I drank under some kind of compulsion. I would make as many trips to the ATM as my bank account could handle. That was the only thing that stopped my drinking—running out of money. Other than that, my unemployment money went straight from the government to a tiny ATM in a tiny town in Vermont then into my bloodstream.
One day I switched it up from G&Ts and drank some kind of potato vodka (which I loved but had also gotten me in a lot of trouble in LA). I drank it because I knew, unlike any of my regular drinks, potato vodka would fuck me up after just a few drinks and that's exactly what happened.
I paid my bill at Whit's, walked across the street and sat on the steps of an old fire station and called a suicide hotline.
A similar thing had happened to me in LA.
"So how long do you have sober," asked this suicide line operator.
"A year."
"Yeah, well you need to get back in touch with a sponsor if you're still having suicidal feelings with a year sober."
I was sobbing my eyes out into the phone. I'm sure everyone inside of Whit's could see me with perfect clarity.
I wanted to yell the head off of this stupid suicide hotline operator. They always think it's about substance abuse. And yes, today I am drunk but I feel even worse suicidal when I'm sober. They don't understand how hard life is to live for me. Because for them, getting clean and getting a sponsor is all it took for them to get over their suicidality. They don't understand mental health, these suicide hotline operators—some of them don't. They figure everyone's a drunk and a little help from the Lord above will help any good straight Christian feel the love of life again.
But they have never met me.
And I didn't understand me, either.
So I sat there on those steps and bawled my eyes out and took some company from the guy on the other end of the line without saying anything that would make him call the cops.
I thought of Thomas standing inside Whit's, watching me, wondering how he feels about his part in this little sickness..but it's me putting down the dollars and drinking the drinks, no one else.
You might think that I had had enough drinking for one day.
You would be wrong.
I pulled myself together, wiped my tears on my sleeves, went back to Whit's, and drank some more.
One of the many assholes who hung out at Whitman's was a guy we all called BTO. I believed Jill had coined the term: Big Time Operator, or BTO, because this motherfucker always had his bluetooth in and his voice filled the entire bar with whatever impossibly ridiculous "business" plan he was putting together. When you talked to him and asked questions about his businesses, you could never get a straight answer. There were no specifics, no concrete players, no events or products that ever came through. But that did nothing to dull BTO's enthusiasm for his work—whatever that was. It required constant telephone conferencing, table slapping, "Yeah!"s and other exclamations, and at the end of one of these ever-successful telephone calls, BTO came from his table to the bar to celebrate with a drink.
"It's karaoke night at the Inferno!" BTO booms. "I'm going down there later on if anyone wants to come with me."
"Hey," Jill says.
"What?"
"You trying to take people out of my bar to go to another bar?!"
"I'm sorry it's just—you don't have karaoke here. Do you think maybe we could get karaoke here?"
"No. We tried that and it didn't work."
"Well," BTO whispers loudly, "karaoke at Inferno tonight."
Jill shakes her head.
"I'm gonna stop letting you do business in here."
"But where would I do business?"
"I don't know! Do what most people do: get an office!"
"But I don't want an office. I want here."
"Then behave!!"
Many drinks later, when it was dark, BTO had made his way around to my corner of the bar and he elbowed me.
"Karaoke?"
"No thanks."
"You know you want to."
"BTO. I've never done karaoke before and I'm not gonna start tonight."
"You've never done it before?"
"No and I have no interest."
"Well. But. It's so much fun. Promise you'll do a duet with me."
"Ok."
"Do you promise?"
"Yes, I fucking promise."
"OH LA LA!! We've got a virgin here who just fucking promised to sing a duet with me at Inferno later."
Jill says, "Is this true?"
I shake my head and my eyes at the same time which somehow equals a yes.
"I hope you know what you're getting into."
"I'm sure I don't."
"I'M SINGIN' A DUET WITH THIS MOTHERFUCKER!!"
"Ok, ok. Shut up. I'll meet you over there later."
"You better show up."
"BTO. My promise is good."
Jill says, "BTO. I guarantee his promise. If Matt says he'll be there, he'll be there."
"Thank you."
Jill puts her hand on mine.
"I've seen you. I know you," she says. "And you'll have a lot of fun. BTO is great at karaoke."
I was almost out of money at Inferno so I bought this cute fat girl a drink and after that she bought me drinks, then her friends did, then the cute fat girl was like fighting her friends to make sure she was the only one buying me drinks. I made it through the night on the promise of sex with this big girl, which I had no plan of following through on.
I drank so much the whole day, my first time singing karaoke, with BTO, a song from Grease, I can't say I had more than two seconds of fear before it turned into addictive enjoyment of this previously-untried thing called karaoke. We sang Summer Lovin' and as soon as I was done I wished we were signed up twice, me and BTO, my big teddy bear business man, blasting songs from a musical that, sober, makes me want to puke.
"It's addictive," isn't it?
"Yeah, BTO. Thanks."
BTO went one way and I went another. And who was at the bar all friendly with my fat girl? It was my mystery friend who I can't describe further but he hooked me up and 29 seconds later I was doing a line of coke in the tiny bathroom.
That was maybe the extra ingredient that turned me using cute fat girl for drinks into me walking hand in hand with fat girl to her home, the hand-in-hand part meaning that we were definitely going to have sex when we got there.
She was talking about it like it already happened.
"As soon as I saw you at the bar, I knew.."
"What did you know?"
"That you were different. You were funny. You were new—I've never seen you around here before."
"I moved here in January."
"How come I never saw you and got to take you home for bedroom games before?"
"I've been holed up in my room writing a book."
"Oh. 'Cause I never miss a karaoke at Inferno. I don't have a roommate by the way. And my son's with his dad this week. So we have all night to make all the noise we want."
The fat girl squeezed my hand.
"I've been looking forward to your pussy," I say.
She turns and looks at me.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"I knew when you bought me that first drink that you were gonna give me your pussy and ever since I've been trying to think: What is fat girl's pussy like? Is it the pug-nose bulldog type? Is it is the long, slivery, no-inner-lips pussy? Am I gonna have to get in there with a crowbar? That type of shit."
"You're high."
"Just a bit. But I am gonna fuck the shit out of you."
Our hands were all over each other's genitals even before fat girl could get her door open. My cock was fully hard all the way through the kitchen where fat girl fed us both some wine out of an open bottle on her kitchen counter ("I was pre-gaming it."), all the way up the stairs, all the way into fat girl's bed and all the way through the undressing cycle (which went quick) and all the way through the condom-application process (which fat girl performed) and all the way into her hot fat cunt which I fucked and fucked and fucked.
I buried myself in that cunt and took all the heat and wet and tight it had to offer. I held onto that fat girl's face and kissed her and looked into her eyes while I fucked her and she squeezed her pussy muscles together to make it even nicer down there between her fat thighs.
I fucked her and I thought of all sorts of people with nicer pussies and bodies and personalities that I'd rather be fucking but I gave her good action in the actual fat pussy I was fucking and I wished I was fucking her without a condom but what the hell.
I grew tired and pulled out and then the instruction began.
She put her fingers inside her and touched the top of her cunt and she was like:
"If you get your fingers in here like this..two or three even..and get me going..we can have me squirting and have all sorts of fun. Here. Just put your fingers right her and you can rub me just right and I'll be squirting all over the bed and you can fuck me after I squirt and I'll be so hot and so wet for you. Here. Give me your hand. Like this. Put one finger in there. And feel that? That's my G-spot—"
"I know!"
"And if you get this other finger in here, right next to it, and then..yeah..this third finger..fuck..rub me like that..like that! You know all the G-spot is, is a big knot of nerves behind the clitoris—"
"I know what a fucking G-spot is!"
"Don't you want me to squirt?"
"I don't want to feel like I'm in an instructional venue, fat girl, I want to feel like I'm in your bed and you just picked me up—a stranger—from the bar..and we're fucking..and if you squirt, you squirt. Am I not being good to you? Am I not stimulating your clitoris? Licking your pink little nips? Didn't I kiss you like a lover and now I sound like an instructor! I was going to lick your asshole but now I'm not sure I want to because we've talked about it first! I just want to..explore..you know..not wordlessly..I know verbal communication is a key ingredient to great lovemaking. But, you know, we just met. Can't our first time be sloppy and off-center and a little unsatisfying to both because it's so fucking lustful that we don't do everything right? I don't know. With you I feel like I'm in a classroom."
At least she didn't cry.
If that fat bitch had cried after my lecture I would have killed myself.
She pulled me down on top of her and I laid there with my dick softening and I ran buy fingers through her hair.
"I like you, fat girl."
"Matthew, I like you too."
We fell asleep like that.
In the morning fat girl took the condom off and with my morning wood I fucked her and fucked her for my purposes only and I came in that fat girl's pussy and I came deep inside that fat pussy and I kept on fucking her all the way through my orgasm and cum was pumping out of the bottom of her cunt and dripping across her asshole onto the bed.
I felt her pussy owed me that orgasm.
I walked home in the sunlight, feeling extra light, and when I walked in the house Tooler and Issa rushed up to me.
"Are you ok? We were worried about you?"
"I worried you?"
"We just wondered where you were..we were a little worried."
"I'm so sorry I worried you. I should have called! I'm sorry. I didn't even think of calling! Oh no, Tooler, I'm sorry I worried you?"
I half-hugged her.
"Where were you?"
"I slept over at a girl's house. Got laid!"
Then everything was awkward. I wasn't sure why, if it was 'cause I slept with a girl or if it was because it wasn't Tooler or if it sounded like I was bragging or if it was just because I was inconsiderate and didn't call. But the vibe went way awkward.
I was cracked out from not having had much sleep.
I touched my face.
"What?" Issa said.
"I lost my glasses."
"Call your girl," Tooler said.
Tooler and Issa left the house to go to Tooler's work.
I was glad, I didn't want to deal with the vibe. And of course, being a little older now, with a little more time to reflect, I know where that vibe came from. It was that Tooler didn't like how I said, "Got laid!" which was basically a brag, and she was disappointed in me that I wasn't on the pedestal of a nice guy who would never brag that he fucked a girl. Well, I don't happen to view sex as a conquest, it was just an exclamation of joy that I had had sex. I should have kept it to myself.
The other reason it was awkward is because it seemed like I was bragging about it to my bros, but even though those two women accepted me into their house, Tooler and Issa were not exactly 100% my bros.
I took a shower and went to sleep.
It's funny what you remember about relationships. You might think it's cruel that I call that girl the fat girl. It's not an insult—it's just how I think of her. I never had sex with Rebecca but I remember she was an awesome kisser. I was with Rishi the longest and I don't remember what her breasts look like. I just remember that she yelled at me.
26
I didn't really want the Professor as my company, but I'm lonely and I take what company, what intimacy I can get. Everyone else has to work or go to school or run their business. The Professor and I drive around all day to stores buying things on each of our lists, cases of Pellegrino for me, yard tools for him, a certain type of fan he wants.
We drive to Massachusetts and drink wine while the Professor does the crossword puzzle, trying to involve me. He asks me for help on every question and only extremely rarely am I of any use. The professor is disappointed because he knows I'm smart and he thought this general principle would translate into magical crossword skills.
"I don't do crossword puzzles," I tell him.
My favorite part of the skimpy cheese-and-cracker meals are the two or three glasses of wine we each have with our lunch, and my second-favorite part is our cigarette breaks outside, standing partially under the awning and partially under the giant black umbrella that the Professor brought just for the occasion. To me it only points out the generation gap: a) that he checked the weather in the first place, and b) that he owns an umbrella. My generation would just wear a coat with a hood. But it's ok. When he's not badgering the staff or attempting to impress everyone with his crossword skills, when it's just me and him, he's kinder, and we're like brothers.
I think the Professor knew from the the very beginning that I would tolerate his injustice toward others, but that if he ever insulted me, even in jest, I would cut him out of my life. He was right. And he never insulted me to my face, though I'm sure he made jabs about me with Thomas about my craziness..me and the Professor's wild dinners and escapades.
On these outings the Professor always informed the bartender that I was driving so not to serve me too many drinks, even when I wasn't driving. But one day he took me to a particularly nice restaurant in Mass, told the bartender this business about me being the designated driver, then the Professor asking me if I would drive us home, and once I agree he proceeds to get drunker than I've ever seen him. At first I drink bubbly water but sometime during the extremely fancy and exorbitantly expensive dinner I ask the bartender if I can have one of those drinks the Professor is drinking. The bartender serves me two or three, so I am drunk when we drive back to Brattleboro, just not nearly as drunk as the Professor.
That night he was reeling me in like a fish. Playing into my weakness for steak, cigarettes, alcohol, and fine service at restaurants. We get out of this restaurant that just looks like a house and I drive us both in his Range Rover—extremely carefully—as far as the new Walmart, where Jimmy insisted we stop and buy limes for some crazy drink he felt compelled to make for me—"You just must try this drink." Then the asshole stood by the Range Rover smoking, gave me his wallet, and told me to get the limes while he smoked. I bought three limes and stole twenty dollars out of his wallet, gave it back to him and proceeded to drive us both to his house—which wasn't a house at all but a library outside of Brattleboro that he had bought and was living in. Half of it was still stacks, book after book on Slavic languages, and in the rest he had carved out an office, a kitchen, a bedroom, a bath.
You know I just remembered a story. He told me about his gardener, a female college student who after she was done working the Professor's garden, would take spare clothes into his bathroom and take a shower, come out smelling and looking all fresh and clean.
I wondered why he told me this story. I half-expected him to bust out some surveillance tapes he had of the bathroom, like he was watching her take her shower.
But he didn't.
He was either genuinely enthralled with the youth and sexuality of this young female gardener—even though he was obviously gay—or (and I consider this a real possibility, knowing him) he was telling me the story to turn me on, so I could have something straight to think about while he made his moves on me.
Jimmy tricked me into sleeping at his house. As we near Brattleboro with him very drunk and me drunk driving, he says he really shouldn't be driving and would I mind driving him to his library and we could have a few more drinks and talk and crash.
So I drove him to his house.
Oh yeah, he also tells me he doesn't like to drive when it's dark—which is a legitimate complaint as the man is likely in his 70s. Now I'm at his house, without my car, and I'm stuck at Jimmy's house till morning when he can take me back into Brattleboro. How foolish I was.
We sit in his living room area, watching the news, talking, drinking, smoking cigarettes. I showed him my language systems I'd developed, and he got really excited (genuinely, I think) because he's a linguist. He took a thorough look around some of what I'd done and sat back in his desk chair, looking up at me standing beside him.
"You really impressed me with that. You don't just come across people in Brattleboro who have developed stuff like that—especially not someone so young. That really knocked me over, my friend."
"Well don't knock yourself too far over. I could go for another one of those drinks—what are you calling them?"
"You're mispronouncing it anyway!"
Then after many drinks and a trip around the garden (where I was so drunk I just left my glass on a stone bench and decided I'd had enough for the evening), the Professor and I got friendly on the couch in his cutout of a living room, touching each other's hair and faces. Then we moved to the bedroom, kissed and got undressed and the Professor fingered my ass and I masturbated but wasn't able to cum, probably because I'm not really gay—but we worked ourselves into a frenzy. I tried to touch his cock but he wouldn't let me so I didn't know if he had something wrong down there or what but I let him do what he wanted to do, which was play with my asshole—and that felt good for me while I jerked my cock in his face and he told me how beautiful I was and I held him and told him how beautiful he was and I meant it.
We slept together in his bed and everything is chill until the next day when he asks me to stay hidden because he's having a carpet delivered and he doesn't want the delivery man to know he has a young man staying over. So I hide in the bedroom for the two or three minutes it takes for this delivery to happen, and I wonder at a man so traveled, so refined, so educated, who can't stand the thought of his neighbors knowing he's gay—which they must already since I'm sure I'm not the first fly to wander into this particular spider's nest. There must be a new boy driving the Professor home in his Range Rover every night.
We hung around in the morning briefly and then he drove me back to my apartment in Brattleboro. As I'm stepping out of the Range Rover on High Street he asks me:
"Are you sure you don't want to hang out somewhere."
"No. I'm done for. I'll see you around."
He speeds off.
The night before he had showed me the room in his library, downstairs, recently renovated, that he said I could live in if I wanted. And his fabulous library palace: me, wandering the stacks with my drink while Jimmy watched the news that night and I checked out books in languages I will never learn to read.
Then Jimmy sticking his finger up my ass.
Wondering if the Professor put something in my drink, but I didn't care, I had fun and I always like getting close to interesting people, even if it's not my exact flavor of fun.
And after such intimacy, I couldn't stand being at the apartment alone—or with Tooler and Issa sleeping—so I wandered down to Whitman's and who was sitting on a barstool but the Professor. I went up to him and said hi. Then I bought a bottle of wine with the twenty I had stole from his wallet the night before.
I thought for a while, trying to figure if the Professor had put something in my drink or not. In the end, I doubted he did. I think we were both very drunk and I didn't mind being sexual with him—it was fun. I enjoyed him sticking his finger up my asshole. I enjoyed him briefly sucking my cock. I wish I could have cum—it would have been satisfying for us both. But I'm not turned on by sex with men, I don't have relationships with men. It's like my friend Caroline: she's a lesbian but she's married to a man. She has sex with girls because she likes having sex with girls. And she fucks her husband because he likes fucking her, and she loves making him happy.
Jimmy offers me a seat next to him at the bar, telling his other friend to move over a seat. But I take my bottle of chianti back to booth number one and open my laptop. I write sections of Of Bicycles and Boardwalks and Oceans and Ships (which I won't finish for another two or three years), then get drunker and more psychotic and write many crazy emails, in my usual style.
I write to my father. How I hate him. How fucked up his actions have been toward me and my sisters and mom. I write to my ex-boss in LA and inform him that I am putting a curse on his company (which seems to have worked) that will limit his success to spending top dollar on lakeside offices while never turn a profit. The sun comes out and I see drug deals going on all up and down Elliot Street and I write to the Chief of Police of Brattleboro offering to be an undercover cop in which capacity I will singlehandedly bust the drug activity on that one street. I don't have the actual email since I deleted to preclude one of my drug friends finding it in my Gmail and murdering me but I can say it included phrases like: "don't ask me how but I have an eye for drug shit." "I am willing to die to clean up the drug activity on Elliot Street." "I am willing to go deep, deep undercover" etc. He never wrote me back prob'ly because he saw right through me as a drug addict looking for a way to do more drugs and get paid for it. I hadn't thought it through—I was drunk and out of my mind (my usual state for about 18 years somewhere in the beginning of my life there). I had very little conscious control over what I was doing.
And if you're some druggie in Brattleboro who is now gonna try to seek me out 'cause I would have gone undercover and turned on you: a) You'll never make it out of Brattleboro. b) Like Joe Pesci says in Casino, "In the end I had to put his fucking head in a vice." That's what I'll do to you. "You make me pop your eye out of your head" like a fucking grapefruit!!?? I'll eat the skin off your face like rainforest ants on a Fla-Vor-Ice. Then I'll make your teeth into a necklace and take it to jail with me as a souvenir. So fuck you. And fuck you too.
At some point in the future, sitting at the bar with that one musician guy and him talking about the Professor and saying:
"Just watch your corn hole. That's all I'm gonna say."
(The Professor is a friend of their family and he's been to their house for Thanksgiving.)
I start talking about being friends with the Professor and this musician guy asks if I've ever been to his house.
I say, "I have but he didn't make a move on me."
"You've been to his house?? Did you stay over??"
"No."
"Just watch your corn hole."
This led me to believe that musician dude and the Professor had been together. And the more I looked, the more I noticed that the Professor was always sitting with a different guy at a different bar. They were all in their twenties or thirties. They all claimed to be Jimmy's driver—or Jimmy claimed this. He couldn't see, so he needed a driver. He was too drunk, so he needed a driver. Yeah right.
I think back to my first night drinking with the Professor versus what I know about him now.
Even back then he was trying to get me to sleep with him.
He was a master manipulator, though, and he excelled at projecting the most odious personality while still keeping people around. He would say just enough of the most horribly offensive things you'd ever heard, that you wanted to slide over a seat, away from him at the bar. But he was also the most intelligent person I'd met in Brattleboro—I could have technical discussions about languages and symbols and all sorts of other things that no one else in the borough had any interest or patience in. He was the only person I could really talk to..and also the only person whose mind and speech were so offensive that I couldn't stand to hear 95% of what he had to say.
The Professor interleaved these poles intentionally because he enjoyed making people uncomfortable (it was a power he could exert over them) and he, like me, had a psychological need for the company of anyone near as smart as him. He was starved for conversation, and I gave him the best conversation he could find in Brattleboro. When we talked, he confided in me how others were of a lower intellectual class. Thomas, for instance, he insulted for his excessive talk of New York and inability to properly make drinks. But what was really wrong with Thomas, to the Professor, was that Thomas bored him. I did not. And that's why I ended up on so many outings with the Professor—with me he could have decent dinner conversation, and I was pliable enough sexually to allow myself to end up in his bed.
Walsh was hardly interested in sex and mainly interested in drugs.
Thomas was almost always working.
Mike stopped going to bars eventually at the advice of his lawyer.
Spots (who you'll meet later) had a boyfriend and I was in too weak a psychiatric position to even stay in Brattleboro to see what could have happened between us.
And Gretchen, Gretchen (you'll meet her later, too)—she was never my friend—she was only a fan. She bought every available book of mine online, read them all, and gushed to me in the basement of the new Metropolis that I had written things down that previously she thought had only been thought in her head, that I had somehow captured her individual experience even though we grew up in different states in different towns at different times. I hadn't the heart to tell her that the secret to that particular bit of magic is that people, everywhere, aren't all that different from one another.
I could never talk with Gretchen as an equal because she was a fan of my books and my thoughts and me in general. She was obsessed. It was one sided. Therefore, we were never friends.
Don't think I'm trying to make the point that the Professor was my best friend in Brattleboro. We used each other and had a good time doing it. We were adversaries more than friends. The relationship was constant manipulation on both sides. But he was the only person in town who I could be my whole self with, mentally, physically—anyone else would have glazed over if I told them about a language system I had invented with my sister. But the Professor pulled up my website and we looked at the system together. He asked questions, we had detailed logical discussions, and at the end he leaned back in his swivel chair and told me that was the most impressive thing he'd seen in decades. Then we got idiotically drunk and had sex, so maybe he was just saying that to get me to bed. But I don't think so. I think we were probably the smartest people in that 11,000-person town, and that made us a strange, strange set of friends.
I stopped the relationship, though, or put it on pause, by just never calling him or calling him back. I didn't want us to be sexual. But one night I got lonely and the Professor was my only friend, I thought, so I called and asked if I could come over, he said of course, and I walked all the way to the cheap parking lot I had moved my car to and discovered that the battery was dead.
I called the professor and told him I couldn't come over that night, hoping he would offer to pick me up but he didn't. And I walked back to my apartment and was sad and glad at the same time. My only friend was someone I couldn't stand to be around. And it had been this way my whole life, from kindergarten on up. I'm too judgmental, too sensitive, too attuned to others' faults. I can't just relax and have fun unless I'm on drugs.
For a moment I really missed the Professor.
I knew our relationship wasn't right, but I needed a friend.
Also I wanted someone to drink with, and I knew he had booze.
27
The next time I was in the Inferno I was shooting the shit with the bartender/owner and I was like:
"I sang karaoke for the first time in your bar!"
And he was like: "Right on!"
And I was like: "That shit is addictive!"
And he was like: "That's what I've heard."
And I was like: "Could'a had something to do with the lines of coke I was snorting in the bathroom!"
Then he gets all serious: "Don't tell me that. You didn't tell me that. Seriously. Don't do drugs on my premises."
He walks away.
I guess my Matthew's SuperfunLand Tent rules don't extend to the entire rest of the world. Fucker. You own a bar. What do you think people are doing in your bathroom?
I was mood quashed by the owner of this fucking place so I found the fat girl and was like, "You want to get out of here?"
So I take her upstairs to Emo's apartment. Emo rents a room there while these other two guys just buy and sell drugs all day and play video games. We walk in.
"Emo!"
"Matthew Temple. How are you?"
"Great. But I got eighty dollars I want to turn into some coke."
"Right this way," Emo says, and he leads me to the man that can make it happen.
"Eighty dollars??"
"Yep."
"Oh, man, you don't know how much this is really gonna help me out. We have like no cash. You can really do eighty dollars?"
I nod.
"Alright, get comfortable, my man, you wanna play some video games with my roomie, go ahead. I'll have this ready for you in two minutes."
I give him the eighty bucks and soon fat girl and I are in the dining room (no table, no chairs, just a rolled up rug, an overhead light, a wood floor and a couple of cokeheads). Me and fat girl do some lines, share with Emo, and then I do a bunch more lines.
Fat girl wants to leave and go fuck.
"You like having your little pussy fucked by me, huh?"
And ninety-thousand other dumb-ass things to say to a fat girl.
I look over and the main guy has a needle—he's shooting it, and he must already be high because he's handling a fat shot of coke without much reaction. I thought back to LA. I wanted to shoot it even though there weren't any clean needles that I knew of. But I didn't even approach him about that because I knew if I started that again, I wouldn't be able to stop. I'm crazy, but I'm not that crazy. They were all partying down and all happy that I bought eighty dollars worth of coke—they needed the cash that bad.
I remembered the last time I shot coke and h and crystal meth back in Hollywood. It is sort of exciting to load a syringe with a certain amount of heroin and know that three or four times that amount would kill you..so you double the amount to get a really good high, and you know you're in the danger zone, you realistically think: this might get me high or it might kill me. And you shoot it.
Seeing that guy shoot coke, I knew I had to leave, so I packed up my sizable bag of powder and took fat girl's hand.
I went home with her again, the one who would direct me in the bedroom to finger her pussy in a certain way.
"You missing these?" she said, holding up my mangled glasses. "They were in the couch cushion."
Must have been lost in there while we were having our monster pre-sex make out session—I did love kissing her. I loved it more than sex, with her, I just loved making out on the couch like teenagers.
After a while we went upstairs.
I had to speak to her: "During sex, telling your partner what you want is fine. But I don't want to feel like I'm watching an instructional video."
"Ok."
"I know where your G-spot is..right here, huh?"
"Uhhhh.."
"Now I'm gonna fuck your G-spot and touch your G-spot with my fingers any time I want. I don't necessarily want you to squirt. I might. I might not. But you know what I want to do now?"
She shakes her head, eyes pointed up at me, hands on my bare cock, thumb rubbing a bead of precum in to the head of my dick.
"I'm gonna fuck you like you've been a nasty nasty girl and I caught you fucking my coke dealer and now I need to show you who this pussy belongs to, ok? Do you think you need to learn a lesson?"
Fat girl starts sucking my cock.
I can feel her pussy wet.
I push her head back.
"Now turn over and press your face into that pillow 'cause what I'm about to do to you might hurt you at first, ok bad girl? Is this what you wanted?"
She nods like the nasty bitch she is.
"The turn over and put your face in that pillow."
I held her neck with one hand and pumped her good like I was riding a camel or a donkey. The bed was like a Slip 'N Slide when I was done with her.
She was grateful to fuck and jerk my cock until I came in her nose, all over her lips, in her eye.
It was tough to get off with fat girl in her pussy though—it was a lot of work. It was the same with this fat girl from LA, the costume designer. And it wasn't their pussy. It was just that they weren't sexy to me and I that's why I had trouble cumming with them. I know they had trouble cumming with me, too—I was a little overweight myself and I don't have any kind of monster cock so it was second-class sex, sex between strangers. The LA girl said to me on Christmas eve that it was very intimate sex..yeah, I looked you in your eyes and held your face in my hands and pretended that your cuteness was the cuteness of Rebecca, who I never got to fuck. And that let me enjoy fucking your fat little pussy to a point, but it was never enough to get me off while I was drinking. Only once I sobered up and had my morning wood could I cum in these women.
While I mention that I'm fucking fat girls, and it's the fat girls in bars that are approaching me, let me mention that at the height of my weight gain, I weighed 215, partly due to the antipsychotic Risperdal, which makes you extra hungry. But when I fucked both of those fat girls, I didn't have Risperdal as an excuse—I was just overweight. Not obese, but overweight, and yet through some form of reverse body dysmorphia, I thought I was my healthy weight and making a concession to fuck this woman who in my twenties I would never even considered a sexual object because of her weight. Back then I had choices—I fucked almost every woman who was my friend (and some who weren't). Etc. But they were all skinny and hot.
Sex was always hot was when I was eighteen, nineteen—fucking Ashley the first time I fucked anyone, feeling like intercourse was perfect—like it was designed to feel this way. Damn. Fucking Charisma's perfect pussy so tight I couldn't help but cum in her the first time we fucked and every time we fucked. I would wake that girl up four times a night to cum in her. Deidre's perfect pussy, her perfect ass—we fucked twice a day for four months and then she dumped me because she "needed to be with herself." Maybe she was tired of cheating on her husband. Maybe it was because I was too crazy—that was the reason she told my friend, who later told me. But I don't care about any of that—I loved Deirdre and I always will. The point is Deidre's pussy was perfect—I'm not going to go into the details—but compared to the pussy back then, fat girl pussy, mom pussy..it's just never been the same.
I don't think it's the pussy itself—it's the personality.
I need that spark.
The fat girl didn't have it. Walsh had the looks but not the spark. The only person in Brattleboro who I wanted in every way, who I would have done anything for, never expecting anything in return, was—I know you think I'm gonna say Justine, but it's not—it's Spots, from the Refuge—my fellow suicidal—one of the few truly cool people in Brattleboro. And, yes, of course I would have fucked Justine—fucking little twenty-one-year-old minx—if I had ever got up the nerve to ask her, and if the wild part in her had said yes.
Faith—bipolar Faith, from the Refuge—was a whole other thing. If I hadn't sold my car, I would drive up to Rutledge, collect Faith, then drive across the country with her, Rainbow and Clyde style. We might have sex—we might not—but we'd be totally crazy, totally wild, and totally bipolar.
Back then girls were sucking my dick in the Burger King parking lot, sucking me off while I was driving. Now, it's probably been ten years since a girl made me cum with her mouth, or I really got to get a woman off with my mouth and my fingers so good she was grabbing my head and screaming and cumming in my face.
Well a one day in ole Brattleboro I was strolling by Tooler's shop and I stopped in and I said:
"Tooler, have you had lunch?"
And she said, "No."
And I said, "Me either, but I'm thinking of getting something good."
And I left.
And 15 minutes later I came back with sushi platter on top of sushi platters and I unloaded this sideways paper bag all over the sales counter and Tooler's face turned pink and she smiled and said:
"You remembered."
"Tooler, how could I forget?"
So we mmm'd and aaah'd and ate our way through enough sushi for about six people.
"This is fucking extravagant. How much did this cost?"
"Look, I'm an extravagant person and I'm so extravagant, in fact, that I did't get a receipt so I have no idea how much it cost but I'd say let's enjoy ourselves before a meteor hits the Earth or something, eh?"
Tooler and I cheers'd with a piece of sushi each and ate up.
"You full now?"
"I'm stuffed."
"Do you require anything?"
"Matthew, thank you, I'm fine."
"I'll bring you anything you like, Tools, offer good one day only."
"You've done enough," she smiles.
"Alright," I say. "Well I have a full day of drinking planned and I have to leave—" (I check my nonexistent watch.) "—oooh! Five minutes ago! See ya!" and I run out the store, dump the trash in a street side can and head my little ass up to Whit's.
"Matthew!"
It's Tooler's voice.
She's leaning out of her shop and she says:
"It's a nice day."
"That it is."
"I was thinking shisha with you and Issa."
"Like after work?"
"No, like..now. Would you go get her and the gear and bring it down here?"
"Yes I will."
Tooler jumps up and down and claps.
"Are you sure?"
"Tooler, this is your day. Anything you want, we're making it happen."
So I drag a grumpy Issa out of bed (this is 1pm or so) and we take the hookah, some blueberry shisha, a container of ice, charcoal, a decent lighter, and we huff it down the hill from our apartment to Tooler's shop. Then the three of us set up chairs and smoke ourselves up right in front of this t-shirt shop where Tooler works that never has any customers and people are slowing down their cars and going, "Right on, man!" and people are stopping on the sidewalk and asking us what that is and Tooler and Issa trade off explaining what shisha is (flavored tobacco) and we generally enjoy the weather and the fact that we survived Vermont winter and Israel security forces haven't come after Issa and she hasn't been deported and I finished my book and Tooler's masters program is going well and then the cops show up.
One cop.
He walks up to us.
We all roll our eyes.
He says, "What's in there?"
We say, "Shisha."
He says, "What's the flavor? It smells like.."
"Blueberry," Tooler fills in. "It's perfectly legal."
"Oh yeah, it's legal," the guy says. "But that doesn't stop people from calling into us and saying there's kids smoking pot on the sidewalk in downtown. You know these people, they got nothing better to do, they don't understand shisha—"
"You want a hit?" Tooler asks.
She holds the pipe out to him.
"No thanks."
"It's really good."
"I can smell that. It smells incredible. Anyway, I'm not harassing you or anything, I just had to come down to check it out since we were getting so many calls."
"This is my shop so we're legal sitting here, too," Tooler says.
"I know. You're well within your rights and I say more power to ya. If it was me we would decriminalize everything."
"Fuck yeah."
"I mean look at the Netherlands," this cop says, and she and Tooler go off on a political discussion a mile wide and three fathoms deep.
How deep is a fathom anyway? Do you know?
I have no clue but it sounds deep.
Anyway they go off on drug policy and human rights and the overcrowding of American jails and then this guy has to leave and the fact that the police came up to us while our fellow citizens were complaining and he didn't do crap made us feel like we owned Brattleboro—or at least ourselves, at least our little hookah and three squares of sidewalk, just for 30 minutes.
Plus it always gives a true American a warm fuzzy feeling when a cop shows up and nobody gets killed.
Tooler, Issa, and I all get cravings for junk food. I drive to McDonald's, we get food and drinks, then I drop the two of them at Tooler's work. I drive to our apartment and see they forgot their Cokes when I dropped them off. There's really no place to park around there so I walked those two Cokes into town so Tooler and Issa would have the appropriate drink for their junk food. That was my good deed for the year.
What follows may be mania.
I didn't have any money, but I went anyway directly from Tooler's work over to Whit's where I proceeded to order a string of drinks I could not pay for, hoping that the Professor would offer to pay.
Consider that for a second.
Ok, yeah, that's crazy.
Mike is there, we're smoking it up and jabbing and Thomas is tending bar and I figure I'll just sneak out on one of my smoke breaks and pay Thomas next time I get an unemployment check.
That was my plan.
Then a certain mystery gentleman who I'm actually combining with a number of master gentlemen around Brattleboro who had their own personal coke for snorting or they sold it, or both. One of these mystery gentlemen comes into Whit's and makes a certain facial expression which I have no trouble interpreting. It means: get up, leave your drink and these drunks and come with me to my apartment just down the road and we'll snort massive amounts of coke!
So I get up, I ignore Thomas yelling at me to pay my tab and Mike yelling at me that I have an open tab at Whitman's (a no-no) and ignoring the Professor inviting me to his place and then somehow the Professor is driving his Range Rover very slowly beside the four of us who were going up to an apartment for some sniff and the Professor is yelling at me that I had committed to go with him to his house (which was true) and this was no way to treat your friends (which was true, but I justified by saying the Professor wasn't really my friend—which was true too).
I just walk out, completely drunk, ignoring all this yelling at me and I go do coke in the upstairs apt with people I hardly know.
When we're doing introductions the main guy asks me what my name is.
"Matthew Temple."
He reels back on the couch and looks like satan himself just sat down on the couch next to me.
"That's my old name," I say. "I changed it to Inhaesio Zha and I usually go by Zha now."
"But it was Matthew Temple before?"
"Yeah."
"How long have you lived in Brattleboro?"
"Like six months."
"Are you an actor."
"No," I say, confused.
"Don't use that name. I almost just kicked you out of my apartment. There was a Matthew Temple who lived here before. He screwed a lot of people over and moved to LA to be an actor," this guy says. "Zha. Definitely go by Zha."
And after this confrontation he finally offers me the wimpiest possible line of coke after everyone else has had two and three lines—everyone's big buddies with each other except me—so I do the line and go into his bathroom and take a nasty shit. If you want to take the nastiest shits possible, drink liquor and do cocaine—you'll surprise yourself.
My drinking buddy Mike calls me from Whit's and is like:
"What happened dude, you disappeared."
And I'm like, "I don't know."
And he's like, "You're doing coke, aren't you—decided not to go with the professor."
And I'm like, "Yeah."
And he's like, Wise choice. Anyway, bud, I thought I'd call you to let you know that you left an open tab at Whit's."
"I did?"
"Yeah."
"And I don't know if you know..Whit and Jill are cool with a lot of things, but leaving an open tab is not one of them."
"Ok, thanks Mike, I'll be over there in a few minutes to take care of it."
"Uh..no you won't. You're high on coke, dude, you're gonna be right where you are..all night long."
I was quiet. I really fucked myself up at Whit's.
"Alright, well, cya dude."
Mike clicks off.
The guy whose house it is introduces me to his girlfriend.
"Juliet."
"Matthew."
You're gonna recognize a pattern here but Juliet looks like someone I'd like to fuck and more to the point she is way to good for mystery man and I can't see anything about this hyperactive asshole that would attract a girl like Juliet while I was still fucking fat girls.
They all do lines and completely ignore me—just don't offer me any when it would be my turn and I'm like: I didn't come over here to buy coke, I came over here to do coke with my new friends—right?
I just sat there on the couch.
No one would even talk to me.
Occasionally Juliet would cut me a tiny little half-line and motion me to the kitchen to snort it.
The guy said something about the stinky shit in the bathroom and I wanted to be like, What are you, some high-class coke-doing motherfuckers because when I did coke back home in Ohio we were like doing it till our noses wouldn't snort coke anymore and we were snorting our phlegm all up our sinuses in front of each other—it was disgusting—am I among high-class coke motherfuckers in Brattleboro Vermont?
Juliet was the only one who would give me the time of day except after a long while mystery man sat down on the couch next to me saying he wanted to hear about my programming stuff and he shoved a MacBook in front of me but soon the computer was on his lap and he was the one doing all the talking. He was a DJ, too—he played me all his mixes and I nodded and said they were all amazing.
It got dark and Juliet was leaning over me to yell at people outside through their open window.
We ran out of coke.
I was so frustrated sexually and offended by these people's inability to integrate with a new person that I finally decided if there wasn't going to be any more coke that I was leaving.
"So. Can we do some more coke?" I said.
Might as well be forward and direct.
"We can buy some if you have money."
"I don't have any money."
Apparently not a single other person in this apartment did, either?
"I can call and see if my unemployment check came in. If it did I could get some cash."
From the moment I said that, every motherfucker in that room was my friend..until the moment I called my bank and discovered that my balance was still negative.
We went back to having no coke and I went back to being a nobody. I'm a guest in these people's house and they're bugging me for dough for more cocaine? That's how this shit works—everyone's a fucking taker.
28
One morning Tooler wakes up all chipper and she says:
"Today I'm going to teach Issa to drive!"
That night when I come home, Tooler and Issa are sitting on the couch. There's no Subaru in the driveway.
"Where's your car?"
"Well, we might need to talk about borrowing yours for a while."
"What happened to yours?"
"Ah..Issa..kind of crashed it."
"Are you two ok?"
"Oh yeah we're fine."
"Oh, good, well that's the most important thing," I say.
"But now we have no car."
"You can use my car no problem—it's a piece of shit but..oh my god..I'm glad you two are ok!"
Tooler and Issa stand up and we do a group hug.
"It was kind of scary."
"Was it?"
"The car rolled," Issa says.
"Like it rolled down a mountain," Tooler says.
She has tears in the bottom of her eyes.
"Oh, Tooler!"
"Like..if it had rolled one more time it would rolled off the mountain."
"Oh my god, Tooler, I'm so glad you two are here, safe. I'll give you the keys to my car—use it all you want, I never use it. It's got some problems and expired tags—"
"But it's not totaled."
"Oh, geez, you know, one thing happens and you can roll off the side of a mountain," I say. "I bet you weren't thinking that when you left the house this morning. Tragedy, you know, it's always someone else until it happens to you."
"Well it could have been a whole lot worse."
"I'm glad it wasn't."
"There was a tree."
Issa makes a pinching motion.
"It was a tree this big and it was holding us from the mountain."
I hug her, tiny little Issa.
And I realize I love these two. Poor Tooler: she's just trying to give Issa a chance to learn to drive and Issa almost kills them. And Issa: poor her because she has to live with the responsibility.
We all chilled out the rest of the evening and gave each other glad-you're-still-alive looks.
The next day while Tooler worked, Issa and I went on a mission to put a new battery in my car. On the way to get the battery, I asked Issa if she wanted to get a drink.
"Uhhh.."
"Let's just get a beer, take a moment, reflect on the world as it is."
"Alright, Matthew, if you want to get a beer I will get a beer with you."
When we sat at Whit's she said, "That's not a beer!"
"No," I said. "That's a gin and tonic!"
We clinked glasses: her Guinness, my gin.
Issa was quiet till the end of her first beer. Then she opened up.
"There's this girl. She's in California. And when I went to California—Tooler does not know this, and you can't tell her, swear."
"Ok."
"Swear."
"I swear I will not tell Tooler anything as long as you swear never to tell Tooler you told me, if this ever comes out."
"I swear," Issa said. "I slept with her in California. This girl."
"I see."
"Yes. And I'm planning on moving to California to be with her after..after Tooler makes me a citizen."
"What's she like?" I said.
And Issa bloomed, telling me all about this beautiful girl from California and how with her and Tooler they didn't have the sexual spark but between Issa and this California girl..they had the spark. Issa told me that all day long, even when she's in bed with Tooler, she's chatting on her netbook with the girl from California, making plans and sexting and shit.
"I feel bad," Issa said.
"What good's feeling bad going to do you? Just do what you do, respect Tooler as much as you can, don't hurt her if you can avoid it—"
"If I can avoid it."
"Well maybe you can't. Tooler will survive."
"Tooler will survive," Issa said. "Do you want another drink?" she asked. "It's on me."
"It's definitely on you 'cause I don't have any money."
Issa punched me in the arm. But she bought us drinks.
We bought a new battery for my car, carried the heavy thing a few blocks from the automotive store to my car, borrowed tools from some Harley dudes, and installed the motherfucker. Hearing the car start was a relief: my piece of shit car wasn't quite a piece of shit yet: it still had life in it.
After we got the car fixed, Issa and I stood on Elliot Street gawking at the high school girls.
"We both have this in common," Issa said.
"What's that?"
"We both like pussy."
I laughed.
"And you like it very young," she said.
"So do you!"
"But I'm twenty-three!"
"So!"
"So you're ten years older!"
"Ahh. Who cares. I don't fuck little girls, I just like to look at their asses."
"And their vagina lips," Issa said. "With this Spandex, you can see their.."
"I know! They show you everything. You can see the fucking outline of their vagina lips, you know practically everything about the girl and you're still on the street in broad daylight. You've got a perfect picture of her labia."
"That's good, I guess."
"Why?" I say.
"So," says Issa, "you know what you're getting into. Maybe you like fat labia, maybe you like string bean labia—"
"String bean labia! I'm going to tell Tooler you said that."
"Don't you dare."
She punches me in the shoulder, this time harder.
Yeah Issa and I stood around Elliot Street for a while and discovered we had the exact taste in women: young, little titties, and fat labia. We congratulated ourselves on how sick we were sexually, and made up some fantasies about what the two of us could do to some of these young girls, tag team. It was pretty sick shit involving military-style torture and animals and..well..let's just say Issa and I were in the same gear when it came to what we wanted to do to the 13 year olds of Brattleboro Vermont.
I taught Issa how to drive, in my Toyota, in the days after we fixed the battery. We practiced on the top level of the municipal parking garage. Six levels up there weren't many cars, only some teenagers using the sunset to make hand puppets on a nearby building. I didn't figure practicing on the side of a mountain was a good idea (no offense to Tooler's method) so we just drove forward and backward the length of the parking lot over and over again. Issa quickly bored of this and our lessons ended. Tooler went back to teaching her on the mountain.
On one of their lessons the engine started to smoke, and kept smoking even though they added antifreeze from the bottle I kept in the trunk.
I said, "Well, that car's been through a lot. I used to drive it from Tucson to LA and back all the time and I drove it all the way across the country, so..I mean..it's on its last legs."
"Do you think it's fixable."
"Sorry, I know nothing about cars."
One day it gets especially bad, smoking and lurching and they drop it off at the auto shop literally one house away from where we lived. The next day I walk over and without any identification say my housemate Tooler dropped my car off and he says they drove it around the block with no problems and he handed me the keys—no charge. That was good for me cause I still had no money.
In fact the whole house seemed to be having problems in that department. I noticed that instead of two containers of laundry detergent beside the stairway washer/dryer, there was just one, and I figured Tooler and Issa were using Maggie's detergent, too.
Actually there were more concrete reasons to think that none of us had money.
Tooler and Issa started getting tons of free food from the government because Issa was a political refugee. I was getting food at the place where Brattleboro homeless people go to shower etc. (the Drop In Center). We all shared together, everything.
One night I cooked for Issa and Tooler. They said they want to keep the house through their summer trip to Atlanta (first I learned of it). They didn't know if Abby would allow them to sublet. I said it will work out somehow. Issa spoke of the three of us going to Egypt together, and the two young women said how would they ever find a housemate like Matthew if they did switch houses at some point. I grabbed their hands and I think the sentiment was clear: it is mutual.
Then in a very selfish move I sold my car for drinking money. I paid Issa back for the battery and Tooler for some fixes she'd made to the engine and I sold the car to Donald Mutebe (Darling Nikki's ex-husband) for $600. I drank that in a few days, buying drinks for Walsh of course. I said:
"Walsh, from now on, as long as you and I are sitting in the same bar, you will never pay for drinks again."
Mutebe was obsessed with the aesthetics of the car. His African eyes must have seen my junked-out Toyota Corolla as some antique cultural symbol. He had a job. The $600 was nothing to him.
But to me, to have unlimited cash for a few days at Whit's, the cash-only establishment that I loved to haunt a thousand times more than my own bedroom, I thought giving up my car was a good deal. I wasn't planning on going anywhere.
29
Fully manic now, done editing ::HARD, no project to tie down my mind, I decided to dye my hair orange.
I went into the salon and took over.
I was ultra-friendly with everyone.
I was assigned a stylist.
And we had fun. Boy, did we have fun.
It ended up costing three times what I expected but that was normal for my spending sprees. I wanted the whole thing dyed orange but they did this little partial orange thing which was way more upscale. What I wanted could have been accomplished in my bathroom for twenty dollars—this, with all the various services and pigments and whatnot was like two-hundred sixty-five dollars!
But I was having fun.
Great fun.
Big fun!
My own brand of insanity where no one gets hurt, everyone has a good time, and we all come away feeling more alive, and feeling more of what life has to offer—the joy that can be felt down to each particle. That's how I felt.
I was talking to my stylist, asking her all about her life and her boyfriend. I was talking to the owners, where they were from and how they had come to start this business. We had so much fun doing my hair that day.
I walked in saying, "Fix me!" (The haircut girl at the previous place I went destroyed what was left of my awesome shatter cut that I had gotten my second day in Brattleboro.)
I felt like I was right there at the lake that my stylist and her boyfriend went to. On subsequent dates I would bring in my laptop with pictures I had collected, and I asked her to cut my hair to look like some movie star or Beckham, and I finally shaved my head that fall, which broke my stylist's heart. She was totally mad at me!—But that's what I wanted to go with my new diagnosis, my new fall lifestyle: no drink, no drugs, no hair, some kind of cross between a monk and a prisoner.
But on the day of orange hair I was buying everyone (like me and three people) drinks at Whitman's. I guess something about this or my hair or my energy caught Walsh's attention but she didn't let on until later that night.
A woman at the bar asks me if she can be honest with me and I say yes.
She says my hair is "hideous."
I say, "Well thank you very much for your opinion. That was riveting. Do you feel better having told me that?"
"Yes, very," she says, and turns to leave (hopefully to pull the stick from her ass).
I yell after her, "Glad to help!"
Then I leave the bar, manic, buying zillions of used DVDs at the record store (too many to carry), a sex toy (artificial pussy), food, jewelry, drink—spending all my money in one day.
Going out again that night. Seeing Walsh. Wow. Maybe seeing Walsh for the first time.
Walsh wasn't a fat girl. She was a fine girl.
We fucked after a night of drinking at Whit's, smoking out front, and smoking pot at her painter friend's house who was high and she and the other three female bartenders had quit the hippie bar en masse in protest of the owner making sexist and abusive remarks toward them. He would just sit at his own bar all day and heckle his own bartenders! So even though there were no other jobs in Brattleboro, these four women banded together and quit—it was a power move like no other.
Walsh's ex-boyfriend saw us after we left the painter friend's house, drunk, high on nicotine and THC, as Walsh and I passed in front of Whitman's and this dull-looking ex-boyfriend said—I remember precisely:
"Go get fucked."
We went to Walsh's apartment and watched South Park while we did lines of the coke I had brought. We watched infinite episodes of South Park and smoked infinite amounts of pot and my mouth got all dry kissing her softly on the couch before we went into the bedroom. After Walsh and I had been sitting on her two-seater couch with her accepting my tentative kisses, Walsh gets up and says, "Well I'm going to bed."
She moves into the hallway.
I stand.
"Can I come with you?"
And she nods, raises her eyebrows, shrugs, like—yeah! And she goes into her bedroom.
And I follow.
And she says close the door.
And she says turn the light off.
And I get on top of her.
And I start taking off her clothes.
And my dick is instantly hard.
And it gets down to that moment were the only piece of clothing left is her panties, where if those weren't there we'd be fucking, and we both know those are coming off and we both know we will be fucking, and in some weird way, that is the sweetest moment.
She says, "There's something I have to tell you. It's that time of the month."
"Which time, Walsh, you're cracking me up."
"I might be a little..bloody. I don't mind if you don't mind."
Pshffttt. "I don't mind."
We fucked without a condom and she had a sweet pussy. I didn't come, and we were both making almost-cumming noises and buildup noises and I wanted to fuck her more but she said she was getting messy from her period and pushed me away.
I got up so our faces were together and we were breathing and grunting together and our breathing and fucking and grunting quickened and it sounded to both of us like the other was going to cum, but we didn't. Her blood was too slippery and I couldn't get enough friction. I pulled out and later got back on top of her but she pushed me away again and said my dick was disturbing her period blood and breaking it loose and she didn't want to be messy. She put her panties back on with a liner.
I wish we had cum together—it would have been to much better—but Walsh is a cool girl, and I'm glad we got the chance to fuck at all.
And I'll come clean about a couple of lies I told so far in my so-called non-fictional memoir: I never came with those fat girls. I never fucked them with my morning wood. That one never sucked me off so that I squirted in her eye. I didn't cum with them and I didn't cum with Walsh so you might as well call this book A Fat Thirty-Something Man Who Can's Cum.
I think Walsh decided that day at Whit's the day I dyed my hair orange, that she was gonna fuck me, because something of the manic in me attracted her. And I'll knew it was going to happen, too—I could tell by the way she was setting her drinks down on the bar. And I'll never forget the whole day os suspense, holding hands with her while we hung out with her pot smoking ex-bartender painter friend. Even the sweet moment of us holding hands while we waltzed past her ex-boyfriend outside Whitman's and him knowing even more certainly than me that I was about to fuck Walsh Killingsly and then eventually sleeping with Walsh—oh god, fucking my day-drinking friend without a condom and feeling her sweet and oh-so-bloody pussy.
The sweetest part, though, was Walsh telling me she had seizures sometimes and not to freak out. And she had one after we fucked and I was lying in bed with her after sex this sweet little girl is convulsing and gripping and I wonder if I should call 911—the whole thing reminded me of Rebecca, when Rebecca went into a coma and died. She had seizures first. But I just held her (Walsh), feeling like I was caring for her, doing something useful and loving, imagining us in a relationship and finally having someone to care for who really needed me. But Walsh came through it in a few minutes and she said:
"Am I ok?"
She didn't remember a thing.
"Did I have one?"
"Yes."
"Did I hurt myself?"
"I don't think so."
"It's ok," she laughed. "You don't have to be all worried for me or anything. As long as I didn't break any glass or fall off the bed or anything..that's all I'm asking you."
"Then you're fine."
But she let me hold her—which is strictly against fuck buddy etiquette.
And if I had to write my nostalgia in one line it would be how I miss Walsh and cow parade and Whitman's and if I had money or a job I might have lived there forever.
I was thirty-three. Walsh was twenty-seven (or somewhere in her twenties). Yes, the age difference was a minor part of the attraction. Mostly I liked her 'cause she's so damn cool: red hair, sexy body, day drinker, and one-hundred percent girl—but when it came to breaking the law, snorting coke, smoking pot, burning cigs, and fucking your friends, Walsh was always one of the guys.
30
Flashback to: one of the first nights I spent in Brattleboro, going by this bar called the Metropolis and having a glass of wine with the owner because he was the only one in there. The place was empty, and after I shared one drink with its owner I could tell why: this guy was King Sourpuss and was ready to sell the business and move on, he just didn't know it yet.
Cut to: months later, meeting the owners of the new Metropolis: super friendly, amazing couple, Alan (who never failed, when I said my trademark Thank you very much to quip in return You're welcome even more!) and Alyssa, and their friend Spots, the New York chef who's doing their tapas menu. Spots isn't there, they just tell me about her and she's listed on the sign out front. There are signs of the mythical creature known as Spots, but Spots is like a puma in the wild—you never see them unless they're about to pounce.
Now there was variety for the discerning drinker on Elliot Street. Inferno was a young kid bar, it reminded me of bars back in Athens, Ohio, college bars, bars where they pour twelve shots at once and half the liquor ends up on some matte-black surface which isn't even a real bar, it's just some plywood spray-painted black. Now it was Whit's versus the new Metropolis, and the clients started going back and forth.
Metropolis had a better wine selection—they had a wine selection at all instead of Whit's: four kinds of generic wine I wouldn't buy in a grocery store. Metropolis had fusion liquors, which I had learned to love in LA, and (sorry Thomas) but Alan and Alyssa just made better drinks.
This didn't mean Whit's was obsolete. Not at all! If I wanted to drink one really good gin and tonic, I went to the new Metropolis. If I wanted to drink six ok gin and tonics, I went to Kips and made a day of it. Kips had a bigger bar so when things got crowded you didn't feel like you were taking up somebody else's spot. Whit's had my people: Whit's had Mike and Walsh, though Walsh drank at Metro too.
Metro was upscale.
Whit's was hardcore.
Metro was like New York.
Whit's was like small-town America.
So it wasn't an either/or. It was a great improvement for the street.
I met Gretchen at the new Metropolis. This town was so small. This is how small this town was:
Brattleboro was the kind of small where Gretchen and I are walking up Elliot Street and we see Alyssa waving from her car but don't even know it's her until we get the sun out of our eyes as we come across the street. And then Alyssa says she just saw Tom (Gretchen's husband) at Metropolis and Tom had asked where Gretchen was and Tom had said she's hanging out with her new boyfriend and Alyssa says Matthew? Ha! Small-ass town. Everyone knows everything, there are no secrets, just this extended family..and so small that I turn around right in that moment and it's Donald Mutebe standing right behind us, observing this whole interaction =) This town is that small.
And did you ever think about the concept of falling half in love..or half-falling in love..of being half in love with someone because if you were all the way in love it would be a problem, so you stay halfway in love. I think I do that a lot.
At the new Metropolis Gretchen orders us drinks while I write in my iPad.
I don't know if that's Brattleboro Stories or Columbia or something else, but I think I need to shoot for the stars..set out to do exactly what you want to do, exactly what you want to accomplish..I am capable of doing a theme-hot pillbox of a book, or an interlocking epic with many lines and many characters..believe it is possible, the greatest or the exact thing I dream of, that I want to see, and then use techniques and process and time to get from a to b. Decide the destination, then invent and find the tools needed to get there.
[See, all the way back then I was thinking of writing my memoir, before my memoir even happened.]
fear anger hate suffering
Love .. Bliss Ecstasy
Push the style and form envelope while maintaining ease of understanding..make it invent style and form, in terms of formatting, sequence, construction; but keep, create, maintain perfect easy reading, perfect simplicity of comprehension
I didn't even know Gretchen was married. I didn't even know Gretchen. I just started talking to this person and even though she was a stalker vampire she was amazing to talk to at least compared to everyone else in Brattleboro and we struck it off right away, talking and talking and flirting and drinking and all the while I had no idea the guy sitting on the other side of her was her husband.
How would I know? It's not like they talked to each other.
That first day I met Gretchen, that was the day Mattson brought an underage girl to the new Metropolis. She wasn't actually ordering drinks, she was just drinking Mattson's and Mattson must have just got paid because he was slamming this bitch with alcohol and they were all flirty, but she was flirting with everyone, including me—just a dumb, random flirter who was throwing darts everywhere, never even hitting the mat. She had two drinks and then went fucking craaaaazy like the had the tolerance of a three year old or she had taken some other drug or something..but she went from seeming sober-but-silly to like..everyone in the bar, drinkers and owners, were like we don't care how tiny and cute and funny and sexy this little mousekrat is or how fucking blonde she is or how much she's turning me on bouncing her little ass in my lap get her out of her and somewhere she can sleep this shit off. I mean she was whirling around like she was at a motherfucking rave!
Mattson came to the rescue with his bike trailer meant for carrying an actual kid, but this girl/woman fit right in that kid carrier and Matt Mattson drove her off down Elliot Street and we all took bets as to whether and how he was gonna fuck that fucked-up girl's tweeny little pussy.
Alan was like, "I hope Matt Mattson's dick is small 'cause I know that little chipmunk's thing isn't any bigger than my little finger."
Of course he holds up his little finger to illustrate.
"She gonna wake up with three babies in a trailer park in upstate New Hampshire."
"Fucking did you see how drunk that girl was??"
"She only had like one or two drinks!!"
(In all fairness, the one or two tall drinks she had were having roughly the expected effect on a person with a body that size, it's just that the rest of us were hardcore drinkers so the equivalent of two large Long Island iced teas didn't seem like much alcohol to anyone else in the building but that little blonde bitch.)
"Is it rape if you fuck a 13 year old and she's so passed out she never knows it happens?"
"YES!!"
"What if you don't cum in her and after she wakes up you ask permission?"
"YES!!"
Alan hits my arm.
"You dirty motherfucker."
"What if—?"
"SHUT UP!!" the entire bar says.
"I was just gonna say what if he's chugging a PBR and he jerks it in her mouth then he shits a little and reaches around and smears the shit on her face so when she wakes up she has shit in her eyes and she's like, Mattson, why is there shit in my eyes and then he hits her in the face with a tire iron and fucks that little bitch's pussy so long that she turns eighteen while he's fucking her."
"Then what?"
"Then is that..like..ok?"
"You are a sick motherfucker I'm gonna have to keep an eye on you."
"Nah, I'm harmless."
Gretchen is looking at me fascinated, head rested in her hand, elbow on the bar. She talks to me confidentially, quietly, like we're already in a relationship. I will say this about her: she actually listened when I talked.
Then Walsh busts through the door like Kramer and announces she's been raped.
"I know him. We used to be in a relationship together. He just kept going and going and I was like I think I'm gonna have a seizure if you force it and he forced it anyway I MEAN HE FORCED HIS FUCKING COCK IN ME. Fucking asshole."
"Walsh. Are you serious?"
"No, I'm trying out for a part on a reality TV show about girls who get raped by their exes YES I'M SERIOUS."
"Here, here, sit here, I'll get you a drink."
"I don't have any money."
I look at her sideways.
"Just get her a Guinness and a chilled Absolute Vanilla, neat—and have another one of those ready."
She puts her arms around me, which makes me really uncomfortable. I don't want affection from a girl who just got raped because she just got the wrong kind of affection you know so it makes it like..confusing..I think it does anyway.
Walsh sits at the bar and drinks her Guinness with both hands. She looks like a child drinking a glass of milk.
Fuck. Roy raped Walsh. Motherfucker. Obviously that's not his real name. He's a Brattleboro famous ex-boyfriend of Walsh and I would love to print his real name here so his predatory ass would live in infLeona, in this book, and people would stop by his pathetic apartment when he was 80 and be like, "You're the guy that raped Walsh—we just read it in this book."
And Roy would be like, "That's right. You boys want a beer?"
And they'd be like, "No, we're here to rape your ass with a chainsaw." Or maybe a broom handle. That would be more realistic. Definitely a broom handle.
The sad part is no one ever really believed Walsh that her boyfriend raped her. I mean even her girlfriends. To her face they'd be like, "Aww," and "Oh my god!" and all that shit but in their heart of hearts—and in conversations where Walsh wasn't present—people just thought she and Roy had sex and Walsh decided to call it rape to get the attention.
Now—this is going to sound conceited but—if you're kind of smart like my fellow day drinkers and Walsh's little girlfriends, you might entertain that theory: that it was consensual and Walsh turned on her long-time ex (who she was friends with) and cried rape just 'cause she had a grudge or she was twisted on cocaine or whatever.
But if you're a little bit smarter—yes, like me—you instantly see that Walsh had no reason to do that. She likes Roy. (Ooooh, I wish I could write his real name.) Roy is her best friend. Not her friend. Her best friend. And sometimes (have your kids leave the room) best friends rape each other. That's right, people who like each other as human beings and as sexual objects and are best friends sometimes get drunk and rape the shit out of each other. So grow the fuck up and accept Miss Killingsly's story at face value, ok? It's the smart thing to do.
I talked with Gretchen.
Walsh drank her drinks.
Then I turned around on my bar stool and I said to Walsh:
"So that fucker raped you, huh?"
"Yeah."
"Well, wanna do some lines?"
She double takes.
"Did you just say, 'You wanna do some lines?' "
I smile like the Cheshire Cat.
And I nod.
Walsh grabs my arm and we get the fuck out of there. We go to her apartment and watch Simpsons and we don't talk at all. I just lay out line after line after line and we do every other one (with her doing two in a row every once in a while since she is the one who got raped and all).
You should have seen Walsh's face when I asked her if she wanted to go to some lines. Excited like a kid going to Disney.
As soon as the last line was done I stood up from her couch. I didn't even hug her.
She said, "Thanks."
And I left.
By the time I go back to the new Metropolis, Gretchen is sitting by herself. I sit down next to her.
Alan says, "Tell me you did not fuck that girl."
"Hah," I say. "No. Not in a million years. Just spent some friendly company and left her to her thoughts."
"I knew I trusted you," Alan said.
And Alan was the kind of guy you cared if he trusted you.
He was a smart man, an artist, and a human being.
And he had a great sense of humor.
Playfulness about life.
Anyway, whatever—it sounds like I'm eulogizing him—he's probably still out there making infusion drinks and being charming and shit.
I had been doing coke all night, since the bathroom at Kips, before I ever got to the new Metropolis and Matt Mattson strolled that little girl away in his bike trailer.
Walsh's eyes brighting when I asked her to do some lines.
And me gone as soon as possible. It was just a utilitarian thing—her high and me goodbye.
My drinking buddy from Whit's bent my ear:
"You have hit that, though."
"Yes," I said quietly.
"Be careful. Today she's going around saying her ex raped her. Next it'll be you."
I told him I'd take his advice under consideration but that I wasn't worried for reasons given 20 paragraphs ago. Jesus Christ. When a woman says she got raped, she usually got raped. I'm a scumbag and I understand this.
Then Gretchen and I got into it. We had our legs intertwined and we drank a couple bottles of wine. I was touching her nipples inside her half-unbuttoned shirt and by cock was hard as a bar of soap. But then she had to go.
"Tom's going to be waiting for me."
"Who's Tom?"
"The guy? Who was sitting next to me? That's my husband, Tom."
"Do you have an open relationship?"
"No."
"Well, Jesus Christ, Gretchen, at least let me walk you out."
We kissed on the street and I pulled her close and that first goodbye, that first night I met Gretchen, is the closest I ever came to fucking her. I was saying in the poet's way everything a man can say to get a woman to come home with him. I didn't give a fuck about Tom. G and I had a good conversation, I wanted to fuck. And we held each other very close in the night of Elliot Street, but ultimately she detached and flowed south to wherever her apartment was.
But then she stopped.
And she came back.
And she gave me Tom's business card, which she wrote her email address on.
Then she went for good.
But the night gets better (if you're thinking in terms of this story) and the night gets worse (if you're thinking in terms of what happened to people's lives).
It must have been very late because Thomas got of work at Whitman's and he had his girl and me and Thomas and Thomas's fiancée and my drinking buddy Mike and me decided to head over to Inferno and knock a few back.
I said I had to go to the bathroom. I went into the bathroom at the new Metropolis, I took the poster of the wall when I was wery wery drunk and high on cocaine. I rolled it up and stuck it down the back of my pants where my belt would hold it in place and no one would have any clue that I had it on me. It wasn't meant as a sleight against Alan and Alyssa—in fact it was a special torture the next day knowing that I had stolen it, and then a special torture on top of that knowing that if someone who had been to the New Metropolis came to my apartment and saw the poster, they would know it was me who had stolen it. I was weak. I threw it away on the Refuge grounds, in a closed-top trash can, the farthest place from the Metropolis that I could find.
You have to understand, people like me, you can't be friends with. We're evil. You might see the intelligence and the creativity and the friendliness and love. And all that is real. But so is the demon we carry inside us, that will drop you off the edge of a cliff, camping, if we just happen to feel like doing it.
I try to encapsulate myself, wall myself off, for years at a time, to mitigate the damage.
There's not much more to tell about that night so I'll be quick about it. Thomas. Thomas' fiancée. Mike. Me. One non-drinker and three expert drinkers. You might think I meant to say seasoned there but I did not. I meant to say expert. These three expert drinkers fill a table with empty glasses. If you had looked at this table when we were done you would have thought it was a crime scene photo—something from The Crow. We drank. And drank. And drank.
Then the night ended.
Thomas and fiancée went one way, Mike and I went the other.
And Mike said, "You want a ride home?"
And I said, "Sure."
And two blocks after we pulled out of the parking structure we got pulled over by the cops.
And the cops said, "Have you guys been drinking tonight?"
And we said, "Yeah, a little."
And they asked Mike to step out of the car.
And they gave him a field sobriety test.
Which he failed.
They breathalyzed him.
He blew over—how far over I'll never know.
Then the cuffed my friend, towed his car, and took him away.
And I had the weirdest experience, standing there in the parking lot of the auto repair shop that was one house from my house. I had committed crimes that night. I had drank as much as Mike, maybe more. But Mike was driving and I wasn't. So they took Mike to jail and I stood there, free, chatting it up with the policeman.
"You live far from here?"
"I live literally one house in that direction."
"Ok, well, have a good night," the police officer tells me, and he gets in his car and goes.
And it's just me and my lonesome standing in this parking lot looking up at the stars and saying, What world is this. I was so drunk I knelt, then laid face down in the parking lot, weeping. I was drunk, yes, but also, I subconsciously knew that that could have been me, many times..weeping against my possible future, weeping for my many narrowly avoided pasts.
I called Matt Mattson and we met on the lawn of the funeral home on High Street. He listened to my story and then told me how he's always wanted to walk on this grass, it looked so soft and thin, like a different type of grass than grows on the rest of the street, but he never had the chance until I called him out here in the middle of the night to talk about Mike's DUI.
He had us both get barefoot and stand and sit and lie in the beautiful grass.
"Did you fuck that girl?" I say.
"Oh, yeah," he says, and he describes the inside of her pussy—in infinite detail—as relayed to him by his dick.
"Thank you for calling me out here," Matt Mattson says, and he slips on his shoes and bikes away. That guy is some kind of a poet—too sensitive for this world—the kind of guy who can't work a normal job and gets strung out on heroin with his ex-girlfriend. I saw them on Elliot Street once, sharing a pizza from Frankie's, and within a few minutes I knew they were back on h, even though people on heroin always lie to you about it. I mean even if you've done coke with them a thousand times and sat barefoot in the fine grass of funeral parlors in the 4am dew, people will always keep it a secret from you that they're back on heroin.
31
The next night I had to drink. I was kind of looking for Mike, but of course Mike wouldn't be out drinking the night after his DUI—his lawyer would have instructed him not to go to a bar, not to be seen near a bar, not to buy beer in a grocery store. The town was too small. In fact, I would not see Mike in a bar the rest of the time I was in Brattleboro.
I took a quick look at Whit's—"Hi Thomas"—then crossed the street to the new Metropolis and somewhere in the middle of a bottle of Syrah in walk two very interesting people: Gretchen and Tom, looking for me.
They sit next to me at the bar.
Gretchen introduces me to her husband.
Then Gretchen proceeds to talk to me—I offer her a glass of my wine—and she completely ignores Tom, who talks with Alyssa, who's tending bar.
Gretchen and I were never not flirtatious. It didn't matter if Tom was around or not. I remembered last night..following her onto the street to give her a hug and a kiss when she left, inviting her home with me..not remembering how much of a kiss we had had..I mean I'm drunk and high on coke, you can't throw married women at me. And why had Tom sat there, so unassuming I didn't even realize the man sitting next to Gretchen was not a stranger to her.
And now this next gentle conversation with G.
G who liked me.
G who listened.
G who acted as if I had something important to say.
G who cared about me, as a person, something I couldn't say about Walsh. I mean G had her life set up—maybe not happily—but she got to know me, got to know—in general—where I had come from in life.
And we had some nice times just drinking wine and learning each other's psychological surfaces.
Skip forward to: Gretchen's and my gentle relations turn to the pretense of ownership and the carrying out of abuse. That terrible look Gretchen gave me when I was simply conversing with a woman whose husband had bipolar disorder and I was hearing her tales of how she'd had to support him but how he's the love of her life and a great artist and I was trying to learn something about myself by listening to her and G came by and gave me one of the meanest looks anyone has ever given me and I was like: holy shit, Gretchen has to go. That shit is unacceptable. No one gets to look at me like that. And after I was done with the woman with the bipolar husband Gretchen was like, "What do you think you're doing?"
And I was like, "Having a conversation. You don't own me. This is not working out between us." I wanted to scream, so many times, "GRETCHEN, YOU'RE MARRIED. STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME." But I never said that. I would like to say that it's because I'm too nice—but that's not true. I was lonely and I was taking whatever company I could get. See: previous 200 pages.
I was so stupid. Gretchen blocked the possibility of other relationships—possibly with Spots. And when I sat in the new Metropolis writing in my journal or writing on my iPad, I was always having more fun either bantering with whichever owner was working or just being by myself when the bar was empty or full of strangers than when Gretchen showed up. When Gretchen showed up, things got worse for me. She demanded all of my attention. She wrapped our legs together between our bar stools in a way that made me feel I was betraying Tom. Plus, I was only attracted to her two times, sexually—the first night we met, when I was drunk and didn't know she had a husband, and the night she came over to my house when I was super emotional after listening to Cat Stevens (The Wind, on repeat) all night and drinking two bottles of wine.
Those were the two nights I wanted to have sex with her. Our conversations weren't that good. What seemed like an equal interest in the beginning turned out to be just an obsession on her part. I was some impossible way out of her marriage—which she wanted to get out of but wasn't ready to say by to Tom in. G would never cheat on Tom. She wouldn't divorce him, either. And it became very not fun for me to be the one she fixated on. I won't even say she was attracted to me. She was just fixated on me, like people whose lives are a mess buy a dog and fixate on it. It helps them to forget their life is a mess when they have this cute little thing to fixate on.
So to me Gretchen became just an annoyance. She was just like Jimmy, really—I was in a weak position and these were the people who took advantage of me. Not fully, of course—they were somewhat-prudent predators—each of them gave me something I needed, and then took so much more from me. What's the lesson? Don't need things from others—the more you need, the less genuine your relationships will be. The less either of you needs from each other, the better shot you have at a healthy relationship.
32
Oh yeah so this whole time I had been looking for a job, knowing my unemployment would run out eventually and I wanted to keep living in Brattleboro.
I found a company called Trash Can Inc. They sold trash cans.
I figured it had to be better than my previous job: fraudulent billing, egos the size of Macy's Day Parade floats, technical idiocy.
So they call me. We have a two o'clock phone interview that day. I decide to have two glasses of wine before the interview for my own entertainment..showing that I can talk to someone while slightly drunk and them have no idea. The interview goes excellently. It's me talking to their CEO, who I call (for reasons which shall remain private) Tiny Paul Bunyan. Tiny Paul Bunyan likes me, I like him. Mostly he drones on about how he's created the ultimate business selling trash cans, which I find profoundly interesting. Carl Sagan might as well be explaining the intricacies of the universe to me in the comfort of my own home, and afterward, on the promise of spending my life writing software to help sell trash cans, I finish that bottle of wine and drink a whole lot more.
We set up another interview, the next one in person. The way this company works, see, is when a company like Google opens a new office building and needs trash cans, they buy them from Trash Can Inc. Trash Can Inc. doesn't make trash cans. No. They then call a company who does, and they order the trash cans and have them shipped to Google. It's called a drop ship company, and it basically means they don't do shit. Their entire value is in the fact that their web site shows up on page one of a Google search for "trash can." The Wikipedia definition of drop shipping cracks me up:
Drop shipping is a supply chain management technique in which the retailer does not keep goods in stock but instead transfers customer orders and shipment details to either the manufacturer, another retailer, or a wholesaler, who then ships the goods directly to the customer.
It's a "supply chain management technique!" LOL!! It's a company that does nothing. They pick up the phone, a guy asks for a trash can, then they sell it to him, then they pick up another phone and buy it at a cheaper price and have someone else send it to the original guy in the mail!!
It's a supply chain management technique, bro! Like so many other things in business and government, it's a big name that boils down to mean absolutely nothing.
Anyway, that's what this fucking business was.
But if it let me live in Brattleboro, I was willing to do it.
The next day I went up on the mountain to try to quit drinking, after one last G&T purchased with change at the bar. I went in Whit's, went straight to the middle of the bar, and put down my change.
"I want a gin and tonic."
Thomas looked at my change and said, "Well, this is interesting."
"Have you seen Mike?"
"He hasn't been in once."
Thomas gives me my drink. As is usual, when I need a drink to get me extra drunk, it does. I was as drunk as if I had drank four of those things.
Thomas saw my gear.
"Where are you headed?"
"I'm going up the mountain. When I come down, I'm not drinking any more. I got a job. I'm going to be a straight man from here on out!"
Thomas gave me a second drink on the house and I left, I huffed it up the mountain and I got off the trail and I hiked into a dense, mosquito-infested, thorny patch of land. This whole side of the mountain would be packed with mosquitos. If I went all the way to the top, or down the other side especially, there wouldn't be any mosquitos, but they were as lazy as I was so we all sat there together in the dirt and ate bits of food from Tooler and Issa's refugee stash.
The Professor calls.
"Matthew?"
"Yeah, what, I'm detoxing, I don't have time for a phone call."
"I'm worried about you."
"Why, because Thomas told you I bought my last drink with change?"
"That's part of the reason."
"Well Thomas should keep his mouth to himself! That's part of what makes this town so impossible to live in..everyone flapping their cheeks all the time about the person who just left the room."
"I want to pick you up, Matthew. I'll meet you on the road if you tell me where you're coming down."
"WHY?! What are we gonna do? I have to make it in this town by myself, and another meal or another drink isn't going to help anything. It's just going to prolong the inevitable, so..I don't know..Professor..what are you offering, exactly?"
"Just to be your friend."
"Alright call me back in five minutes let me think about it."
"Alri—"
But I hung up.
The Professor calls like three times and I do need help but I don't want it from him and I can't distinguish, with the Professor, whether he's trying to help me or use me—with him it was always a bit of both.
But imagine the scenario from his point of view: he goes to Whit's and orders his anemic martini. While Thomas is making it, Thomas can't resist saying:
"You won't believe who was just in here." (Etc. Etc. Thomas tells him I paid for one G&T with change, drank it like water, and said I was going up on the mountain to get sober.) For all Jimmy knows I went up there to kill myself—he had to call. But he knew, too, that I was vulnerable, and even though his desire to help me was genuine, so was his desire to use my weakness to get me to do exactly what he wanted.
"You can stay at my house," he pleaded. "Just as friends."
Yeah, right. But I do know he was worried about me. I sobbed as we spoke—I let him see that side of me. After a point he was just offering to drive me home.
"Meet me on the street—where the Walmart used to be. Just let me drive you home. You can't stay up there. You're my friend and I'm not hanging up this phone until you agree to climb down that mountain and let me drive you home. Do you want to go to Whit's?"
"No, no," I was sobbing. I told him how I had to stop drinking completely.
I'm eating cans of pineapples and my skin is so hot, so dehydrated from months of alcohol, that I'm slurping every last bit of juice out of cans, licking my fingers clean, just fucking sitting in the dirt with bugs crawling all over me and this is where I was going to have my mental transformation (god dammit).
But there are too many mosquitos, and I have to go home, I know. If I sleep up here I'll have so many mosquito bites I'd have to go to the hospital. Also, somehow, that last gin and tonic, mixed with the heat, became like this supermonster gin and tonic. I've never been that drunk off a couple drinks. Maybe my brain amped them up because it knew that I needed to be more drunk but didn't have the money. It could have been withdrawal, my body being fucked up because I'd had less to drink that day than usual. Whatever it was, I was thirsty, delirious, psychotic on that mountain.
But there's no fucking way I was leaning on the Professor.
But I had to leave.
Fuck.
I packed up my empty pineapple cans and huffed it to the trail, then skipped down that trail like it was nothing, jumping over boulders and landing with just the right slack in my legs that I could have jumped down twenty feet and never felt it.
I came out of the woods.
I walked along side streets in New Hampshire.
Crossed the bridge into Vermont.
Stayed far away from Elliot Street. If I saw the professor, it would be midnight before I left Whit's, drunk with the professor's money, prolonging the inevitable one more pointless day.
Tooler sees me when I come in. She looks at me how she would if a literal zombie walked into her apartment on High Street.
"Are you ok?"
Our eyes lock. And they don't unlock for a long time.
I open my mouth and I tell her the whole story, crying—tears streaking down my fucking face, ok?—helpless..how I had my last drink and I was going to go to the mountain to sober up but couldn't because of the mosquitos.
Tooler hugs me and says, "Sleep here. Get some rest."
So I break down my pack and return the rest of the refugee pineapples to our cupboard. I shower, drink about two liters of water, and fall asleep on my foam pad. I hardly had time to think before I was gone from this world, but in the minute or so before I went to sleep, as I laid on my side and sobbed alone in my room, I knew I had done something right: I was an alcoholic and I was just about to have made it through the day with only one drink—well, two.
I wasn't the only one who moved to the mountain. Not a month later Matthew Mattson lost his construction job, was out of money, got kicked out of his place to live, and was talking to me about what kind of crime he could commit that would get him through the winter—as in, the sentence would put him in jail for just the right amount of time that he wouldn't have to sleep outside for Vermont's deadly winter, then release him in the spring or summer.
"Maybe a really minor robbery."
"What's a really minor robbery?"
"Like stealing a screwdriver or something."
"You're gonna steal a screwdriver?"
"I'm just saying! Shoplifting! It's not that bad. Think it'd get me like six months?"
"I doubt it. You wouldn't even go to jail for that."
"Why not? Don't they need to punish shoplifters?"
"Do you have a history of shoplifting?"
"No," Matt whined.
"You wouldn't even go to jail."
"Well what, then? Like a simple kidnapping?"
"What the fuck is a simple kidnapping? There's nothing simple about kidnapping and that'd get you a whole lot more than six months."
"Fuck," Matt said. "Fuck fuck fuck."
And later, seeing Mattson getting his pack together in Whit's and hearing Jill say:
"He's living on the mountain now."
Thomas' eyes widen.
Jill is talking about Mattson in the bar while Mattson is at the door with all his things laid out in the entryway, and Mattson doesn't even hear Jill talking about him.
"Did you hear he's back with Jenny?"
"Oh that's good news."
"Yeah they're strung out."
Jill shakes her head.
"It's sad," she says. " 'Cause a kid like that is on the edge to begin with. You know they have a kid."
Thomas nods.
"And then you put drugs into the mix. Heroin and losing your day job don't mix. I guess with construction he was holding it together."
Jill goes on. She describes. She summarizes. She passes judgment.
Jill is the town crier.
33
The day after my trip to the mountain, I start going to AA. I imagine myself working sober, living a great life in this beautiful town. I'd always been to Narcotics Anonymous before, but Brattleboro has more AA meetings so I made that my community. I went to a seven o'clock a.m. meeting the next day and I went to that meeting for all of its six meetings a week (every day but Sunday). I went every week, week after week after week until I began to get a little sobriety under my belt.
I went to Beadnik's—this huge store that sold beads—and I made myself a bracelet to mark my cessation of drinking and initiation of other choices I made around that time..a bead to remind me of sobriety, a bead to remind me of my own brilliance, a bead to remind me to drink beet juice, a bead to remind me of eating pescatarian—my preferred diet.
My morning AA meeting was just past Whit's up Elliot Street. Even though I used to go in Whit's every day, there was now this long period of time I just walked by Whit's going one direction and then walk by Whit's going the other direction, after my meeting, without looking at the building. And then eventually I didn't even notice I was going by Whit's—it didn't have any special meaning for me anymore, it was just another business on Elliot Street that was irrelevant to me.
I'd see Justine in the mornings, going to my AA meeting early, seeing the rocks collected by the crossing guard on High Street and in the next block seeing Justine pooping her dog before 7am. She'd be dressed in sweats, hair frazzled, and I just wanted to lie her down and lick every inch of her petite little body. We're both up early..and wanting to fuck her so bad..and shy not? She's up early? I'm up early? What more do you need? Penis? Vagina? Let's get these two together and make ourselves cum!
I waved at her politely and smiled and wished her a wonderful day.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"To an AA meeting."
We both smiled, then laughed, then were both cracking up.
Justine looked down at her dog and shook her head.
"No," she said, "it's true. The wheel goes around. You never know, one day you might see me at one of those meetings."
"And you never know, you might see me at Whit's."
"You never know," she says.
And she goes back to pooping her dog.
After the meetings, sometimes I went for breakfast at the Backside Cafe and Big Katie always served me.
"You want something to drink?" she says.
"No thanks."
"You can get alcohol. The bar's open."
"I'm not drinking right now."
Big Katie turns her head sideways. She takes my menu.
I think I hear her saying, "Huh," as she walks away.
When she comes back with my grapefruit juice, she says, "Like not drinking at all?"
"Exactly."
"How did this come about?"
I told her something that I stole from Justine about the wheel turning and I threw in some of my own mumbo jumbo about rotating the crops, "But the real truth is I'm just sick of it."
"Yeah, I get sick of it sometimes, too. I mean there's only so much Jameson you can mainline. You want Vermont syrup with that?"
"Yeah."
Months later I would be sitting in the same booth in the same restaurant with the same server and the same meal and I would tell big Katie how I sabotaged my previous employer (Trash Can Inc.'s) web site while drunk, then woke up at the crack of dawn thinking I was going to go to jail for it, and promptly got myself to a 7am AA meeting where I told everyone I wanted to kill myself and bawled my eyes out during my share.
On that day Katie would ask me:
"So just pancakes this morning?"
"Yes, please."
"Vermont syrup?"
"Of course! What am I? A fucking idiot?"
" 'Cause it's fifty cents extra," she says.
"Katie, Kate, big Kate, on the day when all the money I have is fifty cents I'll come in here and spend it on Vermont syrup."
"You are a true Vermonter," she says. "Only a true Vermonter would say such a thing."
"Thank you. And I'll have a gin and tonic."
That's later, though. Right now I'm still going to AA and trying to be an upstanding citizen with a job and shit.
I start seeing a substance abuse counselor named Carol. She advises me, among other things, to find one friend. I tell her I can't pay her until my job pays me and she says it's ok, your insurance covered it. I had state insurance from Vermont since I didn't make enough money to pay for my own. Just the fact that I'm able to pay for going to counseling is such good fortune for me, the way my life has been going, that I can hardly believe it. I had imagined all sorts of scenarios where to get a little mental help I had to put myself into debt that I would never be able to repay.
But no. The universe gave me a pass.
Going to AA meetings and getting really into the sharing and philosophizing. Some old-timer giving me his big book so I would have one to study when I was away from the meetings. That act, of some spritely sober drunk who could have been my grandpa, giving me his big book—even when I don't even really believe in AA—it fucking touched me, it really fucking did.
But AA came with its own pile of bullshit and it was the real stinky kind. Like when whatever community center moved out of downtown into a strip mall outside of town because the building owner was going to make more money selling the building to a Chinese restaurant. So now you have a community center that people without cars and people in wheelchairs can't get to, and my 7am AA meeting scrambled to find a new place in town to meet—meeting at the community center in the strip mall outside of town would be pointless since most of us who went to that meeting didn't have cars.
A lot of us who needed the services offered at that community center—like AA and NA meetings—were in phases of our lives where things weren't going so well..or places where we were just putting our lives together after they had fallen apart. And in phases like that, one tends not to have a car. Or is not allowed to drive. Or not able. Putting the community center in a strip mall far enough down the road that it was inaccessible for pedestrians, bicyclers, and those in wheelchairs was only the minor scandal, though.
The major scandal was that the noon AA meeting, which rented a dedicated space in the First Baptist Church, would not let the 7am meeting use its space to have our meeting. Let's recap: the noon meeting rented a room from the church which was used for nothing but the noon AA meeting. The room was permanently set up as an AA meeting space and was only used from noon to 1pm, only, and that noon group refused to let our displaced 7am group meet in their space after we got kicked out of the community center which was being sold to make a Chinese restaurant.
Shit like this is always when I lose faith in AA, the program, the people, everything about it, and I stop going. It's happened to me millions of times.
In refusing to let the 7am group use their space at a time when it was unused, the noon group really showed their true colors.
But to me they already had.
The seats in that meeting were set up church-style, all facing the same direction in rows. There was a seat up front facing the group, designated for the moderator, which was a rotating position as in all 12-step groups. But there was also a table up front, set away from the rows of all the regular alcoholics, where a few old white guys who were too good to sit with the rest of us, sat. They were too far recovered, they had graduated, that they didn't have to follow the same rules as the rest of us. They didn't share about how they got sober—that was so long ago that they figured they had practically never even been drunks. Instead of using their share time—and they shared at every meeting, long shares that took up an inordinate amount of the group's time—instead of using that time to share their experience, strength, and hope (the basic formula for an ideal share), they shared at people, giving direct advice as though they were God, not mere recovering alcoholics and addicts like the rest of us.
For some insane reason—I guess just because I could make the meeting often due to its time—I decided to make that my home group meeting. Making a group your home group just means you'll go to most or all of that group's meetings and help pass out the daily readings, make coffee, or clean coffee cups after the meeting. In this group's tradition, becoming a home group member simply involved writing your name and sobriety date in a book they kept on the front table. Before the meeting, one day, I made the difficult walk to that table and signed my name to that book with my sobriety date next to it. I sat down and watched one of these Godlike old-timers get up from his seat, go to the book, open it, and read my information. He didn't then come to me to welcome me, or say something comforting, or introduce himself, or anything kind and sensible like that. He read what I had written out loud, mispronounced my name, and said, "Been sober a week—good luck with that." Thanks, buddy, for announcing that to the other forty people in the room. Not everyone knew I had relapsed. That was my information to share as I wanted to. I felt so betrayed by this asshole that the day I joined that noon meeting as my home group was practically the last day I attended it.
Once at that noontime farce of an AA meeting, this woman from a recovery house gives an amazing share about how she got deeper and deeper into pills, ultimately shooting Oxys and thinking she had found her way to cope with life, that shit was so pure. The story moving, talked about her recovery path, how she got into the girl house she's in now, how it's hard, which is why it has to be one day at a time for her.
Then this asshole home group member thanks her for her share, saying, "This is an AA meeting, so a lot of us and I know I have trouble relating to the drug stuff, but we wish you well in your recovery and you're welcome here any time."
WHAAAUUTT??!! Does this motherfucker not understand that drinking alcohol is just as badass a drug as shooting Oxys? That there's no real difference? Does he need to feel superior that he's never done "drugs?" WAKE THE FUCK UP!! Alcohol is a drug. Just 'cause it's legal doesn't make it better than.
The real mistake these people make is trusting their government. Alcohol and cigarettes belong in the DEA Class I slot, but right before all those drugs got classified and made illegal, Congress passed a law that said to exclude alcohol and cigarettes. The reason they gave? Because taxes off those two drugs were so much money pumped back into the US economy that we were afraid of making them illegal for all the money we would lose. That shit is actually in the statute. Look it up on Wikipedia.
A lot of people, even smart people, make the mistake of thinking their government has their best interest at heart. My mom, even—she's an educated, smart, even wise person. But when I start bringing up scientific data that shows that LSD, cannabis, and ecstasy are less dangerous than alcohol and cigarettes, she checks out of the conversation. She can't believe it. I think it's because she can't believe what a horrible crime the government has committed against us by making alcohol and cigarettes legal, while demonizing LSD, weed, MDMA. Her dad died of alcoholism, so. I can see how that would be a hard fact for her to swallow: that the US knew alcohol was deadlier than ecstasy, but they excluded it from DEA classification and kept it legal because we were making too much money from the taxes on alcohol.
That's evil. To make a calculated decision to keep alcohol and cigarettes legal, when cigarettes contribute to one in five deaths in the US, just for the tax money, while putting people in jail for holding pot, ecstasy, LSD—drugs we know are less dangerous than our two main legal drugs.
That's when this saying comes into play: Part of growing up is realizing that not all the rules are there to keep you safe. Have you ever heard that one? Well, you've heard it now.
When those holier-than-thou recovered drunks denied the 7am group use of their space, it solidified my earlier assessment that these old white guys who ran this meeting were more interested in having a lodge or a clubhouse than running an AA meeting that operated in line with the literature established by AA's founders. AA clearly states in writing that its primary purpose is to help alcoholics stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety. If that was really your primary purpose, then why would you deny anther AA group use of your unused space so they could continue to have their meeting after getting kicked out of their community center. It's one of the most fucked-up things I've seen happen in AA.
And it made a group of three or four long-time Brattleboro AAers mad as a hornet's nest crossed with a blowtorch and these sober adults scheduled a special meeting after the meeting with the old white guys and this group of four recovering addicts who weren't even regular attendees of the 7am group politely and respectfully tore those old white motherfuckers new assholes.
The most outspoken one in the group was this black woman who was like a cross between Melissa Harris-Perry and Che Guevara. I mean this woman could have taught at Princeton, taken over a small country, written poetry, sweet-talked her ass out of Guantanamo, whatever—you would not want to be on the receiving end of this woman's righteous smackdown, and that's exactly where the leaders of that noon meeting found themselves.
I stayed for five minutes of that AA infight, decided it wasn't helping my recovery, and left. Fools will be fools. But on that day I saw a small group of principled, clear-headed people take to task a bunch of power/establishment control-hungry AAers who had lost sight of that organization's primary purpose, and even five minutes of it gave me chills and tears. I have rarely in my life met people who stand up for what is right, and even as I sat through my therapy session that afternoon, right down the hall in that same church, just knowing that group was over there speaking what was right and speaking it against evil..it restored a big chunk of my faith in humanity. Big chunk.
34
My phone is ringing and it comes up as Gretchen.
My instinct says don't pick up.
But I have this little voice in my head that is my counselor telling me to make just one friend. I think, I think, I think.
I pick up.
"Hello."
"It's Gretchen."
"I know."
"I want to see you."
"Well, I'm not drinking anymore, you should know that."
"No problem. The only reason I was going out was to see you."
"You're sweet, Gretchen, but—I mean—what about Tom?"
"Tom is ok with it. Tom is standing right here listening to this conversation."
"I need us to just be friends," I say.
"I haven't offered anything else," she says.
"Yeah but I mean like we can't be holding hands, having our legs entwined, kissing, and shit like that. Is Tom ok with that? I don't know. I don't know your relationship—"
"I just want to see you. Will you please meet me..in the..you know that little glass thing? Meet me there. We'll talk for an hour. No touchy stuff."
"Ok," I said, and I should have listened to me own voice and not my counselor's because we talked for three hours and there was all kinds of touchy stuff. I mean when you're sitting face-on and your legs are every other and sometimes when you grab my leg it makes my cock hard..I've been with married women before and I'm trying to raise my own bar a little bit.
But my therapist said make a friend.
So I tried making friends with Gretchen.
And it did not work.
I'll admit fault in the situation, but there are only certain people I can be friends with.
That might sound weird.
But that is the fact.
And I can't be friends with needy people, potential stalkers, or anyone who isn't just stellar. I mean maybe this sounds egotistical to some of you, but I'm not here to be BFF with basic people. I only connect with developed people, people who have been through a lot and done a lot of work on themselves and are so extraordinary they're almost not still human.
That might seem like a high bar—but that's the bar.
We sat in this glass place downtown and she showed me hundreds of pictures of people I don't know—pointless, time-wasting interaction between the two of us. Maybe she was nervous. You know? Maybe I should be more sensitive to how she was feeling. She put me on a pedestal and that slideshow was just her way of filling the time with something that she knew how to do. But it offended me because not only did she show me every photo on her phone and tell me details about each one. I found that offensive because I viewed it as her wasting my time. Maybe she has nothing better to do. Maybe she would be hurt to find out that I didn't give a shit about any of the photos in her phone or any of the people in them. Is this how we connect with each other's families these days? Because we'll never meet them, we do slideshows with our friends as a way to say: I'm inviting you in [to my family]. I don't know. Maybe mentally healthy people like to look at hundreds of pictures of strangers..maybe it makes them feel closer to the person who's showing them..but it doesn't make me feel like that.
It makes me feel angry.
Angry that you would misjudge me as someone who wastes large chunks of my day on non-productive activities.
Angry that you would impose.
Angry that you would assume I care.
Angry that you're disturbing my peace?
That might be it. I don't know. But I've had more than one person do this to me with the hours-long photo show and I'm sick of each and every one of you. I think you have no respect and no general awareness of other people and the difficult-to-grasp concept that they might not want anything to do with you.
I might not give a shit about your life or the life of anyone you know. Is that that difficult to understand?
Then she pulled out a copy of one of my books she had bought online (it was Camp Lake and I saw there were highlighted passages on every page and I thought oh my sweet Jesus are we going to go through all of them?
And the answer, my friends, was yes.
Gretchen was like a rollercoaster that I had reluctantly agreed to ride which I soon discovered actually ran the length of the entire country. I mean it was fun at parts, but would the fucker ever end?
"I feel like you're inside my mind," she'd say.
And I'd say, "I understand that you feel that way, and I'm glad—really glad—that you're connecting with my writing, but I'm not inside your mind. I have no special insight into you as a person or into your particular history. The only reason you feel like I'm inside your mind is that people all over the world are having similar experiences. We're connected—you know—like a web, and what's going on over here affects what's going on over there so there are all these youth groups or scouting groups or Outward Bound groups and they're all having the same experiences even though they're in different places and they've never met each other. It doesn't matter, because we're part of a universal consciousness. But that doesn't mean that I know anything about you. In fact, I hardly know you. I very hardly know you."
But she'd say, "I think it's more than that."
Gretchen felt connected to me deeply, but the connection was one way..there was magic in it for her but not for me.
Once, many years before this, my therapist Kathryn suggested that part of the reason I got involved with Rishi (a verbally and emotionally abusive woman) is that I was so lonely and so desperate when I met her that I was more willing to enter into a relationship my intuition had told me no about from the first week of knowing her. Kathryn said:
"Can you go out to clubs or bars and have casual sex so you're not so hungry all the time, so desperate?"
I was offended.
I said: "No, I don't think I can do that. It's not a moral thing—I have no objection to casual sex. But I just don't do that," I said.
It was true at the time and even though it's not literally true now, it's generally true about me that I have no interest in casual sex. If there aren't sparks, the connection of at least a potentially meaningful friendship, I have absolutely no interest in or sexual excitement about a person.
At twenty-three years old, I was more old fashioned than my forty-something therapist. Casual sex? I don't eat casually, I don't drive casually, I don't talk casually, I don't work casually. Why am I gonna stick my dick in someone casually? I honestly wish I was more into casual sex—that I had had more sex with more people, starting earlier. But I'm some type of Puritan when it comes to certain parts of life and I don't just fuck anyone—I have standards and there's something sacred about it to me (or at least there used to be)—I have fucked my friends, but I'm mostly not interested in fucking my friends..I'm mostly interested in falling truly, madly, deeply in love and if that only happens for me once in my lifetime, so be it. If it only happened once, at least what I did that one time would be true, would be deep, and would be love that went all the way.
Here I was in a similar situation: having had no friends in years, I felt like my only choice was Gretchen. I knew there was only so much of Thomas I could take, ditto Walsh—she was no good friend for me. I don't think she liked me nearly as much as she liked the collection of chaos she was carrying around in her life.
Mike, my drinking buddy with the shiny new DUI, would have been a good friend for me. In fact, earlier the evening of that DUI, when he and I were out front of Whit's smoking, he said the only reason he goes to Whit's is to see me and Walsh, and I said it was the same for me.
Then he says, "I have canoes."
And I say, "I want to stop drinking."
Then he says, "Let's get together, you know, do some stuff outside of Whit's, outside of Bratt."
"Yeah, why give Whit's all our money?"
He told me his checking account was light because of Whit's.
"Mine too, mine too."
"So let's do a canoe trip or kayaks—I have kayaks too—and there's a regular lake me and Jenny go to..or say we do..but we never do."
The we decide we'll quit smoking too because why not we're in an extra-New Year's New Year's resolution conversation anyway!
"I only started smoking when I started drinking every day!"
"I know. I know! Me too!"
"We'll take out a canoe, look at the wildlife, have a couple beers in the bottom of the canoe—you know, no hard liquor, just a little somethin'-somethin' to take the edge off. I don't need to be doing six, eight drinks in here every day. And I know you must be doing at least that many," Mike tells me.
We were going to save our wallets and hang out and enjoy nature and drink a couple of beers. Stop wasting our money at Whitman's. Stop inconveniencing ourselves to honor their ridiculous cash-only policy. Sober up a bit. Lose some weight. (Mike pats his belly.) But my heart sank as soon as he mentioned the "couple of beers" because I had been around this block a few times and I knew that people like Mike and I never drink "a couple of beers." I don't spew a bunch of AA dogma but I know enough to know that, even though throughout my life I've tried, I don't drink responsibly and I have never had "just one drink" or done "just a line," ever, in my entire life. And I never fucking will. And that was the night that me and Mike and Thomas and Thomas's fiancée went to the Inferno and by the end of the night the table was littered with glasses. I mean (and this is coming from a hardcore alcoholic) it was hard to conceptualize, looking at that table how four people had generated all those empty glasses, even considering Thomas's girl only contributed one glass. We didn't even know how drunk we were. And Mike said:
"You want a ride home?"
And I said, "Yes," not thinking: we are drunk as fuck. No one should be driving. Thomas and his fiancée walked home—they were one block away. I could have offered Mike my couch to sleep on. I didn't realize that till weeks later, when I ran into Mike at the post office.
He's throwing junk mail away in a trash can near where I'm feloniously filling out my unemployment forms.
"Mike?"
"Matthew, hey."
"Is this awkward, 'cause I can leave you alone and go back to my silly forms."
"No, I've missed you, man."
"What is going on? Is everything ok? I mean: are you ok?"
"Well, a lot's changed for me since the last time I saw you."
"Was that the company car?"
"Yeah. I got fired."
"I'm sorry."
"I was mad at you for the longest time."
"Because I didn't stop you from driving."
"Yeah. Why didn't you?"
"I was so drunk, Mike, I never considered it. I mean the thought that we shouldn't have been driving was never in my mind. I'm sorry. I wish I had."
"No, no, you don't have to be sorry. It's on me. We drank a lot that night."
"Yeah," I say. "Way too much."
"If I'd only turned on those headlights."
"I know."
"It's just that we sat there, remember, listening to music. If we had got in the car and gone right away, I would have turned on my headlights just naturally. But sitting there with the music and the lights off, I just never..switched into..driving mode, you know?"
"Yeah, I know, man, I felt horrible."
"Yeah," he smirks. "Me too."
"Have you been drinking?"
"Haven't had a drop. I'm going back to school. I don't know if you know that but I never got my degree, but, Jenny and I have some money saved so I'm going back to school! I'm not drinking for one year..I figure after that, if I can make it that far, I'll see if I can handle it again, you know, start slow, just a couple of drinks a day."
I zone out.
Mike hits my arm.
"Hey man, it's not your fault. If I hadn't been taking you home I would have been taking myself home and the same thing would have happened. I just wish I had turned those headlights on."
I know. That's how life happens. One more drink than you should have. Forgetting to turn on the headlights. A slip on the ice, and maybe you break your ankle, like Butch, or maybe you break your neck. You drive home a different way to drop off your drinking buddy and the cops catch you for a DUI (driving the company car), you go to jail, lose your job, stop going to Whit's at all, never see your fellow day drinkers again, perhaps. We didn't even have each other's phone numbers—we just knew we'd see each other every day at the same bar, sit on the same stools, tell each other the same stories. Yeah, the stories are different from detail to details, but it's the same old shit: unhappy with the wife, working on the house, job sucks, gotta get more cigarettes, fucked the cutie from Elliot Street—Wanna smoke a butt?
That's what Mike always said when he wanted us to go outside and smoke a cigarette.
"Wanna smoke a butt?"
"Yeah."
So we went outside, he stood with his back against the Whitman's door and I stood facing him with my back to the whoring of Elliot street. Sometimes Walsh was there. Sometimes Thomas came out on a break. The Professor sometimes imposed upon us all with his left-field discussion of high-class England, fifty years ago, when he was sport-fucking young boys from the school where he taught Scandinavian languages, knew Winston Churchill, Hitler, Madonna, and all the other world leaders.
But most of the time it was just me and Mike, and I know it sounds like I'm saying I was in love with him or something, but what I'm saying is that Mike is the one who mattered, to me, of the day drinkers.
Of course I wanted to fuck Walsh, because she's a girl and she has a goddamn pussy and I feel special when my dick is inside a girl's pussy. I like the sounds women make and the way they move and the way they smell and they way they look and the way they think differently than men.
And Thomas was special because he's a writer, and we could talk about that.
But I went to Whitman's, every day for a while there, to see Mike. That was the central relationship around which the Whitman's day drinkers revolved. Before us it was someone else—that musician guy, probably, and Walsh. And if there are day drinkers today at Whitman's, it's almost certain to be someone else entirely. But for a while there it was me and Mike, and he would drink his weird half-beef/half-liquor drinks he designed specifically with the purpose of not getting drunk as fast, and I would drink a rainbow of liquor and wine—something different every day, from G&Ts to straight shots of vanilla Stoli to White Russians (ironically, to honor The Dude) to bottles of Whitman's chianti.
Mike and I were like a couple of girls. We didn't go to the bathroom together because it was single occupancy but we did go outside to smoke together, go across Elliot Street to the convenience store ATM to get cash so we could buy cigarettes and be able to pay our bar tabs in cash. If one of us put ten dollars in the jukebox, we'd leave five dollars for the other one to pick songs. I made fun of his drinks designed not to get you drunk and it reminded me of Joshua French, of course, that dingbat programmer I worked with in California who believed that if you ate bread as you drank, it would "soak up the alcohol" and you wouldn't get as drunk. (For all his supposed brilliance, I don't think Joshua understood how digestion works. Except with very special substances, kept at emergency rooms and used on suicide patients, you generally can't sneak some of what you ate past your intestines. You certainly can't do it with bread. That guy told me one night he was, "on a mission to find the perfect appetizer to eat while drinking so that he could drink longer without getting drunk.") Mike tried to do the same thing by mixing beer and liquor in the same drink, a new combination every day, and it never worked. After six of them he was always drunk. It just shows you, even people who are really smart, are in some ways really dumb.
In Whitman's, as I was drinking (I mean as I had a drink in my hand) Mike listened to me tell him a hundred times that I was stopping drinking. He lifted his glass to me and he said:
"Good luck with that. I'll see you tomorrow."
He was totally nice about it, totally respectful. He'd even say:
"I've told myself a million times this will be my last day at Whit's and every day I'm back. But good luck. I fully support you and I hope you succeed."
Then we'd both drink, and order another drink and another.
And the next day, when Mike left work early as he did every day to come to Whit's, he opened the door and saw what he expected to see: me, sitting in my usual chair, with a G&T in one hand, Thomas adding a hash mark to my tab, the two of us talking it up loud about some obscure feature of literary theory, not a single other person in the joint. Also: Nina Simone on the jukebox, which Thomas had turned up to full volume with the remote control. Mike came all the way into the bar and felt exactly what I felt whenever I walked into that place: home.
It's no accident that Nina Simone was host of our crowd of crazy personalities. We played Sinnerman every day and we didn't just like it, we didn't even just love it—we worshipped the motherfucker. Nina Simone is a god.
And if you're wondering if Mike gave me hard time about saying I was quitting drinking one day, and then beating him to Whitman's the next—of course he didn't. Whether we were destroying our bodies, whether we were destroying our checking accounts—none of that mattered—Mike was as happy to see me (and I was as happy to see him) as two brothers—one lost, thought dead—would be to see each other after years of believing that they had been lost to each other forever.
Then came the DUI. And not just a DUI. A DUI in the company car—instant firage.
I didn't see Mike for a month or more.
I stopped drinking and started going to AA on the regs.
I met weekly with a therapist specializing in substance abuse.
Then I ran into Mike at the post office.
I was filling out my important paperwork, as usual, using a mixture of fact and fiction to convince the government not to let me starve this week, and I saw that the guy standing next to me shredding junk mail was Mike.
When he said he was going to not drink for one year and if he could do that, he'd go back to it, the hair stood up on the back of my neck. I said I hadn't seen him around Whit's—duh—and he said his DUI lawyer said this wouldn't be a good time for him to be seen around bars.
After I heard him say that thing about going back to drinking after staying sober a year I immediately went to a meeting—I had been in and out of 12-step programs enough to know it doesn't work that way for an addict. You never get healed. You never stop. And every time you go back to it you just find new and unique ways to destroy your life.
35
In a future AA meeting, the same noon one I went to that day, Gretchen's friend, Castro was telling me about his coma experience after he learns of my suicide attempt from Gretchen. He pulls me aside before a meeting and tells me that there's nothing out there after life, "only blackness." He's trying to convince me to stick around. He told me before a meeting that he was in a coma for six days and that there's nothing outside of this life—"nothing there"—encouraging me not so subtly not to kill myself after I told him why I was in the Refuge. (Don't worry, you didn't miss anything. We haven't gotten there yet I'm just giving a sneak peek.)
In another meeting I heard Castro's story—a speaker meeting—him ruining and ruining and finally fixing his relationship with his kids. That's what I would say the theme was. He would have been homeless if he hadn't been able to sleep on Tom and Gretchen's couch. He got evicted from like a million apartments. He and Gretchen play spy/guns on the street every time they see each other, hiding around corners and crowding behind trash cans, pointing imaginary guns at each other. Gretchen says she's always loved Steve—he's a good guy, but he's a bad alcoholic, and that is part of the reason she understands me.
36
I get incredibly sick and lie in bed listening to Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now on iTunes, on repeat, for two weeks. It was sinus pain, ringing in the ears, a horrible cough. During this time, I think, I write in my journals, I meditate. I have epiphanies. When I get better, I look under my soaking foam pad I sleep on and there's black liquid there..I guess what my body got rid of when I sweated things out!? Jesus, I was filled with demons.
While I'm sick, I try to eBay my laptop so I can pay rent for another month. I don't verify shipment soon enough (because I needed some of the money from the sale to buy postage) and the buyer backs out. This was probably fortunate since I've written a handful of books on this laptop since then—and I'm writing this book on it right now.
After I get well, one day, setting up camp in the little town square in the summer with a little bit of food from the food bank and cigarettes, I sit for hours trying to figure out my life. I'm really low on money at this point..not sure I'm going to make it financially to the start of the Trash Can job, if I even get it. I'm acting like a homeless person already, anticipating that, and even people waiting at that bus stop there look at me eating package after package of pre-cooked bacon, sitting on the raised concrete squares, barefoot, under a tree. I can tell by their looks that I am exuding the down-and-out feeling. For the second time in that town, I apply for food stamps and health care. It's a twenty-page application so I relax, light cigs, and take my time.
I have my at-the-office interview with the Trash Can Conglomerate. My hair was still orange. It made me self-conscious but I figure this is Brattleboro, where are they gonna get another web programmer? I meet the person whose job I'm taking over 'cause he's moving to Seattle. He subtly tries to tell me, with the boss present, that this isn't even a programming job, it's working with HTML templates inside some shitty shopping cart software..I mean like the shittiest of the shitty..but I don't see boring-ass job, I see job that can keep me in Brattleboro, so I give them my best answers on what I'd done before and what I would first do to improve their website.
Personalities click, all around, and they ask me if I mind working in a warehouse. I say I think it's cool. They tell me the story of a previous employee, a marketing person, a woman, and how from the beginning they knew it wasn't going to work out because when she saw the office she turned up her nose and especially when she saw the bathroom she was totally uncomfortable. During the interview they laugh and say that it might not be an appropriate environment for a woman. I give a little heh and wonder what sort of boys' club I am (again) getting myself into.
At the end, the boss, Tiny Paul Bunyan, asks Alex, his tech guy moving to Seattle, what he thinks about the fit. Alex again subtly states that because I've actually built software before, I might be bored at this job and he thinks that there isn't really much to do. Tiny Paul Bunyan asked me what I thought of that. I said it sounded like Alex was right, but my main thing was wanting to live in Brattleboro, so having a more low-key job than I'd had in the past was ok with me. We all shook hands and I left. All the time the sales guy was at his desk making phone calls—we never met. I coughed horribly through the whole interview. I ask what happened to the marketing person. They all laugh and say she quit at the end of her first week. Probably best for everyone. Haha.
Then I have another in-person trash can interview at the bagel restaurant on Main Street. My future asshole boss re-explains the job, I say that sounds like something I could help you with.
He says, "I've looked at your website, and I want you to know, this isn't glamorous work."
I say, "Most of my working life, I've sat in a cubicle, doing very unglamorous work."
He says, "But it looks like you're more into writing novels now, and you've got good reviews and you're selling books on Amazon. I just want you to know that the kind of work we do at Trash Can Inc..it isn't going to be like you're some star player..you know..there's no glitz."
"My last book," I say, "and every book I've written, the glamour profile is much like programming: it's just you, sitting at a keyboard in a quiet room, doing a whole bunch of typing. So..when you look at my website, it might look like the novel writing I do supplies a lot of fuel for my ego—or is glamorous, as you say—but it's really just quiet, observant, constructive work. If I had to say one thing it's like, I'd say weaving."
"So are you working on anything right now—do you think that's going to be a conflict of interest with your work for us?"
"No, I just finished a novel and it was the longest I've done yet and I'm taking a break from writing and that's part of why I'm seeking this job."
He says he has to talk to the guys—he wants them to feel they're part of the decision to hire someone they're going to be working with on a daily basis.
"But yeah," he smiles, "you've pretty much got the job. We're like at an eighty-percent maybe," he says.
And while I hate being drug along behind the boat like this—I mean it's totally unprofessional to tell someone they maybe have a job—I love that, despite Tiny Paul Bunyan's unwillingness to just offer me the job on the spot, I know I have it. I found my Brattleboro job. I can let my breath go.
I walk out of the trash can in-person interview feeling bliss: I'm going to be able to live in Brattleboro, have a job, walk to work, stop at Whit's on the way home everyday, and have a life!! I tell Thomas this, my life plan for Brattleboro, and how fricking relieved I feel that I can actually do it now that I found a job. And, feeling happy, knowing I have a life, that I'm not in crisis, I drink reasonably that day—two drinks—and then leave for home.
"Well, my literary friend, I'm heading home."
"You want to pay up already?"
"Yep."
Thomas says, "That's a first for you—leaving after two drinks?"
I lean in.
"You wanna hear a story?"
"Lemme take care of this couple, I'll get you your check, and I'll hear that story."
Thomas comes back in a couple minutes, puts his elbow on the bar, and looks at me. He's drinking some kind of non-alcoholic beer.
"So," I say. "They did this experiment with mice."
"Ok."
"Two cages. One cage has a single mouse in it. There are two spickets. One has alcohol. The other has water. They give him a bowl of food, a little bed to sleep on, but that's it—there's nothing else in the cage."
"Alright," Thomas is smiling.
"This mouse," I say, "at first he drinks from both spickets. But pretty soon he abandons the water one and just drinks alcohol."
"My kind of mouse," Thomas says, raising his non-alcoholic beer.
"Mine, too, unfortunately," I say.
"But I have a feeling this story isn't over," Thomas says.
"Of course it's not. There's a second cage. In this cage are a bunch of mice, and not only that, but the cage is filled with tubes and tunnels and running wheels and little mouse slides and pools of water and mirrors—"
"Do mice recognize themselves in the mirror?"
"I don't know—I'm thinking not. But suffice it to say, this second cage is mouse heaven. Mice in there are running and sliding down the slide and splashing in the pool and they're chasing each other and fucking each other—"
"As mice are wont to do."
"As everyone is wont to do. And this second cage, the Disneyland of mouse cages, has two spickets too—one with water, one with alcohol. At first," I say, "all the mice drink from both spickets. But after a while, even though there's still a choice between alcohol and water, all the mice in the second cage drink only water."
"I think your story is going to put Whitman's out of business."
"It might. In theory. But I promise I won't tell it to anyone. Anyway I think the Vermont climate alone will always guarantee the existence of bars in Brattleboro."
"So we'll see you soon?"
Thomas pushes my change across the bar.
"Once I get this job, you'll see me every day!"
"Two-drink maximum from now on?"
"I never said that! I just told you an experiment about mice. I never said that experiment applied to humans!!"
I take my change, Thomas and I bow to each other, and I leave Whitman's. I walk directly across the street to the Indian convenience store. I try to get more money out of the ATM but my account is negative. I look at the change I got from Whit's. This is what I'll have to buy groceries with for the week.
I walk around the store.
I pay for a whole week's worth of groceries with my pennies, nickels, maybe a lucky dime or two: eggs, English muffins, no cheese because it's too expensive, a carton of OJ even though it's deadly expensive..all to last for a week. The Indian clerk hated my guts for making him re-count all the change I set out as my payment. He looked at me like I was a degenerate, and I believed it, too.
I formally get the trash can job through a poorly written email from Tiny Paul Bunyan. Things are looking up. I'm still coughing horribly from the most horrible cold in my life.
It turns out show tunes boy has the same cold.
First day, boss is late, show tunes dude and I stand outside on the stairwell and he talks and talks when I ask him questions, but he never reciprocates. In thirty minutes of talking he allows me to ask him questions and is all too happy to talk about himself, but he never asks me a single question about me.
I know from the start he's a real piece of shit.
He's a theatre director and an actor, big-time personality in the booming borough of Bratt, and was a boring person compared to me, but he never know that 'cause he'll never in his life think to ask a question about the people around him..to him, it was all about him. He was the superstar! He was the show tunes singer! But really I knew all that was about his insecurity. If he felt secure in himself, in his new job, if he felt secure around another person who happened to be me, he wouldn't have spent half an hour listing his theatre accolades. Someone who felt secure would have been capable of balanced conversation—or even more frighteningly, would have been capable of saying nothing about themself at all.
My boss is crazy, though. He gets there after their posted opening hour and starts talking porn before he can show me where my desk is. Trash Can boss—aka Tiny Paul Bunyan—tells us that:
"I was surfing a little porn—I don't surf a lot of porn because of my wife—I mean I'm a married man, it wouldn't be right—but I come across this one site, and it's these girls—and these girls don't look like porn stars—they look like the little girls you'd see on Elliot Street! Like little high school girls! Small-town girls! And I'm clicking in and they've got a little bit you can see without a credit card so I'm like ok and then it's like these little thirteen-year-olds getting tortured and raped on this boat off like Cape Cod and I was like these are real..this isn't staged..this is real-life torture and rape and like Eyes Wide Shut-type of shit! So I figured I might have to call a town marshal or the FBI or I don't even know if you could trust this type of information to the FBI—you know, they might be in on it—so after I put my credit card in I could see—"
"You put your credit card in?"
"—I had to because I had to see the extent of what was going on so I'd know if I had to call the authorities! And this is some bona fide fucked-up shit, guys, I'm telling you, the things they were doing to these girls."
Tiny Paul Bunyan looks like he's about to cry.
"I was torn because I was like I've got to call someone..this isn't right..I mean these were underage girls..I've got daughters the same age as these girls. But it was kind of exciting. And it makes you think..what if you were in Abu Ghraib, you know—what if you were really in that situation? Would you go through with it? Or would you be the one guy who stands up and says, This is wrong, you know. But I figure these Illuminati guys on these boats, they're not gonna stand up and say nothing! If they do—pack, pack—two in the back, you know what I'm saying? Throw your ass overboard and never hear from you again. But the things they were doing to these girls, man. The sick thing is, I got turned on by it! I'm no child rapist or anything, but this sick fucking shit is turning me on!"
"They weren't real," says the sales guy who has gotten here somewhere in the middle of Tiny Paul Bunyan's story.
"They certainly looked real to me?"
"Do you think the Illuminati is raping and torturing girls and then selling them for twenty-nine ninety-nine on the internet? I don't think those two businesses exactly mix. You got off on these girls, didn't you?"
Tiny Paul Bunyan blushes.
The sales guy continues. "I don't believe you. You put your credit card in and jerked off to a bunch of thirteen-year-olds pretending to get raped on a boat. You are a sick bastard."
"Please. We have new employees present."
"You're the one telling us what kind of porn you watched last night."
"I think these girls might really be in danger," TPB says, shaking his head and looking at the floor.
There's a word I really like, and I'm going to use it here.
Incredulous.
See? I didn't even have to use it in a sentence and you know exactly what I mean.
This whole time our sales guy is trying to tell us all something. He's looking at his computer and squirming in his seat like a little kid who has to pee.
Finally Tiny Paul Bunyan stops telling us what he jerked off to last night and says:
"What?"
The sales guy says, "Somebody got shot at the Food Co-Op."
"What??" says Tiny Paul Bunyan.
The show tunes singer goes to the windows and looks out. You can see the Co-Op from our office.
"Yup," the sales guy says. "The wine manager shot the general manager in the head."
Tiny Paul Bunyan kneels almost, braces himself, stands up.
"I know him," he says.
"Which one? The shooter?"
"Well I know both of them. They're family friends."
Which probably means they met on the street one time and my boss just wants to feel connected to the event, pretend that he's really moved that some fifty-year-old shot some other fifty-year-old in the head at a fucking hippie Food Co-Op. I agree it's horrible, but Tiny Paul Bunyan didn't know those guys—like really know them. They might have had a bagel together once.
The show tunes singer goes to lunch. He makes a point of walking up and talking to the police who are guarding the bridge that goes to the Food Co-Op—we can see this from our windows.
I have a convo with Tiny Paul Bunyan about one of my concerns. I get up from my newly assigned desk and am pacing a bit, squinting my face.
He's like, "This is really affecting you—is it? 'Cause I don't think you should go home unless you really knew the guy. I mean he was a close friend of our family, so."
"No, I'm not asking to go home."
"Does stuff like this really affect you?"
"Not really, I mean it's a tragedy, I'm never happy when life is wasted."
"Then what are you thinking about?"
"Well, I just always, since Columbine, and all these school shootings, office shootings, I just think I hope I don't die because some guy I work with goes nuts and brings a gun to work."
"Do you own a gun, he asks me."
"No, I say, of course not. Do you?"
Tiny Paul Bunyan shakes his head and smiles.
"No," he says. And then he asks: "Are you thinking about the show tunes singer?"
"That's exactly who I'm thinking about."
"Why, do you know him from before? Do you two have like a grudge match or something?"
"No, it's just a sense of intuition."
"Intuition?" Tiny Paul Bunyan says, "Isn't that something only women have?"
I look at Tiny Paul Bunyan and say, with absolutely no inflection, "No, men can have it too."
"Just making sure you're not some kind of crossdresser or something," says my new boss.
I just look at him like he's fucking crazy. Which he fucking is.
"But yeah, I'm a little worried that in all the excitement my new coworker the show tunes singer might come to our office and do the same thing. We had a very weird conversation this morning before you got here, and you just never know when people are going to bring guns to work and start shooting."
"What if you're the type?" says Tiny Paul Bunyan.
"If I was the type, I wouldn't be having this conversation with you. Notice how I show my emotion in little pieces here and there? It's the type who are consummately smiling, who never let you in, who bottle that shit up while they're pleasant to you every single day—that's the type that comes into an office and blows everyone away. Don't you ever read true crime? FBI profiling manuals?"
"No, Matthew, I don't have time to read FBI profiling manuals."
I shake my head.
"How can you live in America without reading FBI profiling manuals?" It's a serious question.
"Well," Tiny Paul Bunyan says, "I gotta go check on Hipsta—that's my wife. Sorry to leave you guys like this but you can handle the office, right? Might have to take the kids out of school early. Hipsta will be beside herself, I mean she cooked her famous Vermont cheesecake for this guy, and, well, now that he has a hole in his head he's not going to be eating any more cheesecake! Can you imagine getting shot in the head while you're eating the best piece of Vermont cheesecake you've ever had in your life? I'd wanna go during sex, he says. What about you, Matthew?"
I look at the guy like he's fucking crazy. Which he fucking is.
"I don't know," I say. "Maybe in the woods."
Tiny Paul Bunyan mutters something about picking up the kids and he's out the door.
"Does he even know the guy that got shot?" I ask the salesman.
"Never mentioned him before in his life."
"I know Vermont cheese is a thing, but is Vermont cheesecake..like..a thing Vermont is known for?"
"Not that I know of, the sales guy says."
"O-k."
"I'll tell you what, though, this place has changed," the sales guy says. "I mean this sort of thing wouldn't have happened even five years ago, I guarantee it. A few years ago there were only a few of them up here..but now it's like a goddamn migration. They come up from New York 'cause it's cheaper to live, but they do the same things up here they do down there."
"They who?"
"Blacks. They're all smoking crack over there. You know that neighborhood by the Drop In Center? They call that BrattleBrooklyn 'cause it's just a bunch of niggers smoking crack."
"Really?" I say.
"Oh yeah. Trust me on this one. You want to stay out of that neighborhood."
(Which, for my reader, keep in mind this is Brattleboro, so the "neighborhood" the sales guy is referring to as BrattleBrooklyn is actually just a block..one block..one street. Ok. Glad we're clear on that.)
The sales guy says all this crap about niggers smoking crack ostensibly to support the reasoning behind or existence of this morning's Food Co-Op killing, when even I've been to the Co-Op enough times to know that both the wine manager and the general manager are white. They're not niggers. They don't smoke crack. They just have a grudge and firearms and a lack of social skills.
The sales guy sighs. He says, "You expect this in the City..but in Brattleboro?" Him saying this makes me want to shoot him in the face.
My second day at work with these jokers, I go up the hill to get a burger to bring back to the office to eat for lunch and I'm at the burger cart and while I'm standing back waiting for my food, Libby comes up and orders a veggie burger and she comes back and stands next to me as she waits for her food.
"You haven't come in for a while. We've missed you."
"Ugh. The truth is Libby I've been low on funds. But I just got a job."
"Oh, good! How's your body?"
"It could use some work."
"Are you still hiking?"
"Not as much. I've been so stressed."
"It's a vicious cycle."
"I know. I know. How are you doing?"
"Me?"
"Yes, you, Greatest Massage Therapist In the World."
Libby laughs. "I don't know if I can live up to the title."
"Alright well how about Greatest Massage Therapist I've Ever Met."
She blushes.
She looks at me.
"I know you have a partner, Libby. I'm not flirting with you. I just think you're an amazing person and when I meet amazing people I like to let them know. Because amazing people..it's sad but amazing people are some of the ones who get the fewest accolades in this world. You know? It's like I wish the news all day would just show pictures of mothers walking their babies and fathers changing diapers and people shoveling snow so cars can get by and EMT's performing mouth to mouth on cardiac patients who are obviously dead..well..the last one might be a bit much but you know what I'm saying?"
"I do. What we focus on affects what we produce."
"Exactly. I mean one of the things I want people to realize in certain of the 'crisis' situations we're in in this country is that the media is the problem. No an exacerbator of the problem. But: The Problem."
"You're a special person, Matthew. You're special to me."
"You're special to me, too, Libby."
And we stand there for a moment watching our burgers cook.
"I wonder what that fried egg is for," Libby says.
"Oh that's for me."
"You're having a fried egg on your burger?"
"Most definitely."
We stand there a moment more.
Libby says, "I wonder who that avocado is for."
"Oh that's for me."
Libby smiles.
"What about the bacon?"
"Half is for you, half is for me."
"I'm having a veggie burger!"
"I know! You can put bacon on a veggie burger! Trust me, I've done it..it doesn't explode or anything."
We go on like this for a while until she's forced to ask:
"How do you eat that?"
"With a knife and fork," I say.
"Did you know I sing?" she says.
"No, Libby, I didn't."
She gives me the information for her next show.
My burger is ready first.
"Have a wonderful day, Libby."
"You have a wonderful day, too, Libby."
We are both refreshed.
I crave time around her, my spirit does, just like your body craves healthy things to eat.
I take my burger back to the office and eat at the conference table. Everyone asks me what I got. I can feel that creeping office feeling of everyone being in everyone's business, and I hate it.
With the last bite of burger in my mouth, I ask Tiny Paul Bunyan a question about the business. (We sell recycle bins too.) I ask him:
"Are the recycling bins we sell recyclable?"
He turns in his chair, crunching the numbers.
"I have never thought to ask this question and I not know the answer to it."
Yeah, ok. Even though he's the CEO of a business that sells recycle bins, he's never wondered if recycling bins are themselves made of recyclable material. That's a day one question. By the look on his face, by his body language, by the textual answer to my questions, he also does not know if I am asking him a serious question or if I'm fucking with him, and he is clearly afraid to ask.
Tiny Paul Bunyan has a weird calculation-complete look for me on his face.
I have black bile disgust for Tiny Paul Bunyan in my heart.
I need to wash my hands after that burger, having greased-up every flimsy paper napkin the food cart had given me. When I go to the bathroom for the first time, I see why their marketing person quit—one reason anyway. The bathroom is third world.
The show tunes singer sits at his desk singing show tunes at full volume while he's turned his monitor so only he can see it and he's surfing Facebook all day..reminds me of a guy at Mead Research who ultimately got fired for looking at porn at work. He had his monitor turned so that only he could see it..it's never a good sign.
I went to therapy every two weeks at lunchtime while working for the Trash Can Place. Since everyone was so into everyone else's business, I made up lies about where I had eaten lunch, when asked. I hate workmates who do this—I have to interact with your idiotic ass eight hours a day, maybe don't ask where I ate my lunch, ok?
In therapy I stole magazines from the lobby with permission from my therapist. I liked the one about Eminem and also the one about Leona Winehouse who did a lot of drugs and died. I could relate to them.
I talked with my therapist about the show tunes singer singing show tunes at his desk and it irking me and my therapist said:
"At least that noise isn't inside your own head."
"What do you mean?"
"When you go home, the show tunes singer doesn't come with you—unless you choose to bring him. At least that noise is outside of you, not something you're creating internally."
I didn't understand what she meant. I didn't understand what she said because I did have a lot of noise in my own head back then. When my therapist told me that it wasn't the show tunes singer who was bothering me—and when people in AA meetings that year and many years later told me the same thing—they planted a seed in my brain. They said it wasn't the show tunes singer's noise that was bothering me, it was me who was bothering me.
And that made me mad every time I heard it.
They said I wasn't at peace within myself—if I was, then nothing outside would bother me.
This made me even madder—I felt pretty at peace with myself. Who is so Zen at work that they don't mind when some dumb-ass kid who is getting paid to sing show tunes and look at Facebook while the rest of us are working—under a boss who was too chickenshit to say anything to the show tunes singer about the show tunes singing that he never said anything until me and the sales guy said something to this boss about it? Who is Zen enough to program a website knowing and hearing that bullshit right next to you?
I wasn't.
There was so much noise in me that I couldn't tell where the show tunes singer stopped and I began. I will have that level of noise (and more) in my head from before this book started until after this book ends. My therapist and those AA people were right. The person who was bothering me was me. I had and have a chaotic head due to the condition of being human. And also due to special circumstances inside my brain that I had long forgotten. And also due to being an addict.
37
As I write this I have 18 months clean and sober, as they say. It's taken all that time and it's taken a new living situation and it's taken a new diet and meditation and doctors and pills upon pills (upon pills) to get myself quieted a little. I live in a new city in a new state and many things have happened between Vermont and now that I'll never have time to put into books.
Much has changed, but some things are still the same.
I still go to AA meetings.
I found a meditation temple with AA meetings and the podunk town of Baton Rouge, where I lived, got so much cooler when I discovered there was an AA meditation meeting held in a Buddhist temple. I didn't even know there was a Buddhist temple in deep-south Baton Rouge. And it reminds me, one of my favorite meetings, way back in Tucson, was a meditation meeting. So I started going to this one in Baton Rouge and it was way better for me than the Bible-thumping Wednesday night men's meeting.
There was a woman at this meditation meeting named Glory, and the first day Glory I went, Glory stood with me on the steps of the Buddhist temple and talked, and listened, and let me cry. Our relationship isn't one-hundred percent healthy, but she helped me a lot.
A situation happened last fall where I could no longer go to the meditating AA group that had so many friends and that had begun to feel like home and that had helped get me sober for longer than I've ever been sober before. They made a rule that we were no longer allowed to lie down during meditation because it offended the tradition of the monks whose space we met in. I have an illness now—the details are unimportant—but a medicine prescribed to me by a psychiatrists damaged my brain in a way that manifests itself like Parkinson's. I can't sit or stand very long without experiencing extreme pain. My muscles clench uncontrollably. The only relief I have is lying down. And that's why I was going to that AA meeting: it's half meditation, half sharing, for a total of one hour. I lied down during the meditation and sat up during the discussion, holding myself and shaking, trying to sit still, embarrassed and in pain the whole time.
So that meeting was the only one I could really go to, physically, and this new no-lying-down-rule excluded me from the group. The day they made the announcement, I sat up through the meditation—the most painful meditation I've ever sat through. When the ending bell rang, while the lights were still dimmed, I quietly gathered my things and left. In the past I would have argued, I might have yelled, I might have told off the AA group and the monks and let them know how fucking stupid they were—according to me.
I told the show tunes singer off one day at Trash Can Central. He touched my iPad—lifted its cover and had a look around—while I was at lunch. The salesperson told me this when I returned—it might not even have been true. But Tiny Paul Bunyan was gone and it was just the three workers. For a moment, a critical mass was brought together for me at that stupid trash can company, the show tunes singer singing at his desk, touching my personal computing machinery, and of course the sales guy playing one side against the other for his own entertainment.
"Show tunes singer, did you touch my iPad?"
"Uh, yes, a little, when you were gone I peeked under the cover just to see how cool it was."
"So you touched my iPad."
"Well."
"You've already admitted you did. Can I get a yes or no from you? Are you capable of that? Just a simple, 'Yes, I touched your iPad.' "
"Yes."
"Yes you are capable or yes you touched it."
"I touched it."
"When you go to lunch, do you expect me to touch your personal property?"
"It depends on what it is."
"Well, let me inform you, when it comes to my personal property, it does not depend. If I bring a paperclip in from home, and set it on my desk, you are not to touch it, understand?"
"Come on—"
"Do you understand? My paperclip—you do not touch. Company paperclip—have at it. Tell me you understand what I'm saying."
"But—"
"Just say, 'Matthew, I understand what you're saying,' and this conversation will be over!"
"I think you're overreacting."
"It's my iPad so I can react however I want. It's my stuff and I don't want you touching it. Do you realize how low that makes you in my book? I'm not sure I can work with you anymore and as soon as this conversation is over I'm calling Tiny Paul Bunyan and we're gonna have a talk about which one of us—you or me—is going to keep working at this company 'cause I don't think I can work with a no-respect motherfucker like you."
The sales guy's eyes are bulging.
The show tunes singer's eyes are welling with tears.
"Do you realize how unprofessional it is for you to speak to me that way?"
I hit the ceiling.
"You started this, you dumb motherfucker. Now that you invaded my personal property I can talk to you any way I want to try to get you to understand what it is the fuck that you just did to this office and all of our ability to trust each other as we bring our coats, watches, laptops, iPads, whatever, into this office. You have fucked that up."
"But—"
"YOU HAVE FUCKED THAT UP!!"
"I'm going to tell Tiny Paul Bunyan you yelled at me."
"I'M GOING TO TELL HIM FIRST! YOU DON'T REALIZE HOW SERIOUS THIS IS, SHOW TUNES SINGER!!"
"Ok, I agree."
"Just say you're fucking sorry, asshole."
He struggles with it.
"If I did anything wrong, I apologize."
"That is not an apology."
"Ok I apologize!"
"Thank you."
I sit down to do my work.
Then I look over at the show tunes singer and he's smirking.
"What's so funny?"
He shakes his head.
"You. This whole situation. I didn't do anything wrong."
"Show tunes singer, you just undid everything good we accomplished before I sat down."
And I laid into him again, worse than before, and I threw at him every word in the book. Called him a thief. Said he couldn't be trusted around company property. Re-opened the issue of him taking the company laptop home every night to surf porn. Told him Tiny Paul Bunyan and I were gonna have a talk that ended that little practice, too.
Finally the asshole was about to cry, so he left the office with crocodile tears and to tell you the truth I was glad the vermin was out of my elevated sight.
In short, I gave the show tunes singer a scolding unlike any he's likely to ever had in his protected, pointless, no-talent life. I've given a lot of those scoldings—sometimes in email, sometimes in person, vocally. My sister calls it "the righteous smackdown" and it's something I've done many times. I was trained by the best—my mother—when I was a kid. We used to argue, awful arguments, but not to make each other hurt or cry..we were arguing the issues..and we were arguing for the same of argument. At least from the fourth grade on we would do this, at high volume, with her at the bottom and me at the top of the stairs. As either of our positions strengthened, we'd move up or down the stairs. My position could push her down the stairs, her position could push me up and back into the hallway toward my room.
It was like fencing..like fencing practice between the Wart and his brother Kay in The Once and Future King. I learned it early, and people who knew me between the age of eighteen and thirty-six, if you seek them out, will attest that you did not want to be on the receiving end of the righteous smackdown. I think of myself as a peaceful person—but that's not exactly true. People push, and push, and all the while I'm telling them, "Stop pushing me," but they never listen. Then one day they push me too far and I will tell you without pride that none of these people who pushed me ever imagined, in their wildest fucking dreams, the demon that lives inside of me, that comes out, that uses every bit of my verbal and emotional intellect to say things that crawl under the skin and sink like fingers into their brains. I can say things that a grown man will repeat to himself the rest of his life. I can drive a sane person to madness in a single speech, and I used to enjoy doing it.
Just for misquoting Abraham Lincoln (oh and being a homophobe and a racist and generally a dumb fucking cracker), I said things to my uncle Rusty that riled him up like a madhouse bull. That was 2010. It's 2016 and he's still snarling and scraping his hoof and aiming his horns at me.
I'm reminded of a great interchange in Michael Mann's movie The Insider. Russell Crowe has a meeting with his former employer, played by Michael Gambon. Russell gets riled up and says:
"So, what you're saying is: it isn't enough that you fired me for no good reason. Now you question my integrity? On top of the humiliation of being fired! You threaten me?! You threaten my family?! It never crossed my mind not to honor my agreement. But I will tell you, Mr Sandefur, and Brown & Williamson, too—Fuck me?—Well, fuck you!!"
Russell storms out of the room.
Some asshole lawyer says, "I'm not sure he got the message."
And Michael Gambon, brilliantly playing this tobacco company CEO, says, "Oh, I think he did."
I'll say the same of my uncle Rusty. As recently as last year, he was trying to convince my aunt to kick me out of the house I lived in because he was moving to the area and was going to be spending more time around the family. An uncle trying to get his nephew kicked out of the house he lives in? Do I think he got the message every time I told his dumb ass off since 2010? Oh, I think he did. That's a bull with an erection he can't get rid of—and that's not the kind of bull I want to be around.
All I said to Rusty were truths about himself that I could see that he couldn't—and that he did not want to—see. That's how you get under someone's skin. That's how you create an itch that can never be scratched.
If I laid the righteous smackdown on a literal bull, he would lie his huge body in the dust and cry his organs out through his eyes in place of tears—that's how good I am at fucking people up with my words.
In this AA meditation group situation, I could have done that. If you had asked me then if I thought 14 months of sobriety and meditation had changed me, I would have said no, not much at all. But that day I learned by watching my own behavior that it had. When that painful meditation sit was over, after the announcement had been made that there would be no more lying down during meditation, with the lights still dimmed, I quietly gathered my things and left.
And I haven't been back since.
I didn't argue with anyone. I didn't even go out of my way to let the group know how it had affected me. I didn't feel angry. I still don't feel angry—I never have about the whole event. I just made an observation that I now had to jump through too many hoops to participate in that meeting, and I stopped participating in it. I hope to find another meeting that somehow works for me. The righteous smackdown didn't even occur to me—in fact, I'm retiring it. I love the people in that group. I love the monks who give them space to meditate. And after 18 months of sobriety and meditation, of feeding myself better, body and mind, there is a lot less noise in my mind than when I was sitting next to the show tunes singer at Trash Can Central.
I even love the show tunes singer now. I hope he's sitting in an office somewhere, browsing Facebook, singing show tunes as loud as he can, asserting his right to do any fucking thing he wants to disturb everyone else who works in that office, that isn't so much it gives his boss the courage to ask him to stop.
38
The cats were stinking up the house 'cause Tooler didn't clean their shitbox, and that was the main reason I moved upstairs. At first it was just a little bit stinky as we made meals in the kitchen. Then the shitbox wouldn't be cleaned for weeks, and the smell hit you as soon as you walked in the front door. Then it was like Bongo was making these acrobatic shits on the side of our trash can. I would look at him do this, jumping up and shitting on a power bar wrapper that was sticking out of the trash can and I'd be like how did he get that there? He was amazing with his acro-shits, and nothing, not complaining to Tooler, not Tooler getting a hood for the shitbox..nothing seemed fix our stinky cat problem. But I peered into the letterbox a few times and my life wouldn't be happy if I had to shit in there, either. It got to where the shit was everywhere, and the stink was pungent—it was unsuitable for cats, much less people.
I move into the upstairs apartment in the attic, above Maggie, above Tooler and Issa. I didn't tell them until like the day before because I wanted to minimize static between Tooler and I.
Tooler was like, "I wanted to move to that apartment when Issa moved to New York."
"I'm sorry, Tooler, but I just can't live with the cat smell." And the messy: I mean you could never even see the couch because it had trash, computers, protest materials all over it. There was no way I could bring someone over to this apartment.
"The fact that you waited so late to tell is really hurt me," Tooler says. "I thought our house situation was going well."
I felt bad for her.
"It was going well—in the beginning."
"I just wanted a friendly roommate situation."
"I did too, Tooler."
That was the last Tooler and I talked for days. We avoided each other. On the day I was moving, when Abby had finished painting the attic with a new set of hideous colors, when all my stuff was in the stairwell, ready to move, when their new roommate had already moved into my old room and I was homeless until Abby gave me the keys, Issa got me and Tooler together: me on the outside of the open first floor apartment door, Tooler on the inside.
"Now make up," Issa said.
"I don't know if I have anything to say to him," Tooler said.
"Tooler," Issa said.
And I said, "Tooler, I am sincerely sorry that the way I went about this hurt you. That is not what I intended. My communication was poor—"
"Your communication was nonexistent!"
"You're right, until a few days ago, my communication was nonexistent. I didn't realize that that would hurt your feelings and I should have, I should have know that. I think of you highly, I respect you, I even like you, Tooler, believe it or not. I just can't take the mess and the cat smell is too much for me."
"The cat smell isn't even that bad!!"
"It's too bad for me. I'm sorry. I have sincerely enjoyed all three of our time together and I wish it was the way it was in the beginning. I thought we had a lot of fun then."
"Yeah, we did, before you became Mr AA, Mr I-Don't-Drink, Mr I don't smoke shisha, Mr Button-Up-Shirt-To-Work."
"I can't drink like I used to!"
"You used to be more fun!"
"I know, Tooler, listen, everybody likes me better when I drink, ok, it's just one of the conundrums of my life. Sober me is a little too serious—"
"A little?!?!"
"—a lot too serious for most people's tastes."
"Fuck! If this is how you are when you're sober, you might as well drink! You turned into a fucking asshole."
Issa puts both hands on Tooler's shoulders.
"Now hug, you two, hug," Issa says.
Tooler and I hug each other like we're hugging a spider, Tooler leaves for her bedroom and Issa says:
"She'll be better in a few days."
But she wasn't. Tooler I and only spoke generously to each other once more, and we were never friends again.
I suppose this deserves mentioning briefly. The new roommate, Krystal, was a slut. When I was helping her move into her new room (my old room), she would lie down on her mattress with her legs spread in these purple yoga pants. This happened when I was showing her the place and when she was moving in. Like as soon as we started talking about something Krystal would lie down with her legs spread to talk to me, just, showing off that yoga pant gussets and everything. I never saw a woman do that before, precisely, but I didn't make a move. I mean I wanted to fuck her—not her specifically—but any woman just on the strength of her having a vagina. But the fact that she was acting like a superho scared me.
She smoked pot constantly (as in, she could not complete any other task without smoking pot at the same time). She often showed up at one of the doors to the attic apartment drunk and slutty (as in, flirting with me dressed in her underwear but she should barely stand up—hardly a fuck I'd want to entertain). And she always had her legs open. Like she'd be sitting in my comfy chair talking to me upstairs and she would have her legs spread as wide as possible given the limits of human anatomy.
I say this without judgment, but that girl is a psychotic, alcoholic slut.
Abby and I sat on the bed together while she gave me the key to the new apartment. Just sitting on the bed a woman made me want to fuck her—but she's my landlord! This is maybe something about what my old therapist Kathryn said about not being so hungry that I'd go for anything. Maybe I should have fucked Krystal, who knows. But no, no, I should not have fucked Krystal. I didn't want to fuck Krystal. I did want to fuck my landlord. What if we had? Maybe we'd be living together in Morocco right now, peaceful, nomads. But it's not likely.
I bought all sorts of things for that apartment once I got my first paycheck from the Trash Can Cunts, went manic buying computer devices, an exercise bike, all sorts of kitchen equipment.
I was on a TCC check and unemployment money. There was overlap there—I knew and didn't know. I was manic, I was crazy—it might sound like a simple excuse to some of you but it's not. It's actually a really dangerous and out-of-control condition and there's nothing fake or funny about it.
I was going to make smoothies and juice all my ingredients for every meal, get super healthy, but it was really about buying things, having money and spending it, you know?—working at that trash can job and being on a spending spree with two forms of income, Trash Can and also monthly welfare on a VISA card..I didn't even know what I was buying or with what. I ate out and drank the most expensive juices I could buy..at least I wasn't drinking! was my excuse. Looking back I was completely manic—biking halfway across Vermont to have some pancakes someone recommended..way longer bike trips than my body was ready for. Manic, filling out these welfare forms with lies. I was only partially conscious about spending money and the rest of me had no reasonable conception that I was spending so much. I mean I just walked into Kips without drinking and proposed to Jill that we have sex sometime.
She said maybe we could work something out.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, and this! The burger stand! I sell a trash can the first day I worked for Trash Can Incorporated and it takes the bonehead owner of that deadbeat corporation three months to order it. When I finally bring it to the burger stand—that's the guy I sold it to—I gave it to him for free because it took so long for us to provide it that it had become a joke between me and the burger stand guys about how long it takes Tiny Paul Bunyan (who they knew—remember, town of eleven thousand people) to order a motherfucking trash can! It made it embarrassing to even say I worked for the company. I mean on the first day I got the job, the burger stand owner, Chris, was like, "Alright!" "Wow!" and "I'm glad you got the job!" but by the end of this debacle it was like neither of us ever, ever mentioned that I worked for that piece of shit company because it was a blight on me as a person. I never even put that company on my resume because I thought the fact that I had worked there would have a negative effect on my hireability.
The drama with the assholes at Trash Can Consortium got even worse. I basically got played by the sales guy. He instigated problems between me and the show tunes singer, and I fell for it. I got involved where I should have stayed aloof. The owner sided with this no-talent douchebag probably because he was a family friend (that's not a supposition—he was a family friend) or the show tunes singer might have been sucking Tiny Pauly Bunyan's dick—that was just as likely. Show tunes singer kneeling on the warehouse floor while Tiny Paul Bunyan sat on our third-world toilet taking a shit with the show tunes singer sucking Tiny Paul Bunyan's tiny Canadian peen, the smell of shit wafting up to further stimulate the head bobbing of the show tunes singer, Tiny Paul Bunyan cumming in the show tunes singer's face, and them having no paper towels to clean him up with. That's right, Tiny Paul Bunyan barely kept us in toilet paper, but didn't seem to grasp that buying paper towels for the bathroom of his small business so his employees could dry our hands after we washed them was his responsibility. He never bought them. So we all just wiped our hands on our pants.
I kept going to this one bar (and not drinking) but having lunch there to get a break from Tiny Paul Bunyan's idiotic monologues about saving young women from pirates on the internet when he was really just telling us about porn sites he visited.
And I kept seeing Darling Nikki, because she worked at this bar. And we kept having these mini-conversations about social networking sites and what we wished they would do better, and after a month of lunches these mini-conversations had turned into an idea for a web business.
We were always flirtatious but it never got to sex. If I'm sober, I never initiate sex unless it's someone who I truly feel it with—I mean I have to feel some butterflies, man—it can't be robotic for me. I'll have sex with a wider set of women if they push for it (and aren't quite as slutty as Krystal), but for me to be in pursuit I have to feel the sparks..intensely. Justine—yeah, full, 100% sparks. To a lesser degree, Walsh—80% sparks. Women from my past..whatever, there have to be sparks. You know, it has to get me psychologically, too, I'm not some grunt who's into any pussy he can get. Maybe that's because sex has been relatively available to me and it isn't for some guys.
Darling Nikki had a great business idea. It was just ahead of its time. I programmed and it and she helped direct it and we'd make our meetings kind of like dates, where we'd get sushi and talk about our business then flirt with each other, talking about sex and shit, but while I'm tempted, I never make a move. I wanted to fuck her, I was just too out of sorts, too weak within myself, to function on any kind of advanced level.
Our project was an anonymous talk site, and even when we were testing the thing, she would be flirting with me through text and I would be flirting back. She was in good shape, I'd heard from her ex-husband that she was great in bed, she just wasn't for me—I would have rather had a second chance to fuck Walsh, and marry her, have babies and fuck her till we were eighty then shoot ourselves in the head on some grand anniversary. Or at least day drink until we died.
Back in the sushi restaurant. Darling Nikki clearly offering it up.
The old me would have said, "So, you wanna fuck?"
And she would have said yes. She was giving all the signs: also sitting with her legs wide open (but not as slutty as Krystal), pushing the tip of her finger between wet lips, smiling deliciously at me. She would have nodded her head slowly and we would have gone to my apartment and fucked.
But the new me was too jaded, too scared, and too depressed to make the first move—if you haven't noticed, I was having some severe psychological problems at this point in my life. It wasn't even worth it, I thought—and that's depression speaking. If you had seen this girl, you would know that thinking it was not worth it to fuck her..was depression. Honestly I couldn't even conceptualize the desire for sex that day. I didn't even remember what it felt like. I didn't even care.
So Darling Nikki and I became estranged because I kept missing more meetings with her as my mind fell apart. I don't miss meetings. But I started missing meetings with her. I just wasn't aware of my calendar. I couldn't tell you what day it was. Our project failed. We never fucked. We never even stayed friends. It was a disaster.
I remember walking Darling Nikki back to where both our bicycles were parked. Hers was like this three-thousand dollar racing thing. Darling Nikki did biathlons, triathlons, she was self-sufficient, she had made her way in Brattleboro a long time by creating positions for herself at companies that had no positions. She was so functional, and I was so not. Fucking, not fucking—who cares. What Darling Nikki represented to me was a mentality that if I was honest with myself I felt was a) slipping away and b) never there.
Darling Nikki rode off on her bike, head down, ass up, knees turning and thighs pumping—a picture of health.
Sometimes I would see Matt Mattson, working a spare construction day, clomping up the stairs to the drug apartment, slinking down to the lake, living in a tent. And I felt it, because I knew that I was going to end up that way. I had been homeless before, and as a person with bipolar disorder, the chances are decent that I'll end up homeless again and/or will die by my own hand. Then again, fifty percent of the people that US cops murder each year are mentally ill—that sudden death is the best that some of us can hope for.
39
Journal entry from:
July 30, 2011
Just ate lunch at Flat Street (chili and pineapple juice). Now sitting in the Latchis before watching Cowboys and Aliens. Vision of myself as a solitary, non-drinking, rich man. Stay sober, stay clear, and take the next step into having tons and tons of resources. Sell your books. Make businesses that make money. Make businesses to sell. Don't over-extend: focus on one thing at a time, but move out of working for someone else as soon as I can. Before this winter if possible. Use the internet to create interest in my books, to draw traffic to my blog, etc. And become a celebrity, in the literary world. Write amazing things. And enjoy a quiet and serene life. Watch movies, live simply, carry an iPad and a keyboard everywhere, treat people well, treat myself well, and don't suffer again. Be good to myself.
Just watched Cowboys and Aliens. It was fun to watch. Getting sushi now at Shin La. Lots of imagination right now, about what to do with inhesion..to start with science fiction and work toward reality from there. To start off the map, in the middle of the open spaces, to start with Neuromancer and make things from there, possible. Control systems, organic. And I think tonight and tomorrow I'll program on TalkAnonymous.com, get that working with multiple identities, and make the interface simple and uncluttered..it should be the simplest possible, with no credits or explanations, just bulletproof, then later, I'll take xtools and move on and make inhesion, become Eldon Tyrell, make stuff that people never thought of. I love this computer. It's incredibly light in my backpack, and soon I'll have another bag, a bag just for it. Hopefully it fits the keyboard, too. I like the modularity of a bluetooth keyboard and a screen, that you carry around. This could definitely be the future: components that are loosely coupled, such that you can mix and match, use any one of them or none, computers that are small, cheap, and multi-purpose. I have some inkling of creating a lego-like programming environment, that could work well on small screens and touch screens, maybe in tandem with dot oh languaging. Simple keys, small set of symbols, hierarchical software development happening on small screens. DSD: distributed software development. Make tools for that. Post-source control.
The next day:
July 31, 2011
Sitting in Bagel Works. Been playing Mahjong. Moving today. Abby said she'll let me know when she's done cleaning and fixing up the apartment, and I can move in today. So excited. Like: butterflies in my stomach. One of my Mahjong fortunes was "Don't be afraid of competition." or "Don't avoid competition." or something like that. I think the former. This, at work, in my ideas of starting a business. What makes me think that anyone could do what I decide to do, better than me? I could create an AI business, inhesion, that no one else in the world can create. Like that thing of the book you want to read, that doesn't exist, is yours to write. I think maybe that's true with business, too. If I have a vision, that's more than half the battle. Don't be afraid of competition. I am not inferior. I need not feel superior in ego, but in some ways, I am superior. I am superior to everyone else at being me, and so my vision, my desires, my ideas are perfect..perfectly mine. My desires, my wants, are such me, such a critical part of what I am and who I am, I should live by my dreams, by my imaginations for what could be. And another fortune I got this morning at the end of one of my games, was: "Well done is better than well said." Indeed =) Be the former: be one who does well. Leave the politicking to politicians. Be an executioner. Do.
Went to the Sunday AA meeting. Now waiting in the Backside Cafe for my lunch. Getting grilled Monterrey chicken, spending some more time out before I go back to the High Street house. Writing on the iPad 2 is excellent. With iA Writer (program) and an external keyboard (bluetooth) I could definitely write a book or long piece on this machine. I like the idea of being able to write anywhere (and have it be typing, and stored electronically). Didn't share at the meeting. Listened, though. It was about consideration and balance. I'd like to move toward more of that at work. Though, I think this week, it was progress for me to 1) not drink over stressful shit at work and 2) not take shit from my coworker who was being an asshole to me. He touched my personal computer (opened the case) while I was away for lunch, and admitted to this after I relayed to him my coworker's relayal of this to me. I told him: Don't ever touch my shit again. And I think on the whole that was progress for me. It needed to be said, in our office—and I needed to say it, for me. Ultimately I want my effect there, and anywhere, to be that I do my work, do my job, do my part, etc. (Not that I spend my time arguing or opposing people or calling bullshit people on their bullshit.) It's a hard balance, I think. Because, as Joanne suggested when I told her this don't touch my shit story, to absolutely say nothing, to bend to, to completely ignore, such a person's behavior is enabling. I don't want to battle monsters, though, lest (as Nietzsche says) I become one. But to allow the monster to roam freely not just through your town, but past your gate and into your yard, is not to do your town a favor. It is to enable the monster. Where and how the balance lies seems non-simple to me. It seems to me there may be wrong answers to that question of balance, but that deciding on one, single right answer, might not be correct, or complete. I saw a nice-looking girl on the way to this restaurant. She looked like she'd have a sweet pussy, one I'd like to fuck. Maybe with my new apartment I will invite women over, girls, females, and have some sex. But I like my peace, and even a sweet pussy isn't worth too much chaos or trouble. Perhaps at some point I'll have a real relationship again, on all levels, with the likes of a Libby or someone of her caliber.
40
I was going to the 7am AA meeting every day they had it. I got several months clean. I liked the group except I always had a bad feeling about the veracity of my sponsor. He would get confused about his clean date in the middle of a share. He would say things like:
"It doesn't really matter how much time you have, as long as you're living the life," which may be true but it led me to wonder if he didn't really have 20 years..or 17..of 15..or any of the different numbers of years he claimed to have in various meetings.
My sponsor and I would talk every morning on the phone or in person after the 7am meeting, sitting by the creek sometimes where I always sat by myself and ate breakfast before going to work at the Trash Can Carnival.
I remember seeing a drifter girl put on deodorant in front of the grocery store and being really attracted to her, in her self-reliant nature. I would never want someone who needed me. I have always been attracted to women who seemed like they didn't need anyone.
My sponsor was so fucking narrow minded and judgmental..he's flipping out at my eating a beautifully fresh, raw piece of tilapia.
He goes: "Matthew, I'm worried about you. You can't eat that."
"Sure I can. Look at it. That's about the most beautiful piece of fish I've ever seen. It's perfect."
"You're gonna get sick if you eat that."
"No I'm not. I eat raw fish all the time. What do you think sashimi is?"
"But that's in a restaurant. They know what they're doing."
"It's the same thing. I know when they buy their fish. I wouldn't be eating this if it had sat on the shelf in there for five days but they just delivered this fish yesterday or today and it's totally fresh. Look at that."
"It looks disgusting to me. It makes me want to hurl."
What a boring person. What a limited person. In my mind, if this guy can't accept me eating raw fish, how's he going to be a spiritual teacher for me, on the larger issues?—it's a farce that this man is my sponsor, and I'm only keeping him as my sponsor because the other men in the group I go to are much worse choices. Like the man who hijacks the meeting to talk about Jesus Christ and people walk out when he shares but my sponsor defends him:
"He spent two years in a French prison."
What the fuck do I care? He's a Jesus-beating freak that's fucking up my AA meeting—we say we're not aligned with any religion or sect and then the group and the group moderator let this French prison survivor talk about Jesus for 30 minutes of a 60-minute meeting. It's wrong, it's hypocritical, and it turns people off who are there to recover from addiction, not get a poorly-assembled sermon.
By the creek, the whole time my sponsor is spouting AA tritisms at me, I'm just watching the drifter girl, maybe seeing something in her that I wish was more developed in me.
We're supposed to be having some sort of useful spiritual interchange during these morning talks, but mostly it's just yet another sermon from someone who thinks they have their life together when, when I look at their life, I think not.
One day some asshole vegans come up to me and my sponsor while we're pretending to recover. This crowd is all decked-out in their hemp everything and they're coming to us from having just gone shopping at the Food Coop. This one guy comes up with his bag and holds it in our faces:
"Look at that, man—do you know what that is?"
I look at him in the face like why are you interrupting?
He's like: "Beans. Beans are gonna save the Earth, man. Do you eat a lot of beans? I've been through so many diets. Vegan. Vegetarian. Pescatarian. Raw foodist. Diets you never even heard of, man."
"I doubt that."
"What was that? Don't be a hater, man."
"I'm not a hater, I'm an alcoholic, this is my sponsor and we're having a talk here about things I can do to help keep from drinking."
"Oh, drinking..that's just a willpower thing, man."
"No it isn't."
"Anyway, beans," he says, and smiles like Jim Carrey doing Andy Kaufman, then launches into this minutes-long diatribe about the advantages of eating a bean-based diet and how when he smells beans something in the universe tells him to eat them, like the whole cosmos is conspiring to move the people of Earth to a bean-based diet. And this isn't just good for you physically. A bean-based diet will stop war, because it's eating red meat which causes some people to be warlike while if you wear hemp and eat only different kinds of beans, you'll automatically be a kind and loving person—and it'll help you with your addictions, too.
This guy obviously doesn't know this, but: I've encountered millions of people like you. I've encountered so many people like you I have a special term to describe you: diet-only revolutionaries: people who think that diet alone will solve all the problems of the world, and that philosophies don't matter. Now, these people don't realize they're almost preaching to the choir—I happen to be one of those people who think diet is one of the most important factors for world change. But I think it's stupidly simplistic to think it's the only fact we need to change.
This guy's whole identity, apparently, was wrapped up in eating nothing but beans—and he would not shut up about it. I was also talking to an older artist from AA in that same parking lot before we were accosted by the bean vegans—you know, don't make the mistake of thinking that just because I'm standing out front of an overpriced organic bullshit hippie grocery store that I'm a vegan or I want to hear about your fucking bean farm. You're an intellectually-stunted garden gnome, to me, so find someone else to radiate and glow to and magically gesticulate to when all you're talking about is motherfucking beans. I eat beans, too, motherfucker—I just don't go around telling everyone about it. It's like being an evangelical for air—everybody already knows how to breathe!
But this older artist invited me to her place, she had sage advice, she seemed like was a known artist, had made a career of it, was maybe even rich. She invited me to her studio, but I never went. I don't know why. She might have been a better friend than Gretchen, for me. Maybe it was because she was older. Maybe it was because in AA men and women aren't supposed to mix—antiquated tradition. She gave me her number but I never called it so I'll never know.
But when that Jesus freak dude goes on a 30-minute share about his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and how if you don't have Christ in your life this program will never work for you, I'm so desperate for help at this point that I don't say anything. I don't get up and leave the meeting like I should have. I do, later, tell my sponsor that AA claims not to be aligned with any sect or religion and what that guy is doing goes against AA tenets, and he should be stopped, and the fact that he spent two years in a French prison is irrelevant. We've all had hard lives. But I mean when I see the French prison guy on the street I give him a hug, you know, we're both sober—we're drunks who are sober and that's a miracle so I at least give the guy a hug. I happen to think Jesus Christ was one of the towering fucking geniuses of all time—I'm a huge fan of the wisdom. I just don't want to hear about it in my AA meeting.
There was a drug house right across the street from the community center where we held our 7am meetings and the guys who occupied those houses would look at us and intimidate us as we went inside for our AA meetings—I mean they would yell at us an taunt us and offer to give us crack for free and they'd tell us we'd be back out using soon (they were fucking madmen, riding tricycles around the street with no shirts on at 6am)—and we would look out at them during our meetings and say we were glad we weren't there.
41
I went to a meeting every day, sometimes two..riding my bike miles in the pouring rain to get to an AA meeting just outside of town. Everybody can tell, since I am soaked to the bone, that I really wanted to get to this meeting, and even though I'm so muddy and gross I can't sit next to anybody, it earns me a little respect that I wanted to get here that bad. Lady tells me:
"I used to walk 20 blocks in LA to make the coffee and set out the chairs in my early recovery, and back then each day was beautiful no matter how far I had to walk."
I nod. I don't feel exactly like that but I know what she means.
"Those were the days, when I just had to get to that meeting every morning. And I was homeless at the time."
"Been there," I say.
And now a whole platter of topics opens up for us to feed off, and it's just me and her, me and her, talking across this room full of people before this meeting.
I wasn't exactly sure I could relate to her at first..but then maybe I did because something deep in my mind had to get to that meeting that night and I was going to do anything I had to to get there. Like if I just halfway wanted to go to that meeting I wouldn't have been willing to show up soaked from a dangerous nighttime bike ride. No, I did feel her. I did feel what she was saying. I had to get to that meeting for my mental survival, for my spiritual survival, because AA had gone from being something I knew I had to do to stop drinking, to something I knew I had to do to save my spirit.
On the way home it rained even harder..so hard that I couldn't see the road for the rain on my glasses. I was driving in a dream world, blurry lights, cars spraying me with waves of water as they went by. I had to get off my bike and walk when I got near the highway entrance. I took off my glasses so I could see enough not to get killed. It was a pretty shitty meeting, too—no shares I could relate to, a lotta jail shit, no hot heroin chicks. I had gotten used to seeing this ultra-hot heroin chick at some of the NA meetings around town and she would always flirt with me. When I say hot, here, I mean the type of hot I couldn't take my eyes off. And when she sat next to me she shared her Skittles and held my hand in hers while she poured them into my palm—she would do this all throughout the meeting and I craved the feeling of the hot blood running through her hand. But it didn't matter that the meeting was shitty—it was more about the intention. It was like climbing to the top of the mountain just for the sake of climbing to the top of the mountain, even if you didn't get to see the view.
There was this one meeting with this virgin teenage girl. She disrupted the whole meeting with teenage girl shenanigans—her and a couple of their friends. I wanted to fuck her at every meeting. She flirted with me, and not just with me. She flirted with guys in their fifties at every meeting and it created a real split focus at every one of those meetings I went to. She was sexy as hell and just at the age when she knew it, she used it as a tool, but she was so young I just had to think she had no idea what the consequences of doing that might be. Middle-aged men shared about it in the meeting, how they knew we wanted the meeting to be open to everyone and we were all of course glad these fifteen-year-olds were at an NA meeting and not off shooting heroin, it made it difficult to focus when the girls did chants along with every step and every tradition we read, and generally turned every meeting into a screening of Adrian Lyne's Lolita.
I agreed, it was a problem. But maybe one with no solution.
I saw her waiting outside the AA meeting one time when I had gone to the NA meeting down the street instead of her AA one, and I turned my bike around and said hi to her before riding off into the night. I spoke to her as a fellow addict. I didn't flirt back at her, even as she flirted with me. We must protect people, often children, from themselves.
I walked into an AA years later in Baton Rouge, Louisiana where grown men were doing the same thing..not the flirting but the sing-songy cutesy chants that go along with and make a joke out of the reading of the steps and the traditions. I immediately left that meeting and drove down the street, mad, sitting at a red light, and then instead of turning right to buy alcohol and throw away my clean time over some jackasses in an AA meeting, I made a u-turn, came back, and shared that I've been in many 12-step meetings throughout my life and that night I was going to collect a white chip but when I hear people making ridiculous noises during the readings it makes me feel like this group isn't serious about its primary purpose.
"I'm not going to drink over this," I said. "And I sincerely wish you all the best in your sobriety."
I walk out, some dude follows and says those guys are in the "no matter what" club and they have a lot of sobriety time between them and I say:
"It doesn't matter. I understand laughing in your share, I understand being happy while sober..that's the whole point..but when you goof around during the reading of the literature, it sends the wrong message to the newcomer." I should have said to those old-timers that the last time I saw that kind of irreverence during the readings, it was from three fifteen-year-old girls with a year of sobriety between them, and you guys are displaying the exact same behavior.
No-matter-what club my ass.
42
The next time I tried to go to a meeting I was on my bicycle circling this church where a meeting was scheduled, waiting for cars to start showing up. But none ever did. I kept riding circles around the block and about an hour later I remembered that the fellowship was having a camping retreat that weekend so there wouldn't be any meetings. Then I drove around a back street, fantasizing about owning one of the homes in this neighborhood, and I see a rainbow—an amazing, up-close rainbow that touched the ground on both ends and I stopped on my bike and took off my helmet and looked at it.
I got chills.
This is why I came here tonight.
It wasn't the NA meeting—it was this rainbow.
I'm standing at the burger stand when my AA sponsor has called me and I've agreed to volunteer with him at the farm/theatre that he likes to volunteer at and see shows at every year.
He picks me up on the side of the street.
As soon as we're on the highway he turns on the music and it's some Christian stuff.
He's all: "I'm really a Jesus freak and I'm going to try to convert you to Christianity. I mean, no bullshit, Christianity is what really saved me—that's what got me clean, not AA."
If I had been smart I would have told him to turn the car around at the next exit, take me back to Elliot Street, and drop me off right where you picked me up.
But I was not smart.
I look at him like: That was not cool.
He slaps my leg.
"I'm just kidding, man! I'll leave the Christianity stuff out of it if you want me to."
"Yeah, please."
"Geez," he says.
I have a monologue on the tip of my tongue but I hold it. I'm gonna give this guy a chance to recover from that bullshit he just said.
He says, "Do you have a girlfriend?"
"No." And I don't really want one, either.
"Try online. You'll get a girlfriend right away," says this middle-aged dude.
"I'm not an online dater."
He doesn't say anything.
"I don't try to force myself into situations where I'll meet women. I believe that if it's meant to happen, it'll happen."
My sponsor says, "You know the ticket?"
"What? What is the ticket?"
"Yoga class!" he says. "You've got a yoga studio right in Brattleboro—did you see the Bikram Yoga right across the street from where I picked you up?"
"Yeah, I know about the Bikram Yoga studio."
"Well why don't you take some classes there?"
"I don't really like yoga."
My AA sponsor says: "I've been taking classes there and you wouldn't believe the women in that place! You don't have to like yoga! It's not about the yoga—you can do yoga at home. But these women, oh, Matthew, I'm telling you, you're standing behind one of these beautiful women—like twenty years old—and she's bending down in front of you and you can see her panty liner through those yoga pants. I was getting a hard-on right there in the class! I had to sit down and put a towel around me to hide it! You would fucking love it, buddy—I'm sorry, are you gay? We never really talked about it—"
"I'm not gay. I like women. I just don't like to hear you talk about them like that. You're not really acting like a mature adult—you're acting like a thirteen-year-old boy and whether you think so or not, it is the case that your immaturity in this area erodes your credibility as a potential sponsor."
"What do you mean, potential sponsor? I'm your sponsor, man."
"No, we're rolling it back, based on your suggestion that I go to yoga class to pick up women. You're kind of a sex addict, don't you think? I don't know if you know that about yourself, but I thought maybe it would be kind of me to point it out."
"I feel like you're insulting me while I'm trying to help you get sober."
"I got sober without you, let's be clear on that."
"You showed up later to vamp onto me to make yourself look like a successful sponsor. I think you should turn the car around right now, I'm not into this."
"Matt—"
"Matthew."
"Matthew, I'm sorry, I promise, I won't talk about yoga any more today."
"No, I think you better turn around and take me home."
But somehow he convinces me to continue with him—or maybe I'm just kidnapped for the day since he has the keys.
He continues to claims Jesus got him clean, not AA.
He continues to womanize: every fucking skirt we see, he has to talk about.
It's a horrible day for me but I put up with it because supposedly this guy is helping me stay sober. Supposedly this is "part of the program," "the AA community," or some bullshit.
I tell him:
"Yoga is breath—and breath is life. Your yoga is your breath—and your breath is your life. Where is the part about macking on women you heard in that? Pilates is about your core, your stomach, and your spine. Where is the part about macking on women you heard in that?"
He didn't like that at all and I was very glad that he didn't.
We were crossways for a few miles on the highway.
Then we get to the farm.
And I see why we're here.
This is a program that has collected the most gorgeous and talented twenty-something men and women from around the globe to write and direct a play and build all the sets for it..so we are surrounded by the crème de la crème of these multitalented, international, nubile women.
My sponsor spends all day flirting with them, trying to get their contact information, trying to get a date with them.
And yes, I'll give you, these women were beautiful in every way..talented, monied, beautiful physically, and I wanted to fuck them too, but these girls were twenty-two and I was leaving them alone on the basis of being in my early thirties. My fifty-something sponsor—the fucking jackass—he shamelessly flirted with these women—he wanted to marry one of them (he told me that). We hadn't come here to volunteer, we were here to replace my sponsor's wife with a twenty-year-old Romanian girl named Ileana—who, by the way, was obviously the show's director's girlfriend, and he was the alpha male on this farm, not just the director but the star of whatever play they were putting on.
My sponsor was leaning over Ileana like a gorilla. They could hardly carry on a conversation 'cause her English was so bad but my sponsor informed me that was a turn on for him—not a problem. He would turn around and whisper to me how fucking hot this girl was and I was like this matters in which universe, exactly? There's not even an alternate universe in which my AA sponsor fucks Ileana. You're wasting your time, dude. And this wasn't some cultural exchange: he was like a woodpecker, trying to get another piece of personal information out of her with each peck. Maybe I just don't like sexual aggression.
We were totally out of place. All these people lived charmed lives..not like Mike and I: the recovering addict working his ass off as a masseuse with clients all the way from Vermont to New York City; and me, the recently sober recovering addict writer who when my sponsor went on my website and saw a few good reviews from readers, said:
"Damn, man, you're like established and shit."
And I was like Not exactly. (That was in my mind that I said that: Not exactly.)
At a gas station on the way home, my sponsor positions his car so we could sit and stare at a woman's dress fly up in the wind.
"Did you see under her dress? I don't think she had anything on!"
She didn't have anything on. I watched in the rear-view mirror as her dress flipped up and showed me everything. And I'm not saying looking underneath a commando-going woman's dress isn't something I like to do. I love it. I think it's invasive, but that only half-bothers me. What bothers me all the way is doing this with my AA sponsor.
He told me his marriage was on the rocks but it was clear from his actions that he didn't want to save it. He had fantasies about getting with some younger woman instead. And I began to see, as I became a regular at more and more AA meetings, how my sponsor would use meetings to flirt with younger women—in one case one I was interested in. He would act all interested in their sobriety but really he just wants to fuck twenty-somethings.
I mean..who doesn't. I'm not the sex police. But I think it's wrong to use your power as an AA member who supposedly has decades of clean time to get close to 22 year olds who are struggling with a real problem in their life and are therefore vulnerable to unscrupulous guides.
When he was with me in my High Street apartment he mentioned what I nice computer I had (my iMac desktop) and he said he really needed a computer. I was like:
"Well I never use this one, I always use my laptop, so you can have that one."
He's like, "Are you sure?"
I'm like, "Yeah."
And I box it up for him in the original box, keyboard, power cord, everything. Later on after I fired him as my sponsor he asked me if he had crossed the line by letting me give him my computer. I said no, even though he had. But I was like:
"Don't worry about it, dude, I can only use one computer at a time, my laptop's newer, it's my preferred machine, and besides, without a computer, how are you going to send dick pics to all your sixteen-year-old girlfriends? It's much better this way, trust me."
43
While I was still in AA, I went to the Backside Cafe and had brunch. Mystery dude I had met doing coke sees me and sits across from me in my booth.
"You don't mind if I sit here, do you? It's so busy, it's senseless for us both to take up a booth."
"No, go ahead, I'm glad to have the company."
"I've got the worst problem," he says.
I'm thinking it's some sort of rash.
"It's Juliet—remember that bitch?"
"Your girlfriend Juliet?"
"She ain't my girlfriend no more."
"Why, what happened?"
"What happened is I kicked that bitch out, is what happened. Now if you look out in the parking lot right in the middle you'll see that psycho bitch, fucking with her things, which is all a bitch cares about! Her fucking possessions!!" the mystery man shouts.
I look out the windows. All the time, I'm eating my steak and jalapeño scrambler and this guy is telling me the full story of his and Juliet's break up and I'm watching this very same woman in the parking lot, in the middle of all these shops in the very center of Brattleboro. And it's a cold day and she's taking everything out of her car, rearranging it, scraping the windows, throwing shit out of her trunk onto the asphalt and I'm thinking:
This is a pivot point in this woman's life..she's either going to have to re-ingratiate herself with this asshole DJ boyfriend sitting across from me by giving up some amazing and continuous sex, or she's going to have to suck his (or someone's) dick for gas money to get back home, Albany or Rochester or wherever that is..or..I could be watching someone's crucial moment in their life where they become homeless, and stopped being the hot high-class bitch with the drug dealer boyfriend, and becomes someone who first lives in their car and uses the bagel shop bathroom every morning to clean up..until her car eventually gets towed because she can't afford to park her car anywhere 'cause it all costs money. This could be me watching someone's descent into homelessness, which is something I've experienced for myself and I know just what it looks like—it looks like this, like standing in the parking lot taking everything out of your car and putting everything back in. That's everything you own. You're not even organizing it, physically, in the trunk..you're taking inventory, in your mind, of what little you have left of yourself—and the stuff is just a symbol, a reminder, that you haven't yet been completely erased from society, that there is still some weakling shred within you that thinks you can plug yourself back in to the normal world of people doing normal things: fuck, have kids, work, die.
"You still a DJ?"
"A DJ? When the fuck was I ever a DJ?"
I squint my eyes at him.
"Oh!! Right, a DJ, haha. I'm not a DJ, man, that was just a fake identity 'cause I didn't know you from jack and I wasn't about to tell you my real job."
"Well you don't have to tell me now—I don't care."
"I'm a mental health tech, dude—at the Refuge. I help take care of old crazy people."
"Gotcha."
"Say, I don't think my food's gonna get here anytime soon, you mind if I have a bite of your omelette."
"It's a scrambler," I felt compelled to say.
"Oh, a scrambler. No offense intended."
We both laugh.
"Yeah, have a bite. Have all you want."
"All she ever does is do all my coke and hang around the apartment. She doesn't even give it up anymore, which. I mean. When you're the bitch with no income shoveling all my coke up your nose, you have to give it up—you have to contribute to the household in some way."
This guy is chewing my food.
"Wouldn't you agree you have to contribute to the household in some way?"
"Yeah in general I agree with that principle. But what happened? Did you fight or something? I mean, presumably, when she moved in, she was doing your coke then, too?"
"She was doing a little bit. A civilized amount. An amount I could afford to support. But now she's doing approximately half the coke that's being done in Brattleboro—that's based on very good data my friend."
"Why don't you send her to the Refuge—don't they have detox?"
"Ahh, they do, but she won't go. She won't go. She doesn't think she has a problem. I'm like, bitch, when you yourself are snorting more coke than the entire volume I sell each day, then you have a problem. You want a mimosa? I gotta call this bitch—do you mind?"
"No on the mimosa. Go ahead on the call."
I watch mystery man dial some digits on his phone and then, seconds, later, I watch Juliet, in the parking lot, try to find her phone and ultimately it's tucked inside the elastic of her yoga pants. She picks up and I can see the silent silhouette of her movement combined with the 2-second delayed voice on my friend's phone:
"What the fuck do you want?"
"Juliet come upstairs and have brunch with me and Zha. We're at the Backside Cafe. We're having mimosas."
"[unintelligible yelling from her end]"
"Baby, you gonna eat. Then I promise I'll give you some more coke. But you gotta at least drink a mimosa first."
"Fuck!" she says, and I see her put away her phone.
"Fucking bitch won't even drink a little orange juice. If I told you how long she's been awake you wouldn't believe me."
"I'm sure I would."
"Oh. Been there yourself?"
"Yeah. With meth, though, or a combination of meth and coke. But yeah, that sucks. The mimosa thing is a good trick, get her some OJ with the alcohol."
" 'Cept she's hard to temp with alcohol. She prefers the hard drugs."
"You know, for me, alcohol became a hard drug."
But he doesn't hear me, he's ordering mimosas and another jalapeño scrambler and telling our waitress—who is slammed—to make it happen fast.
I've seen her in here before and I think she and Big Katie are their only waitresses—I remembered this one because she has red hair.
"You like Juliet?"
"Seems fine."
"I mean do you like her."
"Yeah I guess so."
"Well you can have the bitch, and believe me, I ain't doin' you no favors."
About this time Juliet shows up. She sits in the booth next to mystery man. She's in her late twenties, he's in his late thirties, and I didn't just like her, I wanting to fuck her so bad. They're drinking mimosas and they're both eating off my plate 'cause the second scrambler hasn't arrived.
"Juliette, what do you do?"
She growls something and punches mystery man in the arm, one eye open, one eye closed. She's a mess but she's still beautiful.
"What was that?" I say, like we're royalty in a high-class dining room.
"I lost my job."
" 'Cause you did too much fucking coke."
"No."
She looks at me with both eyes open.
"I was a mental health tech at the Refuge, but they caught me doing coke in their bathroom so they had to let me go."
She laughs, this eternal-seeming laugh that left no doubt that she didn't care and the Refuge could go fuck itself and so on.
"For doing a little coke in the bathroom."
"Yes, it's all very unfair," the mystery man says. "Nothing you could have prevented by your actions, right?"
"Well you look over your your shoulder but shit happens," Juliet says, and I have trouble finding an argument to that point.
But mystery man says, "That still leaves you sleeping in your car."
"I could sleep in your bed," she says, all cooey.
"Juliet, you'd have to suck so much cock just to get in the door."
"You want me to suck your cock outside of your apartment?"
"Don't be stupid."
"I'm not."
"Are you ready to suck some cock?"
"I might be. It's fucking cold out there," she tells me.
"I know."
"He knows how cold it is, Juliet—you don't have to tell him."
"I was just being polite."
"Well be polite by not talking about sucking dick in front of our guest. You sure you don't want a mimosa?"
"I'm good."
I was so afraid he would ask me why and I'd be caught explaining that even though we met doing coke that I'm now in AA but he didn't ask why I didn't want a mimosa and I was lightened to remember that generally people don't give a fuck about each other and they don't ask why you're doing things or not doing things because they don't give a fuck!!
Juliet totally flirts with me by putting her leg up on the seat between my legs.
When the mystery man sees this he says:
"Juliet, put your fucking foot down."
She just laughs that infinite dry laugh again. She keeps her foot up there and she's looking at me with her head canted down like all intense and I'm about to be like fuck this guy and just get up with his ex-girlfriend and leave him with the bill and take her somewhere and fuck her.
"Juliet, get the fuck out of here. Go the fuck back to your car."
"Well," she says, "you don't want me, I'm on the free market again. The free market always comes to the right solution—right?—didn't you teach me that?"
"Juliet, get out of the booth or—"
"What? You're gonna withhold sex from me? I'm the one with the pussy. I call the shots on who gets pussy when and where."
This is in the middle of a restaurant packed with people, by the way.
"Juliet, I swear to god if you don't get up you'll be sleeping in your car again tonight."
"You hear that? If one of his buddies needed to crash on his couch for a couple of nights, he'd say yes—of course he'd say yes. But no, you're gonna make me sleep in my car. I don't even think you like women. I think you resent them 'cause some girl in the seventh grade wouldn't give up her little seventh-grade pussy to your pathetic seventh-grade cock. And you're punishing the rest of us, just because of that bitch from back then. You prob'ly don't even remember her name. Was it Kristen? Or maybe Jennifer—"
"Juliet. Listen to yourself. This is why I don't like you on coke. You're accusative, you're hyperactive—I just don't think it's a good drug for you."
Juliet, based on looks alone, was too good for either the mystery man or me. I wanted to flirt with her the afternoon/night I was at their apartment (his apartment) and I wondered why she was with him at all. Obviously now I knew the answer was simple: coke.
"I want you to come outside with me, we're gonna talk, then we're gonna get you horizontal where you can do some real good."
The DJ/mental health tech/whoever he was holds up a finger as if to shush me.
Go ahead dude, far be it from me to stop you from fucking your fucked-up whore girlfriend. I was having a quiet brunch before this sexy girl put her foot between my legs to get your attention. Do what you have to do. Keep your bitch on a leash if you have to.
Then DJ dude pushes her out of the booth, drags her by one shoulder out of the crowded restaurant, a little time passes and I see them both outside, having a long talk in front of her car. Then they get in the car and presumably do coke, then both of them get out of the car and head in the direction of his apartment.
On my walk home, up the hill on High Street, I called my sponsor and told him about my brunch. He said he thought it was a blessing, a gift to me from God to remind me where I didn't want to go. And I agreed.
The next time I was at the 7am AA meeting, French Prison guy hijacked the morning meeting for the last time with a forty-five minute talk about Jesus. One guy stormed out of the room and there followed a verbal altercation like I've never seen in an AA meeting. It was scary. My idiot sponsor stood up for the Jesus guy, saying he spent six years in a French prison and he should be able to share whatever he wants and I finally had enough so I stood up and was like:
"No, you're both religious idiots and you're not my sponsor anymore."
And I left that meeting, too.
I knew that my fortunes were going south with the Trash Can Consortium. Even though I was doing excellent work, according to my boss, and work that he said he was very happy with, I could tell that I was a short-timer there—I didn't fit in with the culture..when have I ever?
So I decided to get a second job so that when they fired me or I quit—which I'm telling you I could just feel coming—I would be able to stay in Brattleboro.
So I figured the Backside Cafe. I could be a server/bartender (not ideal for a sober person but that was part of the job). I floated this idea by Thomas. Of course he loved it—he saw us as twin servers/bartenders, each with a literary bent, fixtures of Brattleboro. I kind of liked the symmetry, too.
My one and only day working at the Backside Cafe, the restaurant where I used to like to get burgers on my way home..the former waitress (the red-haired one) showing me the ropes..me feeling entirely foreign, feeling self-conscious about my fingernails when serving (bitten, picked nails).
After close, the two owners talking shit about a former waitress, though they never said her name (that I heard)..they just said she stole and did this and did that and how they hated her the whole time and they were so glad they finally fired her..this is while I'm cleaning up their restaurant and I didn't snap on the meaning of this but it was like they were talking extra loud to make sure I heard what they said. I just cleaned up the restaurant to everyone's specifications, ignoring their conversation, and asked if I could go home.
"You know who we're talking about?" they said.
"I haven't really been listening..focusing on vacuuming the floors, you know?"
"We're talking about Katie—big Katie—she's a friend of yours, right?"
"I've seen her here and there."
"Don't you two drink together at Whit's?"
"I've drank with her at Whit's, why?"
"Well I didn't know if it bothered you for us to be talking about her right in front of you."
My face was burning. I wanted to tell them fuck you right then and I should have.
Instead I said, "I need this job. I'm about to get fired from my other one and without this job I'm gonna sink beneath the cracks of this town so fast I won't have time to say bye to Big Kate or Thomas or anyone. So who you talk about is your business. I just want to help you at this one so I keep getting to live in the city I love to live in."
Now at that point I didn't ask if I could go. I put away the vacuum cleaner and I walked out and didn't say another word to them or that redhead or listen to another word that any of them had to say.
44
Tiny Paul Bunyan is back in the office. He, show tunes singer, and I sit together to talk things over.
"Yes, I yelled at show tunes singer for opening my iPad while I wasn't in the office. I really letting him have it. I told him—and I quote—"Don't. Ever. Touch. My shit. Again." Then this guy tells me I was being unprofessional in the way I was talking to him and I said you were unprofessional by touching my iPad and this is the way people get talked to when they mess with other people's stuff."
"Well we're obviously going to have to make a decision about which one of you is going to continue working here," Tiny Paul Bunyan said. "Because it's obvious you two can't work together."
"No let me make that clear," I said. "I can't work with anyone who doesn't have the sense going messing with my personal things that I may have brought to the office, like an iPad, a bag, an umbrella, or my MacBook which I'm doing all my work work on since you all never provided me a computer. That's my MacBook. Anyone who opens that and starts clicking around I've got the same problem with."
"Ok, I think we understand."
"But does show tunes singer understand?"
Tiny Paul Bunyan says, "Show tunes singer, do you understand what Matthew is saying about personal property versus company property?"
"Well what if I have Facebook up on my work computer, and someone is tapping around looking at my personal account?"
"I think the point is you shouldn't have Facebook up on your work computer," Tiny Paul Bunyan says. "But let's take a break from that 'cause I can see that you two aren't going to see eye to eye anytime soon."
So we break our meeting, the morning goes on, and around 11 o'clock I hear show tunes singer at Tiny Paul Bunyan's desk saying, "What about that thing we talked about?"
"What thing?"
"I need Photoshop to do my job."
"What about that program Matthew recommended, Bring Out The Gimp or whatever."
"The Gimp."
"Right."
"I can't really use that."
"You can't use it like it doesn't do what you need it to do or you can't use it like you need to spend a few hours learning the controls?"
"I need Photoshop."
"Well have Matt get you a copy."
"You mean get like get or like get?"
Tiny Paul Bunyan laughs.
"I ain't payin' six-hundred dollars for a piece of software."
The show tunes singer goes back to his desk, checks Facebook, and a few minutes later he's standing behind me at me desk.
"Matt."
"It's Matthew."
"Matthew."
I turn around.
"Yes?"
"I need you to get me Photoshop."
"Cool, just get me the credit card from Tiny Paul Bunyan and I'll buy you a copy of the latest and greatest."
He doesn't go.
"I need you to like get me a copy."
"You mean you want me to pirate a copy of Photoshop for this company?" I say loud enough for the boss to hear.
The show tunes singer doesn't say anything.
"Boss," I say, "is this what we're doing here. You're asking me to steal commercial software for this company to use?"
"Well actually the show tunes singer is asking you, but.."
"I don't do that," I say, and I turn around and look at my screen.
"I thought you were our computer guy," Tiny Paul Bunyan says, not looking at me, looking straight forward out the window into the parking lot."
I stand up.
"I'm going to lunch."
The sales guy is hunching down in his seat making all kinds of reactive facial expressions, trying to involve himself in the scene.
Outside, under a tree, I call my mom to tell her the situation and check my response which was going to be to say, I will not participate in any meeting where you're discussing illegal activity but you have my cell phone so please call me when you're done discussing pirating Adobe software and I'll join you for the remainder of any such meeting. Mom said that sounded reasonable.
I go inside and everyone's sitting at the conference table—that's the boss, the show tunes singer, and the sales guy.
"Matt," my boss says.
"It's Matthew," I say.
"We were just going to have a little discussion on this Photoshop situation."
"Is the discussion going to involve your credit card plopping down the six-hundred or a thousand that our graphic designer needs to legally buy Photoshop or Creative Suite or whatever he needs?"
"Ah..no. I don't believe in paying for things that I can get for free."
"Well," I say, "I will not be present for that conversation. I'm going out. I won't be far away. You have my cell phone number and you can call me when the illegal portion of this meeting is over, and I will return."
I head for the door.
"You're not serious," Tiny Paul Bunyan says.
I answer by continuing out of the warehouse office and closing the door behind me. You bet your ass I'm serious.
The call me back in a few minutes, everyone smiling at sitting at their desks and working out the day. TPB makes a big show of going to the show tunes singer's desk, leaning over his shoulder, and saying, "So this is what you needed, huh? Our site's gonna look great from here on out?"
"I just can't use that Gimp shit," the show tunes singer says.
"Gimp can do everything Photoshop can do," I say, "for free. Just because you don't know how to use something doesn't mean it doesn't work."
"Let's try to keep it peaceful between you two," Tiny Paul Bunyan says.
I heard Tiny Paul Bunyan laughing as I left the warehouse that day. He thinks it's funny that I won't break the law with him? That night I went online and reporting TCC for pirating Adobe software.
That night, I was so stressed I got a little treat for myself..a special secret..you want a peek? Look inside this brown brown paper bag: a bottle of wine! I had to split from that whole AA program—I was too stressed by the fact that taking a moral stand was going to make me end up jobless and probably homeless..and that predicament deserves a bottle of wine..does it not?
I drank a bottle of wine.
I drank two.
I reported my job to Adobe for software piracy, knowing that would cost me my job, then I wrote a choice email to my boss (Dear Tiny Paul Bunyan of Trash Can Concern, etc—the actual email is below) telling him I'd reported him to Adobe and telling him if he fired me I would file a wrongful termination suit against him.
Here's the actual email I sent to that wack factory:
To: the show tunes singer, Tiny Paul Bunyan, and the remote Co-owner of Trash Can Cocksuckers, LLC
Subject: software piracy
show tunes singer,
This note is to inform you that I have reported your piracy of Photoshop and Illustrator products to Adobe, Inc.
Tiny Paul Bunyan, Co-owner: if I am disciplined or unfairly terminated by you, in relation to this, I will take legal action against you.
I don't like to be asked to participate in illegal actions as part of my job, as the show tunes singer has done by asking me to help him pirate Adobe software.
Matthew
45
How about a little backstory.
I've been part of corporate fraud—billing fraud, misrepresentation of the products a company I work for sells, lying about what our software does, lying about a company's capabilities so that we're advertising vaporware in order to entice clients—I've been part of that at just about every company I've worked for, and I just had enough. I had so say no or else I couldn't live with myself. I mean before I thought I needed the job, you know, so I just did what they did in Rome; but this time I was like thirty-three and I'd done enough fraud—for lots more money than this six-hundred dollar or two-thousand dollar set of programs and I was like fuck it, fuck this shit, no, I'm not going to steal another thousand dollars from Adobe!
One of the principals at SXG—the options trading company I worked for—this VP actually says, and believes, that they have created technology and control the options markets so completely that, as he said, "An individual investor has no chance at making money in the stock and options markets." Hoping he's wrong would just be wishful thinking. Of course they've got it set up so the individual investor can't make money—that's the mission statement of their business. When I was twenty-three I just wanted a job. I put up with the dissonance between me and them—my value system wasn't as fully developed—but now, when I think of what that executive said, I think: How can you live with yourself, knowing that your business is based on you having access to stock prices and news a fraction of a second before the individual investor, and based on that advantage being able to take their money? I mean that's thievery, it's stealing, just like using Photoshop without a license.
I think that sort of thing messed with my conscience all those years and is one of the sources of my anxiety. I'm not a fucking angel. I steal girls' panties and jerk off with them—I used to anyway. I drink and do drugs, smoke—I used to. So I'm not on some sort of moral high horse. But I think we need to make improvements, and when a software company says things on its website, describing capabilities that they don't have, that's a lie. I mean let's hold ourselves to a higher standard. That's what I'm trying to do.
So I drink a little more and sent a second email:
To: Tiny Paul Bunyan and the remote Co-owner of Trash Can Cocksuckers, LLC
Subject: software piracy
I like working for you guys and would like nothing more than to never have been asked to participate in software piracy, but please know that if you terminate me wrongfully over my reporting the show tunes singer, I will sue you. I have no desire to do that, but I have a right to not be asked to do illegal things at my workplace, simply to keep my job.
Sorry it's come to this, but I'm not about to take the fall for the show tunes singer's and/or Trash Can Cocksuckers' illegal action.
Very sincerely,
MT
Then I drank quite a bit more and decided it would close things out nicely if I sent this third brief email:
To: Tiny Paul Bunyan and the remote Co-owner of Trash Can Cocksuckers, LLC
Subject: software piracy
And, actually, it might be best if when we meet next, we meet with lawyers present.
Very friendly and businesslike, no?
But I didn't stop there. No. Who do you think I am, Kermit the Frog? If I was a Muppet I'd be Animal—on my better days I'd be one of the Critics who sit in the balcony making fun of everything.
The next day Tiny Paul Bunyan fired me over the phone. I was very pleasant with him over the telephone as I listened to him writhe and struggle through having to say those awful words ("We're gonna have to let you go.") that are the hardest words any manager ever has to say. You might think those people are total heartless slugs, but if you talk to them, you will learn that firing someone is extremely difficult for most managers. But Tiny Paul Bunyan mustered his tiny strength, hoisted his tiny axe, and cut my head off. When he was done I cheerfully said "bye" and hung up the phone on my iPad. It was a beautiful day, I didn't have to work, and I planned an afternoon of drinking at Whit's. I was glad they had internet, because I had one more email I wanted to write.
Luckily—even—I was already seated on the bench right outside Whitman's! Quel convenience!
I went into Whit's, ordered a gin and tonic, and strategized.
Tiny Paul Bunyan was always bragging that he knew the owner of the biggest business in Brattleboro, and that this owner had nurtured Tiny Paul Bunyan on his way to becoming the booming CEO of a four-person company, Trash Can Cocksuckers, Inc. So I decided to write Tiny Paul Bunyan's mentor a little note:
To: Tiny Paul Bunyan's Mentor
Cc: Tiny Paul Bunyan
Subject: regarding your protégé/buddy, Brattleboro's Only: Mr Brattleboro Himself, The Infamous Tiny Paul Bunyan
Owner of the Biggest Business in Brattleboro:
During my recent employment at Trash Can Cocksuckers, in Brattleboro, I was asked by TCC to pirate Adobe Creative Suite. This was asked of me specifically, and discussed in meetings including Tiny Paul Bunyan, TCC CEO. I stated I was not willing to help pirate this software and that I did not want to be present in any meetings where such activities were being discussed. Piracy of this software continued anyway, involving a CD ROM sent to TCC by the remote Co-owner of TCC. I reported this piracy to Adobe, Inc., informed my bosses of this report, and was fired the next day, by Tiny Paul Bunyan, on the phone.
My work at TCC was impeccable..I have proof of the website work I did while I was employed there. At termination, I was given the reason that it wasn't a "good fit".
Clearly, being asked to do illegal things, as part of my employment, is a lose-lose choice. In this case, I chose to act within the law, and lost my job because of it. The general events, combined with the timing of my firing coinciding by a day with my report of TCC's illegal activity, combined with the impeccable work I did for them while in their employ, leaves little doubt that TCC terminated me wrongfully, and I am seeking damages, given that through no fault of my own, except for refusing to illegally pirate software for my employer, I have lost my livelihood, my ability to pay rent and buy food, and such meaningless and abrupt termination causes chaos in my life that simply doing my job and refusing to act illegally, does not justify.
Trash Can Cocksuckers has added insult to injury by retroactively firing me..a notice posted August 31 claims to terminate my employment as of August 19. This is prior to my last day of work for them..they haven't paid me for the hours I worked.
I don't know if you give a shit, but I want you to know that this has left a sour taste in my mouth about Trash Can Cocksuckers and Tiny Paul Bunyan. He's always talking about how you inspired him to start his business. I sincerely wish him increased prosperity—and I love playing the pinball game in your shop on Main Street, and am not going to stop doing so based on this! But Tiny Paul Bunyan was out of line in this way, in his recent employment of me. The fact that he and his co-owner came into the office smelling like pot, doesn't help me to feel I was being dealt with from a rational point of view.
Smh,
Matthew Temple
I ordered another G&T. Then I forwarded that email to Tiny Paul Bunyan's wife. Booyah! You may be able to save face, but I'm gonna make you have to lie to do it.
You might not think a drug addict and hardcore alcoholic would have scruples when it comes to stealing software..but if you get to know us addicts, we're actually very sensitive people and we have much, much thinner skin than the average American criminal CEO.
One percent of the American population are psychopaths. Four percent of American CEOs are psychopaths. In fact, CEO is the profession in America that has more psychopaths than any other profession. These are actual statistics. Check TIME and Forbes if you don't believe me. I just think it's interesting that capitalism's most prized position is best done by those who don't care about other people's feelings.
As someone who does care about other people's feelings, that makes it hard for me to fit into the working world, in which I have been privy to almost universal fraud, nepotism, failure to report dangerous conditions to a client purchasing a flawed product, theft, illegal discrimination in hiring and firing, wrongful termination, outright theft, and just more crimes than I can mention.
I'm not perfect, obviously—but that's not what I'm talking about.
I'm saying when I go to work, I do my best to make something that's efficient, modest, and true. But the people I've worked for, by and large, had different intentions: like: create the shittiest possible product that we can still sell and sell it for as much money as possible to someone who doesn't know how shitty it is. I'm just not down with that.
This is what I thought as I got drunk on wine and felt hate for my boss for putting me in the position where I had to choose between my morals and my job. Pudgy-butt fuckhead. Paul Bunyan's midget cousin. I hope he gets trampled by a moose. Mr. Brattleboro: everything he said indicated he thought he was the Lord of the Land, that his business buying trash cans from one person at one price and selling them to another person at a higher price was so profound.
It's classic American business—if you make a profit, you must be doing something worthwhile. Smh.
That's your business, that's your legacy? You make nothing, you produce nothing, you innovate nothing, you just buy something cheap and sell it high—exactly like Wall Street. Doesn't anyone see that "making money" isn't doing anything? Period. It isn't productive, it isn't inventive, it doesn't make the world a better place. You can't "make money"—it isn't a thing, so you can't make it. It's just numbers inside a computer and when people look at them, nothing happens. A poem is just letters inside a computer, true, but have you ever read Walt Whitman? Maybe I'm the odd one out here, but I find reading poetry significantly more transformative than scrolling through my bank statement. I was not made for this world—clearly.
Drinking at Whitman's, going over the call I had just been a part of. The trash can boss called me and I answered with the software on my iPad, going outside and sitting on the bench..his opinion was that since I threatened to sue him that he had to fire me so I was like ok and he was like I guess that's it and and I said, yep! that's it! and I hung up.
Then I went to Fireworks pizza where I could get better drinks.
The bartender asked me how my day was going.
"Well, I just got fired from my job, so that means I have more time to hang out with you."
"Why'd you get fired?"
"I got drunk and told my boss in email that I reported him to Adobe for pirating their software..and I did make that report. Then I told him if he fired me over asking me to do something illegal I would file a wrongful termination suit against his dumb oakie ass."
"So you've decided to come here and drink some more?"
"That is correct."
"I respect your decision, sir."
Then he told me the drink specials.
I re-entered Alice in Wonderland, where, drunk, I found myself randomly talking to an old couple—or lost myself talking to them. They were visiting the town as tourist and we made big friends and were going to keep in touch for the rest of our lives and I was going to visit their cabin in New Hampshire. We had it all worked out.
Then I made friends with everyone and entertained everybody!
I met a woman who biked a hundred miles to meet her ex and her kid at this very restaurant and I admired her independence. Unlike me, she stuck to one drink and moved to a table when her ex and her daughter arrived.
"I have a new job," I told my bartender.
"Already?"
"Well yeah, I knew I was going to get fired."
"If you knew you were going to get fired, couldn't you have prevented it?"
"No without sacrificing my morals—were you listening to my story earlier?"
"So what's this new job?"
"It's at the Backside Cafe. I start at four."
"Shouldn't you get going?"
"No, I should have another glass of wine."
I had two and with everything I'd had already was fairly drunk and my bartender said, "Are you going to be able to work?"
And I said, "Ehhhh..I don't know if I'm going to be working that job."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Want another drink?"
"Nah, I better keep moving."
46
So I go up the street to Kips, it's crowded, Big Katie is there.
I say, "I have this new job that I think you know about."
She's all crazy and wild blonde hair and with this military boyfriend and Big Katie..she's like the ultimate host. If they put her on a gameshow the fuckin' world would explode and she's like:
"How would I know about it?"
And I say, "Because it's at the Backstabbing Cafe. It's the wait staff position replacing that redhead I can't remember what her name is."
"Karen. That's my old job!"
"I know. But do you want to know what you don't know?"
She's holding a shot of Jameson looking all skeptical like, "Uhh..probably not. HEY THOMAS GET ME TWO MORE JAMIES AND COME PULL MY HAIR!!"
She knocks back her shot, takes one of the new ones and hands the other one to me.
"To whatever you're about to say," she says.
And we drink.
"THOMAS I TOLD YOUTO PULL MY HAIR!!"
Thomas comes over, Katie leans down, and Thomas pulls her hair as hard as hair can be pulled by a sane human being or anyone who's not a baby.
"Ooooh, I love it when you do that to me, baby."
Katie likes to have her hair pulled—it's a thing.
"So anyway these people—the owners—"
Katie says their names.
"Right. I'm vacuuming their fucking floor and they're talking about you—loud as can be—saying you got fired for stealing—"
"I didn't steal nothin' from those motherfuckers."
"I know. But here's my angle: they know we're friends. Why are they sitting there talking loud enough for me to hear..about you..on my first night of work there?"
"That's fucked up."
"I know it's fucked up."
"They're fucked up people," Katie says. "You don't want to work for them."
"I'm beginning to think the same thing."
First, we do another shot of Jameson, because that's the most important thing in the world, then me and Big Kate and Kate's new military boyfriend go outside and I make a call on my iPad.
I get their voicemail.
I say, "I must politely decline the position we've so recently begun, because when I was there the other night you two trash-talked Big Katie in front of me, knowing she was my friend, and I just can't be a part of that soft of backstabbing, covert, behind-the-scenes kind of bullshit. So, good luck finding another server, but it can't be me."
I touch the button on my iPad that ends the call.
Then me and Kathy do shot after shot of Jameson (naturally). We get fuckin' wild at that bar =)
Kathy says, "I can't believe you did that for me."
"I did it for you, yes—but even deeper, Kath, I did it for me."
Kathy hugs me.
"I can't be part of that shit!" I say, and I slam down an empty shot glass.
"THERE'S A MAN WITH INTEGRITY IN BRATTLEBORO," Katie shouts. "You're coming to dinner tonight."
As we drank, Big Katie told me her side of the story of what had happened at the Backside Cafe and of course I'll never know what's true. Maybe Big Katie did steal from them. But you don't sit around talking about past employees in front of current employees. You know? It just lets me know that as soon as I'm gone, you're gonna be talking about me, whether what you're saying is true or not.
But, really, it's a lot simpler than that: I won't work at a place that disrespected my friend.
That Backside Cafe job is one of a handful of jobs I only worked for one day, and I believe quitting each of them was the right decision.
That night I went to big Katie's for dinner. She cooked and she and I drank while her Marine boyfriend abstained. He had been to jail for things he did while drinking and never drank again. And it gave me a role model, even while I was drinking with Katie, of how it was possible for a grown man not to drink. I mean it probably helps if you went to jail for your part in a part fight where you broke an Absolut Peppar bottle over the eye of some kid in a wheelchair because the kid was talking shit about Marines and claiming to have once been an Army Ranger and you know they have all these little rivalries between the branches but judges don't take well to a Marine breaking an bottle of Absolut Peppar over anybody's head. The kid in the wheelchair couldn't see after that and he was never an Army Ranger, he was just a kid talking smack to a Marine with a short fuse but you know that Marine sat in jail long enough that he figured out the only crazy things he ever did were while he was drinking, and he made up his mind in that jail cell to stop.
"That's nothing," Big Kathy says. "You've hear of the time a guy broke in my house and tried to rape me."
"No."
"You've never heard that story?"
"I guess not!"
"Well, it was this house. First of all. First of all, can I just tell you that this motherfucker eats such good pussy. Don't you, babe—don't be shy."
The marine shrugs.
"I like pussy."
"See that?" Kathy says to me. "See that? A genuine man who eats motherfuckin' pussy. I need to get my shit warmed up before the main event, you know what I'm sayin'?"
I nod.
"Anyway, I wake up in the middle of the night."
"When is this?"
"This is like..two years ago. So I hear these sounds. And I'm like: that's my window opening! So I wait there in my bed and here comes this ex-boyfriend of mine and he's like gettin' in bed with me and shit and I'm all kicking the stuffed animals off the bed—" [Katie is like 40 years old] "—and I fucking dragged that fucking sex fiend out of my room, down this little hallway that's up there, and to the top of that set of stairs you see right there. Fucker was like, 'Ahhhhh!' and I threw that rapist down the stairs. He yelled 'Ahhhhh!' before I threw him down the stairs—I'll never forget that."
"What did he say after you threw him down the stairs?"
"He didn't say nuthin'. He was paralyzed from the neck down and he just made these gurgling sounds. I called 911 and they took his ass to the hospital."
"What happened to him?"
"He's still there, gettin' spoon-fed by nurses unable to move his body because that's what happens when you try to rape Big Kate. Motherfucker. I had half a mind when I went to the bottom of them stairs to put my foot on his neck and finish off that motherfucker."
We're all cracking up.
"Do you know how much this motherfucker likes to eat pussy?"
The Marine puts his hand on Kathy's.
"I mean, we didn't even fuck the first seven times we fucked."
"Tell 'im, boo—tell him how you like to eat the bush."
The Marine just blushes and smiles.
"Don't get all shy on me. You eat pussy, don't you?" Kathy asks me.
"Of course, Big Kate, I'll suck your tampon out of your while you're on your period."
She pauses for a second, then cracks up, then says, "We'll have to try that!"
We all exhale.
"My man is so protective. He's not allowed in the Inferno anymore."
"Why not?"
"Oh, some guy was drinking with me—just a friend, like you—and he wasn't flirting with me or anything—nothing like that. But this guy leans over the bar to pick up our next round of shots and as he leans over that shitty pathetic bar of theirs, his arm grazes my arm, and my man here—he gets very angry—he reaches behind the bar before that fat Inferno bartender could do anything about it and he clocks the guy in the face with a bottle."
"No," the Marine says, "that's not why. It's 'cause he kept bumming cigarettes and I thought it was disrespectful."
"Like I'm bumming cigarettes from you right now, Katie?"
The Marine says, "What kind of man doesn't have his own cigarettes?"
And I say, "What kind of bottle was it? Did you hit him with an Absolut Peppar?"
And we all start laughing.
"That never happened," I say.
Kathy and the Marine are falling off their chairs, looking at me, laughing.
"Bitch," I say, "shut up and give me another cigarette."
Kathy gives me one and we smoke, and drink, and even raise a glass for her ex-boyfriend who is eating blueberry cobbler through a tube down at Brattleboro Memorial as we fucking speak.
Coda: A week later, at the restaurant she got fired from and that I quit on my second day, I saw Katie there, at the bar in the Backside Cafe, with her new new boyfriend—not the recovering alcoholic Marine, but a New Jersey fisherman.
The redhead waitress who trained me (I think her name was Sarah) was back there working—she was like the only person in Vermont or New Hampshire who would work for such a shit wage and shit hours with such shit customers and such backstabbing cocksuckers for bosses. I mean except for Sunday brunch, the place was always empty. The only thing good about the place was the owner could make a mean hamburger.
So this New Jersey fisherman—who did drink—was there with Katie and you could see in his eyes that he was trying to work out whether me and Big Katie had ever been sexual. I didn't care if he knew that or not. I paid all my attention to him and not to Katie to ease his worries that I was going to reel in his new girlfriend—which was not the case. He figured this out pretty quickly and me and Big Katie and the fisherman are all laughing about how fucking funny life is and I get to know the guy and then I really turn on the charm—I can really make people feel good when I decide to—I told him grandly that we would miss Big Kate but if she had to go, I didn't know a finer gentleman to take her away from us. Of course after that he insisted on buying me a drink.
47
I went out and got even more drunk for like a week.
The first day of that week, which was the next day after my dinner at Big Katie's, Tiny Paul Bunyan calls me on the phone over and over and over.
I finally pick up and say, "We've got nothing to do with each other stop calling me."
Five minutes later he's knocking on the downstairs door of the house that I live in. I sneak down the stairs and see his pudgy butt standing there and I'm like what is my criminal ex-boss doing at my house??? I make the mistake of opening the door and I discover that the only reason he came to my house was to yell at me..and even when I'm on your payroll you're not paying for the right to yell at me. If you're not paying me anymore at all, then you can get the fuck off my porch.
He says: "That letter to my role model, that letter to my wife..that's out of bounds, man!"
To which I precisely conveyed these words: "Fuck you, fuck your role model, fuck your wife..you asking me to pirate Adobe Creative Suite..that's out of bounds, so yeah, I let 'em know. Bet your wife made you sleep on the couch last night."
He steps closer to me.
"No sex for Tiny Paul Bunyan!"
"You stay away from my wife!"
"I've never been near your wife!"
"Well don't email her!"
"I'll do whatever the fuck I want. I'd email your fucking kids if they had an email address!"
"You're fucking threatening my kids?!"
"There was no threat there! There was no threat there. What you need to do is a) develop some critical listening skills, and b) Just fucking watch yourself when you're around town."
"What is that supposed to mean? 'Cause it sounds a lot like a threat."
"It's not a threat. See (a), above: develop critical listening skills."
"So what are you saying?"
"What I'm saying is this is a small town and if I happen to see you out and about with your friends or your lawyer or your stockbroker or your kids, I'm gonna tell 'em what Daddy does for work—fire people who refuse to steal software for his rinky-dink business."
"You say a thing to my kids and you're gonna have an accident down by the railroad tracks."
"Now that's a threat. You're gonna what? Kill me on the Amtrak railroad tracks?"
I'm laughing.
"Do you know how many people just heard you say that? You fucking faggot. All these neighbors around here..they're just sittin' inside waiting for this to escalate enough for them to call the cops. And when they get here you want me to have six, seven witnesses to you saying I'm gonna have an accident by the railroad tracks? Why don't you get the fuck off my porch before you say something else you might regret."
Fucker is sweating. You can see Tiny Paul Bunyan's tiny heart pounding out of his chest. And I'm not proud to tell you that seeing him that way made me very happy.
I yelled him off the porch and down the street (cussing the fuck out of his lingually remedial ass—cussing his pudgy butt back into his Subaru, continuing to cuss until he closed himself inside his little blue cocoon. Then I continued to cuss at that motherfucker because I don't like it when ex-bosses show up at my door.
He starts his car and I figure I can get on with my day so I head back to the house in bare feet and then the next thing you know, trash can faggot is right behind me at my door.
"Have you ever sued your employer before?"
"What??"
"Is this like what you do, move from job to job and file lawsuits? Is that how you make your money?"
"No!!"
"No wonder we had such a hard time getting a reference on you."
"The reason you couldn't get a reference is my last boss can't set up his phones without help—he hasn't been getting voicemail for like six months! And let me remind you that you couldn't set up your phones without me, either! I gave you his fucking email address..did you ever try to write the guy? Of course you didn't. Because you can't write. You can't write an email that sounds like it was written by a grown-up. Go ahead: look back in your email. My old boss's email address is in there—I gave it to you when I gave you his phone number. Write him! Ask him if I ever sued him. You two have a lot in common, actually. Neither of you has the brainpower to write a coherent sentence in your native language. Yet you're both big-deal CEOs of five-person companies and you can't even set up your own fucking voicemail—nor retain employees who can! And please recall I worked for free for you over the weekend to get the new phone system working so that your piddly drop-ship company would be able to take orders on Monday. I worked, and worked, and worked until every aspect of that phone system was installed—voicemail, menu system, different ringer delays for different kinds of calls, forwarding to your goddamn cell phone—I did it all, and not even a thank you. Recall this: when you found out I had worked over the weekend you scowled at me and said, 'You know Trash Can Inc. doesn't pay overtime,' and I said, like a simple fucking human being, 'I just wanted to make sure we had phones today.' Because I wanted us to be able to answer the phone when customers called to we could take orders and make money. And you were all like, 'Ok, just so you know we don't pay overtime.' When I worked at Mead Research, I was sick one day, and I get a call from one of the VPs, Alan Huber, a guy who always had my back and I always had his—a concept you know nothing about. Alan called me at home one day and said a particular system wasn't working. I went into the office, coughing, in my pajamas, and sat at my desk for the five minutes it took to restart the system. I was sick as a dog. I didn't go in because I had to, I did it because I'm a team player—and you should know that corporate America rewards a team player like an mob enforcer rewards an errant gangster in Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead—by shooting a bullet up your ass. Are you with me 'cause you look a bit confused. Hello!? Tiny Paul Bunyan? Are you with me?"
"Stop calling me Tiny Paul Bunyan!"
"Anyway, TPB, there was bullshit that happened at Mead Research, sure, but never at any large company I worked for was there the level of bullshit present at Trash Can Inc. and the other small companies I helped. Alan Huber, highly paid Mead Research VP, treated me like a human being. You, Michael Asshole, aka Tiny Paul Bunyan, CEO of four-employee loser company Trash Can Inc., aren't even familiar with the words please and thank you."
I clapped twice, like you would to a dog.
"Good luck. Get off my porch. Bon voyage, motherfucker!"
(That's what Al Pacino says to Robert De Niro in the movie Heat and ever since I saw it, I always wanted to say that to somebody.)
Michael stood there looking like a camel with drool coming out its mouth.
No response.
What can he say? He has the lingual skills of a chimpanzee.
And that's part of the absurdity of the fact that I'm still speaking: I'm like a cat playing with a mouse—I'm having a great time; unfortunately, you're dead.
Tooler later told me she heard yelling on the porch and was afraid to come out of her room and all I could think about was how delicate Tooler's pussy must be, given her delicate face. She had cheeks that turned red when it was cold, or when she was embarrassed, and I imagined that same peach/pink skin on her inner lips and I wanted to run my fingers along it, lick it, kiss it, love it in every way.
"I would lick your pussy for 30 minutes."
"How about five?"
And then I filed an order with the police saying TPB can't come on the property where I live, and the police hand delivered the order to him at work.
You better believe I went to Whit's that day and drank all day. He rushed up to me like he was going to fight me when I answered "Are you really going to sue me?" in the affirmative..haha..that guy was really scared. I hope he gets hit by a bus. No wait, I'm channeling my Deepak Chopra: I hope he becomes a millionaire and feels more and more like a Lord of Brattleboro, served loyally by his minions, selling Trash Cans to Google while stealing Adobe software and feeling proud as fuck about it.
I know why people don't like me—it's because I call them on their shit.
And I had just started to live there, have my place there, meet people I like. But my job fell apart because I drank and reported my boss to Adobe for cheating, then my boss came by my house to have a yelling match? This is after the shooting at the grocery store..for all I know khaki-shorts-bunchy-butt Mr Brattleboro Himself is as crazy as those old fucks who shot each other in the head. "Drop ship"?—so, basically, that means you don't make anything (except phone calls). The police report was an order banning him coming within five-hundred feet of my apartment. My boss probably shit his Jordache jeans when the officer approached him in front of his remaining two employees, and I bet he threw something once the officer left. That's the kind of company I would never put on my résumé—I have a couple of those—they're such pieces of shit companies that if I were a hiring manager, it would look bad that a candidate ever worked for them. You'd only take a job there if you were really desperate.
I wanted to kill that guy, and I told that to the admitting nurse at one of my Refuge stays, which were not that far in the future. She asked me if I had a plan and I said I would stalk him through the woods on one of his fabled hikes and shoot him. She asked me if I had a gun and I said no so they didn't worry about my plan too much.
But I do think think this planet would be better off without certain people. My tenth grade math teacher. Some people I've encountered at work. But I would never actually kill anyone. I turn my anger inward, so the only person I'd ever get to kill is me. My general belief is that others deserve happiness but I do not—I deserve suffering. People who are CEOs of companies tend to believe the opposite.
Anyway I'm glad I don't work in an office anymore—I can think of a handful of damaged, unmedicated people who have never been to therapy that I can easily imagine coming into the office with an assault rifle and doing that classic thing that we Americans do.
Does anyone think of how our sicknesses are related? It seems obvious to me that sensitive, defensive, psychotic people like me exist because of lying, manipulative, borderline personality people like my father and many of my bosses.
You know what I'm saying? I'm not crazy in isolation—my family, my workplace, my world is crazy too.
And I'm as full of shit as Tiny Paul Bunyan. What about that night I went to the new Metropolis and got drunk, walking out with their bathroom poster rolled up down the back of my pants..just stealing it for the sake of stealing it and then throwing it away in a Refuge trash can. Or what about stealing that twenty dollars from the Professor's wallet? What about the many, many times I've driven drunk? I'm just as much a scumbag as TPB—maybe worse.
That night I couldn't go to sleep because of abdominal/back/side pain. I knew what it was. The next day I calling Gretchen for help.
"I have kidney stones. I'm passing one."
"Oh, baby! I'm in Amherst. I'll call Tom to pick you up."
So Tom, my weird crush Gretchen's husband, picked me up in their car (which was also a Subaru—everyone in Brattleboro drives the same Subaru!) and he took me to Brattleboro Memorial. Poor guy. He worked from home but still. He waited with me in the hospital until they took be back to the ER and was more than happy to wait even longer. I told the miniature saint:
"No, thank you. I'll be alright."
And Gretchen picked me up that night and took me to dinner at like a Peruvian restaurant or something. It was such a special occasion for her to be able to take care of me, and as codependent or whatever kind of sick we were, it was great to be taken care of—even by someone who truly scared me. Dinner was great, Gretchen was kind, she paid for dinner, and got me safely home. The things a friend does—maybe I just couldn't recognize it.
The doctor, after he did an MRI or X-ray or whatever the fuck he did, said it was a small stone.
It was not a small stone. I've had kidney stones before. A kidney stone is usually so small (the size of a grain of sand) that you don't even feel it coming out once it gets to your penis but I felt this fucker coming out of mine—it was a quick sharp feeling, something like throwing up a razor blade. Also, these "stones" are not smooth like a stone washed clean by eons of water bathing it in a Caribbean sea. No. They are rough like coral, their outsides covered with spiked protrusions that don't feel so good scraping along the insides of your urethra. So, no, it was not a small stone.
And to the radiologist who said it was a small stone and to the urologist who didn't give me enough Vicodin to last until I passed it: the next time I pass a kidney stone, you two are getting on your knees and you are gonna suck that stone right out through my motherfucking cock. I hope I stated that in clear, unambiguous language.
That night and the next night I took Vicodin to sleep and it worked—I slept all day. Vicodin is such a great feeling, almost like the beginning of cumming, but as you nap..that's probably what cats feel like all the time. Then days later I was barely able to walk to the Hotel Pharmacy to refill my prescription, the pain was so intense. And when I got my refill, I bought a bunch of cheap DVDs at the pharmacy counter, some entertainment mag, and I bought a bottle of water and sat in a chair at the end of one of the aisles, facing the pharmacy counter cash registers and workers, and they knew I had a kidney stone, and I took my pill as directed, and they gave me knowing looks, and I just sat there for a while hurting like hell, putting off standing up as long as possible.
Gretchen drove me to the urologist for my followup appointment. The nurse has me piss in a bag and says:
"You have A LOT of blood in your urine."
And I was like, "Well, most of what you're seeing is beet juice."
They don't give me enough Vicodin to finish the cycle of the stone and I know I'll start drinking again to quell the pain. Gretchen and I were standing side by side at the desk when they gave me the urine strainer and the cute little receptionist hopefully encouraged me to "Have fun!" using it! Gretchen and I both laughed. And of course everyone assumed we were together. Gretchen and I talked about this, and it bugged me that she was enjoying it too much. If you looked at the picture above, you know that no strainer was necessary to catch this stone. In fact it was months later when it finally came out and I had stopped straining by then but as you might imagine I had no difficulty in locating it.
One day I was crossing Elliot Street and Alyssa (co-owner of the new Metropolis where I became a shithead for drunkenly stealing their poster)..anyway Alyssa stops her car and she looks like someone's died and she says:
"I messed up, Matthew—I really messed up."
"What happened, Alyssa?"
"Oh," she breathes.
She looks mortified. She's actually about to cry.
"I was composing this text and I accidentally sent it to Gretchen. And it was about—and I hope you don't take this personally—but it was about how I think Gretchen like hangs on you..like too much..like..kind of stalks you. And I was going to send it to my friend but I didn't realize I was already in a conversation with Gretchen and I feel terrible and—" she puts her hand on her chest "—I don't want to be the cause of any problems between you two and I like you as customers and friends and you're two of our most regular customers and I just feel..I'm so sorry Matthew."
"Alyssa," I say. "You're worrying way too much about this. One, it's not going to hurt me and Gretchen. That text is going to have zero effect on me and Gretchen's relationship."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm absolutely sure. Two, Gretchen and I are not going to stop being customers at your bar, ok—that's not going to happen. Because I'll be there—which means Gretchen will be there. So don't worry about that. And three—this isn't going to hurt your friendship with me, certainly—I happen to agree with everything you said." I laugh. "And Gretchen is stalking me, so that's good feedback for her to get."
"But you don't think she'll stop being friends with me and Alan because of it?"
"No! I tell Gretchen she's stalking me all the time. I yell at her to leave me alone. I tell her awful things like she behaves like a dog and she doesn't give a fuck! She's not going to change her relationship with you because of this because—and don't tell her I said this, but—she's clueless. In her life. She's still living like she's 16, or 24, or somewhere in there, and she's not even going to be consciously aware of that text message like you or I would be so I'm telling you, Alyssa, put your car in gear and forget this ever happened because you will never feel any effects from this except the ones you make yourself."
"Ok, I just feel so bad."
"Seriously, don't. You didn't break anything."
"Are you sure, 'cause that's what I'm worried about."
"I know. And I am sure. Everything is exactly as it was before. Trust me."
"Are you going to the bar?"
"Yeah."
"Ok," Alyssa says. "I'm parking then I'll be right there."
"Good, we'll have a drink together."
"I'd like that," Alyssa says. "I'm glad I ran into you."
"Me too. Don't worry!" I yell as she drives off.
I am good for a thing or two once in a while.
In therapy Eve Fox says:
"I admire your integrity but I wish you had done what was best for you."
"And you think that is?"
"Keep your job so you can live."
"Well," I say. "At the end of the day..at the end of my life..how am I going to feel if I steal one more copy of Adobe Photoshop. Who will that make me? And if I'm unhappy with who I am, then how is that what's best for me?"
Drinking at Metro with my G&T and my bottle of Vicodin on the bar. Gretchen asks me if I'm taking those as prescribed.
"Yes, of course."
I pop another Vicodin. Swallow it with gin.
Gretchen reaches for the prescription bottle and I slap her hand.
Alyssa is tending bar. She gives me a look, then looks at Gretchen, then back at me. I give her a look that says: See?
Gretchen brings her bag around the front of her chair and unpacks a whole special cheese and cracker plate she has brought to the Metro to please me.
I'm like: "Alyssa, is this ok with you?"
Alyssa's all: "Oh, yes, she cleared it with me."
I hate when Gretchen controls the situation by serving me my favorite food, but I eat it anyway because cheese, crackers, Kalamata olives, and wine is basically my favorite meal. And Gretchen's taste is impeccable: she brings three cheeses and they're all amazing.
I'm talking to a woman on the other side of me and she asks what I do.
I say: "Oh, I lost my job, so basically..you're lookin' at it!"
Gretchen gets worried. But mostly she gets offended—you know? She's concerned but more than that she's mad and hurt because I didn't tell her first, and we're supposed to be friends. I told a stranger before I told her—that's the problem.
There were signs of passing of the rare creature known to you and me only as Spots—text on the chalkboard outside that said Coming Soon New York Chef Spots Whoever New Menu By and then Spots is there behind the bar for a few minutes and I get to see what a Spots looks like and it turns out that—in every movement, in every choice of words, in every efficiency of her dealings with Alan and Alyssa, in her body and in her face and in her expressions and in her voice and in everything she does with it—Spots is the most wonderful thing I've seen in a year.
48
I kept thinking about applying at the City Tavern, this shitty bar at the end of Elliot Street—the bar where I had met Aaron, the quantum physicist cum organic farmer cum bong constructor—but every time I went to the City Tavern to apply for a job, they were closed..not a good sign for a potential employer. When I finally did catch them when they were open, I ordered a gin and tonic and bantered with the bartender until I got up the courage to ask her if they were hiring.
She looked around. There were three people in the bar: her, me, and a guy on the wall behind me drilling holes and setting up tables and unwrapping new chairs like as if, suddenly, out of Nowhere, Goddamn Fucking Vermont, huge crowds of college-aged drinkers were doing to descend from the slopes of White Mountain and fill the City Tavern.
"Who's that?" I ask the bartender.
"That's Fozzie Bear. He's the owner."
"Fozzie Bear? Like the Muppet?"
The guy answers me: "Yes. Like the Muppet. As you can see, Candace—" Candace waves, with a bar rag in her hand. "—Candice makes the wraps, she wipes down the fridges, she pours the drinks, she operates the speed rail in a manner that Dagny Taggart would be proud of—"
"Oh, you've read Atlas Shrugged?" I say.
"Yes I've read Atlas Shrugged."
He says it like I'm a pure fucking idiot asking an idiot pure fucking question.
"Are you a fan?" I ask.
The man stops drilling.
"No, I am not a fucking fan. But I get your pun. Speed rail. Railroad. Atlas Shrugged. Dagny Taggart. So you've obviously read the book—are you a fan?"
"No," I say. And it was his pun, but I keep that to myself.
"You don't think it should be kept on the classics shelf?" Fozzie Bear asks.
"No."
"Good," he says. "Because if you had come in here asking for a job as a fan of that piece of shit book, I would have taken your fat ass out back and—see this drill?—I would have drilled a hole right there in the side of you fat stomach to remind you that Ayn Rand is a know-nothing piece of shit who basically wrote a thousand-page romance novel masquerading as the thinnest piece of propaganda ever to be called 'literature.' "
I laugh. "I fully agree, actually."
"Well it doesn't matter if you agree or not because I can't offer you a job. The day Candy leaves, you can make the wraps and run the speed rail and haul kegs up and down that stairway there. Candice, give him another G&T on me and get his information."
"Thank you," I say, and Fozzie Bear goes back to his construction project.
Candice puts a napkin beside my drink and then holds an index finger in the air, laughs at herself, and brings me back a pen. I write my information on the napkin, drink my drink, and leave, supposing that that was a Brattleboro job interview.
That was the last day I saw the City Tavern open my whole year in Brattleboro. I heard Candace moved to Eugene, Oregon to study to become a shaman, so theoretically I could have made the wraps and run the speed rail, but the only problem was that the City Tavern just didn't have any customers.
Also, if I had thought ahead, I would have known that bartender wasn't the best job for an alcoholic..but I didn't know myself that well at the time. I was still playing the game, the game where I pretend I'm in control of it, that I could work in a bar and not drink. It's sort of an insane optimism. 'Cause you need the job, and if you're in a town where half the jobs a guy can get are working inside a bar, you have to believe that somehow it's going to work—when the farthest place you need to be is a bar.
When I applied to work at the hipster grocery store, the Co-op (the place where the wine manager shot the general manager in the head on behalf of everyone who ever worked for that GM on account of him being a complete asshole to everyone he ever came in contact with)..right, anyway, when I applied to work there, at the organic/hippie/peacenik grocery store, they had a question on their application. It said: "Can you commit, at the time of your hiring, to work at least two of these three: weekends, holidays, late nights?" Their form suggested I respond with a yes or no answer but I was not just some idiot who had never worked a day in my life. (I was a different type of idiot.) I wrote in the margin:
I will commit, at the time of my hiring, to work any hours you give me, including weekends, holidays, late nights, and any other hours you require, if you will commit to me, at the time of my hiring, that you will give me full time (40+) hours every week so that I will meet the requirement of being a full-time employee and be eligible for the benefits your company offers.
Naturally they never wrote me back. They want some high school student who thinks (rightly, given the economic world they grew up in) that all they can ever hope to get, even from what claims to be an upstanding company, is twenty hours a week as a cashier-slash-janitor, with no benefits, in a work environment where the senior-citizen management shoot each other in the head, inside the store, over a personality conflict.
It's so important to the middle-class patrons of every hipster grocery store in Brattleboro, Eugene, Portland, Tucson, New Orleans, etc. that they have fair trade coffee—buying it makes them feel like responsible consumers. How about refusing to shop there when the most they'll ever give any employee is thirty-five hours a week so they can say they offer health insurance for their employees. And they do. Their full-time employees get health insurance. It's just that full-time starts at forty hours a week. And no one gets forty hours a week.
It's the same thing from the top politicians. Like your President will say, "No more boots on the ground in Syria." Then they do an air attack on Syria.
O-k..uh-huh.. (Wink wink, nod nod.)
Why not just say, "We're starting a war in Syria." Or: "We don't offer health insurance, punk, unless you're the CEO." Just say it. Just say what's true. Don't give me all this yes, we offer xyz when certain unfulfillable conditions are met. You don't offer it. You just don't offer it.
And for a company to state their expectations of you?—perfectly societally acceptable.
But for an employee—a person—to expect something from a company?—it's almost universally considered rude, irrational, an obvious mistake.
Of course the hippy-esque-branded Brattleboro Food Co-op didn't call me for an interview. Because in the same context they were asking me to work weekends, holidays, and late nights, I asked them for full-time hours so I could make enough money to pay my rent. That type of action is unacceptable from an employee of an American corporation.
I've worked at incredibly rich hedge funds on the east coast, I've worked at tiny diners in the Arizona desert. Corporations don't give a fuck about their employees—it's just one guy at the top trying to get rich off everybody else's backs.
49
Gretchen called, and instead of hanging up and running out of my third-floor apartment and hunting down Spots like a dog, declaring to her that I could tell from one two-line interchange with her that she was the most interesting person in Brattleboro (besides me) and telling her we should fuck and become inseparable, be the best-matched couple in this odd town of eleven thousand.
Instead I took Gretchen's invitation, because I am an idiot.
I spent hours hanging out with Gretchen by the river in hidden areas by defunct restaurants (Gretchen mentioning the rocky area below the bridge saying she used to hang out there with her friends and take black and white photos). Then we sat on a bench in an open area where two roads joined together to make Main Street and there was tons of traffic and Gretchen remarked that someone she knows will see us, and it will be a scandal. I didn't give a fuck, and I thought: why do you give a fuck? If you don't want scandal, then don't invite scandal by sitting here with me. And if you do want scandal, then don't complain about it when it comes about from your very actions.
I sobered up for a week or so.
I went to see a lawyer about a filing a wrongful termination suit and I was riding my bicycle past crack houses with people sitting on the porches. They scared me, black and white, and I wondered if I had lost my edge—maybe my days of hiking up to Harlem to smoke crack with black guys were over. But I've spent enough time around drugs and drug dealers and drug users to know that a friendly encounter can turn into you getting shot over a minor misunderstanding—and minor misunderstandings are constant among people on drugs. Something in me wanted at least physical safety now. I knew that walking into a crack house was dangerous for anyone who had cash in their pocket—those motherfuckers didn't care, they'd rather rob you than sell you drugs, it was so much less tedious for all of us.
I talked with the lawyer. He said unless another employee quit or got fired and was willing to testify with me, that we could never win the case.
My Vicodin ran out and the urologist wouldn't prescribe me more (he just never returned my messages—I got his messaging service, she asked if it was an emergency and I was like have you ever heard of kidney stones—she was like well I'll see but he doesn't take calls on weekends—How fucking convenient for him! I say, and hang up) even though that kidney stone was in me for like two and a half months. It was the biggest stone I'd ever passed and I couldn't get appropriate pain medication—and if you think I'm just a drug addict seeking Vicodin then you've never had a kidney stone..It's mad pain, bro..I've read message boards where women who've had kids and kidney stones overwhelmingly say that kidney stone pain is worse. That's hard for me to believe, but that's the report from at least some women. And if you go back to Libby's theory of pain, it makes sense: childbirth pain normally isn't telling your brain there's something wrong where kidney stone pain is.
The stress of joblessness and just every stress that I could conjure overcame me, and my side still hurt from the kidney stone, so I drank a glass of wine at Frankie's (voted best late-night food in B-boro!..no doubt..it's the only late-night food in B-boro). Jane is there drinking wine and I move over to her booth and we share a glass together. I talk about my writing. I say:
"I'm going to publish a book."
And Jane nods, half-aware, and we have another glass of wine and another and another just to kill the pain. See, yes, addicts are more likely to misuse pain medicine, but when we need it, like when we have a kidney stone, if you under-prescribe the medicine, or if we overuse it, we're going to manage that pain somehow, just as anyone would—and in my case, with kidney stone pain, that meant relapsing on alcohol, which for me is much worse than if I had been able to get more Vicodin from my urologist to get me through the passing of the stone. I don't drive on Vicodin, I don't write crazy emails to my boss on Vicodin, I don't buy Vicodin on the street when I run out of it. You know? You don't want to fuck with Vicodin if you're an addict, but for me, at least, it's much better to manage kidney stone pain with painkillers than alcohol.
I left Frankie's and went to the upscale pizza place (Fireworks). There I had a glass of wine, and a glass of wine, and a glass of wine, reading Jurassic Park all the while—it's one of my long-time favorites, a comfort book for me.
That night Gretchen came over and I was drunk. I was listening to Cat Stevens, The Wind, on repeat and crying. I was so drunk that I didn't want to tell her I was drunk and I didn't tell her and she either didn't know or pretended not to know. I got really friendly and physical with her, pulling her onto my lap and kissing her face and smelling her breasts and touching her body everywhere my hands could reach.
She was trying to relate to me on the level of all the Cat Stevens music she had grown up with, when she got this certain album, etc, but all it did was remind me how much older than me she was. Later, she always referred back to this evening and how happy she was that I was so physical with her. I never told her the truth which is that if I wasn't drunk I would have never been that physical with her. I mean I wouldn't have had a married woman sitting on my lap and kissing her neck and shit. That was the alcohol.
One night, holding hands and legs with Gretchen at the Central American restaurant while her husband was at the table. He was at the head, Gretchen and I were along one side. Gretchen was the drunk one that night. I tried to split up from them and go to a bar while they were supposed to go home but Tom must have let her go because next thing I know Gretchen's turning up at the bar without her husband. And me trying to hide my drinking from one of the cooks at the Central American restaurant—Gretchen's friend Castro.
You don't owe your sobriety to those people, but there is an accountability that's broken when you start drinking again.
I remember coming back from the grocery store with wine in a bag and seeing an AA person on the way (someone from the 7am meeting I used to go to all the time). We stood in the street talking and I hoped she didn't see the wine in my bag—I held it high against my chest to hide the bag's contents. Finally she went on her way and I got down to my new profession: drinking wine and eating cheese and smoking cigarettes by the front window of my apartment. I discovered one bottle of wine wasn't going to be enough for me, but when I got downtown I saw that there was no way to get to the Food Co-Op anymore.
The whole street, the creek, the bridge, and multiple parking lots were now Noah's flood—full-sized tree trunks were flowing down a creek that was normally six inches deep.
CNN was there. Brattleboro got its 15 minutes.
And for all the wrong reasons. People died. Houses floated away. Businesses flooded. First the fire then this—it was a bad year for Brattleboro.
That morning I walked to the Co-op at 11am for wine and cheese and when Gretchen called me back downtown, the way I walked earlier was flooded like a lake. I hung out with Gretchen, both of us in rain hear, and watched the flooding with the rest of Brattleboro from the top level of the municipal parking lot. We waded across an intersection and waved at her dad—who was her next-door neighbor—Gretchen's friends and neighbors seeing us and us both wondering if that would get back to her husband. The water was brown with mud—you couldn't tell how deep it was. It was hard to understand, since I hadn't been here watching it, how the path I had taken two hours earlier to the grocery store was now completely a river. The trickling creek where I used to meditate was now a Biblical-style river with cars and trucks and huge boulders and pieces of earth rushing down it.
Now here's a sad story. An AA woman—an amazing speaker, a strong person—lost her son during that flood. He was around before the flood, and then, after the flood, he was just never around. Ever. Again. The theory is that he went into the woods and took hallucinogenic mushrooms, then couldn't get back home after the flood rose so quickly. He was never found. His mother worked at the Refuge and she was like a pristine spiritual master through it all. She's a person I'd like to be more like. I can't say I'm in awe of too many people, but I am in awe of the way that woman handled the loss of her son, at least the public side that I saw.
When I want back to my apartment from seeing the flood, wineless, I saw a guy carrying an assault rifle and it took me a minute to remember that you can do that in Vermont. I took another way home because it scared me. I had specific fears that he was after me, and I didn't question the illogic of these fears until much later.
One day, hiking to the top of Wantastiquet and looking over the view, looking at the tiny town, I thought: I can do this, I can be homeless here, I can eat meals and sleep at churches, climb this mountain daily, lose weight, and get to this mountaintop. That's all I need for my spirituality, to stand here and look over the peaks of southern Vermont, making a whistle with my hands, calling to a bird that's circling, circling, and it flies right over me to see where the whistle comes from.
And it was like a premonition. Before I was ever admitted to the Refuge, I used to ride my bike around the grounds, just watching kids play and seeing people swim in the pool. The only reason I even knew the Refuge existed was that I'd applied for a security guard job there when I first arrived in Brattleboro. Now it was late summer turning into autumn and I was drawn to that place like a magnet—on the most subconscious level, I knew that was where I was headed.