Timbermedia | Novel

16
T r e a t M e

I'm alone and I'm surprised to be here and part of me is relieved and part of me is disappointed
and part of me is confused and I don't know what I'm going to do.
I can either leave or stay. I can either leave or stay?
Leaving means going back to addiction and facing either death or jail.
Staying means leaving addiction and facing something that is unknown to me.
I'm not sure which scares me more.

James Frey
A Million Little Pieces

My dear old Aunt, to this day is in the market and on the look-out, for a really good treatment center for me: one that fixes broken parts, beyond them ever breaking again - which by the way doesn't exist, or I'd have already attended, documented and be referencing it right about now, thus writing an entirely different story.

I went to this place one time, Las Encinas Hospital in Pasadena, California, paid for entirely by the Musician's Union in Hollywood. They had this offshoot called MAP (Musician's Assistance Program) that I somehow hitched my carcass to. One month: $34,180.38, and that was in American funds! How I swung that - applying for it (legally and legibly) making it there in the horrid condition I was in, I'll never know. No small feat, I can assure you. Actually, I know exactly how I got there, Carrie drove me. I'm sure she was more than happy to finally get her house back to normal.

Check in time, my thoughts against me, and the very worst enemy I know; sensing how this spin dry cycle of bandaging would never work, still seeing myself as some mapless unchartable landscape, which who, up to this date, has invariably looked good on no one. Not for very long anyway.

First, they detox you, the worst of it lasts about 5 days (give or take seven or eight hours, but who's counting?) Once you graduate from that hell, they set you up in a cottage that a drunk and sluggish W.C Fields once inhabited - like this somehow lessens the pain and embarrassment of having landed your ass completely at less-than-glam-gloom-bottom-zero.

"Would you look at all the pretty foliage."

"Yes, that sure is lovely. Oh, is it time for another shot already? Why, how the time slips away 'round this delightful hideaway."

"Yessssireeeeee my chickadee. Care to join me at my table for din din this evening. I'll swing by your cabana, say around six-ish, perhaps a pre-dinner martooni, some canoodling... ?"

If memory serves, my imitations of that great performer (and drinker), W.C Fields, during group sessions, were not found funny by the instructors or nurses I tried to engage in overly personalized conversations. A few of them would have made great do-wah backup singers. They missed their calling, and I told them so, 'cause they sure weren't terribly gifted at putting me back together.

There's a swimming pool and a tennis court amidst your new friends who have also bombed out in the life parade - gang members, misfit fashion models who've cowarded off their runways, people who've just plain lost their footing and are lucky to have found a map to lead them here. There's doctors you call Barry, Doug and Drew, and a big old grand piano which was rumoured to be 'NOT FOR PATIENCE' (if one could even crawl or shuffle up, Thorazinely-speaking, to the main building to check it out.) I was told "Not to play it again, Tim," but I couldn't help but play...the piano OR with the on-duty attendant assigned to keep bored and wound-up patients from getting into mischief.

"I see, sooo no one's supposed to play it?" This I say while my hands glide over the keys.

"Um, that's right, it's only for show, no one really plays it. Uh, no one's supposed to play it." This, from the over-tired intern, armed, sadly, with only paper slippers and upside down name-tag.

"So, just what might this wondrous instrument, this mighty monster be here for then, if not to be played upon?" I'm king of the debating team and I'm racking up points.

He looks at his Mickey Mouse watch. I'm detaining him and he's going to have problems with me. He's also feeling the pressure as a few of my coddled contemporaries have now plopped themselves down on a nearby couch and to enjoy the exchange. They, also are as starved as I am for entertainment on these grounds.

"So, you're saying that even if I'm not disturbing anyone, even if the occasional passer-by says that I've brought some joy, some music into their pitiful, hopeless existence, that they wished I'd pounce on the keys more often, and even though this is clearly cathartic, dare I say, maybe an 'epiphany in progress', you're saying it's best that I..."

"Umm, well, look, I just work in..."

"No, no, my fine gentleman, you are doing a bully job. Yes, a bully fine job; you keep it up, it's good we've got you."

The accumulation of little stunts such as these and my mimicking of other inmates got me on 'Badminton Restriction' (tf#18) and dropped my sleepy-time-medicated-goodness down a notch for a few rough and tumble nights, this, if I remember correctly. I admit I took the 'rebellious' 'deviant' 'nature' routine a little too far when I cajoled a few of the more whacked patients to break into the grounds-shed and liberate multiple spray paint tins that seemed to have no other plans. We drew some wonderful red and silver illustrations of some of the meaner head nurses in compromising positions on the sides of a good many of the cottages.

I consider this recovery villa my 'Drug Kinder Camp' - as I like to call it - pretty much as good as it gets.

*Thought for the day: when seeking asylum (if one has in fact sunk so low) one shouldn't spend too much time being 'extra choosey' while on the search for an Addict-Recovery-halfway-house-treatment-facility; one must opt pretty much for the first thing that comes up. Certainly insurance or lack thereof is a concern, a relevant issue, but one has to take what's available, most often.

*On the whole, they were not a flexible lot, the counsellors and group leaders and such. They had to get unnecessarily (I felt) strict sometimes. "Art supplies back to the Play Room by 5:00 sharp!" Also, must remember to speak of that sick and sad, filthy cocoon of a place I had to hang my head at, 'Charlie Street', in Santa Ana. More desperate hours. And what about 'The Costa Mesa Ha-Cha-Cha'. Did I make that dance-number up? Did I perform it at an AA Memorial Day picnic? That can't be right. Why can't I remember?

Now, the one in Pomona, which was free, paid for by some state, was a very unrosey Pasadena; I learned that the hard way. Also, no piano, but Rodney King was enrolled there, though I was instructed not to speak with him, AND there was a rumour the place was once owned by Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and those brat cats. We'd hear stories from staff of how they'd come out with their lady friends to party, away from the eyes of Hollywood. They ended up just donating the place to people who would end up there as a result of doing too much of what THEY were doing there in the first place. Which is kind of neat, if you think about it. It's funny what things can end up turning into.

B u t t h e M o n s t e r amount of cash shelled out by the union for Tim to be placed in that bungalow of his own, I'm uncertain if it was put to good use or not. And I kick myself now for not having taken better notes and interviewing patients properly, but that might have made my stay even bumpier, as people say that's not the kind of stuff you videotape and document. I don't concur: the human condition is fair game. Did I get through anything there? Learn Life Lessons? Make changes in my behavior that would shield me from the devil, or keep me from engaging repeatedly in mercilessly self-sabotaging situations? AND will those lonesome lessons learned protect me in the real world on a day to day basis? Sadly, no. But there was consistency, a schedule I could stick to (mostly), innovative meal combinations (mostly) and a triumphant prop of hope in that old grand piano, the one I managed to tinkle on in my demonstratively all-too sobering medicated haze.

With hyena-like recollection creeping in, I can tap into events at any second, all senses, instincts plugged in at will, where I want my mind to go. Therein lies my talent, but again, what do you do with all of that? A participant in dripping honey judgment, those doctors in expensive cars who'd leave the facility each day, returning to plush and comfy abodes. Them with their hurried check marks on face-less charts, the billings and files, appointments and rushed phone calls and pages. "And send someone the bill, won't you?" cause I'm all fresh out, and those bastards, always so pre-occupied.

But Christmas eve was the worst.

Anyone in their right mind would be about a gazillion miles away from a place like that on such a carol-less night. God, no one wants that. No matter how low I might get, I'd never wish that on anyone.

Until you have spent Christmas in an institution, consider yourself fortunate to have escaped emotionally unscathed and untainted. No one NEEDS to put themselves through that.

No one.

The bunch of us ignored our assigned counsellor's orders, to "not get too close." We huddled affectionately around the glowing boob tube like kids at some crazy camp, our legs drooped over one another innocently on these not-too-terrible couches, eating no-name potato chips - our Christmas late night snack - and wished out loud that we were somewhere else, but knew deep down inside, that this was the safest place we could be.

It says here, "Mr. Masterson was discharged. He left the grounds Christmas morning, took a cab to downtown L.A, purchased drugs and returned to Las Encinas Hospital, proceeded to get high, refused testing..." I could go on, it's all here.
Was this some kind of cry for help?
Wasn't this just a couple days before you were to be released?

Yeah. Funny, huh? Those places have rules. I thought they'd let it slide. Actually, I don't know what I thought, now that I look back. Christmas day there was like death for me. Stupid families coming to visit their loved ones like some grotesque garden party. It was awful. I didn't really escape, I mean I had a kind of day pass, but on the application for the pass I may have fibbed about getting picked up and where I was going, and what I was up to, all that. That place wouldn't have any of my shenanigans. The union called and said "Toss him out of there." They said sorry, though, which was nice. But they ejected me. I had to pack up everything, all the patients watching me, whispering, rumours flying as to what really happened. So after a month clean and getting through, I was homeless, at the front gates, no one to pick me up. And it was Christmas day, which was nice...for some people...I guess. Dragging my suitcases through the neighbourhood, I caught glimpses of pretty little bungalows along the boulevard, families inside being thankful, their sentiments and thankful prayers, with dancing ornaments and carols drifting over the trees, and me, hating how everything stunk of fucking pine. Open drapes looked out onto me - the shut-out - an unwanted Christmas-less critter, forgetting how to love myself the more I shuffled along the street. Frightened of myself, scared by my own loneliness, hardly meeting eyes with a soul, even when they did speak to me. Unable to tell if I was dying from feeling or dying from not. It would have been a very pretty scene. If I wasn't me.

Wasn't there anyone you could call?

I just couldn't call Carrie. This was pretty much my last shot with her. God, she was getting proud of me. And Lainie and Melinda were years gone. And it would have killed Mom, I mean, she was dealing with her own bouts of losing life, between Ron's death and her own illness. I was totally on my own. I'd really done it this time. Hey, but I've had my share of poignant moments, though. I can say that. My sad escape, such a mess, all of it. Then there's the part about leaving pieces of my heart here and there. I should really go and find where everything got misplaced. Am I the only one who can save me from my sickness? Because there doesn't seem to be a cure or even a name for what I have. This - I'm guessing - doesn't help me in the 'feeling a part of things' department.

________________________________________________________________

tf#18: I played badminton a bunch of times and thought I was pretty good. Until it came time to actually play against other patients, my overconfidence retiring me to the gymnasium floor, scuffed and scabbed and bewildered by one too many players' schemes on my court.

17
H a i k u s f o r H o o l i g a n s / A G a z i l l i o n M i l e s f r o m K i n d a n d P r e t t y

Two letters (A & B) I should keep close as I would brass in my pajamas' pockets.

Note: Keep these 2 sonnets, of sorts, my hellish Haikus, in a designated pant's pocket. Maybe I'll look at them before I decide to use next time - Always looking for the unequivocator, something or someone to play the role of Saving Grace. You, the dummy never learning the eternal lesson, still looking in the direction of some female to save the day.

The clue of the sonnet / Planets of Regret deep in pockets

Who takes a cab to a soup kitchen?

A couple dozen grown men, a few women, waiting
milling about, fleas bounce off inconsistent light,
all outside the church and it's Saturday at 7:20 A.M,
far too early for anything to be going on, really.
I have been up all night injecting cocaine into
an overworked undecided bloodstream.
Lacking and empty again, so now I look towards
scrambled eggs, a needed nourishment, me needy as usual.

It's sad and wretched from the start and
here lie the dregs, the outcasts.
The broken ones up this early are desperate;
they haven't found a way to do it on their own,
to hunt, gather or collect properly;
they know they need to rely on something, someone else.

I am given a coupon, a ticket upon entering,
this my cathedral colonic, a weirdo ghost ride,
this fucked up Un-fair, my cleansing an amusement park
of tired sausages and watery coffee
not up to meeting the need, to give anyone energy.

There is fighting, always fighting; words of war over petty things; bikes tied outside, some dogs not meshing well,
many locked to fences outside, masters missing altogether,
someone looks at someone the wrong way,
wanting to fight so he knows he's still alive,
still has guts, no further reason,
he understands this right now.

A crazy lady with a shopping cart has delirium tremens,
a result of her own show gone badly,
and it's not helping my appetite,
but it's not hurting it either,
this because I can't feel to begin with.

And someone, is not handling this woman
in a manner she should be handled.
The one thing I am sure of is an
accelerated deathly remorseful nostalgic feeling
creeping up into me at this strange but free breakfast offering.

I have never worn a longer face,
my frown is to the grave. I show none of the teeth I have left.
If one person says one thing to me, or touches my shoulder,
I will start crying.
I will start crying because it would bring up a lot of things,
prompt me, this my triumphant return to this church where I recall walking hand in hand with Granny to that Sunday school I begged not to go to.
It's not funny, sometimes, things we revisit.
I am crazy alone and it touches everything I am.
No one to share in me. Once more, in a place
where people are at their bottom, a place I don't need to see again, but seem to choose to be, or so I'm told.

I say this is where I belong but I don't really think so entirely.
A place for me to be at my lowest, no one telling me to cheer up,
to put on a happy face.
I hate that. All this gloom and there's no soup in this soup kitchen and I'm
a thousand lonely lifetimes
and a trillion miles from kind and pretty.

When I get to the window, I give the girl my ticket,
nice unharmful girls, here, volunteering their time,
so they don't end up in selfish mode, pretty girls in younger days I would have flirted with.

But today I am painfully shy, even embarrassed,
a sad person with not much hope, all his things behind him,
gross, dishevelled, and I'm hoping they don't look right at me.

I take my eggs, white toast on paper plate, on green dirty tray
out to the park bench in front of the church.
We used to get cookies and sandwiches here after, sometimes even tea, just like the grown-ups.
Now, two homeless people are threatening each other,
loud curse words fly. I am in-between them,
I keep my head down - very down.

Please don't take notice of me,
don't ask me stuff,
to take sides or comment, I'm no good.
Or I was and don't remember.
I'm Johnny Rotten and I have nothing to offer.

It is 7:35 A.M now and I don't know how I came to be here
in this place of endings in this very early morning.
Nothing has gotten going yet.
The syringes in my pocket are startling my leg, so I get up and find a big blue plastic garbage bin to get rid of me and dispose my junkie tools.
I am hard-worn. (Hardware?)

Making my way off the too sparse grassy knoll,
I overhear someone is thinking of selling his watch,
another hears of a place to get shoes, more people prepping their unhelpful artillery,
their talk for the time,
and the day upcoming seems like
a scary daunting monster.

Better get back out on the playing field. My break is over.
The second thought if I missed something on the first one. You Dummy.

A Junkie's Tired Draining Lament

This is where the broken parts go

Tired of coming up empty
Tired of not appreciating the moments,
of what and who I have.
Tired of being afraid of the whole thing
I do not know what's up and I certainly don't know
what to do if I wasn't living where I am.
Who'd kidding who? I'd be dead.
I wish drugs away from me, but they run after me
and stop me from being good. It's their job.

Everyone needs a job.
I'm an impostor but I'd like to have friends
I just kind of feel alone, ya know?
Scratch that. I am very fucking alone and
this makes me feel like death.

Okay, time for a change, I mean a real change
from the style of life which I live.
No one is coming with me on this ride,
not for long anyway.
I'm tired.
Sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Tired of being so selfish.
Tired of being this scared,
Lonely and scared,
Tired of being chased.
So tired of feeling cheap - and that I don't matter.
Tired of being down, my soaring ups and spooky downs and
In the end Withdrawn.
Tired of lusting after those girls that are,
or might as well be,
imaginary, the 'wonderful shiny and alive unattainable.'
Tired of wishing time that is mine gone.
Tired of trying to hide things.
Tired of being an eyesore to myself and maybe others
Tired of being tied to looking over this shoulder,
Again with the being chased thing, the closing in thing.

I've completely exhausted myself.

There was a time when I was good, did better
didn't feel like I do now.
I don't know where or when that was, but it happened
I swear to God it did.

________________________________________________________________

These two perk ditties were written Christmas morning immediately after the author was ejected from a hospital in Pasadena once he'd made it to downtown L.A after walking all night, alone.

18
M a h l e r ' s E v e

A Wee Reminder of that Long & Confusing Youth - ( A W R of that L & C Y )

Part I
There were Two little Bears who lived in a Wood. They lived in a Tree when the weather was hot -
And one of them was Bad and the other was Good. And one of them was Good, and the other was Not.
Good Bear learnt his Twice Times One - Good Bear learnt his Twice Times Two -
But Bad Bear left all his buttons undone. But Bad Bears thingummies were worn right through.

A.A Milne
Now We Are Six

It is the evening of maudlin trickery. The Children of the Dark commence. An off-putting onslaught. Mephistopheles milks us for cookies. Dracula threatens a trick but ends up just pillaging the Smarties. Hockey Player Guy hovers around our open offering of sweet delights, reaches in and instantly we realize just how short we are on sundries, and well, everything.

Take take hate hate take hate take take hate hate hate.

"I can do this." If I say these words aloud, repeat slowly and add patience, they will empower me and assist in getting through the confusing and tougher times, up and over the hump. They don't.

The leaves rustling in our front yard announce the next contestant. One creepy kid advances up the steps alone, his elders wait in the shadows at the end of our sidewalk. He seems to be having some trouble. He's tripping over his spindly tail, or what's supposed to be a tail. I love this particular pauper because he's perplexed, muddled, knows not the precise 'process' in this extraction-of-candy mania. Also, his face is on backwards - his mask, I mean - though my initial image of a disfigured juvenile recluse, with withered face, is funnier. If I remember from experience, they don't make thos e polyurethane things so kids can breathe too swiftly. It's all one big sweaty, 'hear-your-own-erratic-amplified-breathing-while-trying-desperately-to-see-out-of-any-orafice-that-points-forward' sort of night you're in for, if you choose to don so gruesome a gabardine. The bewildered youngster eventually drags his carcass up to the door and instead of introducing himself and stating his needs, he looks up, way, way up. I see his attention is held by an owl caught and screaming in the eaves trough (trying to eavesdrop?) laughing with frisky dementedness (the Child, not the Owl). He appears to be some kind of Bear Thing and while I'm busy being scared he reaches down in his bag and offers me candy.

I'm racing back and forth, upstairs, downstairs, from front door up to the office computer. I'm scribbling impressions while I jog, as there's an inexhaustible amount of material here for caffeine boy in Oompa-loompa-ville, barely able to keep track of all the queer occurrences. Which thing to extract? Right now, the thing is at our front door and wants recognition and attention paid to him and what must be a Unicef box. (That, or some sort of dangling orange catheter attached to his holster.)

"God, it's me Margaret...I mean Tim...don't let me be that thing one can end up being after listening to too much Joni Mitchell. I want an out."

I Trick-or-Treated well into my twenties, way past my due-date. I'd disguise myself in a moth-eaten pillowcase and saunter through strangers' neighbourhoods begging for bon-bons. After a while it seemed easier to just sit in their cars until the startled lineage would have to take care of me. They gave away just about anything as long as I'd get out of their vehicle and off their property: Doritos, candy bars, cheques, vases, sport coats - whatever might have been lying around their foyer/vestibule area. See, that way, they came to me. Yet another event which has played a part in my accumulative low self-esteem; all I wanted was to be invited in to discuss the day's events and joke around in a family atmosphere. My true desires misconstrued through a pillow case and tell-tale footwear; my Balaclava-begging-for-bon-bons-outfit and withdrawal symptoms, lacking social finesse. I'll admit, the costumes were pretty shoddy the last couple outings ('The Shoddiness of Costumes' - an upcoming chapter?) Regrettably, it became more about the gifts I could acquire, rather than the enjoyment, or the art of the sport. In defence of the unnerved families, I may have missed the mark a little on the exact date, could have been a day or two early or late, though I'm fairly sure it was damn close to October 31st. Pretty close.

Mother shuffles slowly out from the kitchen, leans in close so she can overhear me ask the kids, "So, what are you all supposed to be?" There's five, no six of them. A few pipe up with their monster status:

"Hobo."

"Susan Sontag."

"Goblin."

"Pinchquilly."

This last one, a sinister and clearly saddened child, who's costume was but 3 spice racks glued unforgivingly to him, two candy-apples hammered to the top of his head (antennae, I guess), a light bulb jetting out of his mouth and pants made from a mildewed Maytag box. An instant image of his poor mother who couldn't get herself together to assemble a proper costume, and besides, was using a calendar from the Eighties, thinking she could save money. "Halloween's not for 6 days, Jackson, we'll get you something, lots of time left, don't you worry."

Before he gets sent out into the confusion, she instructs, "Godspeed, kid. Tell 'em you're a 'Pinchquilly', it will sound mystical."

Actually, Ma, it sounds kinda gay, but no matter.

One smartass interjects my way, "And what are you supposed to be, dufus-boy?" (tf#19) I'm caught off guard, my mind pre-occupied with fish sticks flaming in the oven, trips to the front door, in-putting tales of woe upstairs, and what movies I had lined up on my evening schedule, ones I'd pretend I'd been thrown off the set of, and inevitably cut out of. "I...ummm, well, uh, look you - easy on the charm there, Casper, I think your parental orb is calling you, run along...you little..." The best I could come up with costume-wise; a quickly invented a kind of Stephen Hawking sort of thing. In lieu of a real wheelchair, I've got myself set up in a shopping cart with a dining chair in it, and have slunk into a terribly cheap blue suit and brown corduroys, and a snow mountain of dandruff, me only able to manoeuvre about the home doing unfortunate pop-a-wheelies, smashing into couches and ultimately the vestibule entranceway, catching a kid's tail up in the machinery of my shopping cart, my magical-makeshift monkey-mobile setting left precariously on Spin, and spooking youngsters away.

I empty the last of the potato chip dust from the bowl onto his head; they scurry from the porch and call me ingeniously wounding nick-names, foul-mouthed invectives they could only have overheard during bouts of parental arguments. Ungrateful pricks.

I just don't like where my head goes sometimes...

Next cinematic fanciful delight: two extremely young girls of a flirtatious persuasion have arrived at the door, well past 11:00 (isn't there a cut-off time?) with about a season's worth of Lancôme make-up plaster-and-Parissed on, making them look a fiery, capable 16. After attending to the slew of beggars throughout the evening, I'm now relaxed in my role, and with Mom having repaired to the den to drink, it's time for some harmless mental jousting.

"Trick or Treat?", they beam simultaneously, these shrewd serendipitous cuties.

"Yes, a treat, I'd like that, do you girls have any good drugs, or just what did you have in mind?" I jokingly imagined or may have even said.

These dead ringers are dressed in some sort of 'Cow-girl-rodeo-duo-get-up'. I think it's the holsters and the silver-cap-guns they tote, tauntingly (not to mention the horses parked at the sidewalk) but I'm just thinking out loud here. The fact that there are two of them...girls, I mean, add to my, perhaps inappropriate, excitability: such short skirts, their Wonder-Woman and Power-Puff undies just peeking out...this is terrible, I think, stop it! But... the isolation: it is so rare when others come to pay a visit. I'm reminded of the episode where Fonzie finds true love with this bovine gal he thinks is as pure as a shiny John Deere snowplow, or something. Richie and the gang of misfit toys head down to the strip club where she works to prove to Mr. Winkler that, well, she ain't. This Tuscadero-ish hotsy-totsy (Potsie?) mama is un-masked, her identity revealed to be 'The Lone Stripper', leaving a shattered Arthur Fonzarelli alone in a sea of mournful apathy. It was tough to watch. I didn't go to school for three days. Such high hopes dreadfully broken. Fonzie's too.

Now, I've never actually called on call girls - per se. Not really. I'm just saying if I ever did, it might be a kind of exciting fantasy to have two of them, maybe, dressed up in a sort of costume. Semi-depressing thought: I'm say, 60-something years of age living in a dilapidated Vancouver hotel, near Pain and Wastings, 'The Drake', maybe 'The Grand Sludge.' And with my long awaited and much prized welfare-check, I put in a call to the Triple A Escort team, though, in my drunken haze, I cannot tell if I've phoned for someone to tow my car, have telephoned an agent at CAA (Creative Artists Agency), inquired as to when the next AA meeting is or if some girls have been called to come over to rip me off. At any rate, none of the options are self-esteem boosters; I'm on my way out and don't care much either way. Why this is happening in Vancouver is anybody's guess - I can't keep my dreamy sequences by starlight straight, this, just one of my head's hobbies. Whatever. As long as it's not hurting anyone.

But the two girls at the door

I swear one of them was flirting with me. "We're selling ourselves in order to collect money for..." like it mattered what the association was after that stunner. I offer an inviting smile in return, grinning 'til there is sweat jumping off my forehead. I realize that their smiles are in fact painted on. One opens her bag, revealing a slew of condoms - the other one has a back-pack, brimming with suggestive chewy sex toys. Then I wake up.

All right, maybe there was more.

They push their way in, and I fall backwards and collapse into a basket of umbrellas and canes. They hoist me out while clubbing me with glowing Jedi titanium-dildo-wands. I'm dragged away to the garage and tied to the patio furniture. I'm squirted with scalding lemon juice from electric water guns and cram burnt fish sticks into me, preventing me from yelling for assistance. Mom unable to hear any of this wild, script-worthy interaction, as the volume of the Italian News is at an absurdly ear bleeding level in the den. She is also on fire. Seems she spilled some of her pre-dinner martini whilst trying to light a packaged fire log. This is going to cause a big mess and me, with all the running about (metaphorically hopefully?) It's tough even for me to tell anymore, with all these 'putting out fires' and what-not, doing my best to attend to the endless tasks of the home.

My new girlfriends are already stuffing silverware, urns, booze, anything of value that the Duracell Bunnies won't get their fiendish paws on (you'll soon see) into their sacks.

"So long, momma's boy loser crud bum."

The foxy duo jump on their silver-spray-painted-ski-doos, revealing tattoos of super heroes and track marks on their thighs, and Jetta out into the night.

Halloween can sure be a gas, for some.

Do you really get confused, between these dream sequences and
what's actually happening in your life?

I'm sort of used to it all by now. They kind of save me.

________________________________________________________________

tf#19: Alas, I was ill-prepared in regards to a costume. I'd been building one in the garage but could not finish it in time. It involved articles found on a workman's bench in the garage. I didn't get a chance to suit up for the big night with my pieced-together costume made entirely from popcorn, glue and pieces of The New Yorker Magazine... me, hanging together, for once.

19
A n U n s e l f i s h A c t

Basically, all healing has to do with changing our perception and seeing things in a new light.
Every problem, temptation, distraction and all busyness that is avoidance occurs because we are afraid to change.

Chuck Spezzano, Ph.D.
If it Hurts, It Isn't Love

The biggest absurdity today, sending my old friend Jen, a dog-eared copy of this book that's been kicking around in the basement for a zillion years or so: 'Zarathustra's Discourses', by Friedrich Nietzsche. While wrapping it gingerly in some Christmas paper along with a note (it may have been a card, of sorts, no matter), I wax papered these important thoughts:

Dear Jenny,

This comes to you at what I'm sure is a pivotal point in your life. This book assisted me in reaching an epiphany I hadn't thought possible; these are primed blissful moments. This life, a beast at times, much to conquer; but you are more than on your way! Treasure the cathartic chakras going on in your existence. You are an angelic voice through times of darkness. I know we will see each other again when the time is right.

You are missed. Happy Holidays.

Now, I've never read a word of the book. Not a stitch. All I know, really, is that it was somehow tied to that '2001: A Space Odyssey' flick, which I never saw either. Fabulous. So, that's funny on many levels, right? The thing of it was this: it really was meant as a sincere gesture. Along with it came an equally sincere gesture to get as much crap out of the house and into the garbage and the Goodwill bag as possible. She'd appreciate such overly sentimentalized malarkey and probably get a giggle from seeing through my false sincerity. I have hopes it doesn't fuck her up to some breaking point. Hey, what if one day I'm in some out of the way general store, in town for the day from my tree house in the backwoods, purchasing my monthly necessities: salt & vinegar chips, fire logs, swords, naked sheep, notepaper, sundries and such - and by bizarre happenstance, I'll overhear a conversation between the shopkeeper, some warty woman of few words, and this exact girl in question: Jen. She'll be saying how she's moving to Cape Canaveral or some god awful dirt bomb of an sand blown American city and is enrolling in some wildly nutty and grossly time consuming astronaut program. This scene swinging into frame immediately after an old friend (me) sent her a book that sent her into an over-magnified, self-examining tailspin. I hope the address I have for her is still right. Maybe someone should check in on her. Nah, she's a big girl, and she'll work it out.

We're all left to just work it out.

'TAKE A NAP' BREAK...Pace Yourself, I had to.

20
G e n u i n e L u r k i n g

Jealousy is one of the most unpleasant feelings we can have,
because we have attached our happiness to someone else's behavior;
this certainly causes us pain.

Chuck Spezzano, Ph.D
If it hurts, it isn't Love

You know, it's damn hard to continually pine for someone who hates you. You can do it for a little while maybe, praying they come 'round and change their minds, but when the sorrowful screenplay does no more than scream, "It's a lost cause, pal, move on," then even I believe there's a time you can feel not entirely remorseful about packing it in and moving on.

I swear I was doing okay: on my cell phone, genuinely lurking in the bushes across the road from the tennis club, observing her breezing out of the clubhouse with the new beau, though the roses stapled to her car with a love letter woven together with found tree branches did nothing more than embarrass me, not my initial intention. Me, 'Mr. Maturity', reporting the sullied scene to my buddy Frank over the phone:

"No, really I'm...I'm okay."

"Tim, where are you?"

"Well, she's coming out the entrance way...I'm in the bushes, where do ya think I am?

You think I want her to see me, what's wrong with you? Now she's embracing the flowers, she's looking around..."

"Are you all right?"

"Stop asking me that, of course. I'm better than all right, I know what I'm doing."

"Did you finally move your stuff out of there like she asked?"

"I'm sure she wasn't serious...wait, now she's...hold on, no, she's dropped them, wait, she's putting them underneath the front wheel of her S.U.V."

At that moment the sprinkler system decided to turn on. This, a banner fucking day in La-La land. I had arrived. The lurker in the rose bushes, a demented Tiny Tim, now tiptoeing through the awful tulips, socks squishy with mud, thorns jabbing my face, I drop my phone and all my surveillance notes. It's time to move the stake-out. I abort the mission and call my dealer. No way through, as he stops serving when night falls. Shit. I later dubbed this day, 'The Unbearable Darkness of Being and Uncheery Actions.'

Yes, I was doing very well, going by my cock-eyed and sad inverted intuitions and getting ousted from various unfestive institutions. She blames me...for most things. And also writes off our relationship as just twisted and sick, since it involved many late nights, substances, pain, continuous arguing and all around uncomfortability. (tf#20) I don't see it, though. What's worse is right now, as I'm committing this to paper, pathetically I can't remember precisely which girl it is we're talking about. There've been more than a few less-than-healthy, less-than-spectacular, unhappy endings, all of which now seem like pointless emotional outings. Next time will be different. Next time?

I don't think I'll ever get the conversations out of my head, the selective ones still billowing in me, loving ones when we were lying in bed and I said, "I couldn't imagine a time or reason we would be apart, how it wouldn't make any sense and that I'd just want to die", and she'd whispered back, "Well, then it's a good thing we don't have to worry about that." That was about the most reassuring and loving thing anyone's ever said to me. I must have really fucked up to reverse all that beautifully cascading warmth.

My philosophical, always right-on friend Frank had more to say: "I think you'd better get yourself sorted out first before thinking about dragging another poor girl through your great bloody childish muck heap." I wipe the mud off the phone, power down, get in my car (not an S.U.V) and half-listen to the comments set forth and the advice I won't put into play,
"Where is it I'm going?" and
"Do you want to come along on my journey?"

Apparently, you've got to be careful not to get these statements turned around; I'm fairly sure this was something I was supposed to remember, as that's when trouble's liable to get going.

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tf#20: there's some guesswork here with a bit of this, as she no longer talks to me. I'm kind of left to make assumptions, but I'm pretty sure I'm not too far off her beaten path.