'That man is fat!' and other parental pearls of wisdom

"That man is fat!" Mother lights a cigarette in the checkout line at the supermarket and points toward the flustered gentleman just ahead. My sister stands behind her, mortified. "Mom, that is just so rude. And you can't smoke in here!" Mother smiles sinisterly from her wheelchair and takes a defiant drag. She then raises an eyebrow in that all-knowing look. "Yes I can!"

Mom was not an elderly woman when the supermarket incident took place, probably just a couple years older than I am right now. A stroke at age 42 had debilitated her, though not nearly so much as she'd like to believe. Partially paralyzed on her right side, she could walk with the aid of a cane but generally chose not to (in fact, she fought tooth-and-nail against her physical rehabilitation). Her worst qualities had been amplified by the stroke and the good ones diminished (she chose to latch onto her inner spoiled brat and that aspect of her personality now clearly dominated).

Cut to a family get together, my mother's side of the family. She sulks smugly in the corner before seeing an opening. "My father never loved my mother. He had other lovers, you know - many lovers!" she declares to no one in particular. Aunt Jenny (her mother's sister) goes pale. Mother then adds insult to injury: "He visited prostitutes. His mother was a prostitute!" My sister is unfortunate enough to be the chaperon on this occasion as well. She felt like killing Mother that day, a concentration of all the embarrassments of a lifetime.

My mother-related embarrassments were for the most part restricted to my childhood, as she attempted to proposition my friends' Dads, berated me in front of the neighborhood kids for no reason and generally made fools of us all to the neighborhood. The stroke can't be blamed entirely as much of this took place prior to that blessed event.

My sister wasn't so lucky. She dealt with Mom into her adulthood and in fact still deals with her today. I cut bait with Mom many, many years ago. It doesn't mean she doesn't haunt me - she most definitely does - but simply that I don't recognize her right to continue to do so. Whatever ghost of her influence still clouds my dreams does so because of my unresolved feelings, not due to any fresh infusion of neuroses on her part.

Still, that man was, in fact, fat. So there's that.

Our Living Room Cries, Her Coffee Cup Bleeds

I was fixated as a kid on a red and white checkered coffee mug, a cup that would never know the taste of java; in fact, it knew only wine, woman, and song. The wine was cheap, the woman my mother and the song metaphorical. Think Beach Boys 'In My Room,' moved to the front of the house with the atmosphere of Leonard Cohen's 'Dress Rehearsal Rag.' Our living room was an irony, its name an oxymoron.

This mug held court on the TV tray, itself acting as end table to the living room love seat. A white-handled prince among the ashtray, matches and cigarette butts scattered like peasants around it, this ceramic monstrosity was perhaps the favorite among my mom's assemblage of accouterments. It was a toss-up between that cup and her smokes, but I think the balance was tipped when the cup was full. And full it was, often - wounded, in fact, by the beverage it contained. A stained bloody crimson interior, ravaged by Ernest and Julio Gallo's Tavola Red, courtesy of the gallon jug ever present on the floor beneath her feet.

My mom was invariably perched in a regal green robe on her throne, the leftmost cushion of that filthy love seat. Across the muted colors of her homemade braided living room rug, Dad lay passed out on the larger couch along the wall behind the shuttered front windows. His beverage of choice - whiskey, brown bagged - stood steadfast in the corner within reaching distance, no mug required.



That rug - God I hated the thing. Like Edward Sissorhands, it wasn't finished. Ever. Started from thrift store coats by Mom in her 30s, the endings lay unraveled, half hidden in the corner of the room, itself a metaphor for the people who paced on the twisted fabric.





And through the hazy chain smoked fog of Alpine Camel nicotine, the cheap Van Gogh Sunflowers print looked down upon us from its vantage point high up on the green painted stucco wall across from Dad.

I usually squatted by the heater vent below Vincent's flowers, laser focused on the television.

Mom would chain smoke, drink and watch, sometimes she would cry. Always she would read. Dad would drink, smoke and drool. And throw up into his mixing bowl; thank God for Tupperware and other small favors. Dad would sit up occasionally, unsteadily. And drink. Often this required a bit of help, during the shakier times. Wrapping a bath towel around his neck and tied to the wrist of his drinking arm, he'd pull on the terrycloth with his steadier hand and guide the bottle to his mouth, like a seasoned crane operator.

Turn up the volume on the TV! Did I hear that? Probably not - it was just my sensibilities imploring me to drown out the madness. I would spring from my perch over to the console set in the corner and crank the volume up to satisfy my sanity. In time, though, no sound could silence the sickness, and no flickering image could mask the claustrophobia of the room. Television, the thing which allowed me to escape the reality of that place, for the longest time could only be found in its midst, that room. Eventually I was able to watch my diversion for short periods in the local hospital waiting area a couple of blocks up the street. But you couldn't loiter around there for any extended length of time.

More often, when my psyche and stomach couldn't take another hit, I'd go to my room and read (Manchild in the Promised Land, Invisible Man, Outsiders, Great Gatsby, On The Road) or listen (Beatles, Presley, Cohen, Stones, Joel, Springsteen later Clash, Costello, Parker, Ramones). I became obsessed with all things music - albums, eight tracks and Creem magazine fed my addiction. And I'd put my thoughts to paper on my little typewriter. Thoughts and paper lost to time and trash.

Or I'd leave - run, outside - somewhere, anywhere, finally nowhere.

That room, it followed me. At school, until I couldn't go to school. With my friends until I had no friends, became an outsider, a loner, a weirdo. To the Navy, it followed me; to the bottle. It followed me into the bars, until I took the bars home. It was there in Chester and North Philly, following the trail of white powder into my blood stream. The height of the high was the only time I gave it the slip but at a price: when it picked up the scent it did so with renewed vigor and punished me for my elusiveness.

It's with me still, that room (that house) - out of sight, but never out of my raging mind's eye. That room. That robe, those books, that cup. The smoke, those bottles, that bowl, the vomit. Those people, melted into the furniture - my family, smoldering.

The Beatles Help! brings to mind my family more than any other music - I bought the album on August 11th, 1977 and found out my Dad had died of Cirrhosis later that day, so each of the songs invoke memories of the event. I remember being so psyched about getting my hands on that record, never mind that it was 12 years old at that point. For me the Beatles were a relatively new discovery in the mid-70s - only three or four years into my obsession - and I was gobbling up the shit. Hearing the news about Dad had an effect on me I wasn't expecting: overwhelming sadness, pain. I had been braced for it and was anticipating relief; it was a surprise. I lost myself in my room that day and played Help! over and over and over.

However, it's Rubber Soul that's been teed up on the iPod of late, my favorite fab four album. In My Life, indeed.

The Experiment

June, 2006. White coats, bright lights, devilish laughter. Everything is distorted. Clear liquid instruments blend into metal running through IV tubes out of my arm onto the tray. My body rises slightly; reacting, rough callused fingers pat my wrist, then push down on the syringe, the big fade. My head falls to the side hard on the pillow, nylon straps gripping me to the gurney. Whispers blue black, silence blood red. And always: white coats, bright lights, devilish laughter.

I'd been in the ER a few hours at this point, but if you told me I'd been here five minutes or three days, I wouldn't have been surprised.

Mike found me at my house at noon in hallucinatory madness, raving about my walking travels through Mexico the night before as though I'd strolled out of my home in Philadelphia through a wormhole into Tijuana.

I also regaled him with the exploits of a female basketball team living mostly in my attic the past week. The racket was grating on me, what with the bouncing of the basketball echoing through the ceiling and their laughter trailing after it. Except for their center, a very tall Asian player who stands motionless and silent next to my skis in the spare room the whole time. Mike took a peek and of course found nothing, no one but me in the house.

And the dog-size rats! With razor tipped teeth flashing yellowy eyes, shit they were flowing like a river of bubonic gray through my house and out the front door yesterday! The pro-rat crowd was out in force down the street, a spontaneous rally aimed squarely against yours truly, upset that I'd dialed up Pest Control. Man, you should have been here, Mike! They had a big parade with those same rats as Grand Marshall. Then the Pest Control folks arrived and the whole parade/rally exploded into a riot in the church parking lot! I went and hid in the church until the smoke cleared. Wicked!

Just the usual small talk between old friends.

Mike looked around and then at me, quizzically. I had red slits for eyes and jaundiced pallor, pouring sweat. Unshaven in weeks, matted hair uncut in months. Shower? Who needs those? Clearly something was very wrong, and I knew it too on some level, but not in a way I could communicate to myself, certainly not to others. Things were fine!

After an uncomfortable few minutes Mike quietly said, "You need to go to the emergency room, I think something isn't right. You're making no sense." I was agreeable, though I didn't know why. It was like an out of body experience, I was just sitting back in the darkened theater crunching popcorn and watching the show with the rest, wondering what was next for our intrepid anti-hero.

The next thing I 'remember' are the white coats, bright lights, devilish laughter.

You see, I was at the tail end of my own special experiment: let's take a medical leave from work and see what happens when you polish off the better part of two 70cl bottles of Tanqueray each day for the long end of four weeks and then .. just ... stop ... cold. Slow motion suicide. A month long gunshot to the head.

The first four weeks were easy enough - well, the first two and half weeks were anyway.

Gradually the challenge of making it to the state store in the morning without dry heaving on the guy at the register became a massively complicated effort, the hardest I think I've ever worked in my life. Trying to look as normal as I could, trying to walk, then actually drive. Man, I was soaked with sweat like I'd been hiking in an Ecuadorian jungle for a week dressed to scale Mt. Everest. And that's after I managed to make it from the bed all the way to ... the chair by the bed. Puts on pants. Slugs down a gin and orange juice, throws up, another, throws up, another, keeps it down - no, throws up. One more. Puts on shirt. Brush teeth. Slugs down another, back up, down, up, down, down. And so on it went. At least on those happy days when I had a little liquid normal left in the bottle. Some days, I wasn't so lucky.

The drives to the state store were the worst - two miles or so, shaking so uncontrollably I could barely grip the steering wheel, big beach towel in the passenger seat to wipe the pools of chilled sweat pouring down my face and arms. Yellow/clear sickness sticking to black leather upholstery and dripping down the driver's side window when I turned the wrong way.

But I managed to do it - not only the state store but a stop off at the Wawa Deli for a quart or two of orange juice on the way back. Then, finally, home. I made it! I had my supplies and life could go on. Well, not quite. After another round of drink, vomit, drink, vomit, drink, drink, drink ... (Three and a half years later, I still can't stomach the smell of orange juice.)

Finally I was straight enough to turn on the TV, check email, veg out and channel surf. Looking for anything that would divert my attention from the 800 pound gorilla sitting on my chest clawing at my stomach. And drink, TV and drink. Until I passed out. And then the daily cycle repeated itself.

Good times!

My trash cans were filling with empty gin bottles, I was truly the Tanqueray poster child for May 2006, though I imagine I wouldn't be their first choice as spokesperson. Sipping on Gin and Juice, laid back. Not quite, Snoop.

The final week was especially miserable, to the point where I couldn't move, open my eyes, or make a sound without heaving. The slightest smell, however innocuous, would kick off a chain reaction of nausea. Only an ever growing intake of booze would temporarily dull this effect, put the genie back in the bottle for a few hours, but less and less for shorter and shorter periods. Eventually almost all the booze ended up in the toilet as sick.

My stomach, never strong and already prone to severe bouts of acid reflux, finally said "no more." It just wouldn't accept anything. So it was time for phase two: stopping. It was a tough road for a day or so - shaking violent upheavals, icy hot chills. And then it seemingly got better, dreamy. In fact the most vivid waking dreams of phantom visitors, parades down my little street, trips around the globe, rats and razors, and human/rodent riots, all from the 'comfort' of the bathroom floor, eye level with the buttons on the bottom of the shower curtain, night and day gleaned from the indirect light reflected off the mirror above me.

Mike found me on day three of withdrawal and by that point, to paraphrase John Lennon, cold turkey already had me on the run.  And the race seemed over. I was pretty much resigned to death, even giddy about the prospect (no more technicolor yawns). Maybe the joviality was simply an outbreak of the delirium tremens, the DTs. In fact I know now that it almost certainly was, but at the time I thought the DTs meant pink elephants or giant imaginary bugs crawling up the walls and such. The Hollywood interpretation.

But I had gotten myself dressed and called Mike to see if he wanted to grab lunch. I thought I had come out the other side at some level. My masochistic experiment over, I kept telling myself. Fat lot I knew. The slight horror on Mike's face when I opened the door should have been a clue I couldn't gauge my condition properly. Then I opened my mouth and uttered the most nonsensical things. It was clear to him that I was off the deep end and plunging into the icy depths.

My delirium fantasies hit full stride in the ER. The staff there - sometimes doctors, occasionally nurses - hooked me up to a diuretic IV drip for what seemed like hours, force feeding me chocolate and corn. But they wouldn't let me go to the shitter. I tried to speak to them, pleading with them to stop but it seemed they didn't understand a word I said. They looked at me, laughed, and responded always with same two word non sequitur: "Kill Kirk." Never anything but that. "Kill Kirk"

What did it mean?

I wasn't particularly fond of the 60s Star Trek franchise, certainly no Trekkie. But I knew of no other 'Kirk'. I didn't actually hear this, so it came from somewhere within me. Maybe I misheard some critical care/medical jargon/phrase.

So, "Kill Kirk" and then he or she would invariably scribble something on a notepad, chuckle devilishly, and furiously hustle away, bent over doing the Groucho Marx walk with the hand out, fingers gripping the invisible Groucho cigar. Except for the last time.

The last visit I received from the ER staff was when they opened the curtain around my gurney and descended on me en masse. This time there was no "Kill Kirk" or scribbled notes. This time, they stripped me naked, pinned a big clear plastic diaper on me and carried me out into the middle of the street in front of the hospital, depositing me there to quite literally shit myself into oncoming traffic. Fade to black.

I awoke in a hospital room, arms and faces melting like wax around me, pricking and poking, talking loud, screaming. I was dying, I swore I heard that. I glanced out the window and saw palm trees. Quickly to the right, there - a motion camera with crew behind it. I was in Hollywood, on a movie set. Or TV. ER? Grey's Anatomy?

I'm not an actor, though, I'm dying!

Was I taking the Stanislavski Method to it's logical extreme? Or part of a documentary on the terminally ill? Somehow they both made sense. How did I get out of the street? Did I crawl back in? How did I make it to Hollywood? Do the ER staff know? They'll find me and fix my wagon for good. But that was in Philadelphia. If I was in Hollywood on a film set, those ER goons couldn't find me. Unless the film crew ARE the ER goons, making ER. This Philadelphia area 'hospital' I'm in was in Hollywood, always had been. The two worlds were one in my mind.

The faces huddled across from my bed, whispering. What is that they are saying? Liver failure? Renal Failure? Don't lie to me! Motherfucking liars! I wanted to go home to die, tried to break free. I jumped up and kicked at the face blocking the door but missed, slamming my foot into a metal cabinet, breaking two toes and collapsing on the floor. Fade to blur.

Dreams, I'm driving a car with a large sack of potatoes next to me, it goes on and on. I'm still running from death but it's embodied as a car full of doctors now, and they're gaining on me with humongous hypodermics sticking out of the roof.

Finally, lucidity begins to regain its footing in my psyche. Slowly I awaken, but in Philadelphia, in a hospital. Hollywood's gone. And I'm not dying, not immediately, anyway. I am securely strapped down to the hospital bed. For my own safety as well as that of the staff, a nurse tells me.

Confused, disoriented, I'd remain that way for the next several days, perhaps forever. But I knew where I was. Arms immobile in the makeshift straight jacket that binds me to a bed in a hospital with IVs coming out of my arm, sharp pain shooting through my foot and a dull, throbbing hurt all around my eyes. Deep black spots speckle my field of vision, an old man in the bed next to me gags, coughs behind the partition. A TV plays overhead - some soap opera I can make out through the bad reception. A doctor on rounds stands over me. What day is it? Monday. When did I get here? Saturday. Your sister is flying in. What happened? You very nearly drank yourself to death.

Ahh, yes.

I knew where I was. But not a clue as to where I might be going.