Booze Battered Bubbles of Toil and Trouble

The deep dark truthful mirror never seemed to penetrate the fog of Las Vegas and Atlantic City for me.

Those towns were havens, sanctuaries within which my alcoholism could let its hair down and slip into comfortable clothes. There, I didn't have to impress anyone feigning sobriety with my breakfast. A double gin and tonic ordered at the bar at 8am in Casinoville is generally looked upon no differently than one ordered at 8pm. Especially in Vegas. After all, this is the land of 24/7 party time, with folks constantly flying to and fro all corners of the globe. Time ceases to matter; it is in fact considered a distraction and its acknowledgement rude: there are no clocks in a casino and, for the most part, the outside world is invisible from within its depths for this very reason. The ambient temperature remains perpetually hovering around 65 degrees, the air circulation providing a quasi stripper-perfumed scent that mixes in with the cigarette smoke and represents this world's atmosphere. Ah, truly home.

I was loath to arrive into either of these destinations sober, though I always left that way. Broke, shaking, sick. But on the way in, oh Mama! With Vegas, that meant getting good and juiced on the inbound five hour early morning flight. They poured me out of the plane at McCarran and I'd stumble blind through the ring-a-ding ding of the welcoming slots down the terminal out to a taxi destined for the nearest casino and casino bar.

I've lived entire lives at the blackjack table. It was never about the game, the gambling incidental. No, the thing for me was a sort of strange socialization. Plowed, I felt free to interact with the dealer and my fellow players as I never did actual friends and relatives. What's your names? Where you from? Bam! Black Jack! Dealer busts again! I'll have another double gin and tonic!  On and on.  I romanced, married, fought with and divorced many a black jack dealer, with her never the wiser.  We vacationed with our good friends around the felt among the cards and I was free.  By the time exhaustion had overtaken me, and I had to retire to the hotel room alone, I was too blotto to notice it was all a mirage (no pun intended).

I've been back to both places a couple of times since getting sober, A.C. to see bands/comedy acts and Vegas for work. There's no allure there now: they seem like different places, ones that hold nothing for me except foggy memories. It's sad in a way.  The magic is gone.  In the right mood, I can almost make out the ghost of my former self stumbling down the MGM carpet, grasping at a slot for leverage before pushing off again. The blistering Vegas sun, when I had to venture outside, often produced a violent, nauseous reaction in me.  However, it was short lived, the time it took to step into one of the ever ready plethora of taxis and off I'd go in search of the next sanctuary.  I never did find my Sera there.  As a consolation, I did make it out alive.

The Final Peel (Dreamland Fog)

She peels my mind

like a grape out of season,

keeping the platitudes

from the reach of my mouth.

Compulsively itchy,

she's a mammoth wooly blanket,

stinking of casinos

and new money dung.

I remain ever clear

through the forest of my anger,

just a slick twist unstapled

yet hard wired to my fear.

Begging the fog,

"Please masquerade my confabulations!"

And coax me gently

from the raincoat jello shakes.

Blur me resolute

and absolutely fabulous

with delusions of Disney

painting shut my Looney Tunes.

I need the fog of dreamland

when my furniture finally passes;

my best friend, my chair,

of malignant bad posture.

I need the fog of dreamland

when the night keeps its promises

of smoldering loneliness

even television can't consume.

With my gills gone gray on grime,

the fog drifts me asunder

coating my mind's eye

to a soft focus rose.

Peptic, vaguely pompous,

my fog frees me from the vanquished,

as even the grotesque flee,

making sick at my sight.

I share with them their nausea,

I am stillborn of their nausea,

I am master of their nausea

embodying its essence,

while watching my entrails

twist in the wind.

Of Sal Bass and Other Concerns

I'm colder than a February

salmon out of season,

aching for her warm caress

to fold me into slumberland.

The rain runs down the periphery

of the cracks within my conscience,

a chill and wet I've known too well

without umbrella or galoshes.

April looms across the damp

of March distended and corroded;

teasing, loving, sour sarcastic,

she drains me for the springtime thaw.

Yet still distant sirens

splash curbside vendors

struggling for dominance

in city scape paintings.

The perpetual motion

of life lived elsewhere,

contrasts with the rigor

of my hardened self portrait.

The colors run

down the easel,

frightful from me

until I'm translucent gone.

Real, real gone.