Bob and Ruth

Bob Douglas was all chest high plaid pants, wild eyes and eager ears, working the police-fire scanner knobs and his telephone dial with savage efficiency in the darkened room at the back of his house. This was his war room, his command center. The Information Station.

Hey, down there at 1310 Hoyt! Get ready for the fire truck! You, up there at 706 Grand! The police cruiser's coming your way! Yo, over there at 925 Rockefeller! Domestic Squabble just down your alley at 918 Wetmore!

He was wired into it all, hooked into the information grid of nineteen hundred and seventy. Everett, Washington's emergency dispatch signals surfing across his brainwaves, his thoughts tuned into their frequencies. Forever clearing his throat of the perpetual phlegm of ignorance, he thirsted for the knowledge that these crises and misdemeanors washed down into him. But it wasn't enough to obtain the wisdom, he was compelled to impart it onto others. And not gently either - no, this education was delivered to his friends and neighbors with a vicious ruthlessness. Mr. Douglas, you see, was a man both supremely impatient and utterly mad. He suffered neither fools nor the rational gladly.

A call would come over the scanner and his shock of curly hair shot straight up, his hairy ears throbbing with the details of this latest catastrophe. Incessantly tuning the signal to clear the noise from the necessary, Bob would focus, waiting - until, Bam! He'd catch wind of a juicy one through the static and hone in on the location. A picture would form in his mind's eye as he zoomed in for a close up. His gnarled fingers would then start clawing down the phone book white pages, mapping the dispatch address to a neighborhood and the 'hood to his acquaintances, however vague the connection. Match! Yes! Now he would make with the telephone dial.

Ring, ring.

Ignorant Acquaintance: Hello?

Bob: Ummmrrgghhh. Hey, down there at 1215 Colby, you got a heart attack one block down, 1314 Wetmore. Ummmeegghh.

Click.

With that said, Bob would abruptly hang up. He needed no reply from his pupils and had no time for idle chit-chat. They didn't even have names to him, his friends; he referred to them only by their addresses.  There was serious work to do, removing the blinders from the beleaguered citizens of this jerk-water town. How little they knew of these moments of consequence taking place right under their noses! But Bob, he knew. Strokes, heart attacks, burglaries, peeping toms. Bob had total coverage. He was the master of this knowledge. The great and powerful Oz!

This man was a god to me growing up, a giant. Fueled by Antabuse and aggravation, he was nothing so much as a raw nerve personified. All work and no play was not in Bob's vocabulary, though the definition of 'play' is subjective. For instance, he 'played' his long-suffering dog Wolfy into a quivering nervous wreck until the poor thing could take no more, finally succumbing to a fatal heart attack. Not satisfied with simply schooling his own pet, he worked the neighborhood animals into frenetic basket cases as well (they were unable to sleep for days after one of his visits). But unlike Wolfy, at least the neighbor doggies had times of relief when 'uncle' Bob went home. None of these unfortunate side effects were intentional, of course. Mr. Douglas was simply being Mr. Douglas. Wass a gooodd dooggg?!? yessyouare, yessyouare, wass a good dog!?!?! eh? eh?!?!? Was a good dog!?!?! Ehh, ehh, ehh!! On and on and on, he'd go. Bob would have them chase their tails, tug on rags, run down Frisbees, play chop sticks on the piano, clean his garage, mainline meth, and tear their own tongues out. And that was for starters. Waasss a goood doogggie!?!? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Errrmmmdddhh!!

This was simply Bob's way.

His bright plaid pants weaving to and fro, manic voice booming and the constant gurgling of phlegm in his throat, Bob just couldn't stop, had no sense of boundaries or limits. Luckily he was clearing his throat so much of the time that you couldn't make out most of his psycho-babble. His affliction was Turrets Syndrome melded with an obsessive-compulsive disorder and manic tendencies all rolled into one fifty-something package. Or was he sixty-something? It doesn't matter: he was ageless, beyond time.

Bob would also visit upon children what he inflicted on the town's canine population. I cowered in terror upon his arrival at our doorstep. As I said, he was a god to me. Sort of like Loki, the Norse God of Mischief. Or Satan.

Bob stopped drinking years before I knew him, though it took a few trips through treatment before the "cure" took hold. His regiment of Antabuse and terminal psychosis remained the only vestige of a drunkard's past. I have no idea why as a child I was cognizant of his pharmaceutical intake, probably because my parents kept no secrets, as long as they weren't theirs. As though taking Antabuse was a scandalous thing, especially when compared to the unrestrained active alcoholism my folks reveled in.

I had always assumed that Bob and my Dad had been drinking buddies and that was how our families became friends. Those two may well have been boozing pals at some point; however, Mr. Douglas sold insurance back in the day - before he retired to his role as town crier - and that was how our families originally came together. (We had insurance?!?) A television commercial come to life with your broker as best buddy and trusted adviser. His friendship, though, was more akin to Jim Carey's Chip Douglas in The Cable Guy: you'd have to pry your relationship with him from his cold, dead hands. He mated for life in this regard.

Speaking of mating, Bob was not alone. He came as a package deal, wrapped up in a bow with his stubby chubby swinging 60s red headed whack job misses, Ruth. Ruth had the unfortunate habit of wearing skirts sans undergarments on occasion, but was not blessed with the body of Sharon Stone, nor was she of an age - she was somewhere north of fifty - when that behavior might have been viewed in a different light (a black light was too luminous for her particular horrors).

Mrs. D would readily cross and uncross her legs with a silly, knowing smirk as she visited with our folks making gabby small talk, always sounding and acting to me like Sue Ann Nivens from the Mary Tyler Moore show come to life with a dye job. I'd see red and go blind. The carpet matched the drapes, though neither of any shade nature could have conjured up. What nightmares these visuals would give me! ("Join me for a crimson bath! Red-dye #5 mixes well with Mr. Bubbles! Come on in, the water is fine!")

Errhhhhhh.

My Mom - also a Ruth - cut Mrs. Douglas's hair regularly, though she had no training or 'natural' talent in the tonsorial arts that I'm aware of (certainly the results bared that out). This ritual would take place in our kitchen, the two ladies enjoying a beer or two while my Mom took the scissors to that red fright wig atop Mrs. D's head. I had my first taste of the suds in this setting, though I'm not sure why I was offered (I couldn't place my age, maybe 10?). A first initiation into the alcoholic profession my parents saw as the family calling. I was strangely drawn to watching this beauty parlor ballet unfold, my Mom hacking at Ruth D's head while they both got toasted. I shutter when I think about this today. Now that I am thinking of it, my Mom's services to Ruth also included regular dye jobs (though they were, to my knowledge, all on the "up and up").

Bob and Ruth spawned one child, Lee. An odd kid who became a cop, he was by some accounts a sexual deviant. The girls in the neighborhood all dreaded Lee's approaching swagger, as he put his moves on them in his best 70s Disco Stu style.

Nature, nurture - Lee had both going against him and probably didn't stand much of a chance. But at least Father Douglas could follow his son's adventures from the comfort of his back room courtesy of the trusty police scanner. Sometimes his son would be dispatched, and sometimes his son would be dispatched upon. Sort of a one-man game of cops and robbers (or cops and flashers, to be more precise). Who would Bob call during these episodes? Himself? But the line's forever busy! I imagine that after episodes such as this, a confusion of sorts must have hung for a time over Bob's Rear Window lifestyle.

So these are my slanderous memories of just a couple of characters from my childhood. An introduction. They will return. They were central to my upbringing in many ways.

It takes a village. Indeed.

[Postscript: my sister recalls once, back in the days when Bob had been drinking, he accidentally flushed his false teeth down the toilet. The mental picture of that event and the subsequent dental panic - Did they result in a clog? My dad was a handyman, did he break into the sewage pipes to retrieve the choppers? - was strong enough to me that I felt I needed to share.

My sister also recalled for me Bob's love of the pornographic (which explains his wife Ruth). For example, Bob liked to keep his extensive collection of Playboys piled high in plain view on top of his living room coffee table, in order to give all visitors the chance to pursue the interesting articles. He often left the mags open turned to the "article" spread. He went so far as to send my then teenage sister a fold out of a playmate pic because he thought it looked like her. He ratcheted up creepiness several notches in his day, claiming the word as his own. ]

Hal

His name was Hal Lambert. Hal-o-wishes. A charter member of my Dad's drinking entourage, he was forever decked out in his pork pie hat and dapper threads, a gentleman in the 1950's sense of the word. Kind of sophisticated for Dad's crowd. Sophisticated, that is, when he wasn't throwing up in the corner or crying like a baby into a pillow on our couch (both happened more than once).

Looking back, Hal reminds me a bit of William Burroughs. Did that make my Dad Jack Kerouac? Probably not. I think the resemblance ended with the gentile nature and omnipresent hat. And of course their mutual addiction to mood altering drugs. With Hal, it was booze while Burroughs was hooked on pretty much everything (opiates were his "drug of choice" when pressed).

The fog forever enveloping my childhood memories is usually as thick as pea soup, but if I strain my psyche particularly hard, things more or less come into focus for an instant, exposing my revisionist history. Then the fog rolls back in again, protecting me from things I'd rather not know. But it also has an insidious way of hiding the detail that is a necessary ingredient in the pictures I'm trying to paint here. I guess ya can't have it both ways.

I get the feeling that Hal-as-Burroughs is one of those false fog-infused recollections. My memories momentarily a bit more lucid, I see he most resembled Mr. Magoo (who, it should be said, was a sharp dresser in his own right). I'm pretty sure they attended the same Driver's Education class and shared a similar field of vision, Magoo's courtesy of two bum retinas and Hal's brought to you by the makers of Bourbon everywhere. Having experienced the spine-tingling terror of being the lone sober passenger on a liquor run with Hal at the wheel, I can attest to his routine Magoo-like supernatural escapes from the jaws of vehicular death.

Hal's wife Darlene was anything but gentile. Boisterous with the bluest of collar, Darlene was a "tavern jacket" type who could go toe-to-toe with the best of them when it came to knockin' back the sauce. She was tall, "big boned" and prone to strut, he was diminutive of stature and perpetually hunched over. Opposites who attracted, bonded by the booze and little else.

Darlene would have fit right in on the local bar bowling team. Hal would have looked more at home pacing the sidelines of a football game, Tom Landry/Bear Bryant style. Well, he would were they prone to vomiting into the Gatorade and weaving drunkenly onto the field at inopportune moments.

This odd couple often graced our home, to drink and talk and cry (well, Hal cried; that wasn't Darlene's style).

And then one day, Darlene up and died. It was a strange death, apparently in her sleep. Hal waited several hours before calling an ambulance (I think he may have dialed our home first and chatted up my Dad while awaiting Darlene's rigor to kick in).

Perhaps Hal had been drunk and was confused (that was always a good bet). But we often wondered whether he'd finally had enough of her noise and simply wanted some peace and quiet. As mentioned previously, Hal knew his way around a pillow and likely could wield it in anger just as skillfully as he did in sobbing drunken sorrow.

But this was merely idle talk; Darlene had any number of legitimate reasons for casting off this mortal coil at a relatively young age (I couldn't hazard a guess as to exactly how old she was - maybe late fifties). Booze and cigarettes likely played a starring role.

We saw Hal occasionally after this sad event, he prone to crying more than usual and just a bit more blind to boot, thanks to an amplification of his natural melancholy fueled by Darlene's passing and distilled (both metaphorically and literally) through the usual spirits that represented their life blood.

I can't say for sure when Hal joined Darlene and Dad in that great liquor store in the sky. I imagine it's just one of many details lost in my particular fog of time.

Leonard

Leonard was a hefty sort and a sad sack - the only overweight member of my Dad's rum buddies (or more correctly, whiskey chums). He was trapped in a miserable but inexplicably lasting marriage to the rarely seen "Bubbles", a hoity-toity gasbag forever berating him for being who he was: a falling-down chronic alcoholic prone to balling his eyes out at the drop of a hat.

But Leonard had his uses, at least to Dad and his pals: he had a vehicle, a truck. That was a valuable commodity to this crew, most of whom no longer had ready access to such devices (wrecked, repo'd, sold for liquor money; they all had a story).

Leonard's truck was a means to get to the state store or the bars, and was essential to his continuing inclusion in this band of boozers, since he rarely had any duckets to kick in for beverages. (Bubbles came from money and held tight to the family purse strings. She had long since put the kibosh on doling any out to her lush of a husband and he had to settle for scraps or whatever he could steal from the cookie jar when her back was turned.)

Leonard had mad skills behind the wheel as he weaved down the road bouncing from curb to curb, emphasis on mad. Terrifying, in fact. As one of the few people to ride with him sober in those days, my survival attests to his mastery of the art of lubricated locomotion. (I was 8, 9, 10 years old and wasn't prone to knocking back shots at 9am on a sunny August Tuesday like the others along for the ride in this deathtrap.)

Leonard had a six sense when navigating to the state store (the truck pretty much drove itself).

His visits would start with a knock on the door. He'd plop down on the couch, forcing Dad to sit upright from his usual semi-horizontal position. Leonard would start with a bit of small talk, all the while licking his lips and shooting glances plaintively toward the corner where the old man kept his bottle. Medicine for the sick. If the bottle was empty, he would suggest a road trip and if it wasn't, he'd suggest a glass (I think he used a glass but my memories are kind of foggy; Dad usually didn't bother at this point). Either way, soon would be the booze a-flowin' and the tears would surely follow. Bubbles doesn't understand, woah-is-me, yada-yada.

Watching that fat drunk waddle-stagger to our bathroom after knocking back a bottle with Dad was a treat. He'd have done Chevy Chase and Dick Van Dyke proud with his prat-fall antics, though perhaps Chris Farley would be a more apt comparison.

Leonard'd start out by invariably catching his shoe on the braided living room rug, nearly doing a header into the dining room. Next, he sluggishly danced with a leg raised in an attempt not to step on the tail of my sleeping dog Snooks (a failed attempt on several occasions I was present for - the damn dog didn't learn). Once past the dog for good or ill, Leonard would grasp for the dining room table and chairs to slow his stride lest the momentum tumble him into our 'china' cabinet. Safely through the worst of this journey, he'd stagger out into the hallway near the toilet, on two occasions tripping over the cord that coiled out from under the telephone table there, falling back on his ass.

Only once did Leonard alter his route to the can and he paid dearly for this deviation. For some reason on this one trip, he made the journey via our kitchen rather than directly through the dining room. Bad move. He was confused by this wrong turn, puzzled by the sight of a fridge where the hallway phone table should be. In a daze and about to topple over, Leonard made the mistake of using the stove for leverage and placed his hand firmly on a lit burner (I was getting ready to make coffee). You never heard such a banshee cry! It caused Snooks to hightail it out of the living room to safety under my parent's bed. I'm surprised Leonard ever went to the bathroom again in our house. Certainly he avoided the kitchen.

And that's Leonard. Glad ya got to know him.

The Neighborhood Handyman

My Dad lay passed out in a neighbor's upstairs bathroom, in the tub. His toolbox had been propped open next to him, a half empty bottle of whiskey poking up among the pipe wrenches and other equipment in it. I stood over him, frozen. What should I do? Run down the stairs and out the front door, pretending I never came back? Try and wake him up? This latter move might just be worse if he's as in the bag as his slobbering snore indicates. The choice was made then: I ran.

And thus ended my Dad's very short career comeback as the neighborhood handyman. But it all started a month or so earlier. Well, not exactly. Really it had been ongoing for many years.

Dad had steadily become unemployable to the regular nine-to-five rank and file over the years leading up to the tub incident. It wasn't all that big a town we lived in and he managed to drink his way into and then back out of pretty much all the companies that needed a plumbing supply salesman.

Even the alcoholics among Dad's sundry bosses had gradually thrown in the towel with him after a few dances. And by the second or third generation of Dad's career transitions, a high percentage of his hiring managers were raging alcoholics (that's bound to happen when you go job hunting primarily from the vantage point of a bar stool). Those whose boozing buddy loyalty instincts outweighed their fiduciary responsibilities eventually either drank themselves to death or at least out of any positions of influence that could protect Dad's ass from the boot.

Dad drifted into odd jobs and seasonal work after his chosen profession up and ran from him. The only one of these part time jobs I remember distinctly was his stint as a 'peace officer' with Northwest Protection Service (I can still picture his 'police' jacket with company logo and fake badge hanging up in the hall closet).

He got minimum wage to sit in a chair overnight next to the outdoor summer sale merchandise racked up in front of Kmart. There was enough shit that I guess it was cheaper to hire a guard than to haul it in and out of the store each day.

I'm not sure what Dad could have done had criminal types decided they wanted to make off with the inventory (it's not like he had a weapon; not even a club or mace). I guess he could have taken his lit cigarette, dropped it into his ever-present bottle of whiskey, and heaved it after the would-be thieves, Molotov Cocktail style. (By day, mild mannered couch-bound lush. But when night arrives, he is transformed into Whiskey Man: crime fighting Northwest protector of truth, justice and the American swing set.)

Regardless, Dad sat vigilant guard over bicycles, patio furniture and lawn mowers. Lt. Columbo, Sgt. Friday, One Adam-12, Serpico. The one incorruptible cop. Dum Da Dum Dum. That's my Dad! Couldn't wait for career day at school!

The truth is, I loved Dad's Northwest Protection job more than all the others, simply because he often brought his work home with him in the morning in the form of pilfered toys for me. I was on the receiving end of a pitch-n-catch trampoline-style baseball backstop along with a number of other items we otherwise couldn't have afforded. He was a fountain of ill-gotten gifts all around for the family during this summertime blue-light sentry duty. Likely the store would have suffered fewer loses had they simply left the stuff unguarded.

But that kind of work wouldn't pay the bills and didn't last long in any event; he needed something steadier. One of our neighbors, Austin, was a commercial artist and he volunteered to draft up some brochures hailing the "Return of the Neighborhood Handyman" in an attempt at a career revitalization for the old man. It was very nice of Austin and I really wish I had kept a few of those pamphlets around as a keepsake.

Austin's kids and I distributed these handyman leaflets like newspapers to doorsteps all around our neighborhood. The picture on the cover was a caricature of Dad, a tall lanky fellow, staggering under the weight of an overflowing tool belt filled with screwdrivers, tape measures, pipe wrenches, saws, etc. It was a bit like the picture on the left here.

Austin should have sketched in a couple of fifths of booze tucked safely away in Dad's pockets on the front of those pamphlets if he had adhered more strictly to the adage 'truth in advertising.' Whiskey topped Dad's list of the most essential tools of his trade and it didn't even make the cover! Sadly, he'd prove that out in this failed attempt as an independent business man, much to my embarrassment and his continued economic decline. Which brings us back to where we started. The tub. Almost.

The first customer who came calling was a homeowner several blocks north of us, a person we didn't know who had nonetheless been taken by the unique advertisement placed on his doorstep. The guy wasn't disappointed: Dad fixed their leaky faucet quickly and efficiently, with yours truly by his side as faithful assistant. (It was summer and this eight year old was either bored or goaded into servitude, I honestly don't remember which.)

The second customer was not so fortunate. These were neighbors we were friendly with, just around the corner. I knew the kids there, as did my sister. Theirs was a big house, they were fairly well off as I recall (the father was a physician). They had a complex job for the old man, something related to the installation of all new fixtures in one of the upstairs bathrooms. It was monotonous work and I wandered off to do kid stuff after watching Dad for a bit.

That was a mistake.

When I came back to the neighbor house a few hours later to see how Dad was progressing, well ... he was tubthumping, but I already went over that. And then I ran. I'm not sure if the neighbors stumbled upon Dad snoring among the rubber duckies or if he finally came to and managed to slither away sight unseen. I do know that he never went back to the neighbor house to finish and never received any payment from them for services rendered prior to his siesta. The argument that ensued between Mom and Dad made it clear that no check would be forthcoming, and the phone never rang for his handyman talents from that point forward.

I felt guilty a long time afterward for leaving Dad to his own devices. On the off-chance I forgot, Mom made sure to remind me loud and often. I had left my post. That's why he got shitfaced and screwed everything up. Makes sense.

Thus became the Exile of the Neighborhood Handyman. A one hit wonder. We hardly knew ye.

'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.