Sanctuary
a novel
SANCTUARY. Copyright © 2011 by N. Frank Daniels. All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America and The greater world at large. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manor whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Unless you just can’t help yourself and must post your favorite except(s) on Blog, Facebook, or Twitter (500 words or less).
For information address N. Frank Daniels c/o The Bent Agency 204 Park Place, Number Two, Brooklyn, New York 11238.
SMASHWORDS EDITION
Cover design by Jenn Newton
Illustration by Kyle Kaczmarczyk
For TRUE friends, and those who know what that really means.
It must be the colors
and the kids that keep me alive
‘cause the music is boring me to death
It must just be the colors
and the kids that keep me alive
‘cause I’d want to go right away
to a January night
~Cat Power
Sanctuary
One
1
There are 27 of us slumped in folding chairs forming a ragged circle, in the center of which stands a man with a clipboard who is yelling at us with the cadence and ferocity of a Marine Corps drill instructor.
Only 1 maybe 2 of you in this room is going to succeed where so many others have failed, says the guy with the clipboard to all of us pathetic fucks staring up at him from our circled metal folding chairs. Addiction has stolen all of your lives this treatment center is here to help you get them back but make no mistake you will be doing all of the work we are only here to show you the way you will have to do the work. There will be no other options. Stand up. We look at him. STAND UP.
We stand, wonder if this is the part where we have to strip down and guys in surgical masks and hospital scrubs throw some of that delousing shit on us while they hose us down with piping cold water.
This is the beginning of your new life. In order for this life to become a life without drugs and prison and ruined families and relationships and friendships and lost jobs—you're going to have to make changes. These changes include who you hang out with and where you hang out. There can be no more weekends at the bar with your buddies. There should never be a single instance this early in your journey to recovery that you ever hang around these old people and places. They will only bring temptation and make it all the more likely that you will end up right back here again, or worse—in jail or a grave. These are the facts. You will only succeed if you follow the path that has been proven to work—the ONLY path that has been proven to work. If you make yourself open and available to that path You Will Succeed. But most of you are still too caught up in your own shit to let go enough to let someone help you, to allow someone to show you The Way.
He speaks to us like an evangelical preacher leading his sheep. He is mesmerizing.
Now—there are 27 of you in this room. Some of you are here because you want to be others are here because you have to be but it makes no difference whether you want to or have to, only 2 of you are going to last only 2 of you are going to see this the whole way through regardless of what—a wife, a family, a suspended jail sentence—is on the line. Look at each other.
We glance at one another, stare at the floor, look again.
Which of you is it going to be which of you has what it takes to live your life again? Which of you has the guts to Take Your Life Back? Sit down if you think you have what it takes.
One guy sits down almost immediately and then it’s contagious and all of us start sitting down in bunches until nobody is standing except the guy with the clipboard.
Most of you are liars, 2 of you are not. Time will sort out who is who.
I was in this Treatment Center Rehab environment for 7 months and I've now been out for close to 6. So far I've been one of the two who’s stayed clean. I don’t know who the other guy might be from my original intake group that stayed clean, but all that matters is I’m one of ‘em. I’m one of the 2 people who is no goddam liar.
2
My son is almost a year old and he’s the best thing that ever happened to me ever. He is beautiful and round-headed and perfect and the reason I live on to this day.
But I never get to see him. He is waved in front of me like a golden carrot because I can’t have any contact with him until The State decides I’m well-minded enough to not be a ‘harmful influence’ on him. There are days when this scenario becomes extremely disheartening for me and I long—I YEARN—for a bag of Heroin, long to go back to the old ways and just forget. But those days pass, and most other days when I start jonesing for dope all I have to do to gather strength and keep going is pull the one picture I have of my son from my wallet and stare at it for a good 5 minutes. The freakout days when I start realizing that there’s no way in hell I’m ever going to succeed with this thing—I push these thoughts down and away because I can’t give up on my boy. But even after 13 months clean there’s still no indication from The State that I’m ever going to get my son back. These fuckers know how to drag shit out, know how to make a man crazy with anger and revenge.
But they always leave you with a glimmer of hope.
They endlessly shovel purified shit down your throat, and just when you can’t take anymore you get a phone call telling you that they’ve agreed on a visitation schedule and then you reach way down and find reason not to screw everything up, find reason to wait just a little while longer before going postal.
3
My roommate Jeff is this gay guy I met in Rehab. He came through for me in all kinds of crazy situations during my in-time, situations that in the past would have made me bail, take ‘the easy way out.’ He’s one of the closest friends I’ve made since leaving the Old Life behind. To be honest, he’s pretty much my only friend now except for 1 or 2 others because, like the evangelical drill sergeant said, I have had to leave all the old ‘people and playgrounds’ behind me. No more Animal Mother, no more Corey or anybody else that I still care about. No more nobody, even now that I’m sober. They probably don’t want to hear from me anyway. I screwed up too many things for too many people. I fucked ‘em all over, every last one of the people I cared about and who cared about me. I fucked ‘em all over for one more fix.
Now my friends are new friends, friends in the system, friends in The Program. People like me. People who, if it had come down to it, would have sold out their own mothers for shots of Smack and hits off crackpipes, so-called humanbeings trying to find a release from the pain that ‘normal’ people have a seemingly much easier time dealing with (the lucky bastards).
But Jeff isn’t so bad, even if he is a fag junkie. I like him a lot. He’s always got these incredible stories and I believe all of them even though you can’t believe a junkie’s stories for shit most of the time. I mean, they’ll tell you that they knocked over an armored truck and spent 30 grand on blow and threw a weeklong party that killed 4 people before it was all gone, all 30 grand worth. Jeff isn’t that big a bullshitter though. He has the battle scars. He has the track marks. He has the more realistic but still completely insane stories of filling hotel sinks with ounces upon ounces of cocaine and mixing the coke with water so that he could draw up a shot anytime he needed one and then fill his arm with liquid fearless purified ecstasy. And he has a compassion to him that is unrivaled among any of the other room(in)mates at the Rehab. He cares about me. I owe him a lot. But he still pisses me off regularly because he’s always judging me, telling me I need to save money and go to all these AA meetings and stop hanging out with all kinds of people, especially girls.
Girls are a distraction he says.
According to you everything is a distraction I can't take a shit without you telling me I’m distracted.
Well this early in your recovery it’s impossible to be too careful.
I’m starting to think he’s probably just jealous, trying to keep me boxed in for himself. I mean, I think he has a crush on me. I mean, he’s literally always trying to fuck me. Once he actually bought me a 6-pack of boxer-briefs after I complained about how he was lucky that he had loaded parents that were always taking care of him because I didn’t have shit not even clean undies.
I mean even my underwear is fucked the elastic doesn’t even work anymore and then Jeff showed up one day with a 6-pack of boxer-briefs and had the gall to ask me to model them for him.
But I guess I put up with that kind of shit because like I said, he’s been with me through some incredibly trying times, has kept me from going back to the streets on numerous occasions, especially back when I first came into Rehab and was tenuous at best as far as being 1 of the 2 guys who, regardless of the stakes, would remain seated in the circle of folding chairs. But all this goodwill from him was back before he started trying to fuck me, so our relationship has become strained in the last couple of months. But at the same time, it’s easier to just let him beg me for sexual favors I’d never grant him than it is to kick his ass. I owe him my life so what’s a little harmless fag-beggary.
We hang out all the time, he keeps me honest and I try to follow through by going to a meeting all but one day a week even though it’s a total pain in the ass for the most part. I just can’t bring myself to talk about my personal problems in front of a roomful of near-complete strangers. I mean, these people talk about the most personal shit. This one girl just the other day, she was talking about wanting to use because she has all kinds of messed up internal physical female issues. I mean, who the hell talks about that crap in front of a bunch of people they’ve either never met or know in only the most peripheral manner? I don't even like girlfriends to talk to me about that kind of shit.
Its called telling on yourself says Jeff. You’d better start getting the hang of it. Lead by example that’s what these people are doing that’s what you should do.
Which brings us to the greatest exemplars of all: the so-called AA ‘sponsors’ who are the recoverees with at least 2 years sobriety and who supposedly shine like beacons of hope and possibility for all us short-timers. My stellar sponsor legacy is as follows:
1st SPONSOR: This guy always wears this decrepit leather jacket and these Max Headroom sunglasses, yeah, even at night. He’s like 45 and wants everyone to think he’s 25. But I went with him anyway because I could easily see me being that pathetic in 20 years. So anyway, I asked him to be my sponsor. He was heartily endorsed by the Treatment staff, mainly because he had like 10 years clean. But I wasn’t the first addict with the obviously brilliant idea of approaching the guy for sponsorship though. He had like 13 other sponsees (the actual word they use for drunks/drug addicts under the tutelage of a sponsor), and what with his trying schedule—talking up rock stars while begging them to listen to his demo, along with all that heavy face time needed at all the Atlanta clubs—he didn’t really have the time for any of us. Or maybe it was just me coming in at sponsee #14 and his sponsee limit turned out to be lucky Rockstar 13.
2nd SPONSOR: Then there was the guy who began unloading all kinds of his own personal crap on me as we progressed into our sponsor/sponsee relationship. Don't get me wrong, I’m like anybody else. I know that the key to any good relationship is a give and take between both parties. But when you're supposed to be able to depend on some guy to teach you the mystical ways of staying clean and you keep getting side-tracked by his own tales of woe, his being seduced into lost virginity at 13 by his smoking hot middle school science teacher, you have to ask yourself where the man’s priorities are, especially since every pubescent male fantasy this side of Sumerian eunuchs is to bang a hot teacher. I mean, I would have given my left nut to get ‘molested’ by Mrs. Steiner in 10th grade.
3rd SPONSOR: My last attempt at securing sponsorship was right before I’d notched a year of sobriety on my belt. I’d been the guy’s sobriety protégé for about 2 months and its supposed to be this big pomp and circumstance ritual when you reach your first year clean because its a milestone and you get a METAL token to commemorate the blessed occasion instead of the traditional crappy plastic tokens they hand out for 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, 6 months and all the other commemorations on the road to Learning To Live With The Pain—as opposed to drowning it out in all kinds of unhealthy shit that eventually kills you or leaves you rotting in a prison somewhere in Bayou Louisiana. Except for coffee, cigarettes, fastfood and twinkies and shit. That kind of shit kills you really slow and you don’t pawn your house to get it, so they leave that kind of shit out of the equation. Anyway, the sponsor never showed up at my One Year party and so for me that was that for the sponsors.
You have to remember that an addict will always be an addict Luke, even after he has years of sobriety behind him.
Sell it to the masses Jeff.
I mean, I was really disappointed. The guys with the most time clean were still total pieces of shit. It didn’t leave much to look forward to.
4
Jeff and I live in this upscale apartment complex in the heart of Atlanta and even with him halving the rent with me I would normally never be able to afford my share of it on my miniscule wages, but I have a sort of trump card in that I actually work for the place. The apartment complex pays me slightly more than minimum wage and because I work there they give me a discount on a 2-bedroom ‘basement’ unit. I make enough to just scrape by, but most months Jeff has to pitch in extra to cover my share.
His parents are loaded so I never feel guilty about him taking care of me on the short end. When we first moved in his parents paid for all kinds of furniture: a full bedroom suite for Jeff, a couch and end-tables. But I had absolutely nothing, and for the first 3 weeks we were in the place I was sleeping on a stack of blankets (despite Jeff’s constant reassurances that he wouldn’t ‘try anything’ if we shared his bed). I mean, it was some barren shit in my bedroom. Nothing but a clockradio and a pallet. I felt like a goddam serf prepping a bed of hay every night.
Then somebody at an AA meeting told me about this place that helps indigents get back on their feet by giving them free used furniture. You shoulda seen the look on Jeff’s face when the movers pulled up to the building and had emblazoned on the side of the truck, big as the Grand Canyon, a slogan proclaiming that they were ATLANTA’S HELP FOR THE HOMELESS SINCE 1987. It was a far cry from the Haverty truck that backed into the same parking space weeks earlier with Jeff’s suede couches and art deco modernist bedroom suite. I was pretty embarrassed, too, I admit it. But then again, fuck these people if they can't take a little slumming in their midst.
I’m proud to be helped by Atlanta’s Help For the Homeless, I tell Jeff. Somebody’s got to be helped by 'em.
Scarlet (her real name, no joke) is the Apartment Complex manager. She’s this completely stereotypical Atlanta-style southern belle, with an accent that makes me wanna bang her right then and there every time she tells me to do anything. And I don't guess her husband would even mind because that guy’s queer as a 2 dollar bill, I mean I’ve met blatant transsexuals less flaming than Scarlet’s husband. It’s clearly a marriage of convenience. She never catches on, though, or if she does she purposefully ignores my come-ons.
Scarlet says stuff to me like Will you go around to all the units and put these fliers on the doors Honey? and when I say something back that’s sort of suggestive like Is it cool if I stop by your unit sometime after work and have a drink she always has some comeback like I don't drink and anyway its better not to mix work and friendship in that incredible accent of hers. I used to take that kind of reply as less than a complete blow-off kinda like in that Jim Carrey movie when he asks the hot chick he’s been chasing all over the country if there’s any chance she could ever be with him and she just stands there looking at him and so he says One in a thousand? and she says More like one in a million and he says, all drunk on possibility, So there is a chance!
I know it’s pathetic, but it’s all I have anymore, the seeking of female companionship. That and going to AA meetings and chasing after the end of the rainbow that is getting my son back, my little Ben. It’s all one long anticipation of something in the unknowable future that can and will happen if only I give it a little time and put all my faith and trust in the God up above who everybody swears cares about all of us and our needs and hopes and destinies.
5
I was at a meeting the other night and hooked up with this chick that kinda looks like Sandra Bernhard but hotter and less dykey.
We hit it off right away, exchanged phone numbers. I can't get ahold of her now though. Another bullshit lead. That kind of dead end always depresses me and then I write endless pages about it in my journal asking God things like Why can't I ever be happy? and If I was on the right path would you even bother sending me a sign a toad-shitting albatross or a cloud formation shaped like the 110th Infantry Brigade or a fucking sudden ability to accurately do long division? and When does the good stuff start happening that these people always talk about when you go to these fucking self-pitying AA meetings?
I mean, I swear to God I’ve never heard so many sob stories, so many people ‘telling on themselves.’ It’s one long bitch session, a group therapy appointment that costs far less than any 2-bit degree-holding professional ‘therapist’ would charge, but still leaves one feeling like a callow, sorry piece of garbage at the end of every session.
I guess there’s a place for that self-inflicted daily epiphany but 5 or 6 goddam days a week? I can’t hack that. It makes me suicidal just listening to these people talking about their domineering wives and shitty jobs, and how they struggle every time they go past this one bar each night on the way home to their overbearing wives from their shitty jobs.
6
I find all kinds of discarded junk on the apartment complex grounds while zipping about on the company golf cart. It’s my favorite part of the job. I usually do it in the morning right after I make the office coffee, so I have this little window between sleep and actual work when I can cruise along on the golf cart and just think and generally acclimate myself to mylife as it is now.
Sometimes I find some pretty good stuff around the place, stuff dropped out of car doors as drunk strippers and bartenders and business execs ‘working late’ make their way home at all hours of the night. I picked up this supreme little spaceman/astronaut the other day. He’s a little plastic figurine of 3 or 4 inches tall, the kind that has no movable parts and therefore always stays in the same position, like those tiny green army men, except taller. And this particular astronaut has a detachable backpack air compressor thingy on it that really adds to its appeal. It’s detachable.
I stand him on my kitchen counter and I don’t know why but he makes me feel better every time I look at him. I mess around with him sometimes, take off the backpack and march him around his little piece of the countertop moon, then put him back where he can watch the world go through its motions.
But the best stuff I ever find is in and around the garbage compactor. This complex is one of those high-rent gated communities right in the center of Atlanta, so there’s always some kind of stellar shit being discarded either on the wall next to the compactor or sometimes thrown in, and I’ll see it in there before I push the button that initiates the crushing and I’ll climb in and throw the goodies back over the top of the compactor so that I can go through it in peace without fear of being pulverized.
You just never know what can go wrong. There’s always some kind of sick Star Wars scenario running through my head, where somebody inadvertently pushes the button and then I’m racing against time to claw my way out before I’m mushed into a four inch square of skin and blood and pulverized bone.
But it’s worth the risk. The residents here throw out all kinds of totally usable shit. Jeff wonders where I get all the stuff but I’ll never tell because he’d immediately look down on this stuff and honestly it’s almost all in great condition. I’ve practically furnished my entire apartment with other people’s ‘trash’: lamps, curtains, a box full of glasses and silverware (set carefully on the compactor wall), a pair of barstools, a badass welcome mat that says GO AWAY.
And then today...today I hit the motherload.
It was in the compactor for the shame of it, I’m guessing. Or maybe in anticipation of an impending marriage. I almost didn’t see it until it was too late and had to literally run over to the control box and hit the abort button or all would have been lost.
It was a bag of XXX porn, all in original boxes. The bag didn’t reveal its treasure until the garbage started moving with the force of the crusher and then a black trashbag spilled out a copy of a classic Ginger Lynn flick.
I climbed down in there and pulled up the bag. It was heavy as hell, and I could barely contain my excitement, didn’t even wait to get back to the apartment to see if it was just that one video I’d seen initially—maybe just a single vid a girlfriend found while cleaning under the bed, or a flick that finally wore out after years of frequent viewing.
But it wasn’t just a single video. The 40 gallon black bag was full to the rim(job) with 100% smut. I threw the bag over my shoulder like a pervert Santa Claus and nonchalantly ran to the building where my apartment occupies the bottom unit, 103 F. I dumped the bag on the floor and marveled first at how beautiful this pile of smut was. How it had to be more than 30 tapes which—according to the text splashed across the box covers—contained, at rough estimate, more than 180 scenes of Hardcore Fucking.
Then I wondered about the guy who tossed it, wondered what had happened in his life that had caused him to ditch such a thorough collection of top-notch pornography. Didn’t care enough to wonder for long, though.
I pulled the Ginger tape from its box, slid it into the VCR, jerked off like 15 times over the next hour until I was practically shooting air out of my dick, no shit. Eventually I gathered the wherewithal to leave my lair and spent the rest of the day accomplishing various duties; cleaning out the pool skimmers and whatnot. But separating each foray into respectable work was a stealthy stealing away back to my apartment for another go-round with a new slut on a new tape there are so many to choose from I hate myself.
7
It’s only since going to Rehab that I really started getting into prayer, and believing and trusting in God and shit. If there’s one thing they really pound into your head in Rehab, it’s that you have to believe in some sort of power higher than yourself. I can dig that, as I don’t know how I would have gotten through this last year without it.
I pray all the goddam time. It makes it so much easier not to flip out and stick another bag of dope into your arm when you can have your own personal bitch session with the Supreme Being. Lots of begging and pleading. So I keep up a good journal chronicling life events, and self-doubt, and shit in the news, but mostly the stuff I write is along the lines of begging God to help me make it through and I guess it works because I never die in the night like it feels I’m going to.
I just write and write and write until I can’t keep my eyes open any longer. I beg God to grant me safe passage through this dark time, and I tell him all of the shit that runs through my head: the constant doubt, the self-hatred, the lack of companionship. The deafening loneliness.
Please God, give me a sign, please God help me. Give me a sign I say.
I haven’t gotten any blatant signs yet, but so far the manic praying seems to be working, I mean, I haven’t gone off the deep end yet. I keep hearing from all these people like Jeff and my mom and this guy Bobby, who’s the director of the Treatment Center, that as long as I don’t get high, they’ll eventually have to give me custody of my son. As long as I continue maintaining my legal obligation to not get wasted, they have to hold up their end of the deal and place my son back in my scarred-up, loving arms.
But still, I get depressed about it all, because if they take much longer with this carrot-waving shit, my boy is going to remember living with these redneck fucks who’ve been his temporary foster parents since he was just a month old, and then he’ll be all attached to them, and out of a sense of sympathetic duty I’ll have to let him keep visiting them as he grows up, and I’ll have to endure—far into the foreseeable future—their love of hunting and Nascar, which they’re probably even this minute imparting to my boy.
My mom took me for a Ben visitation at their double-wide once, and they had a goddam marlin mounted on the living room wall. It was all I could do not to run out of there with my boy under my arm, jump into the car like Bo Duke and tell my mom to gun it. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned through all of this it’s self-control, in constant debt to the so-called Long View. It can only get better from here.
Please God, hear my cry. I’m giving it my best shot here. I don't know what else I can do, but if there were just some sign that you could give that I’m on the right track, that would be nice. You know, a streetlight blinking suddenly as I walk across an intersection. Or the death of the redneck foster parents—anything. Just give me a sign.
No signs come, not of that blatant quality anyway, but Bobby says that maybe just the fact that I haven’t gotten high in so long is sign enough. And I guess that much is true.
8
My brother Jonas calls. He’s still living on the streets, still shoots up Smack all the time with this one skank who ‘co-signs his bullshit’ (an AA term for junkies who help other junkies remain in the realm of junkiedom by going along with their insane rationales for why it’s ok to keep shooting Smack).
Jonas wants to come stay with me because he doesn’t have anywhere else to go, but that’s a really hairy situation when you’re in my position. I get drug-tested all the time and one screw-up is all The State needs to permanently cancel my parental rights. Plus I don’t want to get caught up in all of that sordid shit anyway—my brother’s daily activity regimen centers solely around shooting dope and figuring out new ways to get more money to shoot more dope. I’m out of that racket and don’t ever want to go back— I’ve got plans and conquests all laid out, you know.
My brother calls me and says It’s 24 degrees out here you’ve gotta let us come stay with you bro.
And my heart hurts for him, always has, but at the same time he’s capable of some sneaky, conniving shit. Back right after I started Treatment he showed up at the door of the Rehab on visitation day and asked me to walk down to the IHOP for a cup of coffee and a stack of pancakes. I immediately accepted the invite because the cunt posing as a nurse that ran the menu/chowline at the Treatment Center was this sadistic robot-bitch that wouldn’t let us have any sugar for stuff like coffee or salt for stuff like instant mashed potatoes.
She explained through her human faceplate that this was for our own good, we needed to cleanse our bodies of all impurities, even sugar and salt. But you could tell she reveled in the complete power of her position and even Bobby who runs the goddam place came just short of admitting that she was the cunt she really was.
I could tell as soon as we started walking toward the IHOP that Jonas was higher than hell but I was worried about him and was also just happy to get out of the Rehab for an hour so I kept walking anyway despite any reservations I had. Just like now, he was living on the street and shacking up in abandoned cars and houses, and I figured this was a safe outing; there was no way I could get into a hairy situation just by walking to the IHOP with him, whether he was high or not. So I went.
We sat in a booth and I watched his dumbass girlfriend nod off repeatedly as I tried to maintain Jonas’ attention long enough for us to exchange more than 2 subsequent sentences. He couldn’t have been more fucked up. I mean, he had to have shot up right before he materialized at the Treatment Center.
What the hell have you been doing? Are you even trying to get into a place? A Detox? Or are you happy living like a complete bum?
Dude, we just got fucked over royally he said, completely ignoring me. We went down to the Goodwill over there on Howell Mill and bought this fucking awesome down comforter for 10 bucks and then we left it in this abandoned car where we’ve been sleeping. Then we went and copped a few bags and when we got back to the fucking car the fucking blanket was gone. Some fucking crackhead took it or something. We’re fucking freezing.
He scratched his nose a bunch. It looked like it was about to bleed from all the scratching, I mean it was nonstop. I ordered some pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream and was eating those pancakes, really enjoying them, staring at Jonas with his pin-dot pupils, and his dumbass of a girlfriend with her nodded-out head slumped against his shoulder, and thanking the Almighty that I was out of that racket. I mean, if Jonas and his dumbass girlfriend weren’t the best goddam deterrent ever then nothing ever would be. Then Jonas asked me if I wanted some.
Before I could say anything, he slid a little green baggie across the table toward me, the same kind of baggie that I used to collect and clean out when there was no money to be found or finagled in the hopes that the residue from 10 or 15 of those little bags might add up to a full shot. The little bag he pushed toward me was filled almost to the middle with brown powdered Heroin. It was a huge bag.
Do you have a work? I asked him, pure instinct kicking in.
He furtively slid a syringe across the table like it was an envelope filled with payoff cash from a mobster to a cop or something.
I slid out of the booth and skulked back to the toilet.
It wasn’t until I’d slapped the deadbolt shut and placed the work and the baggie on the corner of the sink that I really gave some thought to what was happening, to what I was about to do.
It wasn’t even me doing it, it was like watching someone else doing it.
I stared in the mirror for a good long time and watched the bees buzzing in the glass hive and weighed out my options. I thought about how I could cover up this one last indiscretion, could shoot the Dope then head directly back to my room at the Center and feign sleep until the next morning, when the physical manifestations of the high would have worn off.
Then I thought about how I’d justify it if I were found out, how I’d convince The State to give me another chance to prove myself worthy of my son.
I stood in the IHOP bathroom. Kept staring in the mirror.
The bees went about their work.
Then I punched myself hard in the mouth, my bottom teeth cutting my lip. Went back out to the booth and tossed the bag and the work to my brother, told him he was a cunt for doing that bullshit. Scooped up my still steaming plate of pancakes and in one motion turned and walked out the door, ignoring the confused waitress as she explained that the plates were not part of the to-go deal, smiling to myself for a whole range of reasons.
Saw Jonas’ face pasted to the other side of the window in the same booth where I’d just conquered the world. I couldn’t believe I’d just beaten the demon and he couldn't either.
And now I look at the phone a good long time as Jonas again sits destitute in the cold at some phonebooth, as Jonas waits for me to display my good graces, my brotherly love.
I tell him that I’ll let him in the security gate and unlock the pool bathroom for him if he wants to stay in there with his dumbass girlfriend, but he’s not staying in my apartment.
Why not man?
I don't trust you. I don't trust your intentions.
Whatever dude. Just leave the bathroom unlocked.
9
The next morning before work I stop by the pool bathroom and am relieved to find my brother and his girlfriend already gone, headed out in the new morning light to secure the next score. It’s never too early for the re-commissioning of The Infinite Quest.
I go to the locked janitor’s closet and retrieve the pool-cleaning tools, fish out the leaves, empty the skimmers, measure the pH levels. It’s far too cold for anyone to swim but it’s all about maintaining for the next season so that there isn’t a giant clean-up necessary when it’s time for the bikinis to come out and the campaign officially gets underway to drive me fucking nuts, all orchestrated by the multitudinous strippers that live in this place, all of whom (of course) hate tan lines.
Next I drive the golf cart to the trash compactor and use the 9-foot pvc pole to shove down all the previous day’s garbage in front of the massive weight of the crusher. Nothing worth dumpster diving for on this day.
I go to the office, make coffee, check for any faxes faxed during post-business hours, go to my utility shed and wait for Tom.
Tom is the apartment complex handyman. He’s gay and has AIDS, thereby disproving the common misconception that all gay guys are hairdressers and waiters and dragqueens—though my roommate Jeff only encourages this stereotype as he’d been a hairdresser and waiter and dragqueen all at the same time back before he got clean.
Tom loves me, but not like Jeff does. It’s in more of a maternal way. I’ve told Tom about The Shit, he knows all of my darkest drug-use secrets—most of them anyway. He knows that I need this job so that I can fully reintegrate into ‘respectable society’, he knows if I don’t succeed in getting my son back that I’ll have no reason left to live, that I’ll throw away this perfectly adequate body. Yeah, that sounds selfish in light of his having AIDS and everything but everybody’s got their own demons, their own thresholds to maintain.
You need to ask Scarlet if she has anything for you to do otherwise you can help me fix the garbage disposal up in 204D, Tom says.
I like and I hate when Scarlet has shit for me to do. It’s good insofar as it keeps me busy and physically fit, since it inevitably involves my running up and down 40 flights of stairs throwing fliers over 260 doorknobs. But it’s also shitty as fuck because the fliers are almost always some lame-ass announcement about some bullshit ‘exclusive’ event the management has dreamed up to make the apartment dwellers feel as though they are part of a ‘community.’ Apparently most of the denizens don’t have any pressing need to feel communally engaged, because out of 260 doorknobs hit only about 8 people ever show up for these get-togethers. I hate wasting my precious man-hours on shit like that, much-needed exercise not withstanding. It’s like yelling into an abyss for $7.50 an hour. A total waste of time.
How’d you learn all this handyman shit?
Not all fags are hairdressers you know.
Yeah I know.
My stepdad taught me most of my handyman superpowers.
You know I keep meaning to tell you…
What’s that?
You know you have calves like a goddam horse?
What’s that got to do with anything?
I don't know just making smalltalk.
You're weird.
You're a homo.
You're one ‘a them breeders, Tom says like only a gay guy posing as a redneck can say it. I always think its funny when Tom turns on the fag flamboyance because he’s so far from that in real life. I wonder if he’s like that at those gay parties you always hear about, the ones my mom’s told me about, where they all lube up and fuck each other. I ask Tom if he just uses straight guy talk when he’s around straight people and relapses into the gay lispy shit when he’s around other homos.
Are you some kind of retard? Shut up before I horsekick you.
Ah, secret fag society shit.
He kicks me in the thigh and goddam it hurts, the bastard.
10
Seems some of the guys in my post-treatment therapy group think I’ve turned homo because I live with Jeff The Flaming Gay Guy. When I try to defend my move in with him the looks they give me say it all: I’m a closeted homo whose ardent refusal to admit his gayness is rooted in faux-macho swagger which, like everything else, is part of the gigantic conspiracy every junkie plays into wherein he lies to himself and thereby increases his chances of relapse.
I assure them all, every last redneck close-minded fuck in the room, that my swagger is genuine, that I’ve fucked more pussy in my 22 short years than most of them will fuck in their entire lives, and I say this while simultaneously weighing the option to jack all of them in their judgmental homophobic faces. The therapy session continues and on Bobby’s insistence we switch topics but I can’t think of a single goddam thing I want to say, not a single gem I care to impart to this crowd of bigoted small-minded fucks.
You haven’t said anything for the last 20 minutes, Bobby says. You've completely shut down.
I stare at the floor, my face red and getting redder now that the assholes are all looking at me again.
You've completely shut down, he says again.
I. Have. Never. Touched. Jeff. I Have NEVER Wanted To Touch Jeff. I Am Not Gay You Assholes. You're all homophobes and bigots and I can't believe it took me this fucking long after all we’ve gone through together in this rundown shithole of a Rehab for me to realize it.
None of us are doubting you, Bobby lies.
Yeah, man, we never wanted to make you think that we doubted you being straight and all, a guy named Johnny says, speaking for everybody in the room.
I moved in with Jeff because he’s my friend. I bet if you and your butt buddy Tim moved in together nobody would think that you 2 were fags John but because Jeff’s a homo you think I’m one too. You're all fucking sad.
I sit there through the rest of the meeting only because if I leave they can hold it against me and tell the DFACS social worker in charge of giving me back my son that I haven’t followed through on their treatment plan, the fuckers.
11
Went to see that movie Slingblade with Jeff and turned around to find my stepfucker standing in line directly behind us.
What are you doing here son?
He still insists on calling me ‘son’ even though he’s been separated from my mother for months and even though I’ve never been treated like anything close to a son by him. And anyway, he’s never once acted like anything close to a father figure, but more like a long-term live-in asshole.
Watching a movie same as you, I say, turning back around.
He’s wearing—no shit—a blue tracksuit, though to his credit or whatever he’s lost probably 50 pounds since leaving my mother and brothers to fend for themselves.
What movie? my stepfucker says.
Slingblade, Jeff says.
Me too!
We stand there for a few more minutes as the line slowly empties into the theater and then for some goddam reason I ask him if he wants to sit with us. He looks over at Jeff, stares at him hard and I know what he’s thinking and it’s more than just a realization that Jeff is gay. It's also that he’s thinking that all of his accusations over the years are finally being incontrovertibly justified. All those times when I’d come home with fucked up hair-dos and newly pierced ears when he would accuse me of being a faggot.
Now he thinks he knows; he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt. It’s the whole guilt-by-association scenario and everyfuckingbody (the goddam homophobes) thinking they have the market cornered on knowing everything just because they’re too pussy to trust their wandering dicks to befriend someone of the homo persuasion. God knows they’d ‘accidentally’ be taking it in the ass 2 days after meeting one them ‘faggits.’
We all slide into the back row with me between my gay roommate and my stepfucker.
Your dad is kind of hot like an older Michael Corleone or a late 60s era Brando.
What the fuck is wrong with you? I whisper back. And he’s not my dad.
We don't say much after that, partly because the movie is riveting, partly because what would we say anyway.
When it’s over we file out of the theater and stepfuck tells me, It was good to see you again. I still carry around that letter you wrote me.
I look at him in disbelief. I’d given him the letter in question right before Treatment. It said that he was a terrible excuse for a husband/father, that he never supported his family financially or emotionally or in any other meaningful way and that even though I had lost everything and was a pathetic fuck of a human being, at least I was a drug addict, so what was his excuse?
He had no answer for that or any of it, but he evidently appreciated my penmanship or something, because why the hell would anyone want to keep a document on him that basically decries his entire person?
12
I haven’t gotten laid since something like month 4 of Treatment and I’m about to die from Blueballs, Giant Trashbag O’ Porno not withstanding. It’s just not the same—like once you go black you never go back, except with pussy in general.
I’ve come close to getting laid a couple of times. I had a few near misses since this one time with Jonas’ ex-girlfriend, a 17 yr. old who picked me up in her mother’s LandRover and had the biggest tits I’ve ever seen. Still don’t know why she went through all the trouble to come 50 miles into Atlanta just to bang me but I wasn’t complaining, not even when her mom walked into her bedroom mid-thrust and gave me a stern talking-to about shit like not sleeping with kids in high school when I had so much work to do on myself and You shouldn't be dragging others still caught up in the ravages of adolescent hormones into your sordid world.
That kinda shit.
The time I came closest after that was right before I was scheduled to be released, with this skanky chick new to the Rehab. She was a meth-head, only 27 but missing all kinds of teeth and totally ghetto. I have no idea why I fucked around with her. I guess I was just flattered that of the 55 guys available, she’d chosen to fuck around with me in the basement laundry room.
Yeah, that’s why I fucked around with her ghetto ass. That and the Blueballs. Yeah, the being pleasantly flattered, the troughing self-esteem issues that make every addict available to any chick who shows any sign of the slightest interest.
And of course the swollen hungry Blueballs.
They play a factor in everything too.
13
I go to another of my Treatment-Center-Sanctioned (mandated) 4 AA meetings a week and that Sandra Bernhard-looking chick is back. I haven’t seen her in like 2 months.
What happened to you? I called your number and it was disconnected.
I’m in treatment now she says.
Oh.
She elaborates. Because the day after we met I ran into this businessman guy who asked me to fly out to L.A. with him and he gave me all kinds of cash and I started using H again, 'cept this time it was black tar and I overdosed in the fuckin hotel room, then the motherfucker dumped me off at a hospital. I had to call my parents and get them to bail me out of jail. Can you believe that? They threw me in the can for being high and then my parents made me go right back into Charter for treatment.
Did you fuck the guy?
She looks at me like I’m a total dumbass.
I mean the businessman.
I know what you meant.
I let it drop. It doesn’t matter anyway.
You wanna come stay the night at my place?
I can't. (fuck) But I’ve got a weekend leave coming up. (yesss.)
I count the days until guaranteed pussy. It might sound depraved or debased or whatever, but once you start getting clean all you can think about is fucking. It’s the natural progression for the addict and until they outlaw sex all of us are going to be fucking like minxes. When getting loaded on Smack has been your main impetus in life for so long and then you take the Smack out of the equation, the old, long-dormant parts come back from their ancient hibernation and want to eat, make up for lost time.
On Saturday Sandra calls me from a pay phone and says to meet her at the Lindbergh train station in 20 minutes. I walk-run up there and make a 15 minute walk take 10, then sit on a bench and wait. It’s the same station where some suicidal dude splattered his brains all over the tracks and the platform a few months back and left all kinds of commuters pissed that they weren’t going to get home in time for dinner because some asshole decided to off himself by using public transportation for self-destruction right at the height of rush hour. The bloodstains are still visible, though look more like oil spots now, more than anything resembling innards and brain matter.
A black guy asks me for a cigarette. I’m feeling particularly charitable, what with pussy on the horizon, so I flip him 3 Marlboros. Then Sandra steps off the escalator and we’re both beaming and even hold hands walking down the hill toward the complex and past the slowly rising new apartment buildings that are no more than 2 blocks from the one where I live/work. This new apartment complex is owned by the same parent corporation as my complex except this new one will have elevators for the disabled and tired, but mostly for the lazy. Progress.
We waste no time when we get in the door. I don’t ask her if she wants something to drink (coke or milk or water) I don’t try to make small talk neither does she we just get right to it on Jeff’s bed which is queen size (fitting, right?) and way bigger than my double bed. She’s undressing I’m undressing it’s a race to naked and then we’re all over each other.
Who’s that? she releases my lip from her sweet clenching teeth.
Who?
Him. She points to the wall above Jeff’s bed where there’s a giant fucking GlamourShots portrait of himself that he’s mounted for some ridiculous reason just above the headboard.
That's just Jeff. My roommate.
Your roommate?!
He’s gay.
Oh. Then we’re back at it.
It’s Jeff’s laundry day so there aren’t any sheets or anything on his bed but that makes it that much more animal in nature, just 2 desperate people fucking their hearts out on a barren mattress, pushing away everything else that clouds the mind for however long we can make it last, however long I can keep it up.
At some point I look over out the window and there’s Old Jim the groundskeeper right outside the window, trimming the fucking hedges. All he’d have to do is turn his head to the left and he’d get a bigger eyeful than his wrinkled eyeballs have seen in decades.
We throw ourselves to the floor, still connected at the crotch, and laugh then continue where we left off, except on the floor this time.
We break for dinner. Bread sticks and a family-size can of beef vegetable soup.
And then hit it again.
We go and go. I haven’t had this much sex in forever. Sex where there are no time constraints, no distractions. Just mouths and hands and skin and pounding blood and gasps and cries and pushing and pulling and squeezing breathing heaving thrusting melting before the inevitable coming down. Then we lay there on Jeff’s bedroom floor and smoke-smolder, don’t say anything drag inhale exhale hold hands breathe.
What the fuck?! Jeff stands in the doorway horrified at the naked girl lying on his bedroom floor. Sacrilege.
I laugh, long and full of gusto.
Hey at least we didn't fuck on your bed. I leave off the part about when we were fucking on his bed.
14
I dream of Ben. Again. Like I do all the time since I got clean.
In this dream, he’s grown up and has a beard and shit like that, that shows his maturity, his age. But somehow I know it’s him even though I shouldn’t know that because I’m still me now and not wrinkled or hobbled or white-haired or anything like that. We’re practically the same age. He’s maybe even a little older than I am except he has his shit together and is looking at me like I’m a pathetic fuck of a loser. I’m trying to act like that’s not the case but he sees right through me, won’t talk to me, won’t even acknowledge me, just looks at me with piercing blue eyes, then extends his hand, drops a blood-soaked rag at my feet and walks away.
I see my blood everyday, so that’s what I attribute that part of the dream to. Back toward the end of my Rehab stint my nose started bleeding all the time out of nowhere and the bitchy nurse on call said it was probably because of all the coke and Heroin I was snorting and then ignored me when I told her I didn’t snort shit, I only shot it in my arms. I then went back upstairs to my shared dorm room and lay on the bed until I fell asleep.
You have a phone call in the lobby, the guy in charge of running the afternoon desk shift informed me, his aggravating banging on the door fully bringing me back to consciousness, blood smeared across my face from where I’d evidently started bleeding from the nose while napping.
It was an otherwise pleasant afternoon nap except for the reminder that something’s wrong with my nose and that it can’t be good for someone to see their own blood every day, especially when I’m only 22.
Who is it?
I don't know but she said that it was urgent.
Urgent? I throw on a pair of pants over my Spiderman boxers, start pulling on socks.
I don't know if it is actually urgent or just sounds urgent. I don't know, just get down there.
I forfeit the procedures of foot covering, disregarding house rules to never be out of the room sans shoes (except in case of fire), run down the hall, the stairs, making an odd one-footed slapping sound every time the single shoe I managed to pull on hits the worn marble staircase. I snatch the phone from the cradle, mash the Hold button, ignore the R.A. attempting to explain what the nature of the urgent call is.
Hello?
Mr. Buccleugh?
Yes hello what’s going on?
This is Jean Cochran from Newton County DFACS.
Yes. What’s going on? Why is it urgent? Is something wrong with my son?
This is just a call to notify you that his condition has worsened.
What condition? The puking thing?
Yes… the puking thing. It has been determined that he has a blockage in his stomach... which is the cause of the projectile vomiting we’ve been observing for the past 4 months.
OK so now what?
Well, don't be alarmed but
I’m already alarmed what do you mean don't be alarmed just cut to the chase lady what’s going on?
Well he’s been scheduled for surgery this afternoon and we are required by law to inform you of this development.
Required by law? Are you required by law to give me any advance notice of this sort of thing, like say more than a few fucking hours before it’s supposed to happen? How long have you people known about this and you're only now telling me the morning that it’s happening.
Well it was determined by your caseworker and her higher-ups that it would be best if you were not present at the hospital when the operation takes place, as it would only add to the already stressful situation and we’d like to make this as quick and painless a procedure as possible.
Fuck you I’m his father. What hospital is it? I’m coming down there whether you people want me there or not. I can't believe you’d think this was cool, to stonewall me like this this is my son we’re talking about.
I called Tom and begged him to take me all the way down to Newton County and even though we’d only just started working together a few months prior, and even though he’s gay and has no parental instinct whatsoever, he agreed because he still possesses the compassion of a human being, which is more than can be said of anybody working at DFACS.
When we got to the hospital they had guards waiting at the front door.
Are you Mr. Buccleugh?
Yes. Where’s my son?
Please step over here sir.
What is this? I’m just trying to see my son before he’s operated on.
Sir, you are required to stay in this lobby until you are called.
Oh really? And who determined that?
I’m not authorized to answer any questions sir.