I Can’t Quit

When I quit drinking, I substituted caffeine for alcohol.  That wasn’t quite enough so I substituted buying Pearl Jam bootlegs for alcohol, as well.  And then I subsituted working extra hours for alcohol, as well.  And then I ran out of Pearl Jam bootlegs to buy so I substituted DVDs for Pearl Jam bootlegs.  And things still weren’t enough so I substituted sex for alcohol.  And then I tried to quit caffeine so I substituted lifting weights for caffeine.  But I still wanted alcohol so I substituted going to concerts for alcohol.  And I got tired of lifting weights so I substituted hiking for that.  And then I got re-addicted to caffeine.  And then I was having too much sex so I substituted eating for sex.  And then concerts were getting too expensive so I substituted going to the movies for concerts.  And then it was winter so I couldn’t hike so I substituted more eating for that.  And then I tried to quit caffeine again so I substituted going to concerts for that.  And then it was spring so I substituted hiking for going to concerts.  And then I got addicted to caffeine again.  And then I quit smoking and I substituted eating for that.  And then I was eating too much so I substituted working out for that.  But I did too much too fast so I had to substitute even more caffeine for working out.  And then I started eating again.  And I’m still buying a ton of DVDs.  I can’t quit.

Cheers

on the couch a few days ago, not doing much, maybe reading, half-dozing, maybe muttering to myself, was suddenly aware of the Cheers theme song on the television, and despite having heard it dozens of times over the past few years I suddenly remembered a connection I had to it, or it had to me, in the dark smoky years of my fire, during the bed-ridden gin-soaked sorrow, however, I cannot fully remember this connection, it remains submerged in the narrow ether, in the marrow of moments; perhaps, paralyzed on a couch in Shippensburg, during some of the darkest days, with my back turned to the television while my rommates did homework and I was dropped out of school and just drinking drinking drinking and masturbating, perhaps paralyzed on that couch the Cheers theme song came on and it with it’s positivity-laden lyrics but somehow melancholy tune it cemented for me an absolute feeling that existence is definitely worth experiencing while also being utter shit;  I can have no way of knowing if that is the connection I am recalling but it is a likely one and certainly not much different than whatever the truth is.  And while I was on my current couch pondering this connection it became clear to me through some back alley memory loophole that the Cheers theme song had been a source for and symbol of my extreme melancholy for quite a few of the hazy barely-formed years of my most earnest absentia; while I was off tra-la-la-ing in the Land of Drinkers Who’d Rather Be Dead, there seems to have been a lot of syndicated television on in backgrounds (in basements, bars, and bedrooms) and this everybody-knows-your-name trope became something of a razor to my wrist, whatever that means, and what I am now stuck figuring out is how in the world I know this, if I can’t remember any instance of hearing it during those years, and how I forgot this connection in the intervening years and succesfully watched Cheers without remembering that sadness.  None of this has anything to do with Cheers, of course, but instead I am concerned with the terrifying part of our lives which happens without our noticing it; without our ability to notice it if we tried; this submerged, bottom-of-the-iceberg life we all live (whether you drank yourself to death or not, whether you watch boorish sitcoms or not) that transpires below the waterline of our minds.  Suddenly out of nowhere you realize a part of you is dead that you forgot ever existed and then you forget your realization and go on with your day eating a Snickers, riding an escalator, with no idea that hidden parts of you are orbiting.  Suddenly you remember you used to be a different person, with different habits, with different thoughts, and for a moment you hold that image of your former self perfectly in your mind like a microscope snapshot of a snowflake but then just as quickly as it came the structure vanishes and you remember nothing except that you had been remembering something.  Life becomes reduced to shadow structures; edifices with no interiors.  You spend all day trying to figure out what your vivid dream from the night before meant, and then suddenly, at 6 in the afternoon when you go to think about it some more, you cannnot remember what happened in the dream (despite having thought about it all day).  How can this be?  What chased it away?  Where did it go?  Where does it live now?  Surely it lives.  Or you had a dream when you were eight years old that you have remembered your whole life; you go back to pondering it from time-to-time in your waking life.  But suddenly in your mid-twenties you start to think that maybe half of it was real; that your grandma really did take you to that park to see those geese, and that the only part that was a dream was when you rode a goose into the sky, but you never do ask your grandma if it was real and then she dies and now you’re not sure at all.  And then maybe one day you’re 40 years old and you ponder the dream again and you think, maybe the part where I rode the goose was a day-dream; yes, that’s right, I day-dreamed it sitting in school; so half of it was real, and half imagined, but none of it dreamt.  But it probably was dreamt.  How can one not know these things?  Where do we live, in the shadows, in the light?  In the great underneath?  I had a dream a few nights ago that involved a lot of driving, a friend of mine I almost never see, and somehow my old high school parking lot, and I was happy, happy, and I kept on living in that dream world for as long as I could in the minutes after I woke up, until the logic and sense of that universe faded; even now I can remember almost none of it, but I lived there, I tell you; it was me living there just as sure as it’s me typing this.  The dream-me, and the typing-me, and the Cheers-sadness me…I wonder if they are the same.  Or if I am many.  Perhaps it is like viewing something through a crystal, and there are many different versions of the same thing, but existing all at once.  But is the Cheers me, the Fire me, still here, or do I simply hear his echoes (maybe him and dream-me are in cahoots), see his footprints, feel the slouch-pangs of his sinister urges?  In the deepest moments of latest night these are the questions I have when I become convinced I am more than alive

Audio Poem: “The Timid Flowers of a Winter”

Year written:  2006
Collection:  The Salt Flats

The Timid Flowers of a Winter

I could go on for decades
scribbling poems
of puking off balconies
pissing into swimming pools
sweating in the dark
with nameless women
lit by lava lamps
quickly forgotten;
I could go on as long as I like
complaining about the state of my belly,
phantom shakes,
shadows glanced in sorrow.
I could go on forever about
those six years spent in the grip
of a lurching liquid army,
but why bother?

Why bother when
the days now bend to night
in their rightful orderly order
and all about me have sprung
the timid flowers of a winter;
(the sadness of love & the joy of regret)
and life in its most comely phase
descends upon my head like a burning halo.

Minarets

I wasn’t allowed in the women’s wing, despite it being just a few feet from my room.  This was rehab, after all, and it had to be a completely neutered experience.  Sex and romance only clouded things.  But She was in rehab at the same time as me, and I could hear Her down there right now, just twenty feet down the hall, probably sitting on the floor with other women, chatting amiably in their PJs.  Fuck it, I thought, I’m going down there.

My ten-year-old mind was mainly amazed that a swan would walk that close up to me.  It was so beautiful, so…exotic.  What was there to do, I figured, except to pet it?

A grown man in his thirties doesn’t often find himself high up in a tree on a golf course, reaching dangerously far out over a gulf of blank air, desperately groping for a nine iron, but there I was.  A friend had lost his grip on a backswing and his club had decided to stay in the tree.  Despite being the opposite of a climber, I somehow found myself here, swinging out over nothingness.

We were almost too tiny to even carry baseball bats, but here my tiny friend and I were, by ourselves, in the churchyard throwing baseballs to one another and swinging and usually missing.  What a feeling, being alone like that in the world and trusted.  What a feeling, the thwap of the ball on the bat.

I breezed right past Allen, the on-duty intern.  I thought he had looked right at me.  I thought he just wasn’t going to care.  There She was now, right in front of me.  She didn’t see me yet, but I saw Her, all thighs and lips and perfect-voiced serenity washing over me.  I hurried my step to get closer.

My hand never got close enough to touch it, because as I approached it, it lunged at me, making some screeching noise that is still hanging over Newville somewhere.  It’s wings unfurled like a demon’s plumage, and it’s face morphed into a sinister sneer.  It began to chase me.

The branch cracked.  It moved.  I felt it becoming less branch-like.  Below, my friends weren’t even watching me.  They were chatting amiably, assuming I was doing just fine. There was no way I could reach that club.  The branch cracked again.

He threw the ball to me.  Eyes on the ball, I swung.  Thwap.  It launched off the bat, hung in the air like a tiny moon, and crashed through one of the church’s windows with an unbelievable sound.

She glanced up, saw me.  Omigod what are you doing here? You’re not allowed down here!  she blurted.  I grinned, pleased with my rebellion.  I thought I’d come see you, I said.  She actively frowned.  You have GOT to go back to your room or we’ll all be in trouble!  I could see She meant business.  Before I had even finished walking toward Her, I swivelled and went back the way I came.  I walked past Allen as calmly as I could.  Just as I had gotten past him, his eyes looked up from his book and recognition washed over him.

I thought the swan would kill me.  I ran as fast as I could, as if I would never run again.  Somewhere out of my sight, I heard my sister laugh or scream.  I knew she couldn’t help me now, either way.

The branch gave way, and I leapt toward the nine iron as I fell, somehow getting a grip on it and taking it with me toward the lush green turf below.

We looked at each other for one tiny moment.  Run home!  I yelled, and we sprinted off in opposite directions.  As I ran, I was filled with a terrible anxiety.  I was smart enough to know we were lucky it was a regular window and not one of those colored ones, but only becuase I thought God would be more mad about the colored glass.  I thought that all windows were equally expensive: roughly a thousand dollars.  I wondered if we’d been seen, if the cops had been called, if the baseball had hit anyone.  I felt like a murderer.

I was almost to my room.  Hey!  came the call from behind me.  I knew Allen’s voice without even turning around.  What were you doing down there?  Shit.  I was in serious trouble.

I finally got to the back porch.  I knew I didn’t have time to get inside with the swan hot on my heels.  I stopped dead in my tracks, put my hands over my head and crouched down, awaiting a pounding, a pecking, some sort of mauling.  Nothing happened.  Silence.  Slowly I turned to face my aggressor.  There it was, thirty yards away, calmly gliding back into the stream, my nightmare already forgotten, ignored.

I landed on both feet, with a grin on my face and the club in my hand, completely playing off what had moments before been death fear.  I entered their conversation, handing the club to it’s owner, silently vowing once again and for good this time that I would never climb a tree again.

I ran and ran and ran, out of breath and shaken to the core.  I had no idea what to do when I got home.  Mom would be there.  To tell her what had happened, and thereby face the consequences?  Or to ignore what had happened, and hope I didn’t get caught?  I entered the screeching screen door, the windows-open-everywhere summery house to the smell of corn being husked and sasparilla.  I tried to walk calmly around the downstairs until I found her.  She was on the patio, husking corn, putting the spent silk and leaves into plastic garbage bags, smoking a cigarette and smiling at me as wide as the sky.  Honey, she said, what happened?

Monday’s Song, Sobriety Anniversary Edition: “Rearviewmirror” by Pearl Jam

It had been my goal to never repeat a band on Monday’s Song (believe it or not, I have not used a band twice yet) but in light of yesterday’s anniversary, as well as the fact that I used Pearl Jam very early on in the Monday’s Songs, I felt the need to use “Rearviewmirror” today.  This song was a huge help to me during the early years of my recovery, when I would often refer to it as my “recovery anthem”.  It still is, I just need to go to it less often, but it’s power remains.  It clearly is written about a poisonous human relationship, but to me, it represented me speaking to alcohol.  Make sure you enjoy the fantastic live performance in the video.

 

Rearviewmirror

by Pearl Jam

I took a drive today.
Time to emancipate.
I guess it was the beatings,  made me wise…
but I’m not about to give thanks or apologize.

I couldn’t breathe,
holdin’ me down.
Hand on my face,
pushed to the ground.
Enmity gauged, united by fear.
forced to endure what i could not forgive…

I seem to look away.
Wounds in the mirror waved.
It wasn’t my surface most defiled.
Head at your feet, fool to your crown.
Fist on my plate, swallowed it down.
Enmity gauged, united by fear,
tried to endure what I could not forgive.

Saw things clearer once you were in my
rearviewmirror.

I gather speed from you fucking with me.
Once and for all i’m far away.
Hardly believe… finally the shades are raised.

You Would Not Survive a Vacation Like This

So.  That was a pretty insane trip home (and lots of other places).  I’m not even sure where to begin.  This may end up being a ridiculously long and disjointed blog entry.  I apologize in advance.  If it ends up not being extremely long and disjointed, I will come back and delete this intro, and you will never read it.

First, I should like to thank my family (Dad, Mom, Sister) for their various forms of hospitality and much-needed displays of unconditional love.  Yay human spirit and the familial bond!  I feel pretty damn good about my family.  You guys rule!  And thank you to all my friends who made me feel as if I never moved away.  I am blessed beyond belief with deep, intense, loyal friendships!  In addition, a big frowny face to those who I had to miss on this trip (most notably, loyal blog reader and renowned Muse, Cory.  Little does she know, my next trip home is going to be so all about her, she will have to call the cops on me. And the truly lovely Mercedes, whom I am unabashedly smitten with.   Also, on-again-off-again blog reader Tiff, who I had *promised* a certain something to…well, next time, ok???).  I was stretched a little thin to do and see everything and everyone I wanted, but it was fairly satisfying nonetheless.

My Zany Itinerary

Let me just show you the zaniness of where I’ve been the last week and a half.  I am going to include tomorrow, as I go to Pittsburgh tomorrow for a work seminar.  Here’s where I was, for the most part, the last ten days:

3/25: Erie, PA/ Carlisle, PA
3/26: Carlisle, PA/ Asbury Pary, NJ
3/27: Mantua, NJ
3/28: Brooklyn, NY/ Newark, NJ
3/29: Manhattan, NY/ Mantua, NJ
3/30: Mantua, NJ/ Carlisle, PA
3/31: Carlisle, PA
4/1: Carlisle, PA
4/2: Carlisle, PA/ Erie, PA
4/3: Erie, PA
4/4: Pittsburgh, PA
4/5: Pittsburgh, PA/ Erie, PA

And I aint even tired yet.  Bring. It. On.

My Newville Tour

Early on in my trip, I had a little extra time to kill early in the morning, and I drove into Newville (the small town I grew up in) and walked around the town for the first time in many years (I have been there plenty as of late, but not actually walked around).  I took some pictures of major landmarks in my life, also making sure to get a few pictures of some of the places that have played large parts in some of my blog entries.  Here is a bit of a pictorial tour of Newville:

My first house, 66 Big Spring Avenue. My bedroom was the top two windows on the right of the picture.

The big enchilada….the childhood home.  Most famously portrayed in this blog entry right here.

I have been trying to upload the famous picture of my mother and I admiring my grandmother’s garden, but I am having some trouble, so here is a link to that picture on Facebook. And here is a picture of that back yard area today:

One of my most popular blog entries ever was “The Fruit that Ate Itself“, about me being bullied in a local church yard.  I snapped some pics of that area in current day:

The church yard itself.

The line of trees is where the dreaded swingset and slide had been.

The Senior Center where the "fight" ended. Those are the bushes I flew through in the climactic moment.

If you’ve read my blog entry “Down the Rabbit Hole“, you may be interested to see this cellar door on one of my childhood neighbor’s homes:

OK, so just a few more pics here, but not related to any previous blog, just some Seth-historic stuff:

The very spot where I got on a school bus for the very first time.

This was my corner when I was a crossign guard.

Friendies

I had almost too much fun with friendies to try to sum things up here.  I’ll hit some highlights:

I surprised Kate with my presence not once but twice, and she lost.  her.  shit. each time.  First, Michael and I surprised her at her house:

It was also on this visit that this picture of Michael happened:

A few days later, I was strolling through Carlisle wasting a few minutes before picking up another friend, when I came across Kate and her family at the local eatery The Green Room.  As I was leaving them I took this pic of Kate, her husband Matt, and their son Dylan:

Let me just take this moment to say, as I was strolling around Carlisle that night, I was struck by just how freaking cool of a town it is.  Those of you who still live there, please do not take it for granted.  First, it is totally adorable.  And such a great pedestrian town!  And for a relatively small town in central Pennsylvania, it is arts-friendly.  Open mic nights, free music, poetry readings, public displays of photography, and on and on, are quite common.  The area known as the square and the surrounding blocks are humming with a vibrant intellectual life (not to mention some fantastic cuisine).  Please partake of what the gem of a town has to offer!

My brief time with Burke was spent in some fairly intense conversation that may, in fact, make me think about my life differently.  Oh, and Johnny Depp is a fucking sellout.

I spent some truly hilarious time with Jenny.  Jenny is quickly becoming a Major Friend.  (if her name is unfamiliar to you, this was the last woman to be an “official girlfriend”…and if my hunch is true– that I am a lifetime bachelor– she may go down in the history books as the last woman to be an official Seth girlfriend…what a distinction!).  Anyway, I sure do love this woman.  She has the special ability to make me laugh until I am worried about my health…without saying anything. She has a non-verbal humor akin to Kramer.  She can just look at me and I lose my shit.  Here we are, loving life:

Of course, you know I saw Michael, and it resulted in a moment of hilarity that I am pretty sure you “had to be there” for, but we decided that Merle Haggard had at one point recorded the “classic” song “You’re Gonna Make Daddy Fart (and Momma Aint Gonna Be Happy)”.  I still laugh when I type that.

Mary and I had one helluva time trying to find parking in downtown Harrisburg—notable because it’s usually not THAT hard.  Sure, those few blocks in the very center of town are tough, but we were unable to find ANY spots on the street ANYWHERE.  When we finally did park (in a garage) we ended up just hanging around Strawberry Square , when in fact we had intended to go to the Susquehanna Art Museum. I’m still not sure in the least how this distraction occurred, but we had a blast.  But the major news from this venture is that Mary has OK’d some photographs of herself!  You may or may not know that pictures of Mary are quite rare.  She just hates pictures of herself, and of course I love taking pictures of people, so this is a friction.  Plus, she really is one of the most exquisite women in existence, so I always feel as though the world in general is being deprived of some joy by the absence of Mary pictures.  When I take a Mary picture, I have to show her, wheneupon she then either insists on immediate deletion, OKs the picture for my own personal collection but not anyone else’s eyes, or (the most rare) OKs a picture for online distribution.  So here, lucky world, are 4 new Mary pictures:

That's the back of Mary's head in the lower right.

Staying at Dad’s

It is with much chagrin that I realize I did not take a single picture of my papa and me on this trip. *sad face*  Nonetheless, I must say, spending time with my dad just gets more and more pleasant as the two of us age.  It never stops surprising me how we continue to grow into friends (while he retains his essential papa-ness).  He is one cool dude and we somehow never run out of things to talk about.

This also marked the first time in recent memory that I have stayed at Dad’s for multiple days without my sister also being there.  In this sense it was entirely unique.  The last time I stayed at my dad’s by myself for more than one night was way back when I was still drinking and on-again, off-again living there.  So this was new, and really, really great.  In a lot of ways, it felt like a true homecoming, learning how that house and I interact when I’m a grown-up, and sober, and left all alone with it.  Turns out we get along just fine.  And I sleep magnificently in my old bedroom.  But it’s tough getting used to that shower again.

Hey Rosetta!

I’m gonna really have to shrink down the Hey Rosetta! story, or I’ll be here all day.  So, in summary:

Here are pictures from Paul and I’s show in Asbury Park, NJ.  It was a fantastic time, both Paul-wise (Paul, thanks for helping me see that not all my close friends have to be women!) and band-wise.  Really, one of the more satisfying concert-going experiences I’ve had.

Then, I made an audible call and went to see them by myself twice more over the next three days, in New York City (more on NYC later).  Long story short, I ended up basically knowing the band.  But they started talking to me. I suppose when you are a band that is really famous and successful in Canada, and then you come to the states and are playing bars where most of the people are ignoring you, and there is a short fat guy with gray hair jumping around and screaming your lyrics, when he shows up to your NEXT show in a different state, it is worth taking note.  So as I was taking this picture of the chalk board advertising their show in Brooklyn, a few of the band members were walking out of the bar and saw me and introduced themselves.

Because shows like this entail a lot of waiting around (if you insist, like I do, on front row) in small bars with no “backstage” area for bands, as well as lots of changing-out of gear between bands (not to mention trips to very small bathrooms), the two shows in New York would prove extremely fertile ground for me talking to the band.  This went way beyond my previous “thank you, your music has meant so much to me” that I’ve been able to give other bands.  This was basically a getting-to-know-you situation.  Specifically cellist Romesh Thavanathan, lead guitarist Adam Hogan, and violinist Kinley Dowling spoke quite a bit to me and I was definitely on a first-name basis with them by the end of my second New York show, and I’d had a chance to speak to every member of this six-piece band.  Certainly, this was fairly incredible, but also….in some ways, not as great as you’d think.  Parts of this experience were awkward.  I may blog more about this at some point, just because it was pretty intriguing (ever have your favorite band watch you as they are playing?)  But don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.  It was an amazing experience.  Here is a video I took of “Red Song” at Union Hall in Park Slope, Brooklyn, followed by a few select pictures of the New York shows:

I also managed to snag handwritten setlists off the stage two of the three nights.  Here are scans of the setlists:

So now, for the benefit of probably just myself and maybe Paul, here is some Hey Rosetta! setlist discussion:  on the first setlist shown, Bandages was skipped.  On the second shown (from my thrid concert, Manhattan) ‘Bandages’ and ‘Red Heart’ were swapped in position (as were the two songs where a swap is indicated, ‘Yer Spring’ and ‘Welcome’…and talk about a way to open a show!  “Lions For Scottie” into “Welcome”!)  Here are all three setlists for shows I went to this tour:

Asbury Park, NJ

1.  New Goodbye
2.  Yer Spring
3.  New Glass
4.  Bricks
5.  Another Pilot
6.  There’s an Arc
7.  Seeds
8.  Red Heart

Brooklyn, NY
(reconstructed via this photograph)

1.  New Goodbye
2.  Yer Spring
3.  New Glass
4.  Bricks
5.  Another Pilot
6.  There’s an Arc
7.  Welcome
8.  Red Song
9.  We Made a Pact
10.  Seeds
11.  Red Heart
12. A Thousand Suns*

*’Bandages’ is on the setlist in the 12 spot, but ‘A Thousand Suns’ was played.

Manhattan, NY

1.  Lions For Scottie
2.  Welcome
3.  Yer Spring
4.  New Glass
5.  Yer Fall
6.  There’s an Arc
7.  I’ve Been Asleep For a Long, Long Time
8.  Holy Shit
9.  New Sum
10.  Seeds
11.  New Goodbye

Encore:

1.  Bandages
2.  Red Heart

And now, for the record, the sum total of Hey Rosetta! songs I’ve seen, including the two acoustic shows I saw last year:

1.  Red Heart–5 times
2.  Bricks–4 times
3.  I’ve Been Asleep For a Long, Long Time–3 times
4.  Lions for Scottie–3 times
5.  Bandages–3 times
6.  New Goodbye–3 times
7.  Yer Spring–3 times
8.  New Glass–3 times
9.  There’s an Arc–3 times
10.  Seeds–3 times
11.  Seventeen–2 times
12.  Red Song–2 times
13.  We Made a Pact–2 times
14.  Another Pilot–2 times
15.  Welcome–2 times
16.  A Thousand Suns–1 time
17.  Yer Fall–1 time
18.  Holy Shit–1 time
19.  New Sum–1 time

Mom’s/ Sisters

So my mom now lives with my sister, which makes visiting everybody much easier!  It was quite nice to see everybody all at once!  In the same breath, however, I must admit it made me feel as though I did a poor job of paying ample attention to everyone.  When you are seeing a gaggle of loved ones all at once for the first time in a long time, it can be a strain to give equal time.  I think specifically of the nephews, who I love uncontrollably but whom I was not able to give the sort of attention they are accustomed to receiving from me.  When it came down to it, my mom and my sister were the center of my focus (not to mention the antics of Pumpkin Latte).  Don’t get me wrong, I had a lovely time!  I guess I’m just feeling some guilt, cause those boys worked up a good amount of anticipation for my arrival and I almost certainly dissapointed.  That being said, the time with Momma and Sis was marvelous. LOTS of laughs, and a new momma/ son tradition: I claim her and I are going to do the Jumble together, and then I end up freaking out over how amazing she is at it, while I add absolutely nothing to the process (she really is amazing at the Jumble).  Also, I “T”d my sister, which always rules.  A brief but incredibly heartwarming time.  Some select pics:

Sister and Pumpkin Latte, as she was taking their picture

Sis, Me, Mom

New York

The New York trip is another thing I shall have to gloss over, or I’ll be writing this blog entry until next week.  I did what I typically do: I drive right into the city, pay a thousand dollars to park, and just walk around.  I usually have very little plan other than one or two fairly simple goals.  This trip’s goals: see sunrise from inside Central Park, and buy a New York Times from a newsstand and read the whole thing from inside a midtown Manhattan Starbucks during the morning commute hours.  I’m not sure why I wanted to do these things, but once the goals were in my mind, I could not seem to let them go.  I accomplished both, and although being in Central Park during sunrise was magical, it was not easy to get any great pictures of the event, due to the vast amount of:

a) Tall trees, and
b) skyscrapers

These things blocked the view of the actual sunrise rather effectively, but feeling the world come alive from within the park was quite joyous.  Here is the best picture I got of the sunrise:

I spent almost two hours in the Starbucks, enjoying my latte and an incredible issue of the NYT.  I suppose for a moment I felt as hip as I’ve always suspected I am.  It was a quality time.

I spent the rest of the day wandering around, taking pictures, eating, even napping briefly in the tranquil section of Central Park known as the Woodlands.  I also visited, for the first time, the Central Park Zoo, which was a lovely treat.  Here is some video I took of the Sea Lions being fed (and putting on a little show) followed by some pictures:

Sunset, Brooklyn

Me in Central Park

Some Things I Learned

1.  8 months is not long enough to forget how to get around (but it IS long enough to cause some occasional navigation confusion)

2.  When you are a single man in your 30s who moves away from everyone he knows and doesn’t visit home for 8 months, a surprising amount of people from all demographics will just straight-up ask you about your sex life.  This is fodder for an entire blog entry at some point that will be in the form of a “rant”.  FYI, nobody need worry about my sex life, mkay?

3.  You may think where you live is boring, but leave it for a little while and then come back; you may just find it’s really cool.

4.  There are really hot ladies everywhere.

5.  Don’t tell people you got fat.  You may think it will make your fatness less awkward, but it makes it moreso.

6.  Things change.  Buildings get knocked down, businesses change their name, streets get re-directed.  Accept these things as a natural course of existence. (reminds me of a Hey Rosetta! song:  “The schools that we went to have all been closed./ And all of my teachers are dead, I suppose.”)

7.  You can walk further than you think you can.

8.  If you move and your sports allegiances change a little bit, you can just kinda keep that to yourself on your first few visits home.

9.  As you leave places you have stayed for just a day or two, remember to gather all your various “chargers”.  We have a lot of chargers in this day and age.

10.  Family and friends really are the best things in the world, even if saying so sounds cheesy and cliche.  Fuck it, it’s true!

I Almost Forgot…

Today is my 8 year sobriety anniversary!  The original purpose of this vacation was for me to have off and see my loved ones leading up to the big day.  (I just have to complete my anniversary tradition of watching “Dark Days” on the anniversary itself)  So…yay me!  But also…yay you!  Thanks everybody for putting up with my horribleness when I was horrible, and then helping me live such a satisfying and fantastic life in my sobriety!  What a treat, to be able to celebrate the week leading up to it in the way I did.  And how neat is it that I almost forgot today was the day???  That must mean life is pretty good.  I love you, everybody!

Audio Poem: “Value”

Year written:  2006
Collection:  The Salt Flats

Value

When I was a younger man and foolhardy
I would pick sometimes old cigarette butts
out of public ashtrays and smoke the crumpled tobacco,
inhaling the stale breath of strangers and lipstick
because I was out of money or time
or too boozed-up to notice or care.
They had been like any other cigarette
except forgotten, nameless.

I don’t do that anymore.
I now have just enough money and scruples
to separate what is trash from what has merit,
or what is mine from what is no one’s.
And on days when the sun is out
and folks are walking, pushing kids in strollers,
I’ll walk the streets grinning, smoking one cigarette
with an extra one behind my ear, in case a stranger needs one.

Christmas Eve in Rehab

A few good years ago, on my old MySpace blog, as Christmas was approaching, I was searching for something to write about it.  I ended up blogging this small account of the Christmas Eve I spent in rehab.  Looking back on it now, as a piece of writing, it certainly has it’s flaws, but I’ve decided to present it again without changing anything at all.  Rather than continue trying to come up with some new Christmas-themed blog every year, I’ve decided to begin a tradition of posting this every year (kinda like it’s a Peanuts special), warts and all.  Thanks for reading.

I have had the somewhat unique experience of spending a Christmas in rehab.  This Christmas was my fourth since then, and hopefully I’ll never let a Christmas go by that I don’t remember that day and–more intensely–the night before.

Christmas Eve in rehab.

It was a more relaxed day for us.  We didn’t have to be at quite as many group sessions.  We had more smoke breaks, more leisure time.  Most of us had been together for a few weeks by then, so there was a good ‘family’ feeling.  It was actually a very nice day, although it did make you realize there was an outside world.  One can’t help but picture their family, at home, watching The Grinch, burning apple-scented candles.  In the corners of your mind, you dare to hope they are wondering what you are doing, too.  And that they still love you.  (They do.)

Late in the afternoon, just as the light was dying and the gloaming light took over the world, snow began to fall.  It was going to be a white Christmas, and here we were, sealed away, smoking in our enclosed courtyard, catching errant snowflakes whose majesty had been ruined by accidentally falling into a rehab courtyard.

We were told to gather in the ‘Big Room’(this is the main gathering room) at 8pm.  We did so.  Once we are all present (about 30 of us) Bob comes in.  Bob was a counselor and lecturer, and probably one major reason why I am alive today.  Most everyone loved Bob.  Some people didn’t love Bob, cause Bob didn’t let you bullshit him, or anyone else.  Bullshit kills sobriety.  Bob taught me that.

Bob gathered us together and ushered us down the halls, without telling us where we were going.  We ended up going into the pool room.  Yes, my rehab had an indoor pool (it doesn’t anymore.  Nowadays it’s just another fucking room.) in a room with a glass ceiling, much like a greenhouse.  All the lights were out, and there was soft, relaxing music playing in the background (what I suppose is called ‘Meditation Music’); I never could tell where they had that music coming from.

The room was so serene.  You could hear the snow landing and immediately melting on the glass roof, and even with the lights out, the pool reflected ambient light, just a little tiny bit, but enough to see where you were stepping.  The music made it the most inviting, relaxing room I’ve ever been in.  I want to spend every Christmas eve in that room.

As we filed in, one of the interns handed us each an orange glow stick…you know, those things that you shake, then crack, and they glow with an eerie iridescent light of various colors.  Well, all of our glow sticks were orange and hadn’t been cracked yet.  They weren’t glowing.

Bob instructed us to gather around the edge of the pool, and attempt to space ourselves evenly all the way around.  It took us a few minutes, as there were thirty of us, but eventually we were there, in the dark, entirely surrounding the pool.

Bob talked for a few minutes about Christmas, and recovery in general—stuff I can’t specifically remember anymore.  But then he started talking about Faith.  Not necessarily Christian Faith…just.  plain. faith. Faith—in anything—Bob said, was the only way to start properly on the road to recovery.  And if you didn’t have any at all—if you were starting from a position of no Faith at all—all that you really needed was just a little spark, a tiny, almost invisible spark of Faith, and then you could blow on it, and fan it, and protect it and nurture it until it was a roaring, unstoppable flame.

But most important, Bob said, was to surround yourself with others who had sparks or flames, and together, your flames could grow high, strong, everlasting: a testament to a Power higher than ourselves who could keep us collectively sober and alive.

“Crack your glow sticks,” Bob said.

We did.  Suddenly surrounding the pool there were thirty orange lights, glowing in the darkness.  It was a neat sight, but the room remained largely dark.

“These are your sparks of Faith,” Bob said.  “But still, each spark is alone.  You see how you still cannot see each other’s faces, from across the pool?  A spark of Faith has difficulty growing on it’s own.  Now, throw them in the pool.”

We looked around, hesitantly.  After a few seconds, someone threw their glow stick in the pool.  Just the single glow stick seemed to light the whole pool up with an orange, fire-like glow.  A bright orb of light followed it to the bottom of the deep end.

Immediately afterwards, twenty-nine other glow sticks flew through the air, an amazing sight that looked somewhat like anti-aircraft fire, or a brief plague of Lightning Bugs.

The room became aglow.  The pool lit up like a miniature sun.  Everyone’s faces, the tears already starting, were clear as day.  The room was orange now, and still you heard the snowflakes melting on the roof, the quiet music coming from nowhere, the merest hint of the sound of happy lapping water.

“Faith burns brighter in numbers.  Stick together, help each other, and fan each other’s flames,” Bob said, himself on the verge of tears.  “Now let’s clasp hands.”

We formed a tight circle around the pool, staring at the amazing glowing water, and on that Christmas Eve, us thirty recited the Serenity Prayer together, to whatever we happened to think of as God, to whatever being there could be that would allow such a perfect moment to occur in this world of folly and disaster.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

We retrieved our ‘sparks’ from the pool, and each kept one.  Mine still sits on my entertainment center, beside a Beanie Baby and my stereo.

East North Street, Carlisle, Pennsylvania

It’s half—or maybe more accurately, a quarter—of a house.  It’s a nice place, probably a hundred years old.  The floors are hardwood, the walls a standard white drywall, flat paint combo.  It’s in a near-constant state of furniture re-arrangement; like the lives of the two men who live here, the apartment is fluid, grasping, ever on the verge of something.

The day I moved in with Duane was the day I moved back to Pennsylvania from New Jersey.  In my previous life in Pennsylvania, I hadn’t spent much time in this area of Carlisle.  I had visited Duane here a few times, and had always had trouble finding it.  This time, I found it easily, pulling up in my ’83 Ford Escort, with my life jammed into the tiny backseat.  At first, the house actually seems a bit towering and hulking, it’s front porch extending far into the world beyond the front door, and the porch roof arching upwards like the peak of a great barn.  The brown, white, and earth-toned exterior of the house makes it something you can and do easily drive past without noticing, but once you’re familiar with it, it’s comforting, like oatmeal, or sand.

The day I moved in was the most relaxed “move-in” in the history of the world.  Duane acted like I had already been living there forever.  After discussing where our individual “spaces” were, we settled in to just co-existing rather quickly.  I set my coffee maker up immediately.  That night, some old friends came over.  I felt ecstatically at home in these four rooms, with their hardwoods, their flux, their smell of socks.

After a few months, life here had become life, and it moved with an interesting rhythm.  I worked a lot, coming home late at night through the side entrance into our disgusting kitchen, and hibernating with well-deserved sleeps in the sizeable back bedroom I had taken over.  I went to a lot of AA meetings, and voraciously read the AA literature while laying on my twin bed, with my window open during this hot summer of 2003.  Life swam.

I furiously and studiously worked the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, and saw from them true change in my life.  It was magical and uplifting. 

The first four steps are easy.  Then you get to Step 5:  “Admitted to a higher power, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs.”  This is where we take the “inventory” we made in step four—where we write down every shitty thing we did to our loved ones before and during our addiction—and admit them to whatever Higher Power we’ve chosen to take over our will (this can be, essentially, whatever you want it to be), fully admit it to ourselves, and (the tricky part) somebody else.

Ideally this should be someone else in recovery, but for some reason, I chose my friend Burke.  And I called him immediately after having finished writing down the fourth step—once again, laying on my twin bed, with my window open and a nice breeze blowing, during the hot summer of 2003.  I told him I needed him over there immediately.  Burke, being the great friend he is, was confused, but obliged.

Burke sat in the rickety wooden chair, at the over-varnished decades-old computer desk that Duane had given me, after he found it in the basement.  Instead of a computer, a typewriter sat on it.  I sat on my bed, cross-legged, and read to Burke from my notebook.

I told them I was going to work, but really…

 

Then I just left her standing there…

 

I never called back…they had no idea where…

 

…I just opened his wallet, really…

 

…screamed, yelled, I have no idea why…

 

It was hard, but it was also easy.  I’m glad I chose Burke.  He’s guileless, and despite his cynical exterior, there’s not a judgmental bone in his body.  I knew this could be between him and I (and of course, all my loved ones, when I went and admitted to wrongdoings from this list to all of them in the ninth step) and, of course, that room.  That home.  Although I’d never lived there before, it was a homecoming.  The end of something, and the beginning.  Those hardwoods, that drywall, that smell of socks, and great friends like Duane and Burke and everyone else who was around at West North: it was the time of my life.

Audio Poem: “Delirium Tremens”

Year Written: 2005
Collection: The Loosing of Clocks

Delirium Tremens

Your blood boils, and then
it seems that there
might be nothing
else; that this
time you may have
gotten away lucky;
a clearness as of
frigid water forced
over your sleeping
head.  But then
civilization crowds around
your peripheral
sight;
with every possible image
comes another
and yet another;
all feverish history
coalesced within your
optical nerve;
you can’t see
the sides of the
hallway, only
the carpet or ceiling;
the insects of progress
buzz swarmingly
around your outer
sockets,
visions forming in the
mass like grass clippings
or clouds:
not hallucinations
really
but cognizant unrealities:
Beaowulf sleeping
on the Golden Gate,
stiff underwear marching
over Leningrad,
broken pills in a dresser
drawer beside the scissors,
impossibly large globs
of mascara and gin syrup
banging on the door,
warm flashes of wanton islands
searching through
your soaked drunken pants
finding car keys
and onions,
printing presses moaning
and gurgling
under a moony sky
twitching about for the
relief of their burden,
your socks sprouting leaves
or maybe wings,
your own face
before you, magnified
a million times, people living
in the pores of your nose
criticizing your naked body,
the woman beside you
not a body but a
pencil, an amorous,
pensive pencil
laying purposefully inert,
the woman a mast of
swarming, cognizant
bugs within
the periphery of your
periphery,
not to be touched
or even contemplated upon.
Then amidst the visions—
among the boiling blood—
the most terrible:
quakes, small
at first like
tiny skeletal nudges,
barely
consequential spasms
of reversed desire,
years of stored-up
bodily indulgence
backfiring fumes
through your epidermis;
then gaining size,
quakes becoming
explosions, massive,
unending, will-less.
The lamp hits the floor,
maybe it shatters,
maybe it doesn’t,
the sheets torn
from the bed
in a heap
in the
corner,
everywhere you touch
you may destroy:
it is not up to you:
it is no longer up to you:
what once was a choice
now jumps through your
extremities
in a series of jolts
which have gone beyond
the warning stage
and entered
Delirium Tremens,
the last bastion of the blood you own
needing more,
while screaming for so much less.

Chantix Diary: Day 372

That’s right.  Today marks exactly one year since I have smoked a cigarette (it is day 372 of the diary because you start taking the Chantix 7 days before you quit smoking; to read all of my Chantix Diary, click on the “categories” drop-down by my picture and select Chantix Diary).  I’ve been pondering what to say on this occasion for about a week, and honestly, there’s just not a whole lot to add to the existing entires in the Chantix Diary.

Despite being a pretty heavy smoker (just over a pack a day for the majority of my 16 years of smoking) and self-identifying as a “guy who really loves smoking”–up to and including having strong feelings about smoker’s rights and continuing to think to this day that smoking really does make you look cool, it was somehow easier for me to quit, even with Chantix, than it is for most people.

To recap my Chantix experience:  the drug gave me some horrific side-effects, including the grand-daddy of them all, the one that Pfizer still doesn’t want to admit exists: suicidal thoughts.  But it was the cumulative effect of all the side effects that really really sucked:  insomnia, diahrrea (with subsequent terrible constipation), blurry vision, headaches, nausea.  I could go on and on.  Just read the old posts if you want the rundown.

It was hard not smoking for the first little bit, but not even a fraction of the difficulty I’d had when I tried without the drug.  Most of the difficulty came more from the “habit” part than from the “addiction” part; times, situations, places I’d normally smoke made me feel like some sort of amputee.  It was impossible to tell what the problem was; something was missing and I was having phantom desires, but not necessarily cravings.  When I quit Chantix after 3 weeks (long before they recommend) it’s fair to say I experienced very few cravings.  In a turn of events that seems almost unfair to the millions of smokers who consistently struggle with quitting, quitting smoking with the aid of Chantix was, for me, essentially easy.

I haven’t had so much as a puff from a cigarette in the 12 months since I quit.  I have, with relish, inhaled some second hand smoke, but that is totally allowed.  Still, even now, there are moments here and there, now and then, when the urge strikes me and I think a smoke would be great right now.  I can even feel the actual addiction for a second; I can feel the NEED in my lungs, coursing through my blood.  I breathe the air deep and imagine the smoke going in.  It would feel good, yes, it would feel very good.

But then it passes, usually in just a few seconds.  The overwhelming majority of my time since smoking has been easy, craving-free, and frankly, magnificent.  I do think that much of this has to do with my history with drinking.  You might ask…how so?  At first I didn’t see the connection, but now I do.  See, you must understand that I was quite radically physically addicted to alcohol.  This happens.  They’re not really sure how, but it happens.  They managed–by using other drugs and partially imprisoning me (rehab)–to seperate me from the alcohol for a few months.  Then, after a few months, I drank again, and was IMMEDIATELY just as addicted as I was when I quit.  And I mean immediate.  That first sip of relapse, I could literally feel the tug and pull of addiction, stronger than ever.  I would shortly repeat this entire process a second time (complete with second stint in rehab) before I could be sure of it’s factual nature: there was no starting at zero.  All roads led to the heavy addiction, and certain death.

This extreme set of experiences colored every smoking-related decision I made in the past year.  I knew, every step of the way, that one cigarette (at least for me; your experience may differ) would mean full-on addiction again, which would mean full-on quitting again.  I actually had quite a few stressful experiences this year that required keen use of this knowledge to prevent a return to smoking.  (I may never seem stressed, but since work is essentially a non-existent part of my online persona, you are spared the stressful part of my life; plus, I moved across the state all by myself.  Plus, some very interesting female issues that are about as stressful as female issues can get.)And through it all I was pretty easily able to not smoke, because I knew, above all and from previous experience, I simply did not want to have to quit a second time.

Listen, smokers: take it from a guy who so identified with being a smoker that he still defends you and basically considers himself one of you–everything they say is true.  Your sense of taste and smell, your breathing, your general feeling of well-beings, heck even your sleeping gets better.  A year out, and I’m still improving.  I feel like Superman.  No shit.

I ride a bike now, and not just a little bit.  I routinely ride the 13 miles around Presque Isle, for leisure.  A short year ago, ascending a flight of stairs winded me.  (and guys, don’t get me started on what will improve in the, um…wood department.)  I do a bit of jogging when I want.  When I sleep, I don’t feel my heart beating in my scalp.

I know it feels like losing the best buddy that is smoking will be more painful than the pleasure you stand to gain by being smoke-free.  I assure you, that is not true.  The major thing I learned by quitting smoking is that smoking is actually not pleasurable at all; not in the sense that a chocolate cake, or a perfect shower, or a first I love you is pleasurable.  What seems like pleasure when you smoke is the same kind of pleasure you get from scratching an itch.  It is the quelling of a nag, the silencing of a need.  Smoking is no different from peeing, if you had to pee once an hour, every day, forever.  To quit smoking is to stop the itch, and trust me, you don’t really miss the itch.  Sometimes, you miss the scratching, but eventually you can’t even remember what the itch felt like.

A picture of me smoking on the street in Carlisle, about 5 years ago. I just had the film developed today and saw this picture for the first time.

Audio Poem: “Here Are My Plans”

Moving out, finally from Open When I Get There, we now move into the second sober collection, The Mundorf Bench—so named for the bench where most of the poems in the collection were written, deep in the Bernadette Morales Nature Preserve in Flemington, New Jersey.  Though truly, there is little difference between Mundorf and Open When I Get There, as they were both written in the 6 months I lived with my mother in Jersey, and as I’ve said before—probably the 6 most exciting months of my writing.

Today’s audio poem is “Here Are My Plans”.  I do not have a copy on a computer, and it’s very long, so there’s no way for me to put one here for you to follow along with (it would take way too long for me to type in).  I also explain a little bit in an intro in the audio file.  Enjoy!

Here Are My Plans 

Audio Poem: ‘In Flemington’

Now we get into ‘early recovery’ poems.  The first 6 months of my sobriety were spent living with my mother in New Jersey, and were probably the most prolific months of my poetry writing life, and I dare say some of the best, most original work of mine was done at that time, as well.  I wrote two full collections in those six months.  It will take me a few months of Sunday postings to get through my favorites out of those collections.  This poem comes from the very first sober collection, Open When I Get There.  It is called simply “In Flemington”, which is the town we lived in in Jersey, but it is also the title poem of the collection, as “open when I get there” appears in the body of the poem.  “In Flemington” remains my favorite poem that I’ve ever written, probably more for sentimental reasons than technical ones.  If I were to write it all over again, there are one or two lines I’d change, but at this point it means too much to me personally to change anything.  I don’t think I’ve ever captured my own moment as well as this.  Here is is. Click the gray arrow to play it:

In Flemington

On the corner at a small shop I buy a coffee
and take it outside with me.
In the air it steams to cool,
in communion with the breeze.
Strolling east, the cars and bicycles
are sparse today, even birds are few,
this close to downtown.  Passing the laundromat,
sweet, pungent softener assaults the nostrils
and the rumble of coin-op dryers is melancholy and promising.
Turning left onto Reaville Avenue a small boy
eight years old if a day
sits on the curb just sitting there
drying his hair in the sun like the sidewalk
and I almost say hi to him.
The coffee cools quickly in the chill afternoon,
I almost turn back to buy another,
but think better of the three dollars I have left.
I sidle into a quaint bookstore to gape at magazines,
the lives of others and kitchen equipment
glossy and flaxen, and the portly
latina by the register eyes me
and she is beautiful in that way
only latinas and llamas can be beautiful:
using solely the eyes.
Asking her if there is a restroom, she grudgingly gives me a key
knotted to a large wooden block
as if this were an interstate filling station,
and points me to the back corner,
but the door is open when I get there.
Safely locked inside, my pants stay buttoned
and I use only the mirror, studying my lines,
the old souvenir red blotches, reminding me
of lives and moments, other bookstores
or towns; some oversize pores poke peskily
into view begging for me to wash my face more often,
but not right now, not now, a time and place for everything.
Giving the key back to the girl, I emerge onto Main Street
and suck deep the stunningly new air,
amazed by the realization that you are somewhere far away
occupying real space
breathing just like me
and smiling right this instant,
your eyes gleaming like little coins.

Highlights of my 7th Anniversary

1.  Michael and I in the woods:

“Jellyroll Jellyfish, Private Investigator”

and

“A bird in the bush is worth two in the hand.”

2.  This picture:

3.  My dad and I met pretty much the most awesome dog ever while walking across the Dickinson campus.  That dog has been making me smile all day!

4.  Dad bought me a blockbuster at the Hamilton.  I love blockbusters!!!!

5.  Mary smelled so good, something happened to me.

6.  “Alice in Wonderland” is so bad, I can finally completely write-off Tim Burton as a filmmaker.

7.  I got a little sunburnt.  I love being a little sunburnt.

8.  Chinese buffet.

9.  80 degrees.

10.  Yeah pretty much best day ever.

Christmas Eve in Rehab

A few years ago, on my old MySpace blog, as Christmas was approaching, I was searching for something to write about it.  I ended up blogging this small account of the Christmas Eve I spent in rehab.  Looking back on it now, as a piece of writing, it certainly has it’s flaws, but I’ve decided to present it again without changing anything at all.  Rather than continue trying to come up with some new Christmas-themed blog every year, I’ve decided to begin a tradition of posting this every year (kinda like it’s a Peanuts special), warts and all.  Thanks for reading.

I have had the somewhat unique experience of spending a Christmas in rehab.  This Christmas was my fourth since then, and hopefully I’ll never let a Christmas go by that I don’t remember that day and–more intensely–the night before.

Christmas Eve in rehab.

It was a more relaxed day for us.  We didn’t have to be at quite as many group sessions.  We had more smoke breaks, more leisure time.  Most of us had been together for a few weeks by then, so there was a good ‘family’ feeling.  It was actually a very nice day, although it did make you realize there was an outside world.  One can’t help but picture their family, at home, watching The Grinch, burning apple-scented candles.  In the corners of your mind, you dare to hope they are wondering what you are doing, too.  And that they still love you.  (They do.)

Late in the afternoon, just as the light was dying and the gloaming light took over the world, snow began to fall.  It was going to be a white Christmas, and here we were, sealed away, smoking in our enclosed courtyard, catching errant snowflakes whose majesty had been ruined by accidentally falling into a rehab courtyard.

We were told to gather in the ‘Big Room'(this is the main gathering room) at 8pm.  We did so.  Once we are all present (about 30 of us) Bob comes in.  Bob was a counselor and lecturer, and probably one major reason why I am alive today.  Most everyone loved Bob.  Some people didn’t love Bob, cause Bob didn’t let you bullshit him, or anyone else.  Bullshit kills sobriety.  Bob taught me that.

Bob gathered us together and ushered us down the halls, without telling us where we were going.  We ended up going into the pool room.  Yes, my rehab had an indoor pool (it doesn’t anymore.  Nowadays it’s just another fucking room.) in a room with a glass ceiling, much like a greenhouse.  All the lights were out, and there was soft, relaxing music playing in the background (what I suppose is called ‘Meditation Music’); I never could tell where they had that music coming from.

The room was so serene.  You could hear the snow landing and immediately melting on the glass roof, and even with the lights out, the pool reflected ambient light, just a little tiny bit, but enough to see where you were stepping.  The music made it the most inviting, relaxing room I’ve ever been in.  I want to spend every Christmas eve in that room.

As we filed in, one of the interns handed us each an orange glow stick…you know, those things that you shake, then crack, and they glow with an eerie iridescent light of various colors.  Well, all of our glow sticks were orange and hadn’t been cracked yet.  They weren’t glowing.

Bob instructed us to gather around the edge of the pool, and attempt to space ourselves evenly all the way around.  It took us a few minutes, as there were thirty of us, but eventually we were there, in the dark, entirely surrounding the pool.

Bob talked for a few minutes about Christmas, and recovery in general—stuff I can’t specifically remember anymore.  But then he started talking about Faith.  Not necessarily Christian Faith…just.  plain. faith. Faith—in anything—Bob said, was the only way to start properly on the road to recovery.  And if you didn’t have any at all—if you were starting from a position of no Faith at all—all that you really needed was just a little spark, a tiny, almost invisible spark of Faith, and then you could blow on it, and fan it, and protect it and nurture it until it was a roaring, unstoppable flame.

But most important, Bob said, was to surround yourself with others who had sparks or flames, and together, your flames could grow high, strong, everlasting: a testament to a Power higher than ourselves who could keep us collectively sober and alive.

“Crack your glow sticks,” Bob said.

We did.  Suddenly surrounding the pool there were thirty orange lights, glowing in the darkness.  It was a neat sight, but the room remained largely dark.

“These are your sparks of Faith,” Bob said.  “But still, each spark is alone.  You see how you still cannot see each other’s faces, from across the pool?  A spark of Faith has difficulty growing on it’s own.  Now, throw them in the pool.”

We looked around, hesitantly.  After a few seconds, someone threw their glow stick in the pool.  Just the single glow stick seemed to light the whole pool up with an orange, fire-like glow.  A bright orb of light followed it to the bottom of the deep end.

Immediately afterwards, twenty-nine other glow sticks flew through the air, an amazing sight that looked somewhat like anti-aircraft fire, or a brief plague of Lightning Bugs.

The room became aglow.  The pool lit up like a miniature sun.  Everyone’s faces, the tears already starting, were clear as day.  The room was orange now, and still you heard the snowflakes melting on the roof, the quiet music coming from nowhere, the merest hint of the sound of happy lapping water.

“Faith burns brighter in numbers.  Stick together, help each other, and fan each other’s flames,” Bob said, himself on the verge of tears.  “Now let’s clasp hands.”

We formed a tight circle around the pool, staring at the amazing glowing water, and on that Christmas Eve, us thirty recited the Serenity Prayer together, to whatever we happened to think of as God, to whatever being there could be that would allow such a perfect moment to occur in this world of folly and disaster.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

We retrieved our ‘sparks’ from the pool, and each kept one.  Mine still sits on my entertainment center, beside a Beanie Baby and my stereo.

The Title of this Blog is a Kramer Entrance

Oh hi.

1.  I have this pesky head and chest cold that kind of refuses to become “fully realized”.  I cough about 30 times a day but not really really badly. My nose is stuffed up but not terribly. I’m sneezing like a madman.  Now I have a *minor* fever.  It has been this way for about four days and I’m starting to get pissed, cause I KNOW it’s going to get worse before it gets better….why don’t you just get on with it, cold?

2. Have lost my Philip Larkin Collected Poems.  Am freaking out.

3.  If you like documentaries, and/or amazing, enthralling stories, may I recommend Deep Water, a truly incredible story about a round-the-world yacht race (it’s alot more interesting than the description sounds).

4.  Did you know Abe Lincoln was colorblind?!  It’s true!

5.  Going to New York with my sister and my mom in a week…how friggen exciting is that?

6.  Great nonsense from Deep Water: “New Equal Footing Mermaids Stop”

7.  How many ways do I hate winter?  593.  And yet, I am somehow managing to be as happy as I can remember in years recently.  How do I account for this?  My body slowly stopping dying.  Quitting smoking and getting in shape is an incredible experience!  I almost feel like I’m back on that “pink cloud” you experience in early sobriety.  Life rules.

8.  A man enters a restaurant.  He gives the waiter his order of eggs benedict, but before the waiter walks away, the man says “Wait, wait…can you have the cook put that on this hubcap?”, and as he says this, the man reaches down into a bad he’s brought with him and prodices a very nice, shiny hubcap.  “Sure,” the waiter says, clearly baffled.  Shortly thereafter, the waiter returns with the man’s eggs benedict, served on the hubcap as requested.  Before he walks away, the waiter says, “Excuse me sir, but can I just ask why you wanted your eggs benedict on a hubcap?”   “Sure,” the man says.  “There’s no plate like chrome for the hollandaise.” Christmas rules!

Chantix Diary: Day 37

Days without smoking: 30

WARNING: At a few points in this entry, you may feel as though I’ve given you “too much information”.  Proceed at your own risk.

I suppose this is it, eh?  I guess I’m finally a non-smoker, and I can’t really get away with calling these entries “Chantix Diaries” anymore.  This is fairly awesome.

Really, I’ve gotta be honest with you.  It was pretty easy.  Relatively so, anyway, compared to my previous experiences with quitting addictions.  Only the first few days were especially strange or contained significant cravings, as far as the actual quitting smoking goes.  Of course, this was because of the Chantix, which helped me tremendously when it came to quitting smoking, but in fact also made my life a living hell.  I had an easy time quitting smoking, but a hard time doing much else.

In fact, my problems from Chantix aren’t over yet.  I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning to talk about continuing digestive/intestinal problems and insomnia, although last night I fell asleep unaided and slept a full 8 hours, and if I can do that again tonight, I probably won’t bring that up with the doctor.  But for over two weeks after quitting Chantix, I still couldn’t sleep.  And I mean I couldn’t sleep. Not I had trouble sleeping.  I mean, if I didn’t take a medicinal sleep aid, I wouldn’t sleep, period.  This got scary, but appears to be abating.  As for the digestive problems–you don’t want to know, but it really sucks, and he better have an answer for me.

Aside from those glitches, however, this is one of the coolest things EVER.  It feels like I have more time.  Like, somehow, there’s just more time in my life.  My whole body feels great.  My lungs feel REALLY great.  There has been a noticeable improvement in my, um, intimate relations, which I hadn’t even realized needed improvement, but a mere four days after quitting smoking, I seemed to have a little something extra, if you know what I mean.  Also, I can smell everything.  My sense of smell is almost freaky-good.

I don’t seem to have gained a lot of weight.  Five pounds, maybe, and I don’t see it getting any worse, as my eating habits seem to have already returned to normal.  My apartment is clean and smells clean.  I am more productive at work.  I have more fun at the movies.

I still get cravings, but they are minor little things, shadows from my past.  I’m sure I’ll get them for most of the rest of my life, just as I still get the occasional urge to drink, nearly seven years sober.  But I learned some very important lessons on my quest to get sober, and I see no reason I won’t be using them to stay smoke-free.  Namely, if I smoke one cigarette, I’ll be right back where I left off, in terms of my physical addiction.  And I simply cannot dwell on a fantasy of smoking.  I can have a fantasy for about a minute or so, but then you just have to stop thinking about it.  And for me, it really is that easy: just don’t think about it.  And if I do sometimes slip and dwell on a thought, I just won’t smoke.  I just won’t smoke.  Pretty easy, eh?

OK, so it might be tough from time to time, but I’m not going to lie and make it sound like it was some great upheaval for me.  I sure expected it to be, but it wasn’t.  Perhaps Chantix intentionally loads you up on horrible side-effects in order to distract you.  But whatever happened, however it happened, I’m a fucking non-smoker, muthafuckas!

Chantix Diary: Day One

Sure, at one point in time, I was physically addicted to alcohol.  It was ruining my life.  I drank day and night for years.  I drank in the shower.  I drank during sex.  I probably drank in my sleep.  Quitting entailed going through delirium tremens–the name for alcohol withdrawal–and from the name, you can imagine how much that sucked.  I went to rehab twice, for a grand total of 41 days.  I emotionally injured just about everyone I knew, probably should have gone to jail, and am lucky I didn’t kill anyone.

Quitting smoking is going to be harder.

Just because you quit one thing doesn’t mean you can just miraculously quit anything.  I could probably quit smoking just as easily as I quit drinking (which, of course, wasn’t easy) if I could go to some facility where they essentially lock you up for a month and don’t let you smoke at all and make you sit in an endless string of group therapies every day where everyone talks about their history with smoking.  Smoker’s Rehab.

But there is no smoker’s rehab.  And I need to quit.  And not because of my recent scare with the mole on my foot; I actually had the doctor’s appointment before I noticed the mole–it was going to be an appointment just about quitting smoking.  No, it’s time for Seth to get in shape, and that can’t happen until I quit smoking.  The smoking was a crutch I used during my early alcohol recovery period, and that period ended long ago.

I took my first Chantix about 16 hours ago.  I have six more to take until I actually try to stop smoking.  I’m going to document this process, mainly to keep myself accountable to my plan to quit, but also because I imagine it might be interesting (there are notoriously interesting side-effects, such as bizarre and vivid dreams).  And although I have no plans of failing, I’d like everyone to keep in mind that failing is certainly possible.  It can be part of the process.  Remember, I went to rehab twice.

Nothing out of the ordinary is happening yet, of course.  It takes a few days for Chantix to build up in your system.  In the next few days, however, I’ll probably blog a bit about my thoughts and experiences with smoking in general.  It’s an addiction that’s so widespread and common, the drama and seriousness of it is mostly written off.   (OK, so there’s not a lot of drama when it comes to smoking, but I’m sure I’ll dig up something interesting until the Chantix kicks in).

Times Like These

I arrived at The Silo in Reading, PA at about 5pm Friday.  This was an hour and a half before doors were to open.  I always get to shows early, so I can be guaranteed to actually see the action on stage.  When you’re as short as I am, you get sick of spending money to look at the back of some dude’s head.  However, even I knew that this early arrival was probably unnecessary.  If you don’t know alot about Seven Mary Three, let me be the first to tell you, this is no longer a popular band, and they were never more than marginally popular to begin with.  They are, by most measures, a one-hit wonder, and time has largely forgotten them.  At their peak in the late nineties, 7m3 was playing to sold out crowds at the more premiere, mid-size national act clubs in the country; (such as Trocodero and Seattle’s Showbox)  now, touring-wise, they are one step above a bar band (but they are not a bar band yet!). I want to make that clear, before anyone thinks the story I’m about to relate is more impressive than it actually is.  It is not impressive in a real sense, but it was a huge night from my perspective.

At 5pm, Silo’s parking lot was empty, save 6 or 7 cars.  I took them time to walk back out Silo’s driveway so I could take a picture of the marquee.  The much dilapidated marquee.

Then I walked back to the building.  There was one guy standing by the door, and he was holding a clipboard.  Naturally I walked up to him so I could ask my usual questions:

1.  Where will the line form?

2. What is the camera policy?

3. Are there different areas for over/under 21, and if so, which area is closer to the stage, and how will I know how to do this once inside the door?

Of course, these are questions for a situation where there is a line, and people are streaming into the building.

I approach the guy.  “Is this where the line will form?”

“I have no idea,” guy says.

He was a fan.  His clipboard was pictures of the band, which he was going to try and have signed.  This guy was a bigger fan than I am!  I learned his name was Tim, and boy-howdy, if we didn’t strike up a really fast friendship!  Aside from my buddy Paul (who was unable to attend due to his wife’s impending due-date–damned priorities!) there is probably no one else in the state of Pennsylvania who I can talk to about 7m3 like this.  What 7m3 album would you take to a desert island? (We both agree it’s RockCrown) Are there really only two utternaces of “fuck” in the 7m3 catalogue? (Yes.) I sure do miss Jason Pollock, don’t you miss Jason Pollock? (He misses him more than I do.)  Is there a way in which the album day&nightdriving is NOT a breakup album? (No.  It is entirely a breakup album)  And on and on.  I was happy as a squirrel at a squirrel party.

Shortly after I met Tim, he proceeded to tell me that after I parked my car and walked to take a picture of the marquee, Casey Daniel (7m3’s bassist) walked out of the club and into the adjacent Holiday Inn.  I was floored!  I had yet to comprehend that this band wasn’t still the band that I watched from a balcony at a sold-out 9:30 Club in Washington, DC, ten years ago, and that The Silo in Reading is not The Electric Factory.

Now, I really fucking love Casey Daniel.  He is one of the few bassists out there who I am a true fan of what they do.  The man is a mad genius.  His intricate yet subtle, balls-to-the-wall bass lines truly turn some medicore 7m3 tunes into masterpieces.  I listen to some songs, like “First Time Believers”, just to listen to what Casey is doing.  I couldn’t believe I had just missed him.

Now, I no longer do the whole “hero worship” thing.  Five, ten years ago, I thought my favorite artists were some kind of gods, and if I met them–which I really really wanted to–I’d have peppered them with silly questions relating to the myth surrounding them; some silly hints in liner notes or recurring names in films or irregular iambic structures in poems, and just told them ten different ways that they were “awesome”.  Then, a few years ago, something changed, and I came to the realization that even though these people were immensely talented, they were all just people.  Hell, I know some immensely talented people who just happen to not be famous, and sometimes I’m just watching them eat a hot dog.  So, I decided I did not want to meet my artistic idols.  I did not want to bother them, and I now thought it awkward that I would want to meet a regular person; it seemed homo-erotic and obsessive.  Listen to the music, watch the movie, read the book–and leave it at that.  You’re already having a conversation with them, and that’s where that conversation is meant to end.

Then, about 6 months ago, my sister won meet-and-greet passes to meet the band LIVE (a band I also adore with all my heart), although in the end there was a mix-up and she ended up not getting to meet them.  But as the day of the meet-and-greet drew near, we were talking about what she would say to them.  She was a bit stumped, as was I.  Then I said, “I’d just thank them for everything they’ve done for me.”  And I knew right then that I wanted to do that, to say that, to all the artists who had enriched my life, meant so much to me, gotten me through such hard shit, and made the sweet moments of my life so much sweeter.  Sure, I can keep throwing money at them, but wouldn’t it be satisfying for everyone involved if I could also tell them that they meant something in my life?

So.  I was upset that I’d missed Casey.  But no more than 2 minutes after Tim tells me this does Jason-fucking-Ross (vocals, rhythm guitar, lyrics, undenied leader and spirit of the band) walk out the door 5 feet from me, talking on a cell phone!  Now I was certain this wasn’t the Electric Factory!  I was totally ready to introduce myself right then and there and thank him profusely and even tell him that the album Orange Ave. helped me greatly with my recovery from alcoholism, but he was only out there for a minute, and he was on his cell phone the whole time.

But!  Moments later, lead guitarist Thomas Juliano is walking straight toward us!  Tim grabs him first.  “Tom!  Tom!  can we just have a moment of your time?”

Let me tell you, Tom had more than a moment for us, he had five minutes for us, and he’s really cool. Not like, cool in the sense of, he’s just a regular Joe; no, Thomas Juliano is they type of guy who is so cool, you wish you could be that cool.  And I’m not saying he’s cocky–he was anything but cocky.  He was down-to-earth (after all, he’s playing The Silo) and very, very appreciative of our attention.  And I got to do something that I’ve wanted to do countless times with countless artists:  I got to tell him specific stuff that he had specifically done that had touched me.  I told him how much I loved his playing on “Where Are You Calling From?”–how the emotions of his playing perfectly matched the content of the lyrics, how he worked in perfect concert with the rhythm section to literally drive the song like a big rig through Jason Ross’s emotions, etc etc.  I was having so much fun!  And then, Tom and Tim and I just chatted–about getting gray hair, about how much he missed the old tour bus (Tim had a picture of it; they tour in a van now), and about the hat he was wearing.  Then he kindly imformed us he had to go, but told us to stick around after the show!

Then, mere moments later, here comes Casey Daniel!  We’re on a roll!  We stop Casey and it’s more of the same, and Casey is of course really cool too, but in a different way than Thomas is.  I can imagine being roommates with Casey Daniel–and I’d be the responsible one.  You immediately feel at ease around him, as though you’ve been friends forever.  He drops the F-Bomb within 60 seconds of meeting you.  He lets a cigarette hang in his mouth while he talks.  He has less of a fashion sense than I do.  It was seriously like just meeting a guy on the street; within moments, any apprehension I had was gone; suddenly, I knew Casey Daniel.

My new buddy Tim with Casey

I was even more excited to thank Casey than I was to thank Thomas; I just go apeshit over Casey’s bass playing, and it really does add alot of emotional punch to what is happening in the songs lyric-wise.  The first thing I mentioned–and I’m actually saying it as the picture of us together was being taken–was that his playing in the song “Headstrong” makes me poop my pants.  And then I did a very smart thing: I got specific.  “That change you do, in the middle of the final chorus, where you take it up a notch.”  His eyes lit up–someone actually wanted to talk about his bass playing!!  And did he ever start throwing me golden nuggets!  He told us (for it was not just me, but Tim and I recieving this special moment) the story of “Headstrong” being written–how it was him and Jason Ross living together in a little apartment in Virginia, it was the middle of summer, and on and on.  He even showed us some of the song on an “air bass”!    Then the conversation steered toward more rare songs, and I mentioned how much I love “Shelf Life” (which was never on a 7m3 album) and his eyes lit up big time; I suppose they don’t have many hard core fans anymore who know the deep tracks.  So he told us about “Shelf Life”, and how it materialized, musically, out of jam session in an attic with just himself and Giti Khalsa (the band’s drummer, who unfortunately is not touring with them at the moment, as he has just opened a restaurant in Florida.  Some dude is touring in his place but I never did meet him).  Then we chatted amiably, Casey talking alot about his bout of Shingles a few years back, which caused him to gain alot of weight and make sit hard for him to play bass sometimes.  We must have talked to Casey for ten minutes.

6:30 arrived, and no one else was there to form a “line”, so Tim and I just sorta waltzed into the place by ourselves.  Inside there is a huge island bar, tables throughout, a surprisingly large stage, and a railed-in “pit” area, about 20 feet square,  in front of the stage.  We immediately see Casey at the bar and we stop and talk to him some more.  It is unbelievably congenial.  Because Paul will want to know:  he was drinking a bottle a Budweiser.

After a few minutes of talking to Casey, I edged away and sat at a table.  Although Casey showed no signs of being annoyed by us–in fact, seemed to like us quite a bit–I was still wary of overstaying my welcome and bothering him.  Eventually Tim joined me, and we settled on staying at this table during the FIVE OPENING BANDS (which I’m not going to bother to talk about there) or until people started actually standing at the stage.  We were going to be front row either way, but we weren’t going to stand up there for five openers.

I should take a moment to tell you that Tim was getting stealthily drunk, and this is an awesome fact about Tim.  As we were waiting outside, the fact of my recovery had come up in our conversation and he was fully understanding.  As we sat at our table throughout the night, Tim would get up “to go to the bathroom” about once every half hour.  He would return, every time, with a bottle of water for himself and a Coke for me, despite my protestations.  It also became clear that Tim was getting drunk, almost certainly doing a quick shot of something during his stop at the bar.  How cool is that? Here I am, a guy he’s only known for two hours, and he’s going out of his way to not bring a drink to our table, even though I had told him outside that I am perfectly fine being around booze now, in bar settings, etc.  However, around the fourth opening act, this also got a bit annoying, because he was drunk.  He began forgetting what we had already talked about, and we had a couple of conversations for the second time.  Nonetheless–a sweet gesture, and I got a lot of free Coke (I did buy him one bottle of water once on a return trip from the bathroom.)

As the second opening act was playing–the only good one, too–I saw Jason-fucking-Ross walking though the bar in a tremendous hurry.  He was doing that quick-walking thing, when you’ve really got some place to be.  But I couldn’t help myself–I was on a roll.  I’d met Thomas and Casey, I simply could not leave without at least saying “Thank you” to Jason.  So I, um, kinda, a little bit, stood in his way and stopped him.  I stuck out my hand, introduced myself, and said “Thank you for everything.”  He was very cool about it, and he thanked me for listening and for showing up, and then he was off.  I didn’t get a picture with him, but I told him what I wanted to, and I hope he really heard it.

Nobody came to this concert.  Nobody.  By the time 7m3 went on (midnight) There were about 30 people in the pit area (most standing near the back, not the stage) and maybe 20 other people at tables and at the bar.  It was like watching them play in somebody’s basement.  It was neat, but I was sad for the band.  They may have headlined only large clubs, but they have played arenas, as recently as 2004, when they opened for Nickleback.  So an empty club in podunk Pennsylvania mut not look very awesome from that stage.  But Tim and I, from our spots nuzzled up to the stage (no barrier) were determined to rock the fuck out and show these guys some love.

All four guys came onto the stage to ge ttheir equipment ready.  They noodled around for awhile, tuning guitars, etc.  Then Casey went somewhere.  And he didn’t come back.  And he didn’t come back.  And he didn’t come back.  Finally some dude comes onto the stage and whispers something into Jason-fucking-Ross’s ear, and Jason is obviously pissed.  I figure, Casey has gotten into some shit.  Maybe he has diahrrea, or a phone call from a girlfriend, or something.  So Jason confers with Thomas and the drummer guy, and moments later, Jason says into the mic, simply, “Uh, we’re gonna do something until Casey gets back.”

Then Jason and Thomas proceeded to play a guitars-only version of “Times Like These”, a quiet, contemplative song from their masterpiece album RockCrown. Now, I follow 7m3’s setlists online, and, although “Times Like These” may have been played, at the most, 30 times over the last decade, it has certainly never been a show opener, and it hasn’t been played in at least 5 years, not that I’ve seen, anyway.  This was one of the last songs I expected to hear. This is just the first of many thrilling moments.

The setlist:

Main set:

Times Like These
RockCrown
Was a Ghost
Last Kiss
Headstrong
Shelf Life
Joliet
Settle Up
She Wants Results
Peel
My My
Upside Down
Over Your Shoulder
Dislocated
Southwestern State
Roderigo
Cumbersome
Breakdown

Encore:

Water’s Edge
Strangely at Home

Yeah.  Do you see the songs I’ve put in bold there?  Yeah.  The songs I mentioned to Casey.  And these are not songs played by this band frequently.  “Headstrong” gets played somewhat–maybe 20% of the setlists I’ve looked at.  But “Shelf Life”?  That’s as rare as looking in the toilet after you take a crap and finding an Oscar statuette.  As both songs started, Casey (who I was directly in front of) pointed at me and smiled.  We nodded our heads at each other.  During the bass line change at the end of “Headstrong”, I was all about Casey, and he was all about me.  We watched each other and smiled, and I  jumped around like a lunatic.  It was like living in a dream.  Literally, it was like living in a dream.

I won’t bother you with why the rest of this setlist is bonkers-crazy unreal.  If you are familiar with the band, then you already know.  But I just kept crapping my pants over and over again.  And Tim and I were rocking out, jumping, throwing our arms in the air, singing at all the right parts, and letting Jason sing when we had no right to be singing (like in “Southwestern State”).  I’d turn around occasionally, and see that the room was getting even emptier; people were leaving.  Oh well–let them.  Seven Mary Three don’t need no room full of people.  Seven Mary Three didn’t need nothing but me and Tim.

After the last song (the beautifully exquisite “Strangely at Home”), Jason-fucking-Ross immediately left the stage, and just about everyone in the building except Tim and I left, as well.  That left Tim and I (and two other guys who were, thankfully, pretty serious fans of the band, as well) to chat with Thomas and Casey as they packed up their gear.  Casey simply said to me, “I hope you liked that”, with a wink, which I took as confirmation those two songs were for me.  Then he promptly got on his cell phone.

Thomas, however, was a chatterbox, and I got to, once again, do an unimaginably cool thing: tell one of my favorite musicians, immediately after a show, which parts I thought they did really good in. (I know some of you see alot of local and smaller-venue artists and this probably seems silly to you, but most of the shows I go to are larger-scale clubs and arenas; this kind of interaction is brand new to me).  I told Thomas that his solo in “Southwester State” moved me, and that the new take he had brought to “Cumbersome” (and boy, is it new!) made the song fresh for me again.  Tim asked Thomas is he could have a guitar pick, and he asked the drummer for a drum stick, which they were happy to give.  I didn’t want any thing from them, however.  I’ve already gotten so very much.

Thank you for 12 great years, Seven Mary Three.

Gratitude Through ‘Life Wasted’

It was a longer than normal day at work.  I haven’t slept well the past few nights, nor eaten properly.  I am driving home hopped up on caffeine, majorly.  My body is weak, tired, shaking a little.  But it is sunny, and I am headed home, and everything is pretty close to being almost perfect.  I riffle through the CDs in my console.  I come up with Pearl Jam’s newest album, which is self-titled but affectionately referred to as The Avocado Album.  I slide it into the CD player, which eats it like it does any other CD.  The first track, Life Wasted, begins to play.  The opening riff is monstrous, thunderous, and somehow sparse.

Bum-bum-dumdum, Bum-ba-dumdum!

Then the drum and bass kick in:

BUM-BUM-DUMDUN (wuaa!), BUM-BA-DUMDUM!

I know before Eddie even sings a word that somehow I am now hearing this song for the first time. Months ago, when the CD first came out, I knew I had a connection to this song, as most people probably feel. Anyone who is through something, on the other side of something, who is doing good or feeling better, probably feels a connection to this song.  I’ve used a quote from it as my MySpace headline more than once.   Maybe it’s just that there are so many Pearl Jam songs that are already personal to me, so many that I’ve internalized, that for awhile there wasn’t room for one more Big One, one more emotional juggernaut for me to process.  But today, on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, that opening riff hit me square in the gut like a dead fish on the poop deck, and I knew I was in for a ride. He started singing, and I started to sing with him, loud and with more gusto that I expected:

You’re always saying that there’s something wrong. I’m starting to believe that was your plan all along.  Death came around, forced to hear it’s song. And know tomorrow can’t be depended on…

It’s seven years ago. Younger me sits by a fire, a bonfire of sorts, in the yard of some tiny cabin in some vast woods.  I’m by myself on a makeshift bench formed by a log and two large rocks.  In the cabin, 50 yards away in the darkness, loud thumping rap music is playing and the kids from work are dancing.  Some of them are probably making out.  The stars are out in force but I can barely see them.  My head spins wildly, like the amusement park rides I’ve always been too scared to get on.  I’m wondering where all my money went.  I got a 600 dollar paycheck just three days ago, and upon opening my wallet at the liquor store this afternoon, found only a twenty.  And I cashed the whole thing–there’s none in the bank.  I had enough for a bottle of gin and a pack of smokes.  After the party tonight, I’ll be distinctly fucked.  Nobody wanders over to sit next to me and chat, because I turned into “Wolfman” an hour ago.  I snipe at everybody who comes near, or tell them there’s no God, or their shirt is ugly, or they’re fat, or whatever I deem to be wrong with them.  I drink my gin and coke and my stolen wine coolers like they were Gatorade and wander off into a meadow, where I pass out wondering where my money went and why women don’t jump at the chance to sleep with me the way they used to.

I’ve seen the home inside your head, all locked doors and unmade beds.  Open sores unattended.  Let me say just once that–

It’s eight years ago.  Younger me is crouched alongside the house I’m sharing with a married couple.  It’s somewhere around 2 AM, and it’s raining.  It’s not pouring–this isn’t a movie, after all–it’s just drizzling.  But it’s cold.  It’s that barely-autumn part of autumn, where it wants to be summer during the day and winter at night, and fools like me refuse to change from shorts to pants.  I have no idea why I’m not inside.  Maybe I’m locked out and maybe I’m not.  I’m drinking the cooking wine my friends kept in the bottom cabinet, beside the dishwasher.  It’s salty as hell; it tastes like flavored tears.  Even for someone in my desperate position, I must drink slowly or risk vomiting.  It’s a small bottle–probably two liters, but it takes me over an hour to finish it, chain-smoking menthol cigarettes and, yes, singing Pearl Jam tunes.  When it’s finally empty, I find I’m not even buzzed.  But I managed to keep the shakes away, and somehow (and somewhere) fall asleep for an evening of listless, dark-dread dreams.

I have faced it, a life wasted! I’m never going back again!
I escaped it, a life wasted! I’m never going back again!
I have tasted a life wasted! I’m never going back again!

It’s seven years ago. The alcoholic girl I am dating has stood me up again.  I don’t even like her that much, but it’s fun to have a girlfriend after all these years without one, and especially nice that she doesn’t even look at me funny, no matter how much I drink, and she lets me fuck her no matter how drunk I am.  We made plans to meet at 2 PM at Nell’s Supermarket, because she has to drop her sister off there for work.  I prepared for the evening by waking up at 11, showering, dressing and getting thoroughly drunk.  Swaying and stinking I left my Dad’s house and drove the 20 minutes to meet her.  At 2:30 I already know she’s not coming, but I keep hope alive by getting the ready-made gin and coke out of my car.  I’ve always got one in there, in a McDonald’s Super Sized soda cup.  I replenish it every time I go home, so it’s always full.  It’s a sunny winter day and the sun sets early.  The black flat pavement cools like a huge ice pack.  I wander around in the dark, sipping my drink and smoking, looking in people’s cars, admiring the red Exit sign glow in the closed banks, talking to some local skateboarders about God-knows-what.  I pass out in my driver’s seat around 7 PM.  I awake, with no saliva in my mouth and an intense need to pee, at 3 AM.  I drive back to Dad’s house and pee in the lawn.

The world awaits just up the stairs…leave the pain for someone else. There’s nothing back there for you to find…or was it you, you left behind?

It’s a little over six years ago.  It’s my first morning waking up in rehab.  It’s a strange, glowy feeling.  I need a drink, that much is clear.  I also can’t seem to move.  It’s about 18 hours since I had a drink, which is much longer than I’ve gone over the past year.  The shaking is bad.  The fever is worse.  And yet, I am not afraid, because here I am safe.  Here I cannot get it.  Here they will make me whole.
It’s a 3 bed room, but I am alone in it.  The other 2 beds lay undisturbed, made up with precision like a hotel bed.  My blinds are drawn but sun beats through them, is hot and sticky like summer, although it’s December.  Shadows of people move across the window, they laugh and blow smoke out of their mouths.  I wish I could join them out there, but am afraid.  I’m afraid I won’t ever be able to move again, I’m afraid I won’t fit in, I’m afraid they won’t identify with me, I’m afraid they’ll call me short and laugh, I’m afraid I won’t know what to do.  I’m afraid I’ll want to drink for the rest of my life, always and forever, without ceasing.  I’m afraid everyone will know that about me.

You’re always saying you’re too weak to be strong.  You’re harder on yourself than just about anyone.  Why swim the channel just to get this far?  Halfway there, why would you turn around?

It’s six years ago.  This is to be my last day living with my mother.  It was a nice, idyllic half-year stay in the countryside of New Jersey.  Almost a second childhood.  Her home, like her, a womb.  Her three silent cats who seemed to know I was nursing back to health.  The sun-drenched linoleum floors while I had the place to myself, shiny like a summer lake.  I watched the years final snow melt from my bedroom window and watched Spring inundate the thirsty world with water, and green, and everywhere insects.  I gained real weight and shaved everyday, ate candy like I meant it and apples, too.  I wrote so many poems about so many things, my mind surprised by time and clarity.  I cried with joy and sadness as I drove away, toward home, toward my boyhood town, to see if I could now do it this time.  To try to live on my own without fear.

Darkness comes in waves.  Tell me, why invite it to stay?  You’re warm with negativity, yes, comfort is an energy, but why let the sad song play?

It’s three years ago.  I’m moving the last of my boxes into my my first very-own apartment, the first place that I will live totally by myself.  It’s a nice, wood-panelled place with a pretty big living room and off-street parking.  I’m not worried about affording it, or about being alone, or fitting in or being able to do the next right thing.  I walk into the bathroom, looking at the sink and the mirror.  My sink and mirror.  I just stand and stare, because I can’t believe I have my own sink and my own mirror.

I have faced it, a life wasted! I’m never going back again!
Oh I escaped it, a life wasted! I’m never going back again!
Having tasted a life wasted, I’m never going back again!
Oh I erased it, a life wasted! I’m never going back again!

7/19/09

1.  Before an awesome lunch with Joni, we saw a squirrel trying to get into a drainpipe, and it was hilarious.

2.  Joni also wore what I would consider to be the shirt best matched to the person wearing it, ever.  It’s like someone made that shirt for her.

3.  Started off my day by watching 2005’s ‘Rumor Has It’.  I loved it. What’s going on with me and romantic comedies?  I used to think they were the devil.

4.  Saw the very first guy who was my roommate my first time through rehab walking down the street with a case of beer.

5.  I’m going to mention my sister now so I can create a sister tag for my blog, which I don’t understand how one doesn’t already exist.  PS my sister rules.

6.  Walked from my apartment to Thornwald Park, did some reading, met Michael there, and we watched a nice free bluegrass show in the park.  Talked through most of it.  Beautiful evening for sitting in a park for live music.  Instead of walking right home, I stopped at the theater and saw ‘Bruno’.  It was OK.  It’s no ‘Borat’.  Then stopped at the chinese buffet.  Then went to wal-mart and bought more stuff than I should have, since the walk back was rather long.  My shoulder hurts.

7.  Quote from Michael today:  “You want to eat my arm, don’t you?”

8.  Mary is a freelance writer.  She got a job today to write a screenplay that apparently involves a road trip and medicinal marijuana.  I’m excited for her!

9.  Took some dumpster pictures on my walk today.  I continue to be amazed by how many great dumpster pics I can get in this one podunk town of Carlisle.

10.  Going to bed now, going to try to catch up on the 8 unread magazines on my bedside table.

11.  Oh, PS, another quote from Michael today:  “What’s a romantic attachment?  Is that like a dildo or something?”

12.  Things I need to add to this entry to create tags for my blog without having to actually write an entry about them:

Paul, Modest Mouse, NPR, P.T. Anderson, Philip Larkin, High School, Childhood, spirituality, woods

West North Street, Carlisle, Pennsylvania

It’s half—or maybe more accurately, a quarter—of a house.  It’s a nice place, probably a hundred years old.  The floors are hardwood, the walls a standard white drywall, flat paint combo.  It’s in a near-constant state of furniture re-arrangement; like the lives of the two men who live here, the apartment is fluid, grasping, ever on the verge of something.

 

The day I moved in with Duane was the day I moved back to Pennsylvania from New Jersey.  In my previous life in Pennsylvania, I hadn’t spent much time in this area of Carlisle.  I had visited Duane here a few times, and had always had trouble finding it.  This time, I found it easily, pulling up in my ’83 Ford Escort, with my life jammed into the tiny backseat.  At first, the house actually seems a bit towering and hulking, it’s front porch extending far into the world beyond the front door, and the porch roof arching upwards like the peak of a great barn.  The brown, white, and earth-toned exterior of the house makes it something you can and do easily drive past without noticing, but once you’re familiar with it, it’s comforting, like oatmeal, or sand.

 

The day I moved in was the most relaxed “move-in” in the history of the world.  Duane acted like I had already been living there forever.  After discussing where our individual “spaces” were, we settled in to just co-existing rather quickly.  I set my coffee maker up immediately.  That night, some old friends came over.  I felt ecstatically at home in these four rooms, with their hardwoods, their flux, their smell of socks.

 

After a few months, life here had become life, and it moved with an interesting rhythm.  I worked a lot, coming home late at night through the side entrance into our disgusting kitchen, and hibernating with well-deserved sleeps in the sizeable back bedroom I had taken over.  I went to a lot of AA meetings, and voraciously read the AA literature while laying on my twin bed, with my window open during this hot summer of 2003.  Life swam.

 

I furiously and studiously worked the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, and saw from them true change in my life.  It was magical and uplifting. 

 

The first four steps are easy.  Then you get to Step 5:  “Admitted to a higher power, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs.”  This is where we take the “inventory” we made in step four—where we write down every shitty thing we did toour loved ones before and during our addiction—and admit them to whatever Higher Power we’ve chosen to take over our will (this can be, essentially, whatever you want it to be), fully admit it to ourselves, and (the tricky part) somebody else.

 

Ideally this should be someone else in recovery, but for some reason, I chose my friend Burke.  And I called him immediately after having finished writing down the fourth step—once again, laying on my twin bed, with my window open and a nice breeze blowing, during the hot summer of 2003.  I told him I needed him over there immediately.  Burke, being the great friend he is, was confused, but obliged.

 

Burke sat in the rickety wooden chair, at the over-varnished decades-old computer desk that Duane had given me, after he found it in the basement.  Instead of a computer, a typewriter sat on it.  I sat on my bed, cross-legged, and read to Burke from my notebook.

 

I told them I was going to work, but really…

 

Then I just left her standing there…

 

I never called back…they had no idea where…

 

…I just opened his wallet, really…

 

…screamed, yelled, I have no idea why…

 

It was hard, but it was also easy.  I’m glad I chose Burke.  He’s guileless, and despite his cynical exterior, there’s not a judgmental bone in his body.  I knew this could be between him and I (and of course, all my loved ones, when I went and admitted to wrongdoings from this list to all of them in the ninth step) and, of course, that room.  That home.  Although I’d never lived there before, it was a homecoming.  The end of something, and the beginning.  Those hardwoods, that drywall, that smell of socks, and great friends like Duane and Burke and everyone else who was around at West North: it was the time of my life.

Woodfern Road, Neshanic Station, New Jersey

I woke up groggy.  Or at least, I certainly must have.

            Leaning up on my elbow, I felt my lower extremities ache and scream at me, and my neck shot pain down my spine; and yet, I felt good: rested, revived, serene.  Now—where was I?

            A few seconds of adjustment brought recollection.  I was in a Motel 6 in Carlisle.  The story of how I got here with almost no money and no car, all by myself, was already fading fast from my memory as I focused on the task at hand.  Swinging my legs off the bed I had chosen (I had two to choose from!) I shuffled through my wallet and located my Long Distance calling card, picked up the hotel phone, and called my father.  He’d be on his way to pick me up shortly.

            As I sat the phone down, I noticed for the first time the can of Busch beer sitting beside it.  Lifting the can, I was aghast that it was still half-full.  Without a moment’s hesitation, I walked to the bathroom and listened to the brew gurgle down the sink.

            I got dressed (barely noticing the two Busch’s on the floor, still hooked into their plastic ring), gathered my scant belongings into that old blue suitcase, and headed for the door.  I would wait for Dad outside.

            He showed up right on time, as is his style, in his new Sebring convertible.  He was cheery, if a bit subdued, but it was nice to see him and we chatted amiably.  After all, it’s not like I had killed someone.  I’d disappeared for awhile.  Now I was back.

            If only it were that simple.  But that bright April morning, it almost did seem that simple.

            The drive from Carlisle to Newville is painfully short when you simultaneously feel like it is the first time you are making the trip, as well as the final time.  Everything looks so new, so hauntingly familiar, as if it had risen from a dream soaked in gruel, or was a projection playing on your living room wall: the familiar mixed with the alien, the known with the forgotten, the quantifiable with the quantum.  I never wanted that ride to end, and it also couldn’t have been over soon enough.

            We pulled into the driveway of the house I grew up in, on Oak Flat Road.  I had been here only a week before, but a man in a white van waited for me in the driveway while I went in, and he told me I only had five minutes.  That’s when I stole the old blue suitcase and a pair of Dad’s shoes. 

            This time it was different.  It was better.  I was with Dad.  I was in the Sebring.  I could almost feel at home in this moment.  I could almost see my tiny, hairless legs playing basketball on this driveway, my squeaky boy voice recording fake movies on this lawn, my hungry adolescent body getting laid by the big fur tree under the summer stars.  Almost.

            Of course Dad told me I could take my time, there was no need to hurry.  Of course, he offered me food and something to drink, because he is a good dad.  But he was wrong—there was no time, much as we all might have wanted there to be.  This journey finally had an end, and I really had to get there before something—gin, Busch, cooking wine—reached out it’s hand to stop me yet again.

            I gathered up as much of my old stuff as I could think would be relevant in my new life (and as much as I could get before feeling like I was—somehow—running out of time) and Dad gave me the Mapquest directions he had printed out for me, along with—and I still cry sometimes when I think about how much this helped me, and how caring it was—each direction that I had to take written out in black magic marker on it’s own sheet of computer paper.  For instance, Turn Left Onto Rt. 15 was written in my father’s unmistakable handwriting in large letters on the paper.  Once I made that turn, I could simply throw that paper away and look at the next one.

            I loaded everything into Earl Grey, my 1983 Ford Escort, and—not without some excruciating pain—pulled out of the driveway onto Oak Flat Road, waving goodbye to my dad the way we always had when I was a kid, when I was a teenager.  Before I fucked everything up.

            Although my years as a ne’er-do-well seemed to take me all over the eastern half of the country, the prospect of driving all by myself to a state even as close as New Jersey seemed terrifying.  When you’re a drunk, you move around either with a pack of other drunks, orsober people who are putting up with you, or various forms of drug addicts who will drive you anywhere because they have to go there anyway, because the drugs dried up in Harrisburg.  When you wake up in Providence and you don’t know how you got there, the fact is that someone else took you there.

            Once I was on the highway, the fear relaxed a bit.  Just point the car and give it gas.  And there’s no bars on highways.  And the mind can roam a bit, ponder the concept of starting a new life, where nobody knows you, nobody thinks it’s great that you don’t stink today, or it’s a miracle that I’m clean-shaven.  Someplace I could start to be someone worth loving again.

            The sun lowered behind the horizon just as I crossed the border into New Jersey, and then things got trickier.  The directions took me off the highway.  Now I’m making all kinds of rapid turns and I’m having difficulty reading the directions in the dark—and if you think I own a cell phone at this point in time, you are just stupid.

            And then it started to rain, and then I got seriously into New Jersey, where traffic patterns are different than they are anywhere else in the world (things called ‘jug handles’ and ‘roundabouts’ are interspersed with standard intersections, and the yellow lights last forever) and, as I was wont to do just about all the time, I got really scared.

            I pulled into the first gas station I could find, and climbed out of Earl Grey into sheeting rain, brandishing my phone card and my 8 ½ X 11 piece of paper on which I had written the few phone numbers I could gather in the amount of time I had.  Trembling from the cold, the wet, and the fear, I picked up the stark black handset and dialed the two-thousand digits one has to dial when dealing with a phone card.  Finally I hear her voice.

            “Mom?”

            She’s there.  She’s worried.  She wasn’t sure I was still coming.  She didn’t know how long it would take me.

            “I’m lost.”

            She asks where I am.  I describe what I see.  And lo and behold, I am just a few minutes from her.  But she’d rather I don’t try to find her place on my own.  Stay put, she says.  I’ll drive there, and you can follow me.

            And she does meet me, pulling up in that trusty old Dodge Stratus.  It’s strange how in moments like these, your fear can subside as your shame billows.

            I follow her, and within moments I am pulling into a large stone driveway that is almost a parking lot.  I pull the old blue suitcase out of Earl Grey and follow her, with one huge sigh of relief, into the house.

            The entry room, which is unfinished, with plywood walls and a cement floor, smells like the basements I adored in my youth.  There are stacks of plastic storage containers here, and I immediately know they are full of Beanie Babies. 

            Through the first door we came to the laundry room, which didn’t just smell like a laundry room, but like Mom’s laundry room.  I almost wept with the knowledge that Mom herself did laundry here, and that soon, she would probably be doing mine, as well.  There’s nothing quite like regression to make you feel comfortable.

            And then up the stairs into the apartment proper.  The light brown stairs, with their swirly-wood-patterns, felt like home right away.  I wanted to walk up and down those stairs every day of my life (and I still want to).  As we emerged into the living room, there seemed to be a hearth-like glow emitting from somewhere; the lighting was soft, yet not dim, and coming from everywhere, like the first hour after a snow has fallen.  And the smell of cigarette smoke hung round the room like a welcoming committee—everyone in the world hates that smell but smokers; to us it is a nirvana of acceptance. 

            Turning, I see John, Mom’s husband, in his chair, smiling really wide at me and immediately saying something very hospitable and kind—the specifics of which I now forget, but my appreciation of that moment has not abated.

            And then the lovely clutter!  There is just stuff everywhere (just like their apartment in Dillsburg), but it is lovely stuff.  Books, movies, knick-knacks and gew-gaws to be fawned over, played with, turned around in your hand.  A roll-top desk is full of Blues CDs, a plastic TV tray overflows with Grisham novels and backscratchers, piled in a corner is the complete Ken Burns’ Civil War on VHS and a multi-volume set of reference books on fighter jets.  It’s like I had made a bunch of wishes to an only mildly confused genie.

            And then the cats greet me.  They remember me from the Dillsburg days, which is nice.  It’s always nice when animals remember you, and like you.  Li’l Bit, Baby Doll, and Angel—my saving graces.  I knew immediately, as they rubbed their soft fur against my legs and chased the red dot I made on the floor with a pen laser, that these darling creatures were going to save my life.

            I am lead to the kitchen and told to have whatever I want, to make myself at home—because I was home now.  The kitchen smells like Mom’s kitchen, with a little bit of whatever John’s kitchen smelled like thrown in for good measure, and the smell of cats and cat food.  The white Formica countertop, loaded with just-dried dishes and various snacks in various stages of consumption, draws me in like a psychiatrist’s couch.  I open the pantry door and am greeted by canned chili, three kinds of cereal, granola bars, Campbell’s soups, corn chips, ravioli.  I realize, for the first time in many years, I am hungry.  I started eating and, quite frankly, haven’t stopped since.

            Not much in life can compare to the first few hours you spend at an obvious end to a long and painful journey.  Even though the future is uncertain, it’s never as uncertain as the journey was.  It’s like being in a huge womb, waiting to be birthed again.

            I have no idea what we talked about, Mom, John and I, as we sat in the living room, probably with CNN on mute, smoking our cigarettes, stroking the cats.  But it was pleasant.  I miss those blue walls.  That Oriental shower curtain.  All those Grisham novels (though I’ve never read one).  We didn’t stay up long.  I think we were all eager to go to sleep, start the next day anew, see what life would be like now.

           I lay in bed for some time after Mom and John went to sleep, watching cable television (I found that night that I was fond of American Chopper), stretching out and feeling my body, reflecting on nothing and everything.  Suddenly I rose from the bed and found the phone in the kitchen.  I got my phone card and my sheet of paper out of my wallet and called her.  She didn’t answer, and in fact, she’s never answered since.  And I can’t blame her, after everything we put her through, everything she saw.  And she was so young.  Some things, you never get a chance to fix.

            I lay back down, secure in the notion she’d answer the next day.  I put the DVD of the movie In the Bedroom in and lay down in the dark.  Li’l Bit appeared on the bed and cuddled up next to me.  Her purring was an elixir of love, and I petted her slowly, lovingly, knowing I needed her so much more than she needed me.  I am sick, and you’re gonna help me get better, I whispered to her.  I repeated it.  I am sick, and you’re gonna help me get better.  We fell asleep together.

The Theme Was Hotels, the Theme Was the Absence of Worry

Some memories that seem somehow important:

Waking on a hotel bed as a young young boy–no older than 5–on a family vacation to Ocean City, Maryland.  I had apparently been allowed to sleep in.  I could see out of a high window (it was a high window to me then) and the sun was at it’s zenith.  I was suffering from my first sunburn, which if you remember is quite confusing.  What had awoken me was the sound of seagulls squaking.  I caught a glimpse of a clump of them flying by the window in my first few moments of consciousness.  The bed was the most comfortable and comforting thing I could imagine. The air conditioning was pumped up, and the cold air mixed with the warm sun created an elegant sensation. I was alone in the room. This is the definition of childhood happiness, and the absence of worry.

Waking on a hotel bed, trembling.  Where am I? Which hotel is this?  It is dark, and much too hot.  It smells of mushrooms and bile in here. Who is next to me?  Is it someone?  Perhaps it is her.  I didn’t think she’d return. I try to rise, but my peripheral swims with still motion, my stomach lurches, I knock the lamp over, lay back down.  The trembling rises, it crescendos, it is hot and shaky and moist in here.  This is depravity.  This is the sadness. Strangely, it is also the absence of worry.

Waking on a hotel bed, a man of nearly thirty.  I’m in town for my job interview.  The light through the drawn curtains is low and grey; it’s just past dawn.  I only slept an hour but am instantly awake.  My eyes focus and are aware. Standing before the mirror to tie my tie, I am fatter and older. I accept this and smile. I like my fat cheeks, the bulbous nose.  I earned them. I gather my things: the suitcase I bought, the journal I keep, the socks I wash myself.  Tomorrow I’ll drive home. Tomorrow I’ll be OK, I know.

After the Fire

Everyday smells more and more like Indian food.  Must be the owners, down in their tiny shitbox office, cooking some sort of lentils and curry or whatever.  The blankets smell like it, the towels smell like it, she smells like it, next to me, as she quivers and sweats.  When I raise my forearm to my nose, even I smell like the spicy Indian food.  I begin to associate the smell with the girl and I grow to love it; I will be sad if someone launders these blankets, which is unlikely.  Two days ago the toilet overflowed, and a puddle formed in the carpet outside the shoebox bathroom.  It’s overflowed twice more since, and now when we walk to the bathroom it squishes between our bare toes.  It is cold like dewy grass, but mushy like oatmeal.  This morning I thought I was really going to die.  My whole body hurt, and I got so hot like I was exploding.  I vomited bile on her pants, which I was wearing but I do not remember putting on.  She did not seem to care, though.  She has driven to Harrisburg now, to see if she can find any drugs she can afford.  The teenage girl stopped by again last night and gave me a bottle of gin.  I can’t keep any of it down.  I throw it up, I throw it up, I throw it up.  The carpet between the twin beds—where I am sitting—is soaked through with my puke-gin.  If I could hold some down I’d feel better; I would stop dying.  Last night the three of us played truth or dare and I thought I was dying.  I ate a jalapeño off the teenage girl’s breast without shame, but now in the daylight, all alone, I do feel shame.  There is a three-day-old pizza from Papa Johns on the radiator but no one is able to eat it, not even the teenager when she stops by.  There is an unused tampon in the middle of the pizza from some practical joke I can’t remember.  Somehow we have a little boombox but only two CDs; the song What a Good Boy by Barenaked Ladies has been on repeat for hours now, and I am watching Hey Arnold! on mute as I try to get this gin to stay down.  She bought me expensive gin, too.  I am in this hellhole and I am puking Tanqueray onto the floor, and onto the pinstriped women’s pants I am wearing.  Last night I was curled up on the floor in the shower, and she dumped a bucket of ice water over the curtain onto me.  She was trying to be funny, but she didn’t know I was dying.  We have to find some money to stay another night.  Everything smells like curry.  A few nights ago I had a mini-seizure and I knocked the lamp off the nightstand. It didn’t break, but it scared me a lot.  My penis has been less than an inch long for days now and I can do nothing to change that.  What a fate, to die so shriveled surrounded by helpless women.  Cigarettes have been put out on the carpet everywhere.  Yesterday I found a butt in her mascara.  Sitting here, Indian-style, watching Hey Arnold!, I can smell my ass through these pants and my underwear.  It doesn’t smell like shit, but like an ass without shit.  I haven’t shit for a week—not that I recall.  There we go, there we go, there we go—a sip has stayed down for over three minutes.  Each sip will be easier now.  A sip, a sip, a sip, a sip, now a gulp, now a gulp, ah! I feel good, I feel less hot, less shaky, the all-over-pain has drawn back like a persistent tide.  Smiling and laughing, I collapse face-first into my puke-gin and so damn happy.  I am going to die in this hellhole.