I Just Said "No"

The only thing I fear more than death-by-loneliness is being stabbed to death in my sleep by a deranged girlfriend...no, that's not true. I'd rather be murdered in my sleep than endure a lifetime of bad relationships, so at the moment I am alone. That's a choice. I've actually had several overtures recently but I walked away from them all for reasons ranging from prejudice to self-preservation.

It's amazing how much you can learn about sex by not having it- the absence of humpage seems to encourage thought and reason.
Maybe I'm smarter now.
Or maybe I'm just picky.
Or scared.
Or all of the above.

In any case, I wound up giving my version of The Speech ( Let's Just Be Friends) again lately and it's starting to bother me; I am accustomed to being on the receiving end of The Speech, not to giving it- and after giving it, I realize that no matter how well-intentioned, The Speech has a tendency to be a bit disingenuous. Especially the part about remaining friends.

I have a friend here who drinks. Heavily.
Last winter, she reached out to me for help with the drinking. I can't do anything, I said, that is up to you. All I can do is listen and I will- call me anytime but don't call me if you are drunk.

She didn't call for months.

Then we bumped into each other a while back and started talking , she seemed sincere about quitting, she wanted to talk more, in private.

OK. I am cool with that.

So she invited me to dinner and when I arrived, she stank of vodka. Alcoholics like to think vodka is odorless and hence undetectable, but that is a fallacious assumption. Vodka has a strong odor and anything that's 80 proof will noticeably impair you and this woman was impaired. Wobbly drunk.

I got angry. Usually, it doesn't bother me very much to be around people who are drinking, but this was different- we were supposed to be talking about sobriety, a useless conversation to have with a drunk.

Look. I like you but I can't be around you like this.

Don't you think I'm attractive?

I should have said "no, not at the moment", but I was too nice. She is very pretty and I told her that - the next thing I knew she had slipped her distillery tongue into my mouth.

Aughh!

I swear, I could feel a 'contact drunk' from that stolen kiss. I wanted her (or at least my body did) but I knew what would happen if we slept together- I would convince myself that I was in love with her (I'm not) and try to 'rescue' her, which would fail and lead me back into drinking just so I could be with her.

I know this because I've been through it before.

To repeat my mistakes would be insane, so I did the next craziest thing, which was actually
the only sane option- I gave her The Speech.

Dickless asshole!

It didn't go over well.

Rule #1 : Don't date drunks.

Sub-Rule #1a: Don't date drunks who call you "dickless asshole."

Anyway, I must be putting out major pheromones, because a few days later I was getting a ride home from a woman I don't know very well and she asked me if I wanted to go back to her place and get high- sure, I said, why not?

I know her husband, so I assumed he'd be home and that this was just a social visit- I really should have known better. As soon as we sparked the first joint, she started talking to me about her impending divorce...man, I shoulda seen that coming. I've been there before too.

Most guys would probably have just fucked her and vamoosed, but I am not wired like that. I know what would happen- I'd wind up convincing myself that I was in love and it would end in humiliation and tears when I found out the feeling wasn't reciprocal.

Stupid, but I can't help it. It's how I am. I have an extremely naive and idealized notion of romance- it's as if my emotions stopped growing when I started my drinking career in high school and have only resumed progress now, twenty-odd years later.
I don't know where I get my ideas from- I certainly didn't grow up around well-adjusted relationships- I think my ideals are the merely the reverse of what I saw as a kid.
In my perfect world Daddy comes home at night and Mommy doesn't play with guns.
That's pretty much as far as I get with the details of my expectations.
Useless. Dreamer.
I wonder how many hopeless romantics come from broken homes?
Anyway.

So again with The Speech.

Don't you think I'm attractive?

Yes, yes I do...but I like you too much for this...which was a lie, because I don't know her very well at all. This lie made me feel bad, so I compounded the harm with honesty.

Look, I've been through this before and I'm just not emotionally suited to having affairs. I'll get hurt. You'll get hurt. Stop.

Man, I should have stuck with my lie. To her, I think it sounded like I was confessing to bedding every married woman in Virginia except her, because I somehow found her less attractive than all the other women- which wasn't true at all...I buried myself in a deep verbal hole and handed her the shovel. Instead of a spadeful of soil, she tossed this poisoned rose into my freshly-dug grave:

My husband won't touch me anymore.

Try walking home alone late at night with those words echoing in your head.
On second thought, don't.
It sucks. Take my word for it.

Rule #2: Don't sleep with married women.

Rule #3: Don't be a plot device in someone else's revenge drama.

The third rejection slip was the easiest one. It's much simpler to reject someone if you aren't interested in the first place -a gay acquaintance made an awkwardly polite move on me...dude, that's flattering and all, but I'm not gay. I didn't have to give The Speech at all, I just said "no , thanks."

When I was in my late teens I spent two or three days lost in a New Orleans dungeon.

It was during Mardi Gras and I don't remember how I got in or how I got out , but it did dispel any lingering adolescent doubts I had about my sexual orientation. It's a one-way street.
If a three-day absinthe and cocaine binge in a French Quarter dungeon doesn't bring out any hidden peccadilloes, nothing will.

Still, I thought it was kinda flattering to get hit on- most of the gay guys I know are very particular about appearance, clothes and general hygiene, so being hit on by one must indicate that I'm reasonably attractive, well-dressed and unfunky. That was rarely the case when I was drunk, so I guess I'm making progress.

Progress.

Did I tell you about this girl that I really like?

No?

Good.

It Never Stops

Good news first, then everything else: I made a road trip without breaking down or colliding with car-killing quadrupeds. My grandmother looks good and she feels better, more so than anyone but her expected- she may even be allowed to return home in two or three weeks if she continues to do well with her therapy. It's a cause for celebration.

At least it should have been.

I didn't get home until late last night and when I did, I had a phone message from my brother. Call him right away- it's important. So I did.


It turns out that the man who got our mother pregnant has started drinking again. If I had taken the time to visit him, I might have been able to stop what happened from happening, but I didn't do that and as a result , things at home have gone from better to worst in less than a day.

Yesterday, dad apparently fell down the stairs at the family house and tumbled into my grandmother's most precious piece of furniture - her glass China cabinet. He completely destroyed it, along with many of her most cherished and fragile items...a porcelain doll that Granpa carried back from Okinawa after WWII...plates that belonged to her parents...glassware gifts from relatives no longer with us- I don't yet know the full list of losses or all the details of the accident. I'm sitting at work waiting for and dreading more information.


Here's what I know:


Sharon, who is a friend of Grannie's from church, had stopped by the house to feed the cat and check up on my dad, who can't be trusted, him having a long history of relapsing and fucking up. Sharon used her key to let herself in and saw blood and broken glass everywhere- but no dad. She was calling 911 when my blood-soaked parent returned from the store, carrying more beer. According to my second-hand info, he had a number of serious cuts but refused to seek medical attention- he was more than a little abusive to Sharon, who really does not deserve such treatment, and she left him to stew in his own demise.


After talking to my brother, I actually tried to call my dad. Of course, there was no answer.


I hate myself for making that call. I need to stop caring.


I have tried to care- I had fooled myself into thinking it was possible- I had thought that I had reached a sort of peace with my father and that this peace might possibly lead to forgiveness.


Instead, I am humiliated for wasting so much time and energy on such a lost cause- and my grandmother not only feels disgraced ( it's a small town and everyone knows about my dad) but when she heard about the accident her blood pressure sank like a stone. My father is killing himself and he's killing his mother at the same time- she has undergone weeks of grueling therapy; tests; rehab sessions and life-training classes just to learn that her adult son has smashed what few belongings of hers he hasn't already stolen and sold and is currently lying in a puddle of blood, piss and beer. The puddle he is occupying is on her new carpet where her china cabinet used to be.

When he relapses, her health fails. It's a cycle that's been going on for decades and I have done everything I can think of to break it but I can't. He has to stop drinking or he will die and he knows it - but he doesn't care. He doesn't care if he kills his own mother in the process.

He told his mother that he wants to die.

She has been fighting for her life and her son tells her that he wants to die, that being dead is better than having to take care of her.


If he lives, his actions will kill his mother.


If he dies, his death will have the same result.


I have once again given up all hope for my father. My brother, who has been considerably more loyal than myself, has also given up. My father's younger brother is hardly any better than my dad, he's a daily drunk in a deep state of denial, so there's no help to be had from him.

So the cycle starts again. My dad is a wounded fugitive from reality, a menace to every noun he can reach , and my grandmother is literally worrying herself to death over him and there isn't anything that can be done. The local police don't care what dad does as long as he keeps it off the road and dad has repeatedly turned down our Pastor's very generous offer of a church-funded 28-day rehab clinic. He needs to be locked up and forced to change- it is never going to come from inside him.
I don't know if there is anything left inside my father at all. I don't think he can come back from the place he has chosen for himself and that's where the pain really hits- that he has has chosen this life for himself.
People like to say that alcoholics lack willpower, but that is incorrect. It takes a lot of willpower to cut yourself into ribbons and still manage to limp to the store for more beer.
That takes serious determination.

You would think that no store would sell beer to a man covered in blood, but obviously that is also incorrect. After I hit a deer on Independence Day, I was forced to buy paper towels and cleanser at a crowded gas station and I had deer's blood all over me. Deer blood, for those without large-scale roadkill experience, looks exactly like human blood; over the course of an hour or more, only one person bothered to even ask why I was covered in blood.

Why should they care? Why do I care?

I am trying really hard to not care. I don't want to care. I am tired of the pain of caring and I am weary of the burden of false hope, but what else is there?

It would be so easy to start drinking again. Soon, all my problems would become other people's worries- on top of the frantic phone calls about his father, my brother would also start getting emergency calls regarding myself.

I like to tell people that it's fear that keeps me sober, and in a large part this is true. I know what will happen if I drink and it involves pain , bleeding and a slow death by self-torture.
That scares me away from the booze, but there's more to it than just that; this never-ending trauma with our father is having terrible emotional effects on my brother and I love my brother too much to inflict any more unnecessary, tragic alcoholic bullshit on him. I can't say as how I'm especially fond of myself right now, because I am not- but I love my Twin and the thought of causing him any more pain makes me feel as broken and torn as the deer that I killed two weeks ago.

So I'll add love to my short list of reasons to stay sober.
It will be enough. It has to be.

Insomnia: A User's Guide Pt. 374

Ever had trouble sleeping and have someone suggest that you "count sheep?"
Bah.
Sleep is for the weak and counting sheep is for pussies.
I'm a bad-ass motherfucker, I don't need sleep and I sure as hell am not gonna waste my precious insomnia on being a virtual shepherd.
I like to lie awake all night and torture myself by making lists of things I can't change.
OK, that's not exactly true- I don't enjoy making the lists, but I do it anyway.

Here's a sampling from some of my fave self-torment lists:

THE LOVERS:
I'm not now and have never been promiscuous , so if I think about it long enough, I can actually name almost every woman I have ever slept with. But just counting them isn't enough, there aren't that many and it doesn't take long to merely list them. To really deprive myself of sleep, I need details.
So when the insomnia hits, I start sorting them by alphabetical order, last name (if known) first.
Then by chronology. And so on:
-Hair color.
-Astrological sign.
-Where we met.
-What music was playing?
-Drug of choice.
-Favorite position.
If we were 'dating', I replay the details of the break-up and try to figure out what it was that I did wrong. This leads to my next list- Faults, real or imagined:

THE FAULTS:
- HAIR: I started losing my hair when I was 18 but didn't admit it until I was 30 and I started shaving my head in a show of solidarity with my mom, who was undergoing chemo at the time.
If I had started shaving my head when I was 18, it would probably take me a lot longer than it does to count all my ex-lovers. For years, I had long hair and a bald spot, which is probably the least attractive hair-do a man can sport, short of wearing a toupee.
Once, a hippie GF convinced me to try wearing a ponytail.
I was dumb enough to agree.
I had a ponytail and a bald spot at 25 years old.
I may never outlive that shame.

- ROCKIN':
I used to be convinced that I would make a living playing music. Either that, or I would be dead before I turned 40. For 15 years, all my extra energy went into making music. I have at least six hours worth of my own material recorded- I could have written a novel, graduated college or invented a time machine with all of the energy I wasted on Rockin'.
Rockin' has ruined my love life more than once.
One of my girlfriends used to cheat on me when I had gigs- when I was on stage, she knew I wasn't gonna catch her at home...years later, I was trying to impress another woman with my musical awesomeness, so I sent her a CD. She called me and told me that my songs were indicative of serious mental illness and maybe it would be better if we didn't see each other.
That bothered me.

-GETTING WASTED:
I had a PermaBuzz from 1983 to 2005. From Absinthe to Xanax, I have done it all at least once. For a long time, this was fun, but it's really a difficult lifestyle to maintain and it tends to drive away sane people. I once boasted, truthfully, that I could snort an entire eight-ball in two giant lines. That ability didn't exactly attract the best sort of person, my personal possessions had a habit of vanishing when certain 'friends' visited.
And it leads to my new favorite list...


YET ANOTHER BRUSH WITH DEATH:

- DEATH BY AUTO:
Years ago, a man ran a stop sign and I broadsided his new Lexus with my old Honda at 55 mph, totalling both cars. We both emerged unscathed...I was so surprised to be unhurt that I didn't even get mad at the guy, in fact, we sorta bonded on the roadside, looking at the wrecked cars and waiting for the cops...dude sent me $600 even though I told him I wasn't planning on suing or anything.
A year or so later, I blew a tire and bounced my newer Accord across five lanes of rush-hour traffic. I hit a Ford, totalling it, bounced off a Toyota ( wrecked) and finally stopped pinballing when I hit a guardrail. My Honda had a couple dents and lost a headlight. The police officer said he couldn't imagine how I managed to wreck two cars while barely hurting my own. I drove away without a bruise or a ticket...my 4th of July collision with a deer made me think about that...three serious smash-ups that I've walked away from without a scratch.

-DEATH BY SCORPIO:
I haven't had a lot of girlfriends, but at least half of them have been Scorpios and each one of them has made at least one attempt on my life. Knives, guns, a bass guitar and a Wolf-Shepherd hybrid are some of the weapons employed by Scorpios seeking my demise. On the positive side, a failed murder attempt can lead to some pretty terrific revenge sex. It's the mortality buzz, I guess.

-DEATH BY BOOZE:
This is the one that lingers on my mind the most. When I saw the deer's blood and guts on the side of my car, the first thing I thought of was my own experience with alcohol-
induced internal hemorrhaging and how much of my own blood I have seen. If you drink heavily for a long, long time, your guts will literally dissolve and you will drown in your own blood - that is what happened to me.
I made it to the ER with a few minutes to spare. When I read the recent news story about a woman who bled to death in an L.A. hospital ER, I had a flashback that triggered a serious panic episode, so I know the fear is still with me. The fear keeps me sober.

I'd like to think that all these close calls have made me braver or stronger somehow, but yesterday it caught up to me- all of it- and I was literally paralyzed by thought. I spent the afternoon just sitting and trying not to think about all of the things that I have just spent an hour describing.
It must have worked, because I actually did sleep last night and my dreams weren't at all bad.

I had a good dream.
My dream had an accent, not an accident.
It was full of love and it rocked without fault.

Potential for Steam

My car came perilously close to overheating this evening. In the space of a mile or so, the
thermostat goes from it's normal '12 o'clock vertical all the way into the far-right red zone, not quite clipping it, but close.

Can't drive like that without wrecking my engine, so I park in a 'reserved' spot in a nearby apartment building.

Under the hood, greenish-gray spray is everywhere...a coolant hose has split and the antifreeze is squirting into the fan and the belts, which are spraying it downward and aroundward...there is a puddle forming on the asphalt...damn.

Well, I can patch the leak with duct tape and put enough coolant in to get home, but first I need to wait for the engine to cool...it's too hot to stick my hand inside.
(Note: find the fuse labeled 'radiator/turbo fans' and remove it before sticking your hand anywhere near a radiator or turbo fan. Important.)

So I sit in the sun and think. I was thinking about how I was recently forced into discussing my alcoholism in real life, and how uncomfortable that was for both me and my interlocutor.
I was asked about my "support system"...I don't go to AA or any other group, but I do have other things, things I think work. I'm somewhat proud to have these things but not so proud I can't be grateful for them:

1) The radio. I have to get up every Sunday at 5:30-6am and do radio. I love doing this so much that waking up is never a problem, although sleeping beforehand often is. If I started drinking again, I would lose my ability to function in the morning. I'd lose my show.
Radio is part of my support system.

2) My grandmother. She is proud of me. To her, I am the one who beat the odds, she can talk about me at church without eliciting sympathy. To me, she was my anchor in a tsunami childhood. She did everything she could, and I'm here now when I otherwise might not have been.

3) You. My blogpals. You accept me despite knowing things that I haven't told many of my close friends. (Perhaps some of you don't, but you aren't reading this , so it's a moot point. )The real point is: I appreciate all the kind thoughts. (Some of you have marvelous timing...uncanny! )
I write about things that are hard for me to explain and that must be difficult for others to read, but sometimes it reaches someone who reaches back and that makes it worthwhile. Contact.

The thing is, I explained this to someone who has a history of dealing with drunks. They seemed to think it was reasonable and they especially thought #3 above was an interesting alternative to AA. I had never looked at blogging quite like that before, my idea was more along the Isle of Misfit Toys...

Was she wrong? I see some truth in it, but I don't think that's bad. I think it good.

Anyway, I patched the leak (for now) and got home, but I did get some thinking done while I waited for the engine to cool.

I'm thinking it's gonna work out somehow.

A Holiday of Now

I promised myself that I would never talk to my father again.

Then why is the phone in my hand? I said I was going to erase his number, yet it's ringing and I'm holding it.

It doesn't matter. My father is always drunk, so he never answers his phone. I'll leave a message and he won't reply. That is the way it is with us.

Or it was. Before I stopped talking to him.

Why am I doing this?

And why does Dad answer the phone? He never does that.
Is it because he is sober?
He is, I can tell.

So there's this fake holiday to break the ice and maybe for one second I stop hating Hallmark for inflicting these landmine holidays on us.
One second.

Happy Father's Day.

He sounds genuinely surprised to hear from me, but we do need to talk. It's a bit urgent.

My father tells me that I need to be prepared, that his mother probably won't ever leave the convalescent facility she is in...she is gravely ill.
He wants me to know that it is serious.
Really serious.

I have been anticipating this conversation for months. Dreading it.

See, I know his mother is sick. I know all the details. I have been visiting and calling her for the last two months.
My dad, on the other hand, was missing on a multi-week bender, so he didn't find out how bad it was until he came home and slept it off...which took him days. My twin brother flew in from Chicago to help sort him out. It's a miracle that booze hasn't killed our dad.
Anyway, if Dad hadn't been lost in a drunken stupor, he wouldn't be so surprised to learn that his mother can't take care of herself anymore.
Taking care of her was his job, but he won't even take care of himself.
I use him as a model on how not to live my life.

These are things I thought I was going to say to him if we ever spoke again.

But I don't say any of those things. For a moment they slip my mind.

I ask him how he is. I already know, but it's important that he knows I'm asking because I care.
Now.
Yesterday, I didn't care. Tomorrow I may not.
So it is very important that I ask him now.
It's for my sake as much as his.
I care now.

He is OK, he says. It is a lie, but a forgivable one.

My father is very close to breaking as he tells me what I already know.
Yes, I agree, we need to be ready for the worst.

Any day.
Oh, yes, there's always the false alarms...keep hope alive.
Remember last fall? Haha. Boy, were we scared!

We laugh at some of the close calls and false alerts of the past. None of it was funny then, but some of it is now.

And now is where my father is.

So we talk about now.

I know where he was , I know where he is, but I know better than to ask about where he will be. I don't ask for or make any more promises.
His promise to stay sober mean less to him than my promise to disown him means to me and I've already broken mine.
It's only a matter of time before he breaks his.
I know that.
He knows it too.

But he is here now, and for now, we are speaking again.

No More Lies

Sunday morning my uncle picked me up so that we could drive up to see my grandmother, who is in the hospital. She may never leave it, so it's important that we see her.
My uncle and I used to be fairly close, but that has changed in the nearly two years since I quit drinking. My sobriety has become a wedge between us. His drinking is not the problem- it's my sobriety that's the issue. I come from a family of alcoholics and my sobriety makes the drunks feel uncomfortable.
When he arrives, there are two plastic cups in the cupholders, both full of beer.

"Here", he says," I have one for you."

"Eddie", I reply, "I have quit drinking. It's been almost two years. I almost died."

"Oh. I thought you were just saying that. I didn't think it was true."

Eddie, who arrived at 11 am with Big Gulps of beer, has obviously not given up the booze. As I was clearing the pile of newspapers and trash out of his passenger seat- which hadn't seen a passenger in a very long time- I nearly gagged on the ripe brewery smell coming from him.
I used to drink in the morning too, and I know that if you are having beer for breakfast, it's because you have had beer for dinner and dessert the previous night. Hair of the dog, ya know?
I also know that by the time beer starts sweating out of your pores, you are drunk and have been drunk for a long, long time.

"Ed, why don't you let me drive?"
I have been awake for two days but at least I'm sober.

"I never get drunk. I don't let myself get sloppy." Uh- huh.

I wanted to tell him that I spent five minutes cleaning trash out of his car just so I could squeeze into the side door, and that driving around in a huge pile of stinking garbage is something that many people would consider "sloppy."
I don't say that, though.
He is a drunk and he actually believes his own drunken lies, so arguing is useless.

Instead, we talk about his mother. Eddie is the closest thing to a 'functioning' adult child that my grandma has- I am relieved to hear that she has removed my father as executor of her will and named Eddie. I'm not so happy to learn that Eddie has signed the duties over to his wife, who also drinks for breakfast. She's not with us on this trip- she had 'things' to do- so I can't ask her any questions.
At this point, we aren't sure if there is money for a nursing home even if Grandma survives the next few days. I'm really worried. If she dies...well, that's one thing...if she lives, there may not be anywhere for her to go.

It's not until we reach the interstate that I get concerned for my own safety. Ed keeps his car in the right-hand lane so that when he swerves- which is every few minutes- the car rolls over the 'rumble strips' on the shoulder and not into traffic. I have survived two interstate accidents and I doubt I have enough remaining luck to survive a third, so I start getting a wee bit vocal.

"Eddie, pull off at the next exit and give me your keys."

"But I'm not drunk. I never get drunk."

"Ed, you are drunk right now. You can't keep your car in the lane and we are going to die if you wreck."

"I can't drive because you are talking to me. I can't stand lectures from reformed alcoholics. You people are worse than ex-smokers."

I think that I have given ONE lecture about alcohol in my entire life. It was addressed to my father and it was made in the course of an improvised intervention by me , at my grandmother's request. It sucked the life out of me and accomplished nothing.
It didn't do Dad any good at all, he cleaned up for a couple months and then went right back to the bottle, the filth and the lies.
I know lectures don't work. It's why I don't give them.
But Eddie is hearing lectures from somebody...his alcoholic defensiveness is in high gear.

Halfway there, he runs out of beer and he has to find a gas station where he can buy more. We stop at a 7-11 and he buys a 40 oz bottle of Miller.
I buy a sandwich and a coffee.
We argue about his driving. He gives me two choices: I can walk home or I can shut up and be a passenger. He can drive, he tells me. I give up. There's no point in arguing with a drunk.
Oh, right. Excuse me.
Eddie isn't drunk. He never gets drunk.
Drunks never lie and they never make mistakes. If he can't drive, it's my fault for talking to him.

We finally make it to the hospital and when he exits the car, it looks like Eddie has pissed in his khakis. There's a huge wet stain covering his crotch, ass and legs down to the knees.

"Did you piss yourself?"
Drunks never lie, make mistakes or piss themselves.

"No, I spilled a beer on my lap."
I don't let myself get sloppy.

As we walk the hospital's corridors, looking for room #209, I can smell the beer on him. He's been sitting in a puddle of beer for an hour and he smells awful. People pass in the hallway and wrinkle their noses at us.
Another great moment of family pride.

It's Sunday and there are a few ladies from Church visiting Grandma when we arrive. They look like they've been crying. There's a grey lump on the bed. A handwritten sign identifies the lump as my grandma...tubes are everywhere...the lump moves as we enter, tries to raise a hand, but the tubes are in the way.

Hello. We are here.
I kiss her cheek. Her skin feels like tissue paper, but she wakes up and recognizes me. All I can do is rest my hand on hers, let her know that I am there.

The tiny room fills with the mingled smell of death and stale beer. I will always associate those two smells with each other. Dying and drinking smell the same to me. They are the same to me.

The church ladies are murmuring:
"...her sons both drink, you know..."
"...poor thing, having family like that..."
"...don't they have any shame?..."

One of the ladies starts filling me in- last night, Grandma's heart stopped and they thought she was going to die, her abdomen is full of liquid and it's suffocating her heart and lungs. The drainage is not going as well as hoped and surgery is almost impossible, given her frail health.

None of this is new. My Grandma has been pronounced dead quite a few times over the last 15 years , so I'm trying to stay calm, keep cool. The lady who's giving me the information is not doing so well, though. She breaks into tears halfway through her recital.

I don't even know her name, but she loves my grandmother and that's good enough for me. I want to listen. I need to talk to an adult who cares and who knows my Grandma .
I am very lucky that this woman is here.

We step out into the hall so she can tell me more. She wants to tell me about my father. The police have gotten so tired of responding to my GM's requests to check-up on his whereabouts that they have stopped doing it. I had suspected this was the case, now I know.
One of the officers is a family friend and it was his new wife (whom I have never even met) who finally responded to one of the calls that her husband had been ignoring. She found my dad , he was passed out on the floor of his rental cottage, just where he always is. He's alive but couldn't be bothered to visit his mom. He said he'd be around in a few days- he's at the stage where it takes days to sober up enough just to be 'presentable'.

I tell the lady that I don't want him around, that he will just make it worse. She agrees and starts crying. There is so much compassion in her -where is it coming from?... she tells me about her daughter, her son and their drinking. They drank themselves to death, six months apart.
She has outlived her children. Twice in one year.
Her family is full of drunks who ruin everything...she knows what they do, how they poison the world of the living and now she has to see it happen all over again with my family. Her heart is still broken and it will probably never mend.

Uncle's showing up at the hospital drunk and dripping beer is not helping anything. This might be the last time that he sees his mother and he won't even remember it.

But I will. I will never forget any of this.

The woman asks me who is driving. I have already decided that I will take my uncle's keys away from him if even if I have to beat him, so I'm being quite honest when I tell her that I am driving us both home.

"Good. Your uncle has no business visiting his mother when he has been drinking. We can all tell that he is drunk. Your grandmother has told us the whole story. We have been praying that you don't drink."

That's something she needn't worry about, but I am glad to know that the family 'secret' is out of the bag and that there is at least one person who understands. Alcohol took this woman's children away...no wonder she can't stand to watch my grandma's sons destroy themselves.

"Allan, you are going to have to be the strong one. There is no one else. Your brother is too far away and your dad isn't any use."

Yeah, I know that. It's been tormenting me for a long time. I don't tell her that, though.
Instead, we hug and cry. I don't even know who the tears are for- there are so many people to cry for.

After a minute, we return to the room. My uncle is gone. He has left without saying a word.
I'm certain he's sitting in his car, drinking beer out of a soda cup.
His beer-smell was upsetting my grandma- she has oxygen tubes in her nose, but she can still smell the beer. She's as angry as the morphine will allow.
Her son has driven 150 miles just so he can sit in the parking lot and drink furtively while his mother lies dying, 50 yards away.
Another proud family moment.

For a short period, I am left alone with my grandmother and she manages to ask me if I am OK. She tells me some things, some things that I knew already, but I need to hear them from her own lips before I can accept them as true.
Now I can do that.
She's on life-support and she wants to know if I am OK. She is making sure I know these things, because it might be the last time we speak. There might not be another chance for her to tell me these things.
She wants me to be alright but I don't feel like I will ever be alright again.
I am not OK, but I lie to my grandmother and tell her that I am alright.
I tell her that I am OK.
I decide that this is the last time that I will tell a lie to my grandmother.
I make her a promise that I hope I can keep.

I will never forget any of this.

Pastor Bob arrives after services. His is the voice of reason. He's been a good friend to my small family and he's never sugar-coated his words. If he tells me it is serious, it is serious.

"It's very serious", he says.

He tells me the truth about how things have been for my grandma and for my father. It's exactly as I feared, only worse. My grandma can't help herself- it's against her instincts to tell us the whole truth.
She is a protector who can no longer protect anyone.
All the secrets are out.
There are no children to defend, we are all adults now and at least one of us has to act like we are grown-up.

"Allan, you are going to have to keep yourself together. I am praying for you. Call me anytime. Anytime at all."

I have done nothing to deserve this man's concern, yet he is extending himself to me. The world is full of strangers and near-strangers who are praying for me, who are willing to answer the phone if I need to call...this is too much. I am not worth this.
More tears come. Pastor thinks I am crying because of Grandma, but I'm not. I am crying for myself and my family. I'm crying for the woman who's children killed themselves with drink. I am crying because of what my grandma has been through, but not because she will be gone soon. I am crying because my grandpa never lived to see me sober. I have a long, long list of reasons to cry.
I am weeping now because I am ashamed of my family and I know it's going to get much worse very soon and when it does, I am very likely to find myself alone in whatever struggles arise.

Except I won't be alone.

There are people that love my grandmother so much that they will be there for me when she is gone. I don't deserve that kindness, but I need it. I can't turn my back on that.
I do not deserve any of this love, but it is there and I can't help but cry because it's overwhelming to be this human.
Oh, how easy it is to drink, I think, if I was drunk, I wouldn't be so sad. I'd make other people sad, but drunks do not care about other people, so it wouldn't bother me a bit. It would all be someone else's fault.

I tell Pastor what my grandma told me. He said that she had talked to him about it and that he agrees. I don't need to punish myself for this, he reminds me. It is not my fault. Pastor doesn't tell lies, so I know that he's right. I already knew that, but again, it's something I needed to hear. He knew that, that is why he told me.

I tell Pastor about the promise that I have made.
He tells me never to forget those words.

I won't. I thought about it while I was driving my sleeping uncle's car home.

I will never forget any of this.

To Be Continued

I took the day off to attend to some personal business.

First, I took a cue from my long-time blogpal Sling and used my Blooger skills to set up a 'sample' blog that the radio station could use as a newsletter/forum, thus keeping our internal politics off-the-air and off our public website; things that have been a problem for us lately.

Then I spent a long time talking with my grandmother concerning my father's whereabouts- he's been MIA (Missing In Alcohol) for a couple of months now. He had almost 90 days of sobriety but he chose to go back to the bottle.

His last words to his mother:"Say goodbye to the cat for me."

So I did a little sleuthing. Don't ask me how.

I found that Dad's bank and credit card activity ends abruptly on May 7th. This activity is how I used to track him down- back when I still cared enough to bother- it's possible that he figured out that he can be tracked via his plastic and has switched to all-cash, but I think that's unlikely.

The most likely scenario is that he's been dead since May 7th. Or 8th.

It must seem awful cold of me to be able to write about it like that, but that's the way is with alcoholics. I have tried to help him, but he has made his choices and he'll die with them.

I've made my choices too.
My choices are not his choices.
I intend on living with mine.

Anyway, I expect the shit will hit the fan very soon. There's already a considerable amount of fecal turbulence in my neighborhood, so if I'm not around much, don't be alarmed. I'm doing what's needed and I'll be back soon.

Then again, I could post again in an hour.

I honestly don't know what's going to happen, I only know what's NOT going to happen.

-I am NOT going on a wild-goose intervention chase for my AWOL parent.

-I am NOT going to stop playing music, alone or on the radio.

-I am NOT going to quit writing.

-I am NOT going to take a drink.

Not giving in,
Allan

My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains

A double-shot of programs this weekend.
First, Songs From The Big Hair, our weekly 1980's show. This week I was training JY, a new volunteer. She has previous DJ experience and picked up our system easily; it was nice having another person in the booth.
DJing is sort of a lonely job, y'know? Like being a lighthouse keeper or something.



SONGS FROM THE BIG HAIR

Replacements- Go
12" vinyl on 45rpm. Hi-Fidelity! Go! Go! Oh, wait...later for them.

Danielle Dax- Big Hollow Man
I call my program 'The New Breakfast Snob' in honor of Michael Hawkesworth, the original Breakfast Snob. Mike had an all-nighter show on Park City, Utah's NPR station. He let me hang out while he played weird art rock and experimental punk. Among other things, he turned me onto Danielle Dax . Mike and I once played live on his station, doing a Residents-style Casio, feedback and poetry jam...Mike, this one's for you.

God will provide the way You read about it every day -I'm tellin' ya All you gotta do is pray And furnish His house with silver

X- Poor Girl
So, like, if you call me with a serious problem and you ask me to help you, I will.
And I won't take it lightly. But don't talk to me when you are drunk, because being drunk is your problem.
You should know better.

Lou Reed- Don't Talk to me About Work
This is another sore subject.

George Clinton- Tweakin'
Chuck D joins George C for some serious slammin'.
Hookin' into the extra input...

Oingo Boingo- No Spill Blood
Who makes the rules? Someone else!
This is Danny Elfman's old band. Great arrangements and lyrics...now go watch The Forbidden Zone.

The Kinks - Add it Up
So I have done the math, see? And it doesn't add up.
It never does.
I can triple-check it, but it won't help. The error is caused by a constant variable and it all adds up to nothing.

The Stranglers- Ice Queen
I was never sure of the accurate score...and so it goes.

The Damned - Grimly Fiendish
Yep.

The Soft Boys- I Got the Hots for You

Well, yeah, whatever. *yawn* So what else is new?

Meat Puppets- Meat Puppets
It's amazing that the Meat Puppets were allowed to record a second album. Their first one is almost unlistenable.
Their second LP is a modern Lo-Fi classic.
This is from the first album.

Snakefinger- The Model
Former Residents guitarist Snakefinger does a great cover of a Kraftwerk orange.


Lizzy Mercier Descloux - Wawa
Antena - Easy Street
Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls
New Order - Thieves Like Us

I let JY fly solo for a couple cycles while I listened in another room, filling out her evaluation. Before she went on she asked :"Is 'West End Girls' too Top 40?"
I didn't want to admit that I had no idea what a 'Pet Shop Boy' sounds like, so I said, sure, play it.
Now I remember...aaargh...yeah, it is too Top 40.
Nevertheless, I gave her high marks in every category because she earned them- welcome to the station, JY!

Chameleons - Up the Down Escalator
The Go Go's - We Got The Beat
Psychedelic Furs -Sleep Comes Down
Cowboy Junkies - Sweet Jane

JY's second set- The Furs reminds me of...well, nevermind. It's a fond memory.
Whim enjoyed the Chameleons, which I second...thanks for tuning in!

Crack the Sky-All the Things We Do
Am I the only living Crack the Sky fan? These guys were great- they used to play around Baltimore when I was a teen. Terrific band, but I think there were problems-nevertheless , John Palumbo rocks! Meat guitar played with a scalpel, not a cleaver.

Pere Ubu- Bus Called Happiness
It passes without stopping, splashing mud on my trousers as it roars past.
I hear the laughter of aquatic mammals. They are laughing at me.

XTC- Poor Skeleton Steps Out
Joey D. Viver!

Nena- 99 Red Balloons
This song is about nuclear annihilation. Let's take it one step further- how about we divide the world's nukes into two equal piles and place one pile at the North Pole and one at the South Pole?
Bam! The polar icecaps become a gigantic cloud of cleansing radioactive steam! All of humanity's problems are solved in an instant.

Elvis Costello- Poisoned Rose
Dude.

Cocteau Twins- Violane
Years ago , one of my female friends asked me why I liked this CD, they told me that straight punk dudes weren't supposed to like the CT's.
But this CD sounds so good it's impossible for me to dislike. Production...how did you get that sound? I bought my first set of condenser microphones after hearing this record.
That's why I like it.

Talking Heads- Once in A Lifetime
Same as it ever was...


( For deep delving into the video vaults of the 1980's go directly here: the Eighties)
-------------------------------------------

The following morning found me back on-the-air, this time it's my weekly show:
THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB

Steeleye Span- Blackleg Miner
Feeling like some Celtic beats this morning, this is a recent acquisition and it sets me up nicely.

Fairport Convention- The Way I Feel
This version of the Gordon Lightfoot song is wonderful. The way I feel is not.

Maire Brennan- Beating Heart
Does she mean 'beating heart' as in 'beating a baby seal to death with a baseball bat?'
I don't think so, but that's what I hear anyway.

Claanad- The Other Side
Maire Brennan is the lead singer for this group, which has several members with the surname Brennan. Like a family or something...more great production.

Pentangle - The Hunting Song
"Whoever said, 'the heart is a lonely hunter' should have their head stuffed and mounted above my mantelpiece."
-AB

Velvet Underground- Sunday Morning
Yes it is. This song, like the one before it, features bells. Bells trail off, bells lead in; it's an epic cross-fade.
A beautiful moment of transcendental DJ bliss. I wish someone else had heard it.

Damien Dempsey- The Jar Song
Damien Dempsey sings about getting drunk with the likes of Shane MacGowan...have one for me , boys!

The Kinks - Mr. Pleasant
Last week's listener request, filled too late- which sort of fits with the theme of the song...

Sweetwater- Crystal Spider
Look. I like trippy 60's bands with chick singers. I just do. OK? Sheesh...

The Pretty Things - October 26
If I wanted to/could I depend on you/...my friend?
And the guitar sadly shakes it's head and walks away.

Loreena McKennitt- Caravanserai
I want to be a Druid. Really, that's how good this is.

Tom Waits- Shake
If you bastards don't behave, Tom is gonna show up at your door with a gun totin' preacher, a pair of knife-wielding hookers and a wagon-full of hot tubes. Enough!

Eleanor McCovey- Whisper and Prayer
Haven't I heard this somewhere before? It all sounds familiar.

The Wipers- No One Wants an Alien
Yeah. I know that. I really do.

Jade Warrior- Three Horned Dragon King
This record has an op-art pinwheel on the label instead of a song list. When it spins, you get dizzy if you look at it. Groovy.

The Alan Parsons Project- The Raven
I feel a strong affinity with E. Allan Poe and I love Alan Parsons' production.
I should do an 'all-Allan' show one day...oh, nevermind. I did that last year.

The Stranglers- The Raven
I LOVE the Stranglers. A lot. Angry keypunk! And that bass has serious growls, like a hungry Tyrannosaurus, y'hear that?

King Crimson- Model Man
Look for the signs/ look for the symptoms...
Not a model man/not a saviour or a saint/imperfect in a word/make no mistake
but I/give you everything I have/ take me as I am ...

Dude.That and two bucks will get you a cup of coffee.

The Who - Faith in Something Bigger
Inside ourselves.

Motorhead- I Don't Believe a Word
Neither do I. I want to believe, but I don't. Sorry.

Robyn Hitchcock- Midnight Fish
This album is on opaque white vinyl. That makes it very difficult to see the groovy decay between the songs...it's a good thing that I'm an expert, otherwise playing this could be dangerous.

Television- Prove It
Or not. I already knew that.

Cop Shoot Cop - Two at a Time
Using up your lucky days two at a time...

Neil Young- Welfare Mothers
I really wanted to play this on Mother's Day- my mom had a wicked sense of humour and would have approved- she gave me this album!- but I decided to wait until today.
Neil shoulda got an award for bein' so gentle and extra-sensitive...dee- vorrrr-ceeee...

Be Bop Deluxe- Panic in the World
The more things change, the more they don't.

Capt. Beefheart- Crazy Little Thing
How'd ya get a name like Crazy Little Thing? Maybe it was the name that drove you crazy all along

Pere Ubu- Nobody Knows
Sure they do. They just don't care.

Jethro Tull- Teacher
Ah, there's slight problem with your term paper. You see, I Googled your subject- Franco's rebellion- and it appears that you just printed an entire article from Wikipedia.
Leaving the URL at the bottom of the printed page was a dead giveaway.
Still, I'm giving you a C-minus just so I don't have to look at your stupid face next year.

Early Late Stories

I am nearly finished with a project that I only recently became aware that I was working on.
I've been learning my mother's story.

She and dad divorced almost as young as they married; Mom remarried (and later re-divorced) and moved to Evanston, Wyoming.
She spent most of her life living in the West- Montana;Utah;Wyoming- pursuing bad marriages and abusive relationships; alcoholic partners and cocaine husbands.

I didn't know her that well in life. I loved her and a peace was made before she died but I never really thought I understood her.

But I do. A little.

Mom spent entire years in near-total seclusion , a self-imposed estrangement from her children and siblings that lead me to believe that she had stopped caring, that she had abandoned us in heart as well as body.

I've been reading her letters and journals, sorting and scanning photographs that she had carried with her for as long as thirty years and it's clear that, if anything, she cared too much. Her pain caused her to withdraw into physical and emotional isolation, months spent drinking alone in remote Montana cabins or ramshackle Wyoming cottages.

Through it all, she maintained a somewhat erratic correspondence with friends of hers that I barely remember- it seems that my mother really liked to write letters, she received so many. I
I wish I had the letters that Mom sent but the ones she received have quite a bit to say; it's my choice to leave that for another time. I've heard their story and that is enough.

The few possessions she kept have their own tales.

In the X-mas photo, there's a painting, two figures on a road (a copy of a 'real' painting) that my father painted for her. It's on cardboard, a square cut from the corrugated side of a box.

The date stamp on the photo says "Jan.67", placing the setting as Christmas, 1966. I was 3 months old.

Today, ten years after Mom's death, I have finally finished sorting through her belongings. I have thrown some things away, donated others and some I will keep. My brother will get the rest.

One of the things I will keep is that painting. It's in a portfolio case of prints and pictures that she somehow managed to cling to through thirty years of drifting and drinking.

The painting reminds me that my father- whose whereabouts are currently unknown- once possessed a capacity for art, for hope and for love and that he has long since squandered those precious gifts.

It's a warning to me to never, ever take the things I care about for granted. It's too easy to lose everything if you do. Not knowing that simple truth very nearly cost me my own life, but I held on and I am not following my father's path. I hope.

The painting also tells me that although Mom told me to never forgive my father for a certain deed, that she must have forgiven him in some way or she wouldn't have kept that painting. She saw something in my father that I have never seen, but if she saw it, it was once there.

My mother is dead and my father is lost, but the painting is still here and so am I.

I've made many of the same mistakes as they, yet I'm here and they aren't. I like being here.
I can still feel the passion of art, the breathless touch of love and the driving force of hope that they must have once felt. I thought I had lost those things but I was wrong. They are with me.

I found something new in myself while I sifted mother's papers. I found forgiveness.
I can't forgive my father- there are limits to everything, and some trespasses I just cannot abide- but I can forgive her for telling me what he did and I can also forgive her for doing what she had to do.
Which was to leave her children behind.
It wasn't easy for her. She never got over it and neither did they.Until now.

Getting over it is my gift to her and to myself. So this year my Mother's Day gift is a few days early and ten years too late.

Mom, I forgive you. Can you forgive me?




Love,
Allan

I Nearly Married a Machine

This is my Trashcan 38. It's a reel-to-reel multi-track recorder. For many years I recorded bands with it but eventually it became more expensive to maintain than it was worth.

So I pretty much gave up on recording music and decided to concentrate on drinking instead.

My tape deck languished in the basement for a few weeks or months while I pursued my new hobby.
It wasn't long before I started dating this girl named, er, um...Lily...she weighed about ninety pounds with a bellyful of margaritas but could match me drink for drink, all night long. We had drinking contests almost every night and she could hold her own.

Well, not always. Lily was a student and I had a straight job, so she usually had a few hours head start on me when it came to catching a buzz, so there were a few nights when I wound up carrying her skinny ass home from whatever bar or party we'd been mooching booze at.
I didn't really mind doing that- after all, I am a gentleman , if nothing else; but it did start to hurt my back after the third or fourth such incident.

So I had an idea.
Usually my problems begin when I start having ideas and this time was no exception.
See, I figured I'd put that tape deck to use- it had a helluva motor inside and was a lot smarter than some of the people I recorded with it, so I thought maybe I could build a giant robot out of it that could carry Lily home for me when she passed out. I was worried that the police might see me carrying an unconscious woman down the street and get the wrong idea- there was a lot of potential for misunderstanding and all- but if I had a Giant Robot it would be a lot easier to explain what what was going on... well, honestly, if you have a Giant Robot you really don't need to explain much of anything to anybody...


This worked great for a month or so until one fateful night at the corner pub. Lily had conked out an hour before last call and her snoring was starting to bug me while I was trying to hit on her best friend, so I got my G.R. to carry her home without me while I hung out looking to score with Lily's pal.

That was a mistake. Her friend shot me down so I walked home alone...maybe Lily could be stirred into action, I thought as I entered our dark apartment. I didn't see my robot- I guessed it had returned to the basement. It wasn't programmed to do that- it just liked it down there.

I didn't hear Lily snoring but I heard her special little sound- a sort of gasping meow- I wondered if she'd started the party without me...I tiptoed down the hall, maybe we could play 'Burglar'...I opened the bedroom door and saw the robot's metal ass...

Well, you can guess the rest.

Anyway, Lily and I broke up after that.

She offered me $500 for the Robot.

I wish I'd accepted it.

Obligatory Cat Post

I imagine you've heard of the seemingly ever-widening Poison Pet Food Disaster. I am happy to report that my two cats are healthy and gluten-free.
I had a half-dozen recalled cans that I had just bought but hadn't used yet. I read about the recall at work and traded the cans in at my grocers instead of poisoning my cats. Being a web junkie paid off- I saw the news as it broke.
This is Wilkins, (below). She's named after NFL placekicker Jeff Wilkins, who kicked a field goal that won a bet for me on the same day I got the cat. My buddy Mike found her inside a box left in the parking lot at his work. She was a kitten then. Now she's almost thirteen. She was a good mouser in her younger days, but my current digs don't have mice so I put her to work as a music critic.

I clear the floor and cover it with a shallow layer of CDs. Wilkins then walks over to the heap, sniffs around a bit and pushes a few aside. If one is really good, she'll bat it across the room, safely away from what happens next.
Once she has made her selections, she perches herself above the remaining discs and hunkers down on her haunches as if to shit. I always toss her outside at this point, so I don't know if she would really carry through with her turding or if it is just a critic's gesture.
Her picks are usually pretty good, although I've noticed she's started picking discs containing rampant profanity, which I cannot play on-air. I think she's slacking up because she misses her giblets n' gravy canned food.

This is Opus, my Tuxedo Cat. I think he's about ten- I got him from the pound and he was pretty grown-up by then. He's the second dumbest cat I have ever owned, but he's also the sweetest. He already has a long-term kidney problem, so he doesn't have 'normal' food in his regular diet anyway -so he was pretty safe from the recalled food.
He likes to go out in the rain. He will stand at the door and meow until I let him out. Then he runs outside and hides under a shrubbery until it stops raining or he gets hungry, whichever comes first. As I said, he's not very smart.

The dumbest cat I had was a Persian named Oliver. He used to leap into our old clawfoot bathtub and then pretend he couldn't get out. The stupid fucker could snatch a hunk of thawing hamburger from the top of the refrigerator but couldn't get out of the tub.
One night I came home from work and found a raging party in progress . Someone had given Oliver a dish of cream and Kahlua and he was wasted...a jar of honey somehow got spilled on the kitchen floor and my poor stupid drunken cat rolled in the honey.
When I opened the front door , Oliver rushed past into the street behind me. His sticky fur had already started accumulating debris- a few bottle caps, a cigarette butt, a lighter...

I turned around and chased him into traffic- I was almost as drunk as the cat- and somehow managed to wrestle him inside.
By the time me and my roomie Chris got Oliver into the bathtub, he was covered in honey , trash and street grime. We donned thick, long-sleeved garments and tried to wash the poor cat in the tub, but Oliver really didn't take well to being scrubbed and soaped.

We only had one choice. I cut the largest bits of trash out of his long fur with a pair of scissors while Chris held him tightly, then two of us held the cat while Chris used electric shears to shave the wretched beast.
Oliver ran directly into my bedroom and hid under the bed. He refused to come out until his fur had grown back, which took several weeks.

That cat was one sour-ass roommate.

My Crane Award

I haven't had a drink in over 18 months , but I don't go to AA meetings so I don't have any 'chips'.

In fact, I don't have much to show for my sobriety except: a functioning liver; a valid driver's permit; a full-time job; 3 part-time radio shows; a renewed passion for my one true love-music; a handful of great new friends; my self-respect and a generally hopeful (if a bit cynical) outlook for the future.

Kinda sucks that I don't have any chips. It makes me feel all invalidated-like.

I suppose I could troll around until someone felt sorry for me and gave me some 'virtual' chips, which I suppose are just as useful as the real thing...but I have a better idea.

I'm giving myself an Award. It's called That Crane In The Picture.

Why?

Because I used to get into trouble when I drank.

That Crane is two blocks from my house.

When I drank, a multi-story crane left unattended a couple blocks from my home would be trouble.

Even sober, it's tempting.

I shouldn't have to explain why breaking into a construction site and scaling a 100-ft piece of machinery whilst heavily intoxicated isn't such a good idea- but if I was still drinking, I'd probably be able to give a detailed , first-hand account of exactly why it's a poor decision.

Unless I fell.
That would be self-explanatory.

Stay Out

Three radio shows this weekend- details in the sidebar--->

Local legends The Cashmere Jungle Lords will be interviewed during the second show- back in the 1990's I used to play in a band called Mr. Sensitive with the Jungle Lord's drummer- it'll be nice seeing those guys again.
I found an old Mr. Sensitive cassette from 1997 a while back and just finished transferring the songs to my computer. I can barely remember playing or recording this stuff- that's how wasted I was- in one of the songs I sing:

I wish I could get up
off of the ground
and wipe the yellow foam
off of my mouth
how come nobody told me
this is all there was
I'm floating up
throwing up
toilets full of blood

I wrote that in the mid 1990's.
In September of 2005 it came true.

Not only was my toilet full of blood; my tub, sink and floors were all generously coated. I was projectile vomiting little bits of my esophagus and upper GI across my bathroom walls.
I had drank myself to shreds and was bleeding into myself.
Badly.
I drove myself to hospital and fainted in the ER.
They let me out a week later.

Hearing myself singing about my own future death really freaks me out. It's as if I knew what I was doing to myself and I knew exactly what the consequences were, yet I kept going.
And going.
And going.
Until I had nowhere left to go but death.

I had to decide if I wanted to live, which meant a lot of work- harder work than I'd ever done in my life- and I'm a freekin' ant when it comes to work...

OR

I could grab a 12-pack and a 1.75 of Vodka and be dead inside a week.


I haven't had a drink in eighteen months.

Listening to that old song reminds me what alcohol has to offer. That it's never going to fully go away.

It's not coming back into my life. I have too much to do.

Plans

Tomorrow morning I'll do my radio show and then I'm calling the police.

My father , who is over sixty years old , has disappeared on another drunken bender.
Last November I went to the weird little cottage that he calls an antiques shop, my grandmother was worried because she hadn't heard from him for weeks; when he drinks he lives at the shop despite it having no shower, kitchen or bed.

He was a filthy , drunken mess but I got him to his mother's house and he stayed sober until a couple weeks ago, but he's gone again and his mother is worried. Really worried.

She should be. I think my dad is dead. Forty years of hard drinking has to catch up, he looked like hell even when he wasn't drinking, like he was 80 and could barely walk.

This is what he does: He sits in a tiny building with the doors shut and "closed" sign up, and he drinks himself into oblivion for weeks until finally someone from church, the police or the family goes and pulls him out of his ruin.

This might last a month, then he goes away again.

I can't do it again. I told my grandmother I can't do it again. I cannot. If he's dead and I find the body, I will break.
I feel strong and ready for the inevitable, but not enough to discover his body.

I have been through that before and I'm not ready to do it again. I'm not even ready to think about the last time. Sometimes we forget things because we have to and I'm not sure digging out all the details is always a good idea.

It's a surprise to me that my grannie hasn't called the police herself, but she never wants to...we used to have a family friend on the force who would check on Dad, but he got sick of dragging Dad's drunk sorry ass home, and I think he'll stop being nice and just take him to jail next time.

Which is exactly what I want. He needs to be forced into a de-tox center and being AWOL for nearly three weeks is cause for a missing persons report. When they find him , he'll either be dead or so completely fucked-up they'll put him in de-tox and Psych Ward , or at least I hope they will.

I can't take it anymore. I've tried and there's nothing I can do. This is my last effort and I'm doing it by telephone, going to call my police friend and ask him to take a rescue squad to Dad's hovel and drag him out- I hope they will- I have learned of a recent injury Dad incurred while drunk, so I hope I have enough info to convince them to check on him one last time.

There are some things I can do and there are some things I can't. And I can't deal with this situation. I don't have the training or skills or knowledge to manage someone who is this far gone; I'm only 16 months into being sober myself and I'm in no position to intervene-again.

I have talked this over with the Twin and we agreed that I might as well wait until tomorrow so I could do my show and maybe we could watch the Bears game before we got the call back from the town police.
If that sounds cold, you don't understand how many desperate emergencies that turned out to be just another drunken binge- how many people from the church and family have wasted words on him...I'm done and so are all our family friends. Only my grandmother still cares, so I will do this for her.

I'm doing my show, then my laundry and I'll wait till halftime of the Bears game.
I'll call the police during halftime, that way I won't interrupt their viewing either.

I hope they put my father in rehab and make him stay. He won't go on his own- the church will pay but he won't go. We'll see.


At least it'll be a great game tomorrow- I'm a Bears fan, but I'd have a hard time being sore if New Orleans won. If anyone deserves a morale boost, it's New Orleans.
It's a win/win game.

Mostly Good , Trying Harder

Last night I had the chance to talk with an old friend I hadn't seen since before I got sick and quit drinking. My friend , of course , was drunk, so my words were most likely wasted, but I can't shake them off...

Many years ago, my friend drank a hole in himself in much the same manner that I did- he too almost died, yet once he'd recovered from his surgery he started drinking again and really hasn't stopped since. He has had life threatening surgeries and seizures. He tells me he's had another alcohol-induced grand mal seizure just last year- but he just doesn't have the willpower to quit... I have a hard time listening to this.

Look, I say, we have both had surgeries and seizures and done our hospital time- for me it was the most traumatic time of my life- I am haunted every single day by my memories of that time- you--you know what it's like to go through that and you KNOW that it's going to happen again and you still keep drinking...
I stop my tirade because I'm trying talk to a drunk about drinking and I know it's useless to do that.

He knows it's killing him and he keeps drinking despite that certain knowledge.

That takes a lot of willpower. I know because I've been there- "drink 'till it hurts" was not a Spring Break slogan , it was a lifestyle choice...oh, don't mind the blood, that's normal right? Everyone pukes a little blood now and then, don't they?

I actually convinced myself that a little blood in my vomit was normal- I never allowed myself to think that about why I was sick all the time in the first place- must be the flu, food poisoning, an allergy- anything but the truth.

Believing my own lies almost killed me.

My friend isn't even lying to himself - he admits what's happening but doesn't seem to care enough to stop. I wanted to shake him, yell at him, beat him...stop, stop, stop STOP...
I didn't do that. Maybe I should have.

It was an otherwise perfect night of good friends and much joy, so I didn't do that. Instead, I had great time bar-hopping and staying up into the early hours- all without drinking. I didn't even smoke any dope- I didn't want to.
I was enjoying myself too much to want to get high, which is something I never thought I would hear myself say.

We have, as a group, pledged to arrive en masse in London in 2008, where we have a number of gracious hosts who know exactly what they are in for but have invited us anyway. I am told, not for the first time, that I'd be much happier in the U.K.- plans for seeking political asylum need looking into*...

When we left the bar, my English passenger walked 'round to the driver's side of my Volvo and stood there expectantly while I unlocked and opened the passenger side door for her.
I waited a moment, holding the door open...my passenger looks at me like I'm nuts...

Oh, right.

"Hey, in America the driver sits on the left side."

Haha...we switch places and are on our way.

Two good nights in a row, this is a habit I could live with.