I, of course, was a cheapskate I must admit. I say this because if I had only and simply purchased an admittance ticket or two to the Blues Festival, the short, unfortunate misadventure I am about to relate would not have occurred. Put another way, my poor young daughter may not have suffered the “torments of the damned” if I’d only indulged a bit more in community-guided consumption. Of course, the 38th Annual Waterfront Blues Festival is the Oregon Food Banks number one most successful annual fund raiser, so there was already the incubus upon me for not giving for that reason alone. In my defense, I boycotted it for the exorbitant and exclusive price it imposed on the public for admission. I support the festival, not the professional organizers managing it and pricing working families out. I support the festival, not ticket prices that have jumped from $3 to $20 in 2 years, with no noticeable difference in anything. Without going more into this very petty dispute I have with the 38th Annual Waterfront Blues Festival, for me to have purchased admission tickets that doleful eve was not our fate.

There we were, wending savagely through the swarming, seething fun-seeking mob, scouring the mass with a squinted eye for a free loo! Legend had it that these magical, treasured oases of bladder evacuating relief existed. They were plopped arbitrarily in secret locations scattered throughout the westside waterfront; Tom McCall rolled in his grave. This wasn’t the humble 4th of July weekend galas I remembered in Woodland Waters campground dreams, or small town Almont Michigan fairground fireworks displays, no, even at those intimate events there were many San-O-Lets to be found. I see in my mind rows of gleaming inviting sanitation-green & white sentries of intestinal security, blessed bladders of sweet justice.

Our eyes swept across the concrete apron surrounding the Salmon Street Fountain, behind us Hawthorne Street’s bridge overpass flapped and echoed, its’ girders and beams the stuff of shadows, always moving, groaning, stretching. We turned desperately, hurrying back in the direction we’d come, and around again…

“Dad! I think I see it!”

Further south, beyond Salmon Street, at the southern end of long sprawling Tom McCall Park, stood the legendary loo! It stood like a silver sphinx, twinkling with day-glo stars and moons scrawled with chalk. All the twinkling in the universe was concentrated upon this living aluminum glimmer, and the people worshipped, and it was savage, I turned away. My eyes followed the people leading into a long 1/4 mile line south toward the Sellwood Bridge and the South Park Blocks, lost into the vapor of the night, all of its supplicants nodded and waved.

“Dad, there’s so many people!”

I turned my head sharply west, scowling up some street, I didn’t know which, Alder?! No! That was north, bah!! Let’s just say Market, westward ho we tramped up against it, the hill and Sally’s intestines both. Against gravity, against grace and dignity, all due to my refusal to pay $20 extra bucks!

In the light-dappled air of the night, senors and senoras sold tacos, churros, elotes, chapulines, chicharrones, all out of small bike carts with backyard grills and Coleman coolers. Other vendors rose up through the smoke and clatter, rose up to tempt the passers-by with every kind of candied sweet treat, every kind of sausages in rolls, Chinese noodles, deep fried wads of granulated tissue, reconstituted, regurgitated, SOLD! Racks of pork ribs slathered in vinegar gravy, and great pluming banners of smoke above, as if the roasted mutton, lamb and beef existed as an apparition just upon the air over us.

We couldn’t enjoy any of it, dammit! Another glimmering cascade emerged across the air over the river, but I sure as hell didn’t see it!! We were dashing like maniacs up Market Street, where we dashed right onto 3rd and upon an open convenience store. In we hurried, my hopes of convincing the convenience store clerk to allow my daughter to use the restroom were half-hearted. Nonetheless, I had to make the damned futile effort! Portland at night, in its’ tiny downtown, always feels like old Portland (or what I imagined of it) until you enter an establishment and have an interaction with someone.

“Hey man, look, my daughter really is having a helluva time, she has to really use the toilet, you know, please, can you help her out?”

“Nope”

“Really, it will….”

“There’s no restrooms for the public.”

“Thanks man, FER NUTHIN!!”

I spit this at him from the hazards of 3rd Avenue as we continued south on 3rd, dodging the perceptibly thinner throngs and hucksters.

“Daaaaad, my stomach!”, Sally lamented, holding her cramping gut, the digestive juice thick with carnival fare and a pageantry of pastry previously consumed. Not to mention, the whole smorgasbord was mixed vigorously on the lurching, lilting six mile # 17 bus ride to Tom McCall’s memorial park.

“I know honey, I’m sorry! Dammit Sally, why didn’t you go at home?!”

“I didn’t have to!!”

“Yea yea, I know….” I muttered, turning my head back and forth frantically, searching for some sign of human contact and hope!

“Damn! I’m such a fool, I should’ve been better prepared!!” I thought as we rapidly marched in silence, the new storefronts flashing in the security lights, the old storefronts twinkling forlorn in the gleam of the new. All of the narrow streets slouched beneath their weight of twenty years gloss, gladness and loss. Such a rapid and vapid economic loop-dee-loo, and in this splendid night, in these narrow, always 1/2 wet streets, it felt like the whole world of the city and my heart was collapsing; oh my poor daughter!! For I knew her pain, I’d had the same; oh, I’d wish that pain on no one, not even a worst enemy!

“People here are beasts! They never used to be like this!” I was cursing to myself.

“DAaaAD….!!”

“I know I know….”

The strange Caribbean guys selling stones and skulls and fruit couldn’t help her; dark-eyed Guatemalan Indians with serapes and small carts of all the earth’s secrets inside couldn’t either; or the middle-aged Mexicans smiling over cd’s, Coca-cola, trendy liver-stuffed toys, tamales. Only brick and mortar, or….

CARTS!!!

The food carts offered a glimmer of hope! And it was a favorite of mine coincidentally, Lebanese food on SW 6th & Main, hot damn!! And those guys, sweating and smiling over their geometrically impossible shawarmas and gyros, sweat flying over the sandwiches and fries, “Sure man, sure! In back man, back there!!”

Saved, and our saviors were not the prophets, or the powerful, or even the moralists or materialists, but the human greasy heart of another man sharing in suffering and joy next to us, in the crowd, on the street, through the food cart window! Saved!! Not an elected official, or an imposed dictator, or king, queen, prime minister…. just another guy like me, slinging his woebegone mind away in that slurry of time we call life. Earning bread, breaking it, making love, breaking that too, earning families and histories, suffering the despair of bliss. Love must eventually lose in order for life and love to inevitably renew.

Little Sally was overjoyed, as was I, her lackaday dad. The big night was alive with smoke in the air and conversations all around. Distant sirens wailed a wistful evocation, with the bursts from Thunderbombs and Flashcrackers punctuating the summer’s song. And like a wide span of amphitheater above it all was lofted the rumbling incantations of the Infinite 38th Annual Waterfront Blues Fest, so fine!! It towered even above the rockets and mortars launched from the banks of the Willamette; three tall stages blues performers swayed from, with international acclaim, and all for a good cause, how could it not reign supreme?!

And here I was, next to a Porta-Potty back behind a Lebanese food cart in southwest Portland, downtown, feeling so relieved I broke down and bought a big Coke for Sally and I to share as we trudged back to meet our family. At least it was downhill.

The story that's to follow was written by a friend of mine, written when we were much younger. This story of my friends' was entrusted to me to hold onto for safe keeping, yet it wasn't made clear to me if he ever wanted the story to be read, hence my discomfort in submitting it. Please don't think I have not given this matter serious consideration, it is something I have thought about for quite some time, and in so doing, I feel confident in my decision. With that said, I would like to preface what's to follow with a short, expository introduction.

The writer/narrator of the story that's to follow has availed himself of the use of numerous heteronyms: Robert Neville, Eric Sandstrom, Chris Wanzognetti and Jeffrey Gatlingsly, just to name a few. I mention this to begin to explain that my good friend wasn't particularly pleased with who and what he'd become, so that these invented characters of his were efforts at reconstituting himself, and this recreating was quite a regular habit with him. He'd assume these varying personages, destroy them in the process of writing, and then feel free to be born yet again! In reality, he was all of these characters, but none of them, and finally, more than them.

I grew up with this guy, and his given name was Andy Campbell. Andy is difficult to encapsulate in a short preface (as could be said for us all), nonetheless, a few words in the way of an introduction may be a useful complement to the story, in addition to possibly helping ease the reader into a sympathetic state for Andy, who is the unapologetic antagonist in his own narrative!

The story that's to follow is the self-indulgent, narcissistic tale of a young man, and an event that occurred which was quite terrible, and nearly tragic. I think of how Andy wrote of this event, and it seemed to be in an effort to understand it honestly, which could only be done elliptically, poetically. It is also how he struggled to understand the failure of the relationship with his first love, Catherine, who is implicated in the story, but not in the terrible event itself. It's not certain if Andy ever reconciled any of this within himself, or with Catherine. Sadly, Andy was killed in a fishing accident on the Pacific, and that would have been in 2008, he was just 37.

In the spring of 1999, Andy and I were both still living in southeast Michigan, and we had been drinking beer at a friends' house, around the kitchen table, when Andy suddenly tossed me a heavy duffel bag he had brought inside. The bag was full of a jumble of loose manuscripts. I asked him what was going on? He proceeded to tell me he had a job lined up in California with his cousin on a fishing boat, and it was a great opportunity to start over, begin a new life, a life of wayward travel and adventure. I looked closely into the duffel bag and gaped at the swirl of paper, a thousand pages at least! What was this?!

He proceeded to tell me it was scrawling from his childhood to the present, and since he was leaving, and wasn't sure about his situation in California, he didn't think it was wise to drag anything that wasn't absolutely necessary along. He asked me to hang onto it for him. I told him I could hold onto it for him, but I was planning on leaving myself and couldn't bring his writing with me, what would he like me to do with it? He told me to bring it to our friends' girlfriends' house, and put it in her attic in the garage. There, he said, it would be safe and out of the way.

After I learned of his passing, I retrieved the bag on my next visit to Michigan, and brought it home with me to Oregon. It was then I began reading. Much of it was written when he was a young boy, stories of spies and space adventure. The writings of his teen years into his early twenties became more interesting to me. A lot of it was pedantic, self-indulgent melodrama, but I could trace the burgeoning of an ignorant poet, for it exhibited a poetic sensibility and a visionary aspiration that was quite striking. Andy had a poets' heart but came of age in circumstances that did not benefit his artistic development. And he drank a lot, and could, and would, become physically violent! Then his poets' heart was gone, and he became merely a monster. But, he left a mark in my small world, and I'm of the opinion it is worth recognizing.

Finally, this submission is also a farewell, a final farewell to a certain time, in a specific place, to a dear departed friend. At one point, we had been as brothers, then he was gone, and I never was allowed a proper goodbye. Well, here it is, at long last, goodbye old friend!! Thank you, I love you.

This is my gift to you, for you! Gifts can be joys, burdens, blessings and curses, yet they are always given with uncertain tenderness, in a posture of vulnerability.

It's early....

January 24th, 1998- A blankness of the most violet depth arose and dismayed me; a blankness like dreamless sleep, but swimming with backward peering nymphs and troglodytes; fractured pavement oozing rainwater, trees thrashing beneath a storm swollen sky, party stores clinking like silverware and power lines that invigorated this abyss with palpable electric. Then, there was a light, and a clap of thunder, and I awoke. I awoke holding my 12 gauge shotgun, on the porch, my index finger tight on the trigger, and it occurred to me this is from where the thunder came. It startled and frightened me so, disrobed me of drunkenness and left me standing nude, stupid and staring-eyed. Every nightbird arose and descended in a senseless flock upon my head, their talons embedded through my hair, tangled as if in thorny briers. I recall this as if a distant nightmare, a puberty induced dream wrapped in tremulous bedsheets, a vision that stings so deeply you can't help but reel for days.

So began mine dismantling-

so began the crumbling of the fortress referred to as Me.

Chaos enchanted and beguiled me.

I believed I was Jesus Christ for 22.5 minutes,

I believed I was Rimbaud and Whitman for an hour, maybe more.

In the meantime, the ghost within me withered down to sleep, to recuperate in a bower of tail lights and blackberry across the street.

I'll tell you this much,

the only sure way to live is to die; die an infinite click of deaths, trample your own viscera a thousand times, shoot yourself through the teeth of that insipid smile and cup the ichor in your palms, anoint your belly, loins and genitalia with this.

There are baptisms upon clay beneath azure,

as well as baptisms of whiskey and semen and dope and cunt.

Shatter your wrists through sextillions of window panes and smear shut the light in your eyes.

Upon me next descended a flock of 2000 police officers, all of them skittish and fearful, round bellied but empty; all of them sought a fragment of me they could beat bloody. What they failed to take into account though was that I had done it for them, and I had for years, and for that they were quite resentful.

I would've made a wonderful executioner.

January 25th, 1998- 30 hours in a tomb. Shoulderblades of wings ache, spine too. Dozing off and nodding in and back through the reverence of a Superbowl Sunday, catching glimpses of my gaze in reinforced plastic glass and stainless steel.

Here's a story of the kid who shared those 30 hours in a tomb with me:

Another Friday night in wretched Eastpointe, police prowlers creeping 8 Mi. in search of black felons. The kid said he was a repo man, the first or second night on the job. His partner and him were repossessing a delinquent vehicle in the parking lot of a K-Mart on Gratiot Rd. when a cop cruiser pulled in. The officers asked routine questions, received unusual answers, a quick frisk and ID check ensued. Upon the kid they found a small folded knife, tucked in his boot. He was promptly arrested and charged with "Felonious Possession of a Concealed Weapon" or some such ridiculous charge. The whole thing seemed ludicrous to me! The kid was 20, 21, and claimed he'd never in his life been in trouble with the law. And this became apparent to me after listening to him speak with his parents on the phone in our cell. His voice was subdued in a despairing way, an anxious way first timers in a lock up have; it is a beseeching and anguished tone because it is overwhelmed with impatience and uncertainty. My heart really went out to him, and together we endured the vast, boring weekend in a city precinct holding cell.

We chatted, paced, gazed out longingly at the freedom through the reinforced glass; we were shrill in our desire for cigarettes, complained loudly of the cardboard the cops issued us as bedding to place upon the granite benches situated around the cell, drank strange tasting water from the fountain provided, urinated it back out into the stainless steel toilet provided.

Strangers spirited in and out: angry black men, drunk, equally angry, white men, confused teens, cursing drug addicts, crestfallen proletariats. Like a tide they came in and bailed out, but the kid and I remained, token felons. Monday dawn was leagues away and hopeless, so we'd try to sleep, to no avail. The sluggish hours were punctuated with greasy sandwiches and the intermittent clanking of cages. Approaching footfalls stimulated expectation of some sort of interaction with the world outside, yet it often only culminated with the disappointment of passing and departure; these agonizing minutes tormented me, perhaps all of us.

The majority of what I listened to from the tide of prisoners were complaints.

They were treated unfairly (true enough), they always assigned blame for their predicament to another (girlfriends, mothers, best buddies, the dog). Yet the loudest complaints were emitted from the younger drunken, stoned twentysomethings. They complained like the rest did, but in a way that presumed they, unlike the rest of us, should be exempt from this unfair detention on the grounds that life and/or fate owed them deferential treatment not afforded the rest of us. And this deferential treatment should be afforded them due to the fact that they were selfless enough to have appeared in the world, and they were entitled to something more, something better.

Shut up!!! Fuck off!!! Lemme sleep you yakking pigeons!!!! The 30 hours would have passed easier in a solitary cell, at least in some certain, existential way. I've found that the best to be imprisoned with in these circumstances are the homeless. The only time they awaken is to eat or defecate, my kind of cellmate! Put me, if you must, into a penitentiary full of the marginal misfits of the world and I'd be as happy as a pig in shit!!

Often, the loneliest and most harrowing prisons are those that have been erected in the charnel house of freedom. Street folk are well aware of this, but they're not telling; their mouths are too full of the awful food and their eyes too heavy with a comfort of negligible warmth.

January 26th, 1998- As the night seeped out through the flood grates along with a styrofoam scrambled egg, anticipation crushed the levee of boredom holding my spirit.

30 of us mucked together behind the reinforced glass; some slouched against a wall, others were seated upon the floor and around the granite benches, and always one man straining over the telephone, his ear turned in a futile effort toward the nearly inaudible voice issuing from the speaker. Most of us simply stood or paced impatiently, expectantly. Within the cell anxiety was allowed full bloom in this ideal environment of regret, incipient recompense, and worried speculation of just what that recompense may entail.

The crowded scent of 30 strangers stifled me! The lingering vestiges of cologne barely concealed the odor of sweat and sour breath, hours old alcohol and cigarette ash. The raucous conversation and undercurrents of murmuring moved the anxious, stinking air around even more, and I felt tense and nauseous.

The bootknife kid was beside me, arms crossed, throat empty, eyes darting. His anxiety overwhelmed my senses, so I moved away and paced about.

Finally, I closed my eyes and made a language of the minutes. I no longer wished to see the ceiling above me which I'd counted the white squares of countless times. I tired of the incessant telephone yammering, foul tasting water and ghastly reflection of myself trapped in the cell's plexiglass window. I was weary of these drunks and crooks, the jailhouse lawyer complaints and speculation. I no longer cared to see the spattering of pimples flung across the cheeks and forehead of the bootknife kid, or hear his common voice, or smell his sweaty smell, or, for that matter, my own! I knew I stunk, I knew my breath stunk; my armpits and anus felt gluey and abrasive. My hair was spiky because I'd run my dirty fingers through it so many times, and by this time I had created novels of the minutes.

We were finally herded into the courtroom; along colorless blocks of wall trapping fluorescent light some faceless guard hurried us. The lopsided timetable of the justice system appalls me! Any poor soul tumbling into this pitcher plant learns quickly enough your time and obligations mean nothing, while the machinery of the courts operations are inordinately valorized and held high above any other worldly concern, so in this sense it functions quite swiftly...so be it!!

Apprehension coursed through my blood and pitched me forward blushingly; all of our eyes were cast downward, all of our feet shuffled laboriously as if manacled. Even amidst the reeling of my mind, it was wonderful to be out of that cell! This transient liberation rejuvenated me and left me feeling that, no matter what the outcome before the judge, I was at least unfettered from the bondage of the tomb. But physical release from a holding cell is short lived and contains only ambiguous promise.

Within the box the bailiff instructed us to sit in wafted an iciness that, in comparison, made the tomb an equatorial tropic!

Ugly faces perched upon trunks of neck gaped at our vulnerability; every visage a mask of scar tissue, scribbled mouths mouthing silent consonants, all horrid and fork tongued.

Amongst the throng an angel shone forth, an indelible angel focused upon me...Catherine! Her eyes trembled on mine, round and blue, two ineluctable tarns, and her mouth mouthed silent consonants I couldn't translate. I could only nod sheepishly and grin. I felt an utter drip, a completed bum. Packed together as we were, surrounded by spectators and detectives and guards and scribes, I suddenly felt lonelier than I had the entire 30 hours before. The blackness of an eclipse stole over my spirit and shrunk me to a squirming corpuscle.

The bailiff ordered the court to rise, and in a rustling of whatever it is that rustles when people pick themselves up off benches, we stood for Your Honor.

The Judge turned out to be Catherines' sisters' Father-in-law...what a break!! He was grey headed and imposing, judicious and stern, but human, at least, from my perspective. Of course, I'd shaken his hand before dinner with the family, we'd drank Scotch together, shared small talk, this was very good!! I relaxed some and glanced at Catherine. Judging from her expression, it seemed she relaxed some as well.

I find describing a courtroom drama gratuitous. If this account should come across eyes that have not experienced this delirium first hand, I'd suggest setting this aside to venture out to begin garnering the nuggets of life. This is not to say that having a court hearing is a necessity to live a genuine life, but unfortunately it is an ordeal humans often must endure in an attempt to live freely. Anyhow, let's clear away the grime of codified ritual and administrative machination, after all, I'm not dictated to by legal obligations, ethics or orthodoxy. I'm a free man, and I can write as I please, just as one can read what they choose.

I bailed out of the tomb on January 26th, 1998 at approximately 2:00 pm...just about 2000 years after the death of Christ, at least so some believe.

February 2nd, 1998- Work was slow; work of every imaginable type crawled sluggishly between the cleavage of snow drifts flopped on the curb. And these drifts of snow would swirl away, and reappear shortly thereafter, slowly, methodically, as if created by the working hands of some silent potter.

Work was slow and I didn't have much to do about it, I didn't care. I wanted to just drink and copulate and blot out my forlorn freedom which, incidentally, didn't feel much like I thought freedom should. I believed, as I still do, that freedom was defined as self-determination, the unfettered quest for meaning. Instead, I merely felt bound: bound by my job as a roofer, bound by my job as a dope peddler, bound by my relationship with Catherine.

And many moons crept down and back upon us. Many frayed nights tangled with Catherine in efforts to disavow my captivity, and many more boring transactions with even more boring potheads sucking with a ghostly inhalation of $30 or more.

And February limped with me into pool halls and strip bars; drug dens where sickness was free in some constitutive sense that I was not. This soaring liberated social malady became an epidemic of delivering desired darkness; yet amidst the ghoulish filth there was Catherine.

I loved her so monstrously then, loved her like the stunted and deformed love, rabidly, possessively. With savor I devoured her in our garden, beneath a blanket of snow below a low stone wall scarred with indecipherable hieroglyphs.

February, cont'- Catherine and I fell into the television and lost what little we knew of ourselves; we shoved all aside to sing along with one more commercial jingle.

My birthday came and went, I can't recall what we did. I assume we had dinner in some two bit, red napkined joint where they try to conceal the absence of culinary competence with haphazard plate dressings and high prices. What did it matter? I'd just suck down another of whatever it was I was drinking that night and I could've eaten a dog's intestines.

And in retrospect, that's what it all seemed like to me; everything tasted cheap and vile so I'd garnish the plate with my frilly ornament of bourbon, my red cloth napkin of wine...but damn! at what a price! I'd set little roses of booze all around in an attempt to disregard the bitter and rancid essence within me. I felt trapped as well: trapped by acquaintances, business and personal, that I met with day in and out; the go-nowhere job I had, the house that seemed as if it were about to collapse into a worm ridden gash, and Catherine...maybe it's still too soon to fully and coherently write of what and how I felt for her. I know that at the time, she was the one and only person in my life that made any sense. She complimented and defended me, and it seemed as if she loved me more than I could ever love myself, and I was grateful. And in my detestable gratitude, I was more cruel to her than anyone before.

I was violent toward her in ways I'm ashamed to admit. I must have murdered her on a million occasions in the time we shared together. I'd drink everyday and miss work. I'd blow bad breath that stunk of bourbon down her throat and trample her heart repeatedly. I would try to make it up to her, but it would all just again become more booze swilling, more meaningless carousing, more violent thrusts into her soul. I think I did all this in part because I loathed her. I could not believe she was so weak and blind, it repelled me! Why wouldn't she leave? why would she return when she did escape me for the night? So I could punch her air out some more? trample her? use her? kick her again in the mouth as she begged me for mercy? I'd scream at her,

"I'll never marry you! You're weak and pathetic! Our children would be worse monsters than we are!"

And everyday I'd wake up hungover, and she'd be next to me sleeping soundly. As she slept, I'd tie her down and cut her open; I'd dig and root around within her, leaving the hideous incision open to fester and ooze.

As it is with anyone I feel deeply for, I would excavate and dismantle her, and in this process she finally lost her function to breathe, or see or move. Like the passionately unfeeling scientist, indifferent to the reality that life dwells within the subject/object he's to dissect, I'd brutally kill her to try to understand why she couldn't believe she deserved a better man than me! I tested her love and trust too many times to count, and in a sense, I hated her, because it seemed, like with me, that she hated herself more. Neither of us carried much love for our own selves, yet we loved the other as we'd never loved anyone before.

Her love was suffering and submission, mine was to test the limits of suffering she could endure. We were both innocently wrong, on all counts! I owe her more than I will ever be able to return; she gave everything that she could, she exhausted within herself every possible exertion to help and love me...which was possibly her biggest mistake.

Now, the only thing to do is live my life as well as I'm able, and allow time to resume its natural course.

My lawyer was a small bird named Mary.

She scratched and clucked about the courthouse as if upon the straw scattered flooring of a chicken coop, but she saved my ass.

Catherine and I waited, plopped disconsolately in straight back chairs. Catherine seemed more apprehensive and concerned than I. And though I felt quite acute anxiety, it had an almost anesthetic quality. Additionally, I felt quite a bit of confidence in Mary's courtroom skills in legal argument, and, more importantly, her obvious familiarity and friendliness with everyone, from clerks to prosecutors. There is a certain serenity which comes with an acknowledgement of helplessness, and this felt confirmed within myself during that arraignment. I felt complete abandon and some soothing disconnection, which afforded me the luxury of feeling deep compassion for all the despondent and voiceless defendants I shared the docket with. They were all me, I was them, and the judges and attorneys were us as well! The only noticeable difference between us all being the side of the law we found ourselves on. This insight shook loose my sweaty palms allowing me to wave frantically away any residue of nausea or confusion. I found bitter condolence amongst the thralls, and they, in turn, had my condolences. And within an abyss we are shrunken, left to wither in some forgotten mud where the deep tracks of a shapeless entity have tread before us.

Strangely enough, the Judge set me loose on advisement. I should've been charged with two felonies at least: Unlawful Discharge of a Firearm Within City Limits and Possession of Narcotics (the police had found a 1/4 oz. of marijuana on my person, but had failed to uncover the 1/2 lb. of marijuana in my freezer, half of which had already been bagged up into smaller quantities for distribution.) The Prosecutor had also recommended charging me with Destruction of Private Property (I'd shot a low brick wall separating our property from the property of a small church next door. The Reverend of the Parish though, brimming over with Christian tolerance, did not pursue pressing charges against me.).

I was released, free and clear, with somber warnings, court costs, and solemn oaths from the Judge assuring me all charges would be reinstated and I would suffer the full impact of my indiscretions if I were to appear before him again.

I spewed thanks to the Judge. I thanked and wrung Mary's hand graciously. I hugged Catherine warmly, and chortled with glee in the dark heart of myself due to the naivete of these blind and stupid fools.

It was then a shuddering of a magnitude before unfelt coursed through my frame. I was heaved into an atavistic maelstrom, a reinforcing of steel studded battlements was at work. From my heights, from the turrets, I'd put the sights of my shotgun on...me. And in so doing, on humanity, letting loose 2000 volleys. I discerned clearly enough the advantage of my position and the stature of my spirit. No human law could drown me in the stinking mud. I followed the law of a quest, a mission, to open the 'bile-filled belly of civilization'!

It seemed clear to me then that the Judge released me not in service to his better judgement, but against it! And to what end? He saw I was a savage, but one who bore gifts, who wasn't of his race, but of the Mongol clan. He knew a monstrous truth resides here in me: a knowledge of rhythm and the majesty of life, enough anyway to flay the hides of the living and tear asunder the sickness.

But, like from Cendrars "Moravagine", the Judge would have been better advised to "hem me in with the 100,000 bayonets of Western enlightenment", for woe unto Your Honor for dismissing the conclusion of the preceding sentence, "for woe unto you if I leave the dark of my cave and set about in earnest to chase off your clamorings.".

I speak of blood and illusions (or delusions, for aren't all these writings just drunken delusions? Rubbish really!), but isn't blood what life flows in, and aren't illusions only moments of clarity? Within the deep dark hours of black-out, there is a perverse choir that sings from a hymn book written in the blood of long dead aborigines; lines scrawled in the living dirt of ancient roads and wagon ruts. All of this life flows out and back from me, and I taste it like I taste the rabid sputum of bourbon. Its clench is often unappealing, but the phantasy it inspires is tangible and ecstatic. Tremors shred me to streamers, and I roll back my eyes and peer into the billows of infinity. All that man is reveals itself to me, and I can comprehend for a moment why life will always flourish and never abey. I awaken from drunkenness and the husk that I am suffers the scars of the savage in investigating the sickness which pins me as a helpless child to the pavement of the earth.

When my walls run with blood (as they often do), I know it is only my blood.

How futile to bandage the gashes upon my body, for I witness again the gauze become saturated from this flux.- March, 1998

1.) Volunteer- That’s right! Volunteerism is back in style!! At least, it’s back in style in Parks & Recreation Little League. We don’t have the CASH to pay for competent officials and coaches (I mean no disrespect to any volunteer coaches or officials. My daughters’ coaches are great, and I myself umpire Minor softball games), so hurry hurry parents, grandparents, energetic aunts and uncles, unemployed teenagers! Step right up, jump right in, and get yourself a generous helping of ingratitude and abuse from the smiling and spirited community of baseball/softball families! Regardless, you will usually get a rebate on the price of your child’s participation fee, and SNACKS!!!

2.) Seating- Sit as far away from opposing teams’ families as is humanly possible. This tactic may nip in the bud any conflict before fistfights erupt. By sitting a distance from the opposing teams’ families, there is less opportunity to overhear the rude and thoughtless comments and opinions spoken about one’s child. Now, when your child’s own teammates’ families make rude, inappropriate comments about your child, there are only a handful of things to be done about it: A) Grin and bear it. B) Eyeball them openly with silent scorn. C) Scream obscenities at them. D) Put in earbuds. My wife chooses option A or B, I usually choose option C or D.

3.) Spiritual Practice- Think of Little League season as that opportunity to take up the practice of some esoteric spiritual exercise you’ve been putting off. For westerners, this may mean Tantric yoga, or Transcendental Buddhism, or the quiet violence of Tang Soo Do. There may even come a time in the near future when we witness a circle of parents: tattooed and pierced 45-year-old mothers, skinny-jeaned and nostalgic hipster 60-year-old fathers, green and fuchsia haired grandparents, all in right-field during team warmups, practicing magickal Tai chi. If eastern mystical, meditative practices are not your cup of green tea, there is always the western forms of spiritual practice: pharmaceuticals, vaporizers loaded with cannabis oil, and my personal go-to, a walk around the block with a cigarette.

4.) Don’t Get (Too) Drunk- You, dear reader, may be thinking to yourself, “Now what kinda loser would be such a slob as to drink excessively at a youth sporting event, especially at 9am?!” I am not in the moral position to address this legitimate question with regards to ethical behavior or civic responsibility, but I do think I can address it in a more pragmatic fashion, which is the mindset one should take in any question around youth sports. First, I would say there are parents who suffer from acute general anxiety, or they are afflicted with intense social discomfort. The ease and relief that comes with, let’s say, a glass of wine, or a can of beer, is an effective means of handling these unfortunate conditions. With that being said, oftentimes, this same group of parents, having every good intention at heart, may, after having a glass of wine or can of beer, feel the pressures to move quickly (because you’re always running late with youth sports!). In response they bust out that fresh fifth of vodka in order to hurry along the process of anesthetization that they are so desperately pursuing. Which leads us back to the original premise of this section, do not get (too) drunk. The only recommendation I can offer is, stick with beer or wine. Most youth sports before high school are fairly truncated events and only last an hour or two (Two hours is the most common length of time for baseball and softball. They play 4-6 innings, depending on their age and fortitude.). It’s a really good idea to save the hard stuff for college and professional sports only.

5.) Skip the Whole Shit Show!!- That’s right, you heard me, just don’t go! Make some extra cash and work overtime, or, barring the opportunity to work extra, just lie like an accused thief and say you have to go to work. This is really not as pathetic as it sounds, and it offers your child a reprieve from your own criticism, chatty encouragement, short-sighted judgement and general disinterest in youth sports altogether. Believe me, your child WILL SURVIVE if you don’t make it to every one of their freaking games! As a matter of fact, by the time they reach middle school, they may be making this recommendation to you as well. Currently, as I write this, it is basketball season, and of course, both my daughters play. Well, you should see my 13-year olds’ eyes light up when I tell her with a beaten, downtrodden air, “I’m sorry honey, I can’t make your game Saturday, I have to work. I’m so sorry.” She will look at me with her bright eyes and trace of a wide smile and say, “That’s ok dad, I don’t want you to come to my game anyway! You embarrass me and mom with your antics!!” At which point, I will act deeply hurt and proclaim incredulously, “C’mon!!! Really?! You don’t care if I come to your game or not?” “Nope. Actually, I want you to go to work and make money.” “Okay honey, if that’s what you really want…” See? Win win.

In closing, you perhaps now see how simple it can be to get along well at Little League, or any youth sport for that matter. With grit and ingenuity, you can really fall in love with, and even enjoy, youth sports. Try to not get caught though lying to your child about working. They get really upset if you’re not making that time and a half to go get pizza and ice cream after the game!

1979-1982 were probably the roughest; my ma and dad were divorced, and my mother was laid off in ‘79 for at least three years. Food stamps, state financial assistance (my mother received zero assistance from my father, which, if I were to elaborate upon the reasons why would lead us down an avenue of digression I’d rather not take), food boxes from the church, help from extended family, etc… Though we were fortunate enough to have family and friends who could offer help, often there remains a feeling of failure, imposition on others, a sense of inadequacy, on and on. These insidious conceptions, transferred to me through my mother, of one’s self, most likely stem from sordid and varied expectations and demands placed on people through society, and its values, traditions, beliefs and history. For example, my mother and father divorced in 1973 (not long after, incidentally, that my ma had gotten employment at Chrysler). Even at the height of the struggles of women striving for revolutionary transformation of their political, economic and domestic lives, in my world, the raggedy remnant of disdain for single mothers responsible for their children remained firmly in place. Questions from family were often about my mothers romantic life. The implication being, “You find a good man to take care of you and John yet?!” At least, that was my mothers interpretation.

She also felt subtle scorn and disdain for her situation from the church, our church, St. Clements. My mother and I are both born Roman Catholic, and our relationship to the church was always porous and ambivalent, somehow uncertain. It never felt fixed or sturdy, even though I attended St. Clements private Catholic school. And when my mother was laid off from Chrysler and she had to take me out of the private school, our relationship became even weaker and more wobbly. So, my mother and I unknowingly followed Nietzche’s advice and pushed the whole shaky structure over!*

We moved into a mobile home, I started public school in 4th grade, and my father and the Catholic Church moved more and more away in our lives, became less present or vital. My life, our lives, my mothers and mine, also changed. Leaving the house, the neighborhood, my friends and school when my ma was laid off was really difficult, but accepted as inevitable and an unfortunate side of life. And as we grew older, my mother and I moved more and more away from each other as well. As I grew into a teenager, I became more rebellious, and my mother had injured herself on the job, and Chrysler was putting her through college instead of paying her a huge cash settlement, so she was home a lot studying environmental science and what not, she would eventually get a Masters degree in Occupational Health and Safety, and in her 40’s, become an OSHA official at the Daimler Chrysler Tech Center in Auburn Hills, Michigan. In that same time, I discovered punk rock and underground culture, dropped out of high school, was kicked out of my house by my weary and perplexed mother repeatedly, and proceeded onto a long line of building trade and landscaping jobs, while also still spending too much time in parks and libraries, carousing and dreaming.

Today, as years pass, the connecting threads of memory wear away, become worn and thin, and frayed. I feel the pressure to get some things down quick before being completely obliterated. For, like water eroding the rock of chasms through time, so is the tide of time cleaving the ridges and sandscape of my memory, impressions, my experience. And I sit and think, but have no pictures, only the erratic flashbulb pop of an incoherent and strained vision. I do have a language though, one scrawled longhand over every papered surface: receipts, 1/2 full notebooks; too many loose scraps caught in the breathing of windows, the opening and closing of doors, august ochre blood suffuses the entire mindscape, and I sense the push AND pull of time, simultaneously, in opposing directions. And as I’m pulled with more force, the pushing becomes as a small dying birds effort, ephemeral and breathless. And frail, so frail. But this life of mine has rebuked frailty; so many things this life I’ve lived has come to know, yet frailty was it rarely acquainted with. I’ve known more a fear of becoming frail, vulnerable, ineffectual. Am I not also only driven by fear?! O’ so many fears, too many to name or elaborate upon!

Fear is what led to God, and writing, and Alcoholics Anonymous, and a wrestling with reality that I had not attempted previously in this life. The wrestling was really only an investigation, an investigation of myself, this world I came up in, and into it all, thoroughly immersed, a conscious deep diving into a certain unattainable divinity. That divine treasure ended up to be wisdom, but only in retrospect. What led to the present can be lost, or worse, degraded, but then, uncovered. But if not careful and discreet, what can be uncovered, like the misguided archaeologist tends to uncover, are the bones and artifacts of an entity we never really knew, but mistook for one we did.* With error there’s remorse, weariness, so much to do about weariness. There can be resentment at injustices poorly conceived or understood; and others, opportunists all, may use this for ideological purposes, reconfigured, reformists with an agenda! There is much to navigate in the ever increasing complexity of the world, and if one follows a route to maturity through socially reputable institutions such as colleges, universities, trade schools, government programs of all sorts, then one can often become mired in the sullen trenches of capitalist ideology, and this indoctrination is a subtle and pernicious process which ultimately results in the aforementioned archaeological errors.

As a remedy, there is some sort of vital importance to remembering. Individual lines drawn across a collective map, and the destinations reached after the scribbled zigzag of the route taken, which is never straight! Time moves us through the world of our lives and we discern those lines fading, blurring, degraded and translucent scrawl; and voices become garbled and incoherent, lose a certain yearning, and urgency, and grace. The reason for meaning becomes too distant, becomes too indeterminate, and this is due to the ceaseless pull of history, and the weak defensive push of our memory that counters the trauma of an unbridled inhalation.

I cannot abide this now, so I, too, shall scrawl. Lets begin with Alcoholics Anonymous, and this scrawl will unfortunately require a preface, for in writing this, I’m hoping to get at something in AA, something useful to a project of social and personal transformation, something useful to revolutionists working to move beyond party politics and capitalist reform and management.

In trying to think of a reason why I believe AA is of value, historically, to a revolutionary movement, I mean, think of a truly relevant and insightful theory that would convince anyone (and now I’m thinking of academics and intellectuals here) of the hidden potential, or the kernel of truth, contained in the maligned tradition of AA, I’ve thrown myself as many times headlong into a stubborn mile high bulwark that seems impossible to scale, as come to anything worthwhile in a theoretical sense.

I would begin by saying that, what aspects of AA that I find the most to contain some conception of revolutionary spirit, are the 12 Traditions. While the 12 Steps guide the individual, the 12 Traditions guide the group, the collective that all the individuals depend upon for support in sobriety.

The 12 Traditions are as follows, I’ve included the Long Form:

1.) Each member of Alcoholics Anonymous is but a small part of a great whole. A.A. must continue to live or most of us will surely die. Hence our common welfare comes first. But individual welfare follows close afterward.

2.) For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority–a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience.

3.) Our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. Hence we may refuse none who wish to recover. Nor ought A.A. membership ever depend upon money or conformity. Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an A.A. group, provided that, as a group, they have no other affiliation.

4.) With respect to its own affairs, each A.A. group should be responsible to no other authority than its own conscience. But when its plans concern the welfare of neighboring groups also, those groups ought to be consulted. And no group, regional committee, or individual should ever take any action that might greatly affect A.A. as a whole without conferring with the Trustees of the General Service Board. On such issues our common welfare is paramount.

5.) Each Alcoholics Anonymous group ought to be a spiritual entity having but one primary purpose–that of carrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.

6.) Problems of money, property, and authority may easily divert us from our primary spiritual aim. We think, therefore, that any considerable property of genuine use to A.A. should be separately incorporated and managed, thus dividing the material from the spiritual. An A.A. group, as such, should never go into business. Secondary aids to A.A., such as clubs or hospitals which require much property or administration, ought to be incorporated and so set apart that, if necessary, they can be freely discarded by the groups. Hence such facilities ought not to use the A.A. name. Their management should be the sole responsibility of those people who financially support them. For clubs, A.A. managers are usually preferred. But hospitals, as well as other places of recuperation, ought to be well outside A.A.- and medically supervised. While an A.A. group may cooperate with anyone, such cooperation ought never go so far as affiliation or endorsement, actual or implied. An A.A. group can bind itself to no one.

7.) The A.A. groups themselves ought to be fully supported by the voluntary contributions of their own members. We think that each group should soon achieve this ideal; that any public solicitation of funds using the name of Alcoholics Anonymous is highly dangerous, whether by groups, clubs, hospitals, or other outside agencies; that acceptance of large gifts from any source, or of contributions carrying any obligation whatever, is unwise. Then too, we view with much concern those A.A. treasuries which continue, beyond prudent reserves, to accumulate funds for no stated A.A. purpose. Experience has often warned us that nothing can so surely destroy our spiritual heritage as futile disputes over property, money, and authority.

8.) Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever non-professional. We define professionalism as the occupation of counseling alcoholics for fees or hire. But we may employ alcoholics where they are going to perform those services for which we may otherwise have to engage nonalcoholics. Such special services may be well recompensed. But our usual A.A. "12th Step" work is never to be paid for.

9.) Each A.A. group needs the least possible organization. Rotating leadership is the best. The small group may elect its secretary, the large group its rotating committee, and the groups of a large metropolitan area their central or intergroup committee, which often employs a full-time secretary. The trustees of the General Service Board are, in effect, our A.A. General Service Committee. They are the custodians of our A.A. Tradition and the receivers of voluntary A.A. contributions by which we maintain our A.A. General Service Office at New York. They are authorized by the groups to handle our over-all public relations and they guarantee the integrity of our principal newspaper, the A.A. Grapevine. All such representatives are to be guided in the spirit of service, for true leaders in A.A. are but trusted and experienced servants of the whole. They derive no real authority from their titles; they do not govern. Universal respect is the key to their usefulness.

10.) No A.A. group or member should ever, in such a way as to implicate A.A., express any opinion on outside controversial issues–particularly those of politics, alcohol reform, or sectarian religion. The Alcoholics Anonymous groups oppose no one. Concerning such matters they can express no views whatever.

11.) Our relations with the general public should be characterized by personal anonymity. We think A.A. ought to avoid sensational advertising. Our names and pictures as A.A. members ought not be broadcast, filmed, or publicly printed. Our public relations should be guided by the principle of attraction rather than promotion. There is never need to praise ourselves. We feel it better to let our friends recommend us.

12.) And finally, we of Alcoholics Anonymous believe that the principle of anonymity has an immense spiritual significance. It reminds us that we are to place principles before personalities; that we are actually to practice a genuine humility. This to the end that our great blessings may never spoil us; that we shall forever live in thankful contemplation of Him who presides over us all.

The Traditions weren’t conceptualized, drafted and decreed by Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith, the co-founders of AA. No, the Traditions, like another revolutionary document, the US Constitution, was born through the cooperative and collective effort of a sublime human will, the Group Conscience. I suppose Consensus is another name. Regardless, this conscience is the driving metronomic pulse of the group, yet it is understood that the power derived from this is of a higher power, expressing itself through the disciplined and tireless striving of each member in a labor of necessity and love. It is a building and bonding, a reconfiguration few drunks, let alone “normal people”, have much acquaintance with. So by that measure, it is a great school as well, almost an “Alcoholic University”.

Arthur Rimbaud, The Wastelands of Love

Harry awoke with what he thought was dried saliva, or vomit, on his cheek; he was wrong. Blots of blood were on his pillowcase. Blood was a clot in his ear. Blood was caked in his matting. Blood was a crust in the corners of his maw.

Harry sat up carefully, painfully. His body ached from fighting, and he had a disabling hangover. He wrestled out of his meager bedsheets and made his way to the bathroom mirror. He studied his bruised face in the mirror, touched gingerly the crescent beneath his right eye. Turning on the hot water, he filled the cups of his palms and carried the water to the bread dough that was his face. He rubbed delicately that rigid batter, the batter that was his face.

Harry attempted to piece together the previous evening. It had begun innocently enough. Him and a buddy had been drinking beer in the friends’ shed, his friends’ name was Jeff, and the two of them went back to elementary school together. They had been seated around Jeff’s dirtbike, it was a YZ 250, and Jeff loved that dirtbike. Jeff was a dirtbike fanatic, Harry didn’t understand fanatics.

It had been a wet, mild dusk, and the sky crept down to insinuate itself within the autumnal mists. It was one of those dismal, opaque evenings that are such a wonderful reason for suburban boys to drink about, but, maybe only a suburban boy would understand that. Regardless, they drank. They drank beer, a lot of beer. They drank rivers of unabashed beer.

Harry and Jeff had been plopped beneath a lantern talking of the same mundane shit that half-drunk male kids talk all across suburbia: cars, girls, memorable incidents, invented lays, superficial dreams and aspirations, nonsense, bullshit. It had been an uneventful evening which had culminated into an uneventful conclusion.

Harry recalled walking back to his mobile home through the light rain, and his breath issued from between his lips in punctuated cloudbursts, yet he’d felt warm. Beers were crammed in every pocket large enough to contain a can of beer. The night was pleasant and empty, and perhaps that had been the pleasure Harry had relished most, a night erased of any discernible life, any light. He’d drank a beer as he walked, and he was grateful for the solitude of the journey. No cars prowled past, no familiar voice interrupted his reveries, no yammering insistent friends to intrude upon his self-absorption.

Harry was transported then, backward into the rapture of nearly a decade, backward into the occupied long scrawls penned on paper, syntax aligning into inadequate sentences, swelling into the paragraphs which deliver swollen pages of novels. And he was then laid upon his stomach, with a crooked left arm in a strange bed, the comfort of a Marlboro between his index and middle fingers, scribbling scrawl-

He commenced to slugging

My face when i

Spit into his hideous

Eye.

I saw too many lights,

They burned like salt,

Tasted of copper,

Sounded in dizzy thuds.

My head dragged through glass

In a sightless span of

Asphalt stretching into

Hectares of omnipresent strip malls.

Through my half-closed

Eyelids i witnessed K-Mart

Somersault, and i could

Almost taste the big pretzels

And frozen Cokes.

When we came to on

Barstools, he wiped

My face, and his,

And ordered shots of bourbon.

Vignettes of numerous beatings; so much nastiness and violence etched upon the pages. So much of his nasty life coagulated between the lines of notebook paper. And to what end? All the means of drinking and fighting, and carousing and manipulating...to what? and, for what?

Harry remembered (read of on his cluttered bed) the night drinking Cisco (cheap wine), emerging from a blackout into the sodium glare of his friends’ backseat. He came to being beaten with fists and foreheads, two friends of his friend. They’d broken his nose, left his lips split open, jaw badly bruised. He’d folded over and sobbed for mercy, pleading to “just stop already, enough!” They didn’t stop, not for a while more; his friend eventually stopped them. Just a petty squabble gone wrong, misunderstandings.

Harry read again on his cluttered bed (remembered) a beating he took from another buddy, in the reservoir, another drunken night and its’ share of drunken misunderstandings, and resentments, and revenge. On the slopes of the reservoir he’d been hurt badly. With two black eyes and bruises covering his shaved head, he had had to face his family the following day at Easter dinner. His grandfather asked him sardonically, patronizingly, if he’d been beaten with a baseball bat. His grandfather had been a fighter, a pro boxer, before marrying his grandmother. Harry desperately loved his quiet, almond-ugly granpa.

Harry (read and remembered on his sullen bed) and the two friends he had fought with over ridiculous, small quantities of weed or beer. They’d fought, and Harry again was stomped and choked and warned to “Stay down!! Goddammit!” But of course he’d get up again, get knocked down by one of them and stomped by the other again...O’ banal madness!

All the inconsequential incidents: the sucker punches, the broken beer bottles, the ravaged furniture, torn shirts and coats, the slicing and gashing and scabbed knuckles; and blood did run down the walls!, and windows did get shattered!

A tear (or was it the light rain?) slid down the furrow of Harry’s cheek, and he let loose with an unearthly howl, so...

He sunk the pen he had been writing with cleanly through the top of his left hand. The sensation of this act, strangely enough, was not pain, but a dolorous curiosity, so he turned his hand over and studied the pen tip which protruded through his palm, and he smiled.

The night left a mark of its own doldrums upon Harry and Harry’s half-drank can of beer; and Harry relished the nights’ mist flung doldrums, savored the quiet recollections, was resolved to peer all night into his reveries. The mobile homes crept by scowling, but Harry didn’t scowl. He took a long drink from his half-drank beer and felt his pockets (for the third time in three blocks) to reassure himself that he had more beer.

Harry laid perplexed on his strange bed (with a crooked left arm, the comfort of a Marlboro between the index and middle fingers, scribbling scrawl-). It had been an uneventful evening which had culminated into an uneventful conclusion. He could not recall how he had been hurt so badly, and he searched madly for a cigarette, a notebook, a can of half-drank beer. He scrawled another sentence over the rough spot called Life, took another swig from the half-drank can of beatings, pieced together a medley of scratched tatoos and cheap wine in the park (Hampton).

A suburban drunk is like no other, but you meet him everywhere telling you what happened to your face last night.

“Sorry about the mess.”

Unknown author