I'm a bit uncomfortable submitting the story that's to follow, and the reason for my unease I shall explain shortly. Regardless of my reservations, I feel the story must be read, and it must be read because it is a story of a young working class man who yearned to be an artist, as written by this man in the process of testing whether he had the strength to meet that task. It isn’t clear if he ever felt he did.
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