Chapter Three
I heard Bob and Frank come in and the fridge being filled with beer. I felt like they had been with me all day and we'd been drinking and swapping stories. I smiled sleepily.
"Hey, stranger."
Stranger than you know Bob, I thought. Someone opened the curtains and the sun hurt my eyes. Fantasies of beer commercial camaraderie fled when my legs were twisted and I was flipped over onto my stomach.
"It's wedgie time," Bob said.
"Hey," I started squirming and foolishly, to panic, "hey!"
"Relax. We're not interested in your crusty underwear. Well, I can only speak for myself, of course."
Bob's roommate didn't speak though I had the impression that he could care less if it was crusty, ripped, too small or threadbare. I grabbed a beer then returned to where I'd been laying, the sad couch that looked as if it was determined to unravel until all that was left of it were a few unremarkable threads. Bob put a Dylan record on. We clinked our bottles together and drank.
After drinking for a while I noticed that my brother seemed different. He wasn't the person I remembered. He was the same visually. I knew him even with the mop of hair he'd been without at home, but he had changed.
"There's something different about you," I blurted.
"Really?"
"Oh, yes …not that that's a bad thing, it's just…"
"I don't have a clue as to what you're going on about," he replied, "do you think I'm some kind of demon or a guy off a U.F.O. or something?"
"I'm just having a bad trip," I answered quietly, feeling cowed, "just a bad trip."
"Yeah," he said, the beer giving him bitter eyes, "well, you don't expect me to tip-toe around and watch everything I do or say, do you?" I knew he was referring to my state of mind and answered in the negative.
"Well, drink up," he said, "maybe we'll go out later."
I woke in the morning not knowing or caring if we'd gone out. Something, besides my pounding head and shaking hands was wrong. Ah, open up hungry earth and swallow me feet first with my black boots on. What am I going to do, I moaned, how can I possibly explain that I've pissed myself in the night? I was soaked. I'd lost control over my bladder.
Quietly, I ran and jumped in the shower fully clothed, enduring the hot spray long enough to get sopping wet. Towel in hand I went back where my disgrace lived in the fibers and fluff that made up the couch. The wetness was just waiting to be found. I'd really degraded myself this time.
After drying my hair I arranged the sleeping bag I'd been loaned, driest side facing the sky. I wanted to shake my fist at that sky; I wanted to shout at God and thank him for nothing. But, I didn't. I went to the fridge grabbed a beer and chugged. When it was gone I chugged another.
"Hey," Bob said, amused, "go easy, the bar doesn't open for awhile."
"Hair of the dog," I replied. He nodded. I went out and joined him on the couch.
"You puke?"
"No Bob, I didn't puke."
"Hmmm, something stinks. Maybe it's you sitting there in your wet clothes." He shrugged his shoulders and walked back to his room.
Bob and I had drunk our share of alcohol together. It was a greeting, a farewell, a ritual, a ceremony that treads water in a hallowed lake. When we drank by day the sky seemed brighter, a hallucination that kept me parched. At night the darkness was complete, it was black, a puddle of India ink on fresh laundered white. But I had changed all that. I'd changed pure white to yellow, I'd pissed into the darkness and the truth I had always seen there had melted. I'd transgressed and like any other wrongdoer, I hoped to get away with it.
First Bob and then sleepy Frank left for work. When I was sure that I'd be alone, I started scrubbing the couch with a towel and hot water. On my trips from the couch to the bathroom for more hot water, I berated myself. I was a chump for pissing my pants; it just proved what I'd always suspected. I would never be a man's man. More demoralizing, I'd never be much of a hit with the ladies. What woman in her right mind would want a guy who's liable to mess his drawers?
After I'd scrubbed long and hard my head began to ache. My stomach was turning. I took a handful of aspirin, which only made me vomit. Soon I was in an uneasy slumber, full of shadowy figures and beautiful women. Everyone in my dreams seemed filled with ill will. I forced myself to sleep all day. It was a day like any other. It faced me head on and I shied away, hiding in slumber and behind random tears. It seemed to me that I was a young man whose world was too often under the thumb of disappointment.
So we drank and drank. I didn't relieve myself in my sleep again and if anyone knew I had changed the colour of my underwear, they'd didn't let on. We drank and sometimes we quarreled. One night Bob and I came to blows over a bit of corned beef. We drank and my supply of money dwindled. I had to find a job, had to suck it up and go out, even though going out had become frightening. I had to shake off the stupor that held me like a clammy, controlling lover. I had to get off my duff, put down my beer bottle and pound the pavement.
I was like Socrates who complained about a voice that repeatedly took him from what he was going to do without encouraging him to do anything else. I would wake and say to myself, today is the day I start searching for work. An inner voice would immediately pipe up and dampen my spirits with logic like "All people are assholes out to cause harm in odd and various ways." I wondered if that was what Socrates went through.
Eventually, I left the apartment for more than just smokes, alcohol or one of those delicious burgers they made across the street. I brushed my hair and teeth and put on clean clothes. By noon I was back home with a box of beer, waiting for the phone to ring. I had been promised that it would and it did, the next morning. I had a job starting the following Monday.
An inner voice said, "All people are assholes out to cause harm in odd and various ways."
"Shut up," I said loudly as I put on my boots and coat. All the way to the beer store my new mantra, hastily acquired and soon to be discarded, preceded me, "Shut up, shut up, shut up…."
I'd been living with my brother and his friend for a month and a half. The weather had grown colder and every day seemed damp. At work I kept stock of gizmos used to fix televisions and stereos. Sometimes I'd go out and help a technician install a big screen TV, often in someone's bedroom. We'd giggle, knowing that they weren't going to be watching the Under Sea World of Jacques Cousteau or the Gong Show.
The first night Frank didn't come home I didn't really think anything of it. Bob and I sipped on a few pints and watched the idiot box. I had bought it at a pawnshop and was quite proud of it. It was black and white but the picture was crisp and clear. The next night Frank didn't come home and I started to wonder. We had taken up our positions in front of the box.
"Wanna smoke?" I offered.
Bob shrugged his shoulders and I threw one that bounced off his chest. We lit up. I squinted at him through the smoke and he squinted back.
"He's not coming back," he said.
I took a quick look to see if he was all right. For some reason I thought he might have whatever it was that I had. "We argued, violently. It was bad. It was as close to a fight as two pacifists can come. You don't need to know any more about it - it's between him and me. He sends his regards, you know, he always did like you."
As though having said all that had left him spent, he turned back to the TV and took a long pull on his bottle. The night passed, as would the next one and the one after that. Eventually, they'd all melt together. We never saw Frank again.
Frank's disappearance was lodged inside me in a strange place, a place that lived to convince me that everything gone wrong was my fault. My boss was in a fender bender and when he got to work he glared at me. I was clearly to blame. My brother stubbed his toe, a house burned to the ground, the Maple Leafs lost again - my fault.
Alone, in the apartment I banged my head against the wall, saying over and over, "Stop hurting people." This strangeness stopped not long after it began. I realized I couldn't accept responsibility for everyone who screwed up. I didn't cause their messes or mishaps.
Still, I often felt brittle, as if I might break into shards at any time. To me, that was life. The brand of fragility that lived inside was a driving force. On the outside, my finger had to be pointing at me, nagging, for me to get anything done.
Bob began to look at me with eyes of hatred. Soon, everyone was looking at me with those same eyes. I couldn't walk anywhere without being confronted and stared down by an unusual loathing people were projecting my way.
Bob's beef, I figured, was that I was an obligation he'd rather be rid of. I had no idea what it was that other people had against me. Defeated, desperate, humiliated and scorned, I decided to see a doctor. It wasn't a decision I made lightly. Nobody wants to admit they are mentally ill, least of all someone who is still young enough to believe that the only thing worse than being crazy is dying. Even that was debatable, among kids with honour.
Waiting for my appointment, I wanted my turn to come quickly. This guy has to be a straight shooter, I thought, looking around at his collection of Norman Rockwell prints. I picked up a magazine and something about Elvis jumped out at me. I couldn't read and put the magazine down.
My desire to be well was real. It had been kindled when I made my appointment and was still burning. After an eternity spent embracing boredom, I was shown to a small examining room and told to strip and don the gown supplied. I shrugged and did as I was told, having no idea what stripping had to do with my head.
The doctor breezed in casually, as though we were old friends. I noticed jealously that he seemed to be carefree. Maybe some men are just better fakers than others, I thought. I was getting flustered and I guess it showed because he gave me a moment before asking what was wrong.
"Well, sir," I began, feeling stupid because I never called anyone sir, "I think there is something wrong, no, wait, there is something wrong with my head and the … my feelings, emotionally, ah emotionally speaking, ah, jeez, I guess I'm always depressed."
"And, how do you deal with this?" he asked.
"I drink," I answered, "and smoke anything resembling marijuana."
"Well, you're honest, I'll admit that," he replied and I mistakenly thought he was impressed.
He asked me a series of questions. Some made sense, others didn't. I'd never, for example, known anyone who lived in a glass house. I told him that a question about people living in a fragile building like that was lame.
"It just isn't done," I said, "it would be far too dangerous." He looked at me over his glasses and wrote something on his paper.
When he was satisfied that he'd bewildered me, he prescribed a medication that I would one day know is used for treating depression and psychosis. Within a week I was starting to feel more comfortable and within a month I was feeling better than I had in years. Realizing how much time feeling ill had cost me made me angry. I started going to bars, behaving aggressively and getting in fights.
When my prescription ran out I didn't rush back to the doctor. Not knowing any better, I thought I was fixed. Alas, my improved state would last but a short time and then would disappear. The soothing pills were gracious, giving relief from my personal upheaval but, after a month without them, the good feelings became a memory. Well-being vanished, leaving emptiness as its legacy.
The change in me that others had witnessed was forgotten once it was gone. I went back to being perceived and welcomed as a bit of an oaf and acted the part to gain a small bit of acceptance.
Christmas was bearing down and would soon crystallize. I hoped that every deserving person would find more meaning on the festive day than was present in the "buy this, buy that" slogans that assailed us all. If only the commercialism the slogans represented could have reminded us that Christ was against greed we may have boycotted the opportunism that greeted his birthday. Surely if Jesus had looked ahead and seen the bastardization of his date of birth, he would have booked forty more days and nights of prayer in the wilderness.
In spite of how I felt, the jingle that changed every day, "Only twenty shopping days left," piped incessantly from my radio until Dec 24 when it finally left me alone.
The day Christmas became a tinsel-tousled reality, I found myself alone, un-medicated, scared, and lonely. Bob was off gliding down the side of a mountain somewhere, showing off, maybe drinking a little Irish coffee with some red-cheeked snow bunny. Sarcastically, I wished them well and saluted them with an imaginary glass which I then threw into an imaginary fireplace.
"All the best bro. Merry Christmas."
It was my first Christmas spent alone and I was a drunk on the hum of solitude. I tasted the lonesomeness around me and it made my mouth pasty. There was an odour too. Christmas day of that year had an aroma. It wasn't turkey, gravy or turnip - it smelled more like mould. I wrinkled my nose and thought of people I'd known, wondering how they were spending the festive season.
I had no way of knowing that soon the old friends I was thinking about would drop me like a hot potato, claiming they had never liked potatoes anyways. When people come as close to shunning you as they can without starting to look bad, it's difficult. How can you protest when you're the one whose perception is out of whack? Who's going to believe you?
"It's got nothing to do with your head, but, ah, the wife's not really comfortable with you coming around, you know, if it was up to me, but, you know, she worries about the kids and, ah sorry."
"Yeah, well, I guess you're right, it probably really is in my head, this feeling of persecution, but, hey, can I just bite you or something before we part, just so you know it was real and I know that you weren't a hallucination?"
Christmas day ended. It was a day of solitude and bleak preoccupation with the organism I call me. Christmas was a reminder that I wasn't exempt from loneliness. I had spent the previous Christmas at home with my parents, my other brother, and a vastly different mind. I was doing well in school, everything pointed onwards and upwards, yet, in a few short months I would start to unravel.
Bob was back by New Year's Eve. I got ridiculously drunk because I knew it was one night of the year when people would make allowances for just about anything. You could have pinned the Kennedy and Lincoln assassinations on me or told me that Bobby Hull had been partying with us most of the night until I insulted him, saying he was a whuss and a whiner to boot. You could have told me just about anything and I couldn't say much, because I couldn't remember a thing. I'd heard of people deciding to quit drinking when that happened. I just figured that's what happened when you got drunk.
I made a resolution to quit drinking, broke it the next night and then it was back to the working world and the long haul through the bleak months of winter.