Caroline Says Part 2

Caroline says
as she gets up from the floor
You can hit me all you want to
but I don’t love you anymore

              This verse has haunted me for most of my life. I first heard it somewhere in those first years of college or maybe even earlier. Maybe Jack Lenert turned me on to it in one of those high school afternoons in his bedroom with all of his records and that little stereo he had. Pretty much anything I knew about that was remotely cool came from Jack. We followed similar paths in very different places. Jack didn’t make it. He played Lou’s Rock and Roll Animal for me one afternoon and I think that’s where the whole romanticism of heroin started. Certainly, we were already getting high on whatever kids in the sticks in the late 70s could get their hands on. But that there was a song - a really long song - about heroin on a record seemed so wild and forbidden. Lou Reed was a distant light in a fog of teenage confusion and wonder. I didn’t take him on as my sole focus, but he was what I’d pull out when I was alone and wondering about how far can you take this thing. How deep can you go into turning away from normalcy?

              And so, at some point I heard this verse. I probably heard it well after I first listened to it. The way he so haltingly speaks as Caroline just made me so sad. Lou as Caroline in this song is so okay with whatever her tormentor can possibly do to her. He’s Caroline in a way that feels like she’s won the war by simply embracing defeat. The very act of claiming defeat has rendered the attacker neutered. But even with this victory it’s such a heartbreaking moment he sings about. Christ, to write a song like this. How far is Heaven? I’ll go tonight.

              At some point we left Durwood Wiggins apartment. We may have gone back now and then to cop but I think we only stayed there one night. And it’s not like we slept in a guestroom or even on a bed. We just sort of sat there high and maybe dozed until the day came and it was time to leave. It was that moment when people have nothing really to do but it’s clear the moment has come to separate. We walked around those caverns of the lower east side and I remember wondering if this was some place Lou Reed ever came to. The way the sky was so bright directly above us but the steep faces of the buildings kept everything in shadow. Light could only spill into these gullies for such a short time each day. I’ve always heard every Velvet Underground and early Lou Reed song as if they’ve been sung in the winter. There’s not a single aspect of summer in Lou Reeds music. Not for me. And here I was, in his winter chasms full of dope and wandering imagined paths that he’d walked. I’m such a tragic romantic.

              The rest of the trip seems so disjointed and improbable. We’d walk and get some idea of where to go and who to meet and poof! We were there and then memory fades and we’re back walking these cold, impossibly bright New York streets. Winter sunlight is so stark. Such a bright light so devoid of heat. Winter sun is like everything in the first phases of breaking down. The sun loses heat. Here it comes.

              My mind registers the next indoor moment in some girl’s apartment. I feel like she was someone I knew from college but it’s also entirely possible that she was Dean’s friend. Both seem to be true and that can’t be. But I remember sitting on the floor of her crazy apartment in the same neighborhood as Durwood and drinking beer. I still had on all my clothes and sweater and plaid trench coat. The feeling was light. There was laughter. We were snorting dope and drinking. She was my friend and she’s also unknown to me in my memory. And Dean’s gone now and there’s simply no way for me to ever know who she really was. She’s just a spectre who let us spend a night in her NY apartment and got high with us and laughed. I remember leaving at some point to get food. We went to what I’ve always remembered as “Basilica” but I think it was actually called Veselka. We had pierogi. I remember there being another restaurant nearby that served mainly pierogi and that’s all we ate. The entire trip is wrapped around images of pierogi and a faint feeling of connection because of my half-Polish blood. My mom’s Polish. Fully. Whether we were in a Polish or Ukrainian or Russian joint it didn’t matter. I thought of my mom. I felt warm.

              We’d eat pierogi, snort white dope in the restroom and wander towards some other night. Someplace out of the cold. And this wasn’t a trip gone south this WAS the trip. This is as deep as we’d planned it. I don’t think I’ve experienced a period of time so full of pure leaps of faith and come what may abandon as that week in NY. And still, it was just a little speck of time in a life and one which I have great regret about despite its otherwise magic.

              We got onto a train and went to Hoboken. Dean knew someone there. What I’m left with after a lifetime of other moments is a memory of a scene in which I witness Dean returning home to see his mother after a long sad period. His Mom was so beaten down by his continual bouts of recovery and self-destruction that she forlornly welcomes us in at the top steps of the little front door porch in a row of New Jersey little houses. We go in and are served cereal. Dean wanted cereal. I feel so out of place seeing them circle around each other, dodging so much pain and so many questions. “How are you feeling?” she asks he mumbles a “fine. Good. I’m good.” No one is fine here. There’s nothing fine about this scene. We have the stuff of her nightmares and dashed hopes in our pockets. Little folded envelopes of powder we’d traded our entire lives away for. Dean looks into his cereal bowl and lifts another spoonful into his mouth. This is horrible for him too. He’s not so loaded or beyond hope that his Mom’s heartbreak is nothing to him. I’m in a room where everyone would rather be dead.

 And yet. None of this really happened.

              I don’t know why we went to Hoboken. I just followed Dean and the adventure. All these years later I realize I’ve superimposed a scene from an HBO doc I’d seen called “Dopesick Love” over our night in Hoboken. We see the subject visit his crushed mother and pretend to be excited by cereal and slyly ask for money. He leaves for what might be another month. Or year. Or more likely, forever. I’ve remembered this Hoboken trip as that scene. I’ve seen the side of Dean I’d so often wondered about. Where’d he come from? What was his kid-life like? Did his parents love him and stick around? I never knew any of these answers. I made them up for myself within the memory of this one night during a trip to NY. That’s where I put it all together. God, if I could only see him one more time. If I could only break through the veneer and hug him and actually say I love you. But he’s gone. He’s gone.

              We walked to the train station to go back to the city after whatever actually happened that night in Hoboken. That much was real. We spent a night indoors somewhere in Hoboken. I know because I realized we were where Frank Sinatra came from. These little funny markers we have in a life of jumbled memories and wished-for outcomes.

              We ate more pierogi. We snorted more dope. We were without Durwood and his outfits so we snorted. It was fine. We had plenty. Andy Warhol hardwood floors were more than enough for this weeklong daydream.

              Thoughts would puncture the dope glaze now and then and I’d stumble over them. We were in the days long before cellphones. Before pagers even. I don’t remember calling Leslie to check in. Maybe I did but I don’t remember it. What I remember is being wholly selfish and rotten. We kept walking towards new people and new interiors.

              I called and connected with friends from Penn State. Andy lived in New Jersey. He lived in Linden and having gone to his house once during school I knew he was near. He was close to the city. Somehow, I knew other friends were nearby as well. I connected. Eventually I made plans to meet the whole group at a bar in the city. Here we are at the moment of the great reunion. Dean and I walk up with some sort of luggage in the cold air and embrace Andy, John, Drew and Nancy and maybe some new people they were loving at the moment. Some of these people are still in my life and maybe they might read this. Maybe they’d say, “Huh? I was never there.” And I’ll defer but, in my memory, such a vivid memory, we’re all hugging and exhaling frost as we walk into some bar in NY. I think it was the Pyramid Bar or the Apex or something which had a point on top. Just a little place which seemed like the place to be. We sat and drank and laughed and took turns doing dope in the bathroom off the graffitied porcelain toilets. It lands now as a great night. Certainly, the very last time I’ve ever seen these people.

We wound up, at least some of us, back at Andy’s house in New Jersey. I see us all in chairs and couches in his parents living room. The lights are low but we’re so happy. God, if only that moment could have lasted forever. I remember them knowing what was going on. The dope was out in the open. At least the idea of it was. I didn’t feel dirty. We ate sandwiches which Andy drunkenly made. They were exquisite. We were just kids again sleeping over at each other’s’ houses trying to stay up all night and fearing the morning. Fearing the end of this moment. At least that’s what I feared.

Morning always comes no matter how much you love the night. Morning slammed us back into the city, everything good and clean hours behind us. Maybe we had days left. Maybe hours. The whole trip is such a fragmented remnant. I remember being in a garage. A car garage. A mechanics place. I can’t imagine why we would have been in such a place but I see us standing as the central- casting-New Yorker with the accent and the grimy visage is on the phone barking at someone. Another guy enters the room and starts laying into this guy on the phone. We watch him yell at him and it’s clear they’re brothers. The new guy. The clean guy screams. “And you, always in the fuckin bathroom getting high. You don’t do shit!” I see that so clearly. Did it happen? Am I confusing it with a movie? Does it matter? These moments surely happen. Maybe I’m just witnessing moments of real familial pain floating aimlessly around our world. Maybe they land where people who know can recognize them. Somehow, I saw this. I knew the shame in the junky brothers face as he took another beating from his brother. And I knew the pain and heartbreak in his brother as he tried anything to get through. People have been trying to get through to me forever. I knew it when I saw it.

Eventually we went home. We’d had our drug vacation. One thing that I remember clearly is sitting in Andy’s house and starting to drift off to sleep as the night gently faded away. I remember feeling the sweater and trench coat wrap around me in lieu of a blanket and feeling warm. I also realized I hadn’t taken them off for days. I never took them off the entire time. I stayed fully dressed for the six or seven days I was there. We just walked and landed. Walked and landed. Vagabonds in some hardwood floor paradise. Only pushing up our sleeves to get high.

But what I think about most now, what I’ve always carried with me, what the true cost of the trip was is the shame I feel for just up and leaving Leslie like that. Dean and I just zeroed in on ourselves and ran towards it. We never gave a thought about who we were leaving if only for week. I know Leslie will read this. And maybe she remembers it as no big deal. I doubt it. I think I hurt her. I know I hurt you Leslie and I’m so sorry. That I could be so incredibly selfish to go away like that just baffles me. I hurt you in so many ways. I want to think I don’t have that in me. That willingness to make someone else suffer the cost of my pleasure, my comfort. But I did. I did that. As hollow as it is, I’m sorry. I truly am.

I take the pleasant moments of these memories and I try to push the others away. I get confused and I wonder what’s real. Fortunately, we remember what we fucked up more than what we did right. We’d be fucked without this. It keeps us from forever causing pain and yet we often still do. Often, I think of how much money, and love, and heartbreak and support and how many resources have been spent over decades just to try and stop me from doing one thing. One. Single. Thing. And even now there’s no guarantee.

It’s something. It’s really something. This one thing.