Go!

I’m sitting here on Sunday morning after posting The Thing. I click on one of the email alerts I get every 15 minutes or so from MLB.com. Baseball stuff. I’ve become so adept at pushing it all away. But this one’s about a no-hitter. And so it bursts through, and I go in. I watch images that used to fill me with wonder and joy. They just terrify me now. How did I lose this? How can I get back in? I’ve lost baseball again.

              Let’s go back. There’s so much more to tell. Jesus! I’d love to hear your stories. I’d love to hear the little explosions in your lives. Hearing these little bombs, these hidden grenades, is what I love so much about being a therapist. Every day I swoon at the idea that I get paid to talk to people, and they tell me things they’ve never told anyone else. I feel honored. Sometimes I feel like a fraud. But I do it. I sit there and listen, and I love them. I just love them. I’m not sure what else to do as a therapist. I just try and love them. They aren’t all lovable, or at least it seems hard to me. But I try.

              Let’s go back. College was winding down. I was in that perfect place of ending something and an adventure rolling up. Leslie came up most weekends, and we took more acid with Paul and the gang and looked for more buffalo in the country. After that first trip, the magic never held; we knew where they were. The sudden surprise wore off. When we found them that one day, it was like we were on some Tolkien journey. We were hobbits walking through the endless world looking for a ring. The magic wears off. We found these animals while vibrating out of our skin and laughing like jackals. You can’t watch those movies for the first time over and over again. But we’d felt it once.

Our house was chaotic. Greg and I are on the first floor with Paul, John and Steve, two floors up. It was a typical college house turned into apartments and rented out to kids on their way to something. We all had plans. I don’t think any of us got there because life is tricky. Life throws curveballs. Life is beautiful like that. One day I marched home from some forgotten 400-plus level EE class in a wrapped-around trenchcoat and walked up the porch stairs to our apartment door. It was about three inches ajar. I knew this trick. I’d invented it. I’d push open the door, and a bag of flour or maybe even a cup of liquid would lose balance and fall upon me. This was my trick. And I could hear nervous snickerings inside. So, I played along. I held out my left hand holding my Minolta 35mm SLR camera and slowly pushed the door open. Wham! A fucking bowling ball falls from its balance point and wrenches the camera out of my fist. It shatters. The black bowling ball rolls off to the side as the camera lies there dead.

I’m stunned. Too stunned to be angry, and I see faces. I see Paul, Greg, and John looking embarrassed and beaten as if they’d tried their best. And I see Steve Yetsko, smart but a troglodyte nonetheless, laughing with such glee and as if he was wringing his hands together at his chest, waiting for some huge hug of approval. “Did I do good, Dad? Did I? Did you like it??” He thought braining me with a 16-pound bowling ball would be funny.  

These are the moments when God gently pulls you aside and whispers, “Son? You can walk away or murder. Either is fine with me.” Murder seems like such a hassle. I walk away, but I keep tabs. I must admit that while I don’t think I have it in me to pull such a stunt, there’s something about its severity, the sheer, fully over-the-top-ness that I can appreciate. I don’t remember him ever fixing the camera any more than I remember really wanting to take pictures with it in the first place. Truth is, it was a great fucking prank. Hat’s off to you, Steve!

But I kept score. Paul and John who likely argued against the prank became targets. The lived with Steve. I injected the juice from fiery hot Thai peppers into their oranges. I rubbed their cutting boards with these same peppers, so every innocent peanut butter sandwich became an artillery shell. I rigged foul-smelling vials of God-knows-what chemicals under Steve’s bedframe feet, breaking open as he lied down like a drunken oaf every night and filling the apartment with unlivable scents. I switched out all of their coffee with decaf and made it fully apparent to destroy even the placebo effect. I ruined their trust, their faith in coffee. I got back. I’m smart, and I’m clever. Sure there was collateral damage, Paul and John lived with Steve, but collateral damage is what gives war all its flavor, its thrill. I think about all of this stuff with love. All of it sprang from love. To put that much effort into hurting someone is a measure of devotion. We just walk away and forget those we don’t love. I loved these guys. I still do.

Eventually, this pure, perfect, beatific time ended. I’d graduated. I’d done it. Five years. I think my Dad was proud. I know he was. I’d done this for him. I’d spent five years talking myself into doing something because it was what my Dad thought would be best for me. And so I did it. My parents saw me walk down the aisle in the auditorium where Iggy Pop had played not one month ago. I remember wearing the gown and the hat. I stood there in a sea of other Me’s surrounded by other parents while Bachelor of Science degrees was conferred to us. I was an Electrical Engineer. What did that mean? It felt good, but it also felt foreign. It felt fraudulent. Imposter Syndrome swept in and enveloped me. Christ! You can see it wrap around me still like the plaid trenchcoat I never took off. I never, ever, think I’m good enough. Even writing this feels phony. Like I’m just doing it for “likes.’ Like I’m lying and making everything up. Maybe we all feel this. This intrinsic self-doubt. Perhaps this is what ultimately grinds us down. Well. The truth is that I know I’m a great singer. That much I have confidence in.

In any case, Leslie and I watched them drive away happy and proud. I don’t regret a thing. Let’s get back to dope.

A month or so before graduation, I stood before this very hot Goth chick, just mumbling shy goofery as guys like me usually do when juxtaposed next to a beautiful girl. God knows Leslie must have had to hear all manner of my stumbling attempts at charm and teenage seduction. Our house was way more a gathering point for townies than it was for students. And here she stood. I remember her as looking just “hot.” I can’t even begin to describe her other than her black hair and clothes. But I remember she was fucking hot, and everyone wanted to fuck her. I didn’t. It was something entirely different about her that pulled me. Well, I suppose I could have risen to the occasion if she threw herself upon my startled being. But what drew me in was hearing her telling us she was moving to NYC. She was leaving soon. And so I asked her, as anyone who was me at that age in those clothes in that house with her standing in front of would have, “Can you buy me some heroin If I give you some money.” Something about drugs must have been mentioned, or maybe it was simply moving to NYC that made me ask her such a bold question.

I really don’t remember, but I can’t imagine it was an entirely blurted-out non-sequitur. She said, “Ok, yeah, I can buy you some and mail it back to you.” I sprang into action, “wait here! I’ll be right back. I ran downstairs, checked for bowling balls and went into my bedroom to find an envelope of some kind. Then I pulled out from my wallet whatever cash I had. Forty dollars. I jammed it into the self-addressed envelope and fairly lept back into the party. “Here ya go. And thanks!” “ok, no problem.” And I never saw her again. She just evaporated into some Bauhaus-infused whiff of vapor and floated away with my money. I had taken a leap of faith. I try to take as many as I can.

Now I know what some, if not many, of you, are thinking. And I was thinking the same thing. Surely buying you heroin, not doing it herself, putting it into the envelope, and buying a stamp were at the top of her list of things to do upon landing in NYC. Good luck with that, buddy.

We got back to this last semester, and I kept waiting. Time moved on, and I waited. I’d check the mailbox like you do when waiting for something important.

Now, I need you all to know that I reached out and spoke with Leslie just yesterday as I’d considered telling this little story. She just said, “It’s been forty years! Just keep writing.” I had to ask tho. I had to. At some point in our “long-distance” relationship, Leslie told me that she was ok if I had sex with another girl. She understood. Now, this was as likely as her telling me that I was allowed to win the state lottery or that she’d understand if I was, for whatever reason, drafted by the Orioles and asked to start Game 7. The chances of me aligning all the stars and keeping every planet in perfect orbit to wind up in some bed with some random chick were small. Very small. I just wasn’t that guy, but I loved her for it nonetheless. And so she granted me this freedom with one little caveat. I could fuck any girl at Penn State and, I suppose, anywhere really as long as it wasn’t Brandy Zimmerman.

              Brandy was one of the gang. She was a stunningly beautiful blonde girl following some unknown path I suspect her parents put her on. Maybe she was on her own path, but some way had led her to our corkscrewed house. And she was a friend. She was an actual student like us. Not some up-and-out-the-door Goth chick on a forty-dollar mission. I remember Brandy having the hots for Paul. Virtually every girl in that little community we’d built had the hots for Paul. And I guess she was a threat to Leslie, or maybe she just didn’t like her. When Leslie gave me this get-out-of-jail-free card, I didn’t think of Brandy at all!

I could fuck anyone but Brandy.

              Well, you know where this is going.

The night came when I slept with Brandy. I want to use more descriptive language. I want to bombard you with erotic filth and detail. I want to be the hero in some sex-filled legend. But I can’t. Somehow we had sex, and it was fine, and I got to do all of my favorite, necessary things, and then it just started feeling redundant. I sorta lost interest in it. I faked an orgasm, then we kissed goodnight and went to sleep. The next morning I felt awful. I just felt guilty. I’d fucked up. Again.

              All I had to do was not do one thing. Just one fucking thing. And I did it.

I remember seeing Brandy a few years later when I lived in Baltimore. I lived in Charles Village. I’d come home and gotten clean for a while. I walked down St.Paul, and she was there. Out of nowhere. We said hi. She looked beautiful. We talked for a few minutes, and maybe I felt some stirrings of a second chance but no. We said goodbye. I’ve never seen her since. Just a wisp of a moment, and how is life like this? Just little moments that should be hurricanes but are just soft, meaningless breezes. I remember walking away and feeling struck by a realization that had never occurred to me before. It’s something I’ve carried around ever since. I realized that I tended to whirl into peoples’ lives like a cyclone; I was gone before they knew what hit them. I had another friend in Baltimore, and I remember telling her that while I loved her and our friendship, I was bound to just up and disappear some day. Not by design and certainly not by choice, but it would happen. I’ve struggled so much with keeping friends and people who’ve loved me in my life in any sort of consistent way. I think it may be that I split before they find out. Surely they’ll all find out, and then they’ll just want me banished. Clearly, my drug use played a huge part in these patterns of intense intimacy, wild abandon and poof! Where’d you go, Mike? What happened?

And it felt all happening again to so many of my friends here at Penn State. I just knew in my bones they’d be distant, heartbreaking memories in so much time. I really do hate this about myself. I try to do better, but there’s never been much evidence of it.

              We were doing those last couple of weeks things you do in college. We were studying for exams in subjects which thoroughly baffled me. But, somehow, I did ok. We drank a lot. We made plans to stay in touch. I’m sure there was some LSD involved at some point. I sold my little Brown Chevette to Drew for 100 dollars. It broke my heart. I felt like I was selling a dog. What kind of monster sells a dog?

              And then wonders of wonders. I brought in the weeks of overflowing mail whether it needed it or not, and ----- hmmmm? I just got caught up in and stymied by an envelope falling out of the pile. My handwriting was on it. No. There’s just no way. It had been months. Maybe she was simply sending back some sorry-man, I-tried-but-got-high-instead note driven by months of guilt with visions of me sleeping under the mailbox all night, uninvested in everything around me except for the daily click-turn of the mailman’s key.

              I held the letter. It had the slightest heft to it. But there was still no way. These things just don’t happen like this, even in the coolest outer rings of the drug addiction inferno. I opened it to find four little glassine bags wrapped in a single sheet of lined notebook paper.

I’d been such a weird kid. I latched onto heroin addiction as a goal so early on. It was aspirational. All my heroes were junkies. And here it was. I looked at these four bags in my hand. They had stamps on them. They had brand names. I can’t remember what they were called, but it seemed so official. Official heroin. I’d never seen such a thing.

I held onto it for a few days, hidden in the back of the shelf in my closet. I’d take them down and treat them like talismans.

One night,  I opened one. I poured some of the white powder out onto a mirror. I rolled up a dollar and bent down. I crossed over. Later, I remember looking into the mirror and saying out loud that I’d never not do this if it was at all available. I’d never stop. It was everything I’d always imagined, and that times a million. I was fucked, and I was found. I’ve always been so dramatic with my out loud proclamations of my own demise.

That weekend Leslie and I did some more. Sex on LSD had been something to consider, but this single night was wholly above it. This sex was like nothing I’d ever experienced. Slow and dreamy and primal and Day-Glo and without end. Always without end. I just remember the red light coming from somewhere in my little room on what amounted to a futon. But Jesus! The love was just so amplified. Heroin gets you, or at least it got me because it makes me want to love everything so fiercely. Every person. Every little utterance from anyone outside. And to feel it to that degree, that first couple of times degree with the person I actually did love the most, was ephemeral. It was epiphanic, and ultimately, it was anodyne. The song kept playing and playing, helped by my slow reach over to hit rewind. It was just a song. Nothing special. I think I’d played it during one of my last college DJ stints from Midnight to 3 on a Friday or Saturday. I don’t know, but it was the perfect song. We listened, kissed, touched and fucked in that red light for hours and never knew what was coming. We just went.