To Lando, with affection

Never go into a small room in the basement of a bar. Nothing good happens there – ever.

However, being just barely intoxicated – the kind of buzz where you’ll do things you normally wouldn’t but where you are still able to remember whatever it is that you do – I didn’t take this advice on a recent night. And the consequences were nothing short of mind-numbing.

The setting: A college bar called “The Grotto at Capone’s,” one of those flair-riddled bars with the kind of overblown kitsch that makes you feel like you’re in your grandmother’s basement, only a lot cleaner.

The notorious Chicago gangster is well represented here. Tommy guns line the walls, pictures of Capone with a freshly lit cigar between his teeth are within eyeshot of any particular place as is, of course, his famous mug shot.

The Grotto used to be a hippy bar, full of patchouli-oiled, dred-locked hobo co-eds who would sip microbrews and sneak hits off a bowl in the bathroom.

Those were the good old days, and I wanted to return to them one last time.
The bar was already filling-up when my best friend – who happens to be old pals with the manager – led me down a short hallway, through a door with the feel and look of balsa wood and into the break room, a small space lit by two, long fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling.

The room was full of shit – cigarette butts littered the floor, various hardware implements were thrown in the corner, un-matching chairs circled around a white thrift store table.

It didn’t take long for things to get down to brass tacks.

The manager packed weed so tightly into a short, glass bowl that I thought a marijuana diamond would emerge from the ashes of the last hit.

Four semi-intoxicated men sat at the table. Something about gangster rap was uttered and then the bowl – with a skull and crossbones emblazoned on the glass (which didn’t ally my fears one bit) – made its crazed carousel from hand to hand to hand to hand.

I can’t speak for the others, as pot packs a different punch for everyone, but this is how the session went for me.

After hit No. 1: Rising euphoria.
After hit No. 2: Growing concern.
After hit No. 3: Loss of feeling of feet.
After hit No. 4: Complete panic.

For the sometimes pot puffer, smoking with professional pot-partakers is dangerous in two ways.

First, you don’t want to seem like some kind of pot pussy, so you try to keep up. And you better inhale, because they’re watching you. “Are they watching me? I think they’re watching me. Oh my god, are they watching me?”

Second…well, fuck it. You just get blown out of your mind.

The only reason we left that room was because the weed had been cashed. What wasn’t cashed was my tab, and the four of us had every intention of taking this lightheadedness to BuzzCon 4.

As we emerged from the man cave/pot den, the bar seemed to be overflowing. It seemed like every slut and douche bag multiplied themselves five times over, like Gremlins do – with the bubbles on their back that steam and froth after they get wet, eventually spewing forth a new
Gremlin from each back pod.

This was not a pleasant thought.

Neither was the fact that we were in a dimly lit basement with capacity for about 100 but was filled with 200. One staircase, 200 people, someone drops a cigarette, bar lights on fire, mob scene to escape flesh melting fire, pathetic death.

At this point my mind was reeling. I scared two women I was talking to because I told one of them they’d never get a job because corporate America was “a big slut that fucks everybody.”

They hastily moved to another table.

The air was thick and my ears had a constant furry buzz in them, like someone was ripping apart a pad of steel wool inside my eardrums. I sipped a pint of PBR and told my friend that we should go outside for some fresh air.

Outside, I made a mistake of lighting a cigarette. It seemed like it was 10 minutes, but I took probably only four puffs. Then my legs started to give way, like my torso was being held up with over-cooked angel hair pasta. I was laughing the whole time – for no reason – and reminiscing about the time I took a landscape rock from outside the “old bar” and threw it at a frat establishment across the parking lot.

Turned out I almost hit a cop in the head. My friends at the time told me to rush into a video store in the area, but I never made it. The cop came up like gangbusters and asked me “what the fuck are you doing, you asshole?” and took my information. The stars aligned, however, and he was called to more pressing matters.

So by this time, me and my pasta legs noodled our way back down to the basement.

By now, the entire scene was a sea of tube tops, popped-collars, cleavage, gelled hair and high heels. It moved and began to drive itself into a massive, whirling mess. IT whirled faster and faster, tighter and tighter, and I thought that at any moment the energy would either crack space-time and usher in some kind of demon legion or create a black hole that would suck us all to another dimension.

It was now that I swore the manager laced the pot with crystal meth or crystal light or some kind of heavy shit that has crystals in it.

I had to leave.

“Dude, I’m out,” I said to my friend, now shooting a glass of Jameson, which made me puke in me head.
“Just hold on, you’re fine,” he said.
“Dude, I’m out.”
“What the fuck? Just stay. You’re freaking out.”
“Dude, I’m out.”
“Why? Now you’re freaking me out.”
“Dude, I’m out.”

And then I was.

I made my way through the Capone mob, past the two girls and frat guys that seemed to be 10 feet tall at the time. They reminded me of oak trees.

I made it up the stairs, clutching the railing for dear life – literally – through the upstairs malay and in to the street.

I made a zig-zag pattern through the parking lot and somehow ended up – ok, purposefully ended up – at the Campus Kitchen Chinese restaurant, an establishment that specializes in mystery meat concoctions that are sucked up with reckless abandon by drunk college kids who throw food at the help and scream about the pussy their going to get later with voices that could cut through marble.

I ordered a pint of chicken lo mein and a side of crab rangoons. I paid at 1:30 a.m. and got the meal at 1:45 a.m., but it actually took 45 minutes to make the food.

As I stumbled out, I was looking for some ambiance. I like to be inspired when I’m stoned.

The WMU campus would be perfect, I thought.

So I made my way in to the heart of this fine institution – my alma mater – a place where you go when you can’t get into MSU or U of M. In the hazy, yellowness of the streetlights, I ate my rangoons and a deep blanket of calm wrapped around me. A campus cop drove by and I waved.

He didn’t wave back.

I walked over to the Honors College, where I’d spent many semesters, and looked at my image in the mirrored front door for probably 10 minutes, noting the way the rangoons greased-up my lips and admiring how well I chew my food.

The college’s dean, a man who I’d had many philosophical conversations with, would have been so proud.

The lo mein had to be eaten in a more quiet setting. The paranoia was setting in quick now. Ten freshmen drunks were making their way back to their dorm and I didn’t want to be spotted, so I found a pine tree and sat underneath it on a bed of wet wood chips.

After each bite, I looked over both my shoulders, like I was some kind of cave man looking for a horde to come over a non-existent hill in the distance. I’ve never finished a pint of lo mein, but I did that night. Even the soybean stragglers were slurped up.

Thirst overwhelmed me now, probably from the MSG. Water? No. Salt-splattered, dirt-encrusted snowbanks? Yes. I took a handful and ate it like a snow cone. I must have looked like a transient with nothing to lose.

Now to get home, about a mile and a half away.

I walked gingerly. Why is it that, when your mind is swimming in THC, that everything you want takes forever and everything you don’t want takes a few seconds?

I cut through campus, avoiding people like they had darts tipped with the AIDS virus that they intended on throwing at me. I ducked behind bushes, dumpsters, cars. A few people honked at me as they drove by, and my heart jumped against my rib cage.

One last hurdle.

I tried to time my walk across Stadium Drive so that the least amount of cars would be to my right and left, and I timed it perfectly. Running would have looked too strange, but I had to do something different. A regular gait would not do, so I chewed my fingernails as I crossed the five lanes.

Up the hill, down the hill, then up another hill, next to the football stadium. I tried to jump the fence and get on the field, where I intended to run the entire length of the gridiron for the only reason that I was stoned. Seeing the outlines on the snow of other people’s failed attempts, I gave up, imagining a broken leg, collar bone, face, and other assorted maladies.

I was now five minutes away from my flannel sheets.

Up another hill and I ended up at East Hall, overlooking the city. I screamed with all I could “I
LOVE YOU!” and scampered off, down a staircase that leads to my street. It was so packed with snow and ice – from snowboarders, residential skiers and drunk stoners like myself – that I had to schuss my way down, which was easy because my kicks have no traction. I had to hunch the whole way, like some kind of half-alive Quasimodo, and I’m sure it appeared to the sober observer that I was about to toss the recently ingested lo mein onto the dirty snow.

I made it home unscathed, however. In the bathroom, I flipped on the lights and peered into the mirror. It looked like my eyes just had an artery explode in them. Red, everywhere, like a thousand tiny blood drenched streets converging together in a twisted, non-sensical pattern drawn up by a city planner on an acid trip.

But all was well. I was safe.

I went to bed with my shoes on.

to you, my old man

You, there, alone in your dark escape
Pulled too many a string.
You, there, behind the thickness of your Vaseline eyes
In the deafness of your mind.

Waiting.

No
Going
Back.

“You didn’t hear? I’m so sorry.”
But I did.
My ear’d been on you,
I was onto you.
There.

To see you once more.
You, there, but not at all.

A white-washed wall, too clean
And you, there, just down the hall
Swaddled in a baptismal cloth
Keeping you from the chill, but not from cold
Reality.

I, here, cast a gaze at you.
My prideful one
My moxied marauder
My life’s lesson
Of how not to live.

Heart pounds and palms ache
To touch you
(sonofabitch).

You, there
Split my mind with your silence
And I, here, don’t seem to mind.

The first thing that hits you when you walk into Ministry With Community is the smell. It’s heavy and thick and you can nearly chew it after you fling open the heavy, oily doors. There’s a pow-wow of African American men, all in their fifties, in a sunfilled room near the front of the building, near the clothes washing and drying machines clothes are washed for free. They’re talking about fishing in a polluted, trash strewn stream that snakes through the downtown. They don’t catch much there, they say, except for a discarded crutch or the plastic rings that hold six packs of beer together. So they usually pack up their tackle and lie under a tree near the stream and stare at the sky. Walking toward the back of Ministry, there is a room filled with people waiting to use the three telephones available. Toothless people dial numbers written on ratty, torn shreds of paper. Their voices hiss off their gums and you can scarcely make out what they are saying but they sound adamant about everything. There is immediacy in their speech, like they are making investment deals or negotiating a land contract. They lean on the walls and look like they are sinking into the floor. In the building’s rear, near the kitchen and cafeteria – now-locked with a heavy chain and a few intimidating pad locks – the homeless sit on plastic patio furniture around round formica tables. An old, nearly bald woman leafs through an old issue of “Home Magazine,” looking intently at each page, like she is considering a big remodel of her mud room or looking to add some new appliances to her kitchen, the kind with the shiny aluminum facades that make guests ask questions and long for the same convenience and efficiency. A man with a crisp white t-shirt tucked into his beltless black jeans sits in a cubby hole on the side of the room. He’s resting his head on his arms, perched on another chair in front of him. His feet are bobbing up and down like they’re punching out Morse code. I wonder what the message might be. Next to him is a middle aged woman with long blond hair that looks to have the consistency of straw. She’s staring at the wall, with a look on her face that is confused and frightening. I’m scared of her. Her eyes are large and opened wide and she looks at me, emotionless. Her skin is ashen and puffy looking, the kind of skin that somehow coats the body of someone on heavy medications. Her nails are long and yellow and they are attached to fingers that clutch hard on a big purse with dark colored flowers on it. It looks to be brand new. For a moment, she seems to be waiting to go somewhere, and she’s getting anxious because her ride isn’t here yet. She’s not going anywhere, but I bet she thinks she is. Walking outside. A thousand generic cigarette butts litter the parking lot like dead insects. The benches out front are full of people, some with large stomachs or distended livers. They wear oversized t-shirts with the names of Ivy League colleges on them, or some Looney Tunes character or a verse from the Bible. They greet each other with handshakes, nods and swear words. “Don’t fuck with me, bitch,” says a woman to her bench mate. She’s being nice. I walk through a cloud of generic cigarette smoke as I head to my car and it smells like burning grass.

I got up this morning to the blast of my alarm clock. 5 a.m. came like a thousand daggers into my mind. Piercing, piercing. I flop out of bed – there’s no need to worry about disturbing anyone. When I get up, all that’s left is a crumpled white sheet and a pile of blankets that look like a small igloo.

I don’t make the bed. There’s no use, no point.

I flip on the recessed lights that dot the bedroom ceiling and shuffle into the bathroom. The light oozes in and I stand there, my hands pressed tightly against the sink, as I lean toward the mirror. I can barely see my face, but I know it’s there. Glued against the image of myself, I have a conversation with my face. We talk for several minutes, but nothing really gets said. It’s hard to talk to someone you barely know.

I turn on the light. It bounces off the white walls and clear plastic shower curtain and straight into my eyes, and I’m blinded for a moment. I splash some water on my face, shake a can of Aloe Vera Barbasol and dispense a large puff ball of shaving cream into my hand. And as I frame my face with it, I’m taken back decades, to a time when my father and I would share the bathroom at our tiny home on Detroit’s west side before he would go to work and I to school. He’d take the cream he didn’t use on his face and paint mine with it, the last bit he’d dab on the tip of my tiny nose and I’d laugh. I remember the scraping sound his razor made as it tore off his whiskers and how the first lines it made on his freshly creamed face looked so perfect. I felt so proud I got goose bumps on my tiny arms.

I shave in exactly 23 strokes. Six for each cheek, seven for the neck and two to clean-up my sideburns, a stroke where I pull up the skin toward the side of my face to tighten the skin, making my wrinkles disappear. I’m taken back to my father’s bathroom again, and my eyes water for the thought of it. But I wash away the tears as I rinse my face. They disappear down the drain with the creamy, whisker-speckled water.

The light shines on my head as I comb my hair back and I can see the shininess of the oil on my scalp. I’m not bald, but I will be.

I dress. Nothing fancy. Baby blue button down shirt, paisley tie, all hugged with a black suit. I slip on a pair of thin black socks and place my feet into my worn black shoes and it feels good, like I’m not wearing any shoes at all, like the hot summer evenings when I shot hoops in my driveway as a child, nicking the soles of my feet on the cracked cement driveway but loving the touch of the soft dandelions that poked out of them, drifting over my feet like a brand new paintbrush.

I walk out of my bedroom and into the large expanse of my home, a ranch in a quiet neighborhood. The click of my shoes against the hardwood floor bounces off the walls like drumsticks on a snare drum. There are no pictures, no relics or memorabilia. The walls are as flat as flat can be. There’s no cushion to them. I like it that way because I like things hard, sharp, devoid of nostalgia.

The early morning light is just now making its way through a large bay window in the dining area just off the kitchen. The milkiness is cutting through the phalanx of trees in the backyard and I walk over to the window and look out. The light is thick and almost intimidating, as if it was trying to envelop me like a huge white blood cell.

I grab the keys to my car off the kitchen counter and head for the garage. There is no particular scent to my car, as is the case in most people’s because they become a second home for most. My car is pristine, almost like I just drove it off the lot. The passenger and back seats are hard. No one’s ever sat in them.

When I open the passenger door to place my briefcase on the seat, I get an image of a child, about 7 years old, with moppy blonde hair. He’s standing next to me, playing with a backpack. I’m taking him to school and we’re late.

“C’mon, sport, this is the third time this week!,” I say out loud. I want to be angry, but he’s got my blue eyes and he melts me when I look at him. I take my hand and place it on top of his head, running my fingers through his long, thick hair, curling it around his ears so I can get a better look at him.

“When I pick you up this afternoon, we’re gonna go to the Y and play one-on-one, ok?” I say out loud.

“But dad, you’re a thousand feet tall,” I say out loud.

Then I wake from the moment at the ridiculousness of me, petting the air, being warm to the stillness of this garage phantom I created. I start to cry, but can’t bawl – even though my insides are screaming to – because my neighbor and I leave for work at the same time. I stand there, steadying myself against my spotless car, silently shrieking.

I wipe my eyes with an old Kleenex in my pocket and gather myself with a scowl. Pulling the car out of my driveway and heading down the street, I make a wrong turn toward the elementary school just down the road.

I slow the car down as I ease it to the side of the road, throw it into park and run my hand over the hard, cold seat to my right. It should be so much warmer. But then I pull my hand away quickly, like I had just been startled, and wrap it tightly around the steering wheel, twisting it until I hear the leather squeak.

I’ve just been awoken by the needley poke of tiny snowflakes bouncing off the other side of the window in my room. It’s still dark outside and the moon is playing hide-and-seek with the dark snow clouds that are moving across the sky like cars on a freeway.
I lay here and stare at the ceiling for a moment. I know all the specks in it, and I think of all the figures and objects I’ve crafted in my mind from the formations of lines and dots on the soft white tiles. I stare for a long time, longer than usual.
I close my eyes and try to fall back asleep. Sleep is a refuge to me, a temporary reprieve from my life chained to this bed, my hands and feet tied to it with tubes and wires. My body is my prison, but this bed is my torture. I want to arise like Lazarus and tear these strings off my body. I want to feel the pain as they ease out of me. I want to scan my skin and see the blood ooze out of the holes where they’d once been. I want to feel my body again and peer into a mirror, fix my hair up, curl my eyelashes, let a puffy brush tickle my cheeks and powder my face ever so gently.
A shot of moonlight pierces through the window and into my left eye. I want to grab it and feel its brightness. I want to wrap it around my body and wear it. I want to believe that it can take me someplace else. I look down at my right hand, twisted and deformed like a crab claw. I inspect my nails. They’re long and yellowed, with bits of gummy particles under them that no one cares to remove. It disgusts them. They won’t let me grab onto anything except one day at a time.
I take my good hand and move it slowly to the crown of my head, gently tracing the tiny strands of hair that poke out of my scalp, covered in crusty scabs and sores. They’re crooked and dry, like thin, mangled wires, spread far from each other from my monthly dose of chemical cocktails. I open my eyes and begin to dream in the moonlight. I’m with Bobby Trumbull in his ’66 Chevy Camaro, on the beach at Burt Lake, just a mile from the farmhouse. His uneasy hands are caressing my face and I can feel the calluses on his palms. Then he moves his hands up to my hair and they disappear in its thickness. He takes a few large clumps of hair and frames my face with them. He tells me I’m the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.
The moon is going away now, shifting over the building and out of site, leaving behind a milky light on a perfect slathering of snow that clings to the tree branches and lies silently on the rolling hills outside.