Dear Dad (6 page)

Finally, it was late enough that the married one, my drinking friend's drinking friend, had to drive home. His truck ran on propane and it farted this strong popcorn smell as he drove away. My other buddy motioned for me to go outside, back to his van, where He could sneak a toke. We ran into some guy who looked like a skipper. He had an accent. He attached himself to us. We were soon best friends, speaking of foreign lands and getting his ship ready to sail: THAT NIGHT!  But, what I want to tell you, which is so alarming, is that while frantic, enchanting words of future adventure was being spoken, I had completely blacked-out. In fact, I don't remember talking to this guy at all, let alone run into him! And, the most scary thing? Is how coherent I look in this picture: ( i'm in the middle).

I was not even there, in my mind, or at least my mental tape recorder was wet with alcohol and wasn't tracking the information to turn to memory. It was mind blowing when I saw this picture when it was developed a week later.

My friend and I decided to go to the married guy's house and sweet talk his wife into handing over the husband for some Light beer out in the wood shop. It seemed so innocent when we told her our proposal. She turned around without a word and went into the bedroom. We knew our married friend would be dead by morning, so we went outside quickly and grabbed the beer from the van. We thought a fire would be appropriate for the occasion. So, we got all the leftover wood from construction sites we had worked at and threw into a big pile and lit it. We kept throwing things on the fire. The flames got so big that we were all standing there, nervously silent with a million thoughts racing about which safety measures to use first. I decided to save the party and I jumped into a coffin-shaped box. The fire got bigger and hissed violently around my ears. I wasn't afraid. I wanted that picture, that immortalized me that Summer and made me the Blue-Collar Hero!

DRUNK ON YESTERDAY’S DREAMS

I used to walk down to the little neighborhood park and swing on the swingset and look out towards the bay and the land on the other side. I had a light feeling in my stomach that fueled my hunger of ambition. There wasn’t a hint of discomfort, even if the weather was chilled. Oblivious of the weather touching my body like a ghost in a mansion, I contemplated a life extraordinary.

It was a time that my friends were packing and leaving for college or the more adventurous, hitchhiking, backpacking, and flying to Europe. I wasn’t cool enough to know the ones that flew to Europe, but I assumed they made a show of whatever they did with a pompous and tacky air of false dignity.

I swung higher towards the stars and when a jet flew over, blinking its little red and white lights like the lights from It’s A Small World at Disneyland, I followed the jet in my mind and landed in London, Paris and Tokyo. I didn’t know about Dubai yet, but it surely would have been at the top of the list. The air was like a sauna and there was perfume and money mingling from the international Jet Setters of mystery. Men wore suits ironed so flat and women dangled precious stones like dumbbells. In my mind, I was at any airport arriving or leaving and waving to the onlookers as if in a parade. My imagination swung with me on the swings as if I were stoned and skipping school, but it was my life and it was now beginning without my parents barking Yes, No, Yes! . . .which equaled: NO!

The trials of life began too fast and I found myself living paycheck to paycheck, but I still had an air of rebellion that propelled me to walk out of jobs as easy as walking out of colleges. I wasn’t scared of consequences. Life was a big game show of neon shoots and ladders and I wasn’t going to assess the damage until I was at least forty.

Pretty soon, the daring characters of my Romantic youth became beggars, bums and druggies. I was chasing a pipe dream while digging a shallow grave. I used all my free-passes and my tank was on empty. I was watching myself as if already dead, walking into AA where incessant smokers added to the brown hue of their lungs and the walls, where infamous mottos and cliches reminded the distraught how to “Live life on life’s terms.” Screw this. Let’s go back out there and chase James Dean’s exhaust and take a few huffs as well to get high. Let’s just remember to take Vitamin B before bedtime. Things will change.

I remember tackling my Ego and my personality split into two and I was yelling at myself. I was sleeping somewhere I didn’t recognize. The walls were gray and telling from the sound of my voice bouncing back to me, the walls were feet thick. A Deputy Sheriff unlocked a huge metal door and handed me a yellow letter. The word that stood out was “restrained”. My Ego was holding on with excuses and denial. I looked down and my pants were Orange. The next day I was released into a windy world where crows flew overhead as I walked back to town. I found shelter out at the state park in an old Officer's cabin and rolled out a mummy bag I had just bought for five bucks. I lit a candle in the middle of the wood floor and hoped for a better life.

INSIDE A PHOTO BOOTH

It was Winter in Seattle and nothing was happening, except for a rock show I was too drunk to get into. I thought of my resources in the immediate vicinity and came up with a photo booth. How many couples posed in here, with their smug, protected, domestic bliss of courtship? I felt alone, with nothing but an imagination struggling to entertain it's inebriated, somber host. The great Al Pacino and Robert Deniro would just shoot up this place and head off to some after hours party to be celebrated for shooting up the place.

So, I summoned all my powers and sat in the photo booth and closed my eyes for a minute. My thoughts headed into the show, where my friends were probably stage-diving by now. I opened my eyes and popped in the fifty cents and closed the curtain, and lo and behold my countenance was that of the great Deniro/Pacino spirit! If you don't have the Deniro/Pacino spirit, I suggest you get one. I got mine meditating in a Thousand Days of Sodom. . . or was that Sardine?!

PART THREE

After being selfish and crazy for awhile, I delved into solitude and the sweet subtleties of sipping tea in the evenings and staying sober. There was one person left in my circle of friends that was not self-destructing or raising a family. Haas was a travel writer who I had met at the local gym. He was soft spoken and had a depth of wisdom that was rare for a man his age, or any age. I looked forward to seeing him and we played tennis once a week in the Summer and watched the boats floating in the bay from his cabin on the beach.

             
He was in-between writing & research jobs, which took him all over the world, to offer me a surprise trip to South Beach, Miami. I hadn’t traveled for years and was burnt out from work and gladly accepted.

CUBAN CASH

My great friend, the late Haas Mroue, who penned "Beirut Seizures", a very popular poetry book around the UC Berkely scene, and I flew to South Beach, Miami, to bask on the white sand beaches and to drink the little white styrofoam cups of sweet, very strong Cuban coffee. Parts of Miami seem strangely subdued and rundown, but on the strip near the beach there are the bikini girls and the Lamborghinis driven by big black rappers from NYC. The homeless are also sprinkled into the mix and mostly add an eccentric flair. There was one large Jamaican looking guy who had white sand stuck to the side of his face, probably from sleeping on the beach, which wouldn't be a bad homeless shelter at night. I could see a designated area lined with Tiki-torches and a miniature bar of Nightrain and Mad dog bottles and Old English 800 - In a perfect homeless world, right?

One guy, in particular was a total character. He looked like a skinny Cuban Johnny Cash. He had a decorated dog that sat on the handlebars. The dog had figurines riding along on his back, probably Cuban Voodoo dolls that warded off the other, not so friendly, homeless people. One man walked past Haas and I and screamed behind himself at the top of his lungs "LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!!" of course there was no one there, it was his tormenting hallucinations that probably followed him endlessly into a sleepless sordid night. Anyways, Cuban Cash was our man. He deserved my dollar that was sitting alone in my wallet. If I had more, I would have emptied my wallet into his hands or into his dog's mouth!

OLD SCHOOL MIAMI

It's Old School South Beach, filled with new money. This picture was taken with an old Kodak. The colors are rich and you can almost see the branches moving. It's hot and the breeze is the only thing saving the air from being stifling sauna-like. Restaurants have little air-conditioning misters that act like sprinklers, that spray out this fine vapor onto the eating patrons. There are exotic girls lost in thought, or lost in space, a space filled with the chaos of a drug-induced party, the dance of ecstasy, where everybody gets lost in a sea of sweating bodies. There's Plantains being seared with butter in the kitchens and there is Cuban coffee in little white cups. White girls down here only want dark boys: "If they know how to dance, they know how to F**K" they would say. So, I stayed in the hotel and watched TV.