The following is an excerpt from Masterson’s upcoming novel, Paying Rent in the Tower of Bliss & Courage:
1. M e a n d C h a r l e s B .
I first began reading Charles Bukowski right around the same time I was falling off the earth. Hearing that he’d lived a tragic, tortured existence made me all the more eager to get involved with his books, to read of his treacherously long, strange days moonlighting at the U.S Post Office – his part-time gig when not getting down his raging words that would come to engulf a nation. How peculiar it must have been for him to have had such a wide array of untamed characters show up at his residence: seasoned drifters from far away presenting themselves at his doorstep, posing as fans, assorted folks driving through who thought they’d just pop by.
These constant ambushes occurring because the youth of America at this time sensed Bukowski represented a generation’s rebellious yet modern view of society. He was only writing what was in his heart and suddenly he’s some spokesman for mankind, partaking in what by this time had become daily involvement in an unwanted celebrity pseudo side-show; some reward for being a gutsy unique storyteller, a true-to-life prose-conjuror of raging words.
Poor guy, dodging compliments from illiterates who excitedly said they treasured his words, though when tested, clearly had read none, unable to recite line one from any of Bukowski’s works; these pointless people assembling around his noble bungalow, peering in windows to maybe catch a view of an unparalleled writer enjoying a beer and a cheese sandwich. Ah, the human race strikes again.
None of this made any sense to him or his life partner Linda, who’d often be keeping watch at her post, ‘Selective Security Sifting Mode’ (I imagined this role for her), fielding requests from the front door, hollering to Chuck, who’d be off hiding in the kitchen,
“You have visitors, Shakespeare,” but ultimately telling most of them to take a hike and come back another decade. “It’s not that he doesn’t love the admiration, guys, but, honestly…he’s too drunk off his ass today to really…he wouldn’t want you to be disillusioned, is all.” An outright lie, she knew her better half couldn’t give a shit what they thought, but often, Linda had to play the protective role. Swinging a broom to shoe them away, she said just out of range,
“So long, hippy parasites; crawl away like the cockroaches that you are.” They hopped back in their hippy-sippy lovin’ van and turned the car radio on as loud as it would possibly go. “We met the master, dude!” all high-fiving one another in delight. The Kerou-wackos scurried off, hustled up more drugs, called it a day, and forgot where old man Bukowski lived altogether.
This was the 60’s, man.
Recently, I’ve had my own share of poignant moments and bewildering escapades in Los Angeles, reason enough to draw comparisons between myself and the horse-race-gambling, portlier, slightly more successful Charles Bukowski. Something I don’t recall him being famous for was writing bum checks to bookstores and cabbing it to second hand haunts to get what cash he could for them: that’s been my occupation. His books always brought in a favourable bounty at the establishments I slithered into. Man, they got some sweet deal off of me. I’m guessing the bookshop owner’s greed overshadowed his moral ground. Hey, who could fault him? My desperation, racing blindly through intersections with stolen words, the soon to be profitable works of literature sitting pretty in my accredited accomplice – a soiled threadbare sack; and if the sweat on the brow and the holes in my shoes weren’t a dead giveaway, I don’t know what was. I must have been a some real sad sight. Maybe if I’d schlepped less, showered that week, presented less of a Neanderthal-like presence, maybe then I could have kept up a better face for my narcotic fun-run, chockfull of good times I told myself I was having. On a few occasions, I’m sure I handed over the crumpled receipt given to me an hour earlier from the three-storey-high, unsuspecting book conglomerate not yet tipped off to the literary mad genius scam I believed so foolproof, such clever creativity…inevitably my demise. They must have been kicking themselves having trusted me and my post-dated, personal out-of-province checks, my bank account a less than zero affair. I can laugh about it now, a little.
After a spell I gave up any further attempts at acting cavalier and nonchalant, just dumping the books from the satchel, scattering them feverishly on the counter, the way one might brandish a sour attitude, or a gun in a hurried frenzy, “I’m in kind of a rush. You know how it is…whatever you think is fair.”
The similarities crossed over into the bizarre, Bukowskally-speaking, as during one of my most recent stints at a recovery rehab institution, I learned that the distinguished address of 360 South Westlake Boulevard – where I called home for a grand total of nine days – had actually been occupied by the eminent author many years earlier, though at this moment was housing many non-writers and felonious finger-painters. Seems it had been magically transformed into a chirpy dwelling called The Royal Palms Center, though the furthest thing from some balmy, palm-desert-hallowed-ground the name might conjure up.
I was the clock watcher, needing the hours and days to pass quicker than usual so I could get out of there. Fidgeting and depleted, up at 4 A.M on account of not being able to sleep from the all too familiar withdrawal game, perched out there on the rusty blackened fire escape, a solitary spot I discovered up at the fifth floor window, to rock back and forth, rattle and hum while considering various game plans that weren’t working. Passing prayers and fleeting thoughts flew across my mental dashboard, devoted mostly to just how I’d ended up in such a demoralising house. These prayers and thoughts I was privileged to own, as most else was sold or misplaced. “How did I land here? What am I going to do when I get out? I could be a cab driver. I could be good at that…be my own boss, meet people, good tips.” I mumbled to myself, considering various occupations I’d not yet taken a stab at, in an attempt to diminish and make light of this cold, illogical end-of-the-line scenario.
Was this my bottom? Did I have more saved in a reserve tank somewhere to go on another run? Could I control it better next time? I had no way of knowing.
I looked forward to crawling out to that fifth floor fire-escape, to receive my dose of sanity, an all too sobering symmetry, the twisted station of silence apart from the other court-ordered drug savages; them, a constant static with buzzing backward agendas, having to put up with their irritating milling about, rummaging amongst each other’s diseased minds that sickened me to see, feel and regrettably be a part of my home team for the time.
Addicts don’t get breaks, it seems. Not for fucking long anyway.
Directly below, a family dealing in the brisk sale of crack cocaine fiendishly working all hours: a spiffy, finely tuned operation taking place around the clock, a freakish after-hours carnival, night after night, ominous, never ceasing, not that I saw anyway. It inspired dread but amazed me, much the same way A Clockwork Orange did as a kid; decadent and intriguing, frightening and dangerous, but strangely, not scaring me off the way it should have.
All sorts of shoppers would drive up in search; high-end, slick subterranean appendectomies to broken-down rusty lime-green Gremlins hobbling relentlessly on their last legs, callous bug-eyed drivers in need, pushing poor jalopies beyond their own wake. Colonel Sanchez (I named him) and his chain gang of feisty fools chattered away in foreign tongues while keeping tiny bindles tucked away in their orifices, awaiting the substance seekers to show up and purchase their goods. They’d know precisely when to step open the gate and step into the spotlight from the graffiti-strewn apartment complex, and rapidly conduct their openly orchestrated drug shuffle. Every actor prepared to play their roles exactly as rehearsed. There should’ve been a titanic-sized flashing neon sign that said *ONE STOP SHOPPING* TRI ‘N SAVE*
That would’ve been funny.
“Yo, dog, what you doing watching us out here every night? Why don’t you get your cracker white ass down here to the party?”
The grand pursuit is going on as we speak, bleeding waterfalls spilling creepy shadows into our cities, towns and streets across this limitless land of heartbreaking unfulfilled need, the devil’s agents always advertising, accepting fresh asinine applicants, publicly, unashamed, requiring participants for the alluring fury and hunger to survive – an underworld complete with its own twisted primitive set of rules – murky manners, fabricated protocol, things you just don’t do, and ways in which to manipulate the team and yourself…like in any other world, be it under or above ground. There’s no jubilation here people, enslavement gets to be a cheery upper, served encrusted and awkward. Cheating Death is one thing – to repeatedly laugh in his face, steal his lunch money and perform oedipal acts with his mother is another story.
Anything went down.
Occasionally, a squad car would pass by a few streets over and shine its disquieting spot light down the alley. “Buddha!” or whatever the code word was for that special night-shift was screamed out by a guy whose job it was to keep watch and everyone would scatter like crazed centipedes. I’d stretch my neck out, further dangling over the outside landing, inhaling the scent of the Spanish spider animals scurrying to their concealed cracks, who’d reappear minutes later to continue business as usual. Different worlds co-existing dangerously close, me, too infatuated, too fucking fascinated with my proximity to the psychotic prowling, no one paying me much mind, mostly. It’s scary and speaks of uncaring, the trifling inhumane kind, to close ones eyes when others around them are losing theirs, sinking, spiralling south of eye level to a suffocating soil, and me unable to mushroom in a much trounced upon earth; nobody growing with me here at the birds-eye view, deserted and unfed, along with the sweet and sweaty whores lacking manners, even though they turned out to be amazingly supportive spellers when the time came. I knew this because I’d seek out their wisdom, shouting down the occasional crossword query.
“Excuse me there ladies, um, ten letter word for ‘Used in alloys, electrodes and catalysts’?”
“Try M-O-L-Y-B-D-E-N-U-M,” one of the girls shouted up to me matter of factly.
“You don’t say?” I tried fitting it in the puzzle and was instantly amazed that she was bang right on. “Holy geez, it fits. Way to go ladies. Thanks.”
“Gladys, you always had a knack with that Periodic Table of Elements stuff. Shit, you’re in the wrong biz, doll!” They all laughed like hyenas in the alley up the way while I jotted down impressions of the scene in my notebook, paying enough attention to film it all in my mind. We worked out a system where if they helped me complete the damn thing, I would toss down a dollar or two, which they promised would go towards an academic fund, just in case the sex-for-money thing didn’t pan out liked they’d hoped, they could saunter over the local community college. Crosswords would remind me of mom, of her and I sitting in the den figuring them out, safe from what lay beyond the front steps of her house: more of life’s frustrations.
Once I snuck out to my perch, it was hard to not watch the whole scenario. I’d catch Colonel Sanchez and his compadres counting out crumpled American bills, elephantitus-like wads that must have been in the thousands. Had this always been The Family Business? Just how did they fall into this profession anyway? Were they putting their kids through expensive private schools? Needing to keep up appearances? In an attempt to connect with one of the little hoppers, one night I took hold of that rusty fire-escape ladder and climbed down there, nearly breaking my neck, ignoring for the moment the punishment the counselors would dream up for me if they caught me off grounds.
I jumped down off the last rung of the ladder somehow twisting my ankle, not yet used to the sleepytime meds they were giving me to help get over the dope sickness. I took a seat at the curb, lit up a cigarette and spoke. “I remember back when I was your age, my father was working as a copy editor at Spitzer, Mills & Bates.”
“Yeah, my dad runs a gang and he’s going to rip your head off, mutha fucker. Gimme your cash and your car keys, man.”
“Uh, I don’t have a vehicle, young fella; you see, home for me now is in this rehab. I’m the guy 5 floors up, you see me all the time. I thought maybe I’d check out the scene you got going and…” I’m rudely interrupted. “Get the fuck out of here, Narc.”
I was no good to him or his family that began to threateningly assemble around me, so I quickly climbed back onto the fire-escape ladder like a ring-tailed lemur escaping from a zookeeper and made my way back up to my balcony where it was mostly safe.
Melodic echoes bounced off the concrete minefield, the soulful sounds of Isaac Hayes was the soundtrack of the night that made its way over from a boom box somewhere, a faded blackboard of L.A ethics. Pointless poetry filled my head sometimes…words flew around that I hoped could help make sense of the fragmented man-child I now was. A voyage of the damned, the always intact unyielding dawn, my carousel of the macabre holding firm, cinematic cysts brewing in me for what’s seemed like forever, what’s infected my subpar moral infrastructure, a carnival in need of repair, the windswept boulevard needing a good hosing down. I will tell all, as I am told I’m allowed no secrets in this purge pot, this reeling and revealing revelation in and of
C o m i n g C l e a n .
*
2. R e v e a l i n g F l u i d s
I recall sitting in Larry’s office, a windowless room with too much brown, staring at him juggling my urine sample, and me, mesmerized, forced to sit and stare at it transitioning into a rainbow of opaque colours, yellow to blue, swishing back and forth in this tiny vial, the guilty verdict seconds away. Seemingly pleased with his findings, a dwarfish smirk made its way onto his face as if he’d found a treasure chest of gold coins, or had discovered pants that fit. He said my sample was positive which didn’t sound too bad at all, but in fact represented an unfair and disagreeable result. Before the sad uninspiring diagnosis sealed my fate, I had a few good responses ready. “That can’t be my specimen.” “I’d like a re-count, please,” and, “What’s in urine, really?” But it took far less energy to just fess up.
As a rule, it’s best to abstain from using during one’s holiday in a drug treatment facility even though there are a surprising number of ways to procure the exact substances which landed your ass there in the first place. Ah, sweet irony. Scoring a little pick me up, ingesting something to make one feel mellow or embalmed, or maybe something to quicken the mad mind, something spicy; just to take the edge off for a time would sure smooth out the journey, but, and this is a biggy, they now seem to have devised this nifty, yet irksome, rapid-result number called a Drug Testing Kit. There seems to be no suitable method for avoiding this new hi-tech random testing that they’ve assembled in such residences, as it’s just that: random, like some kind of threatening kryptonite set on ready to subdue the powers of Super Addicts.
Good old head-counselor Larry buzzed an underling to assist with my exit. “Please gather Mr. Hollywood’s belongings from the Bukowski suite,” so everyone outside his office could hear. Then, brightly over the intercom he announced, “Attention, attention: Royal Palms residents. It’s the kid’s last day here so don’t forget to say toodle-loo.” I had nowhere to go and no game plan. I figured it would get dealt with, later on and by someone else.
I was kind of glad to be getting out of there, to tell you the truth. It ended up being a lot more work than I’d planned, having to jet out the back alley to score then sprint back quick enough to keep the sobriety-facade up. I’d done my time in there (kind of) and was annoyed and frustrated, having sweated my ass off there day after day in the bowels of that harsh and crusty uninspiring dunk tank. What actually came to mind as Old Larry was monkeying around with my bodily fluids was the time I thought my old girlfriend was pregnant and we had to go to the Drug Store (a funny name, that). We bought this instantly-earth-shattering-tell-tale packet: if it turned blue we were good to go and off the stork’s hook; if it turned yellow, well, then we had to make a heavy decision or start squirreling away money for a college fund.
He certainly was a character though – a genius in training who thought I was there only to make his life hard and cause dissention in the ranks with my self-deprecating hilarity, sarcasm and general hi-jinx. I’m guessing a good deal of the hostility he harboured towards me was from believing that I was the terrible so and so throwing a monkey wrench into his grand plan for the place. See, he imagined himself to be a bit of a King and we – I guess – were his loyal subjects toiling away, slaves and servants in his kingdom. At any rate, he wasn’t too sorry to see me go, the same mustachioed devil that barked these exhaustive lines at each morning meeting moments before we began chores and tasks for the day: “Losers do what they want to do. Winners do what they have to do.” I more often than not wasn’t listening as I was out the back door busy not being a winner. From what I could surmise, his public addresses were the best time to sneak out the building, down the alley to score from the closest dealer while everyone else was busy paying strict attention how best to not end up like me. Larry mentioned I was, “Insufficiently committed to a course of action that would be required to remove substances from my lifestyle.” Powerless to tell if he was making fun of the manner in which I spoke, I responded by sharing with him – and the group – that, he was, “Communicatively-challenged with an accent too tough to pin down and a scent unbearable to endure.” I even caught him a couple times digging the aroma of his watchband when he thought no one was looking, a true sign of senility in my books.
It wasn’t all dreary. There were some fiendishly sweet moments, like when I’d bring back hookers during visiting hours, just to hang out with of course, and with each instance confessing that it was in fact my own personal mom who was accompanying me up to my room. Why those were the moms I clung to, who I seemed to feel a particular kinship with, I can’t say. I knew that I liked and respected the sweet working girls stinking of disproportionate self-imagery and tequila, ingesting treats and turning tricks up the way behind the facility at below-basement-bargain-prices. For one thing, they weren’t lying about who they were. “Mom’s in the program, she’s kind of been on relapse mode, lately,” sharing that kind of knowing look with Sunil, one of the more sympathetic on-duty guards. He’d been clean and sober for about 10 years thanks to Narcotics Anonymous and had worked at the place since he completed the Royal Palms program. I liked to think we were both men of the world, men who understand how such delicate issues have a way of working themselves out. Sunil the security guy permitted our conjugal-crossword-visits until a less compassionate fellow took over Sunil’s shift and found me and female guest in my room, not doing the crossword. They were supposed to be licensed though I suspect they were not, those hypothetical counselors, original guests themselves on the fruitless freak ship, too frightened to get out there and play ball in real the world, just on a different type of drowning vessel I guess, but who was I to judge?
I’m under the impression (delusion?) the other guys in the rehab came to enjoy my cutting remarks and predictable rebel rousing. True, there may have been times when my stratagems and flagrant behavior served to hurt only me, but I believed myself cunning, an innovative hands-on artist convinced there were no telephone calls from TV agents and personal managers only because the front desk chowderheads knew not how to work the switchboard properly, and even then, they wouldn’t put them through, non-disclosure agreement, privacy rules and all. I was awarded the nickname ‘Mr. Crafty’ by many staff there, but was also told to not take it as a compliment. I’m sure they’d still roll out the nurturing and hospitable carpet for me to vacuum again in a heartbeat, if somewhere down the line I made up my mind to buckle down.
*
3. A n y b o d y H o m e ?
The boy appears to be deaf to her criticisms, so the mother repeats them over and over again.
What she doesn’t realize is that her son is paying very close attention. He grows up feeling there is something inherently wrong with him. It’s not his actions that are unacceptable to his mother; it’s his very being.
So this is the arena where my dear Mother and I are re-connecting, her grand old house in Lindsay, Ontario. I’m allowed to live on the Glass Menagerie stage, that is, as long as I don’t rearrange her meticulously placed items from their precious spaces. Everything must be just so, right down to the fragile Tetley Tea miniatures and what I imagine to be a snug and comfortable afghan that I’d love to throw over me during allotted TV time, but alas, is only a prop for show. There’s a litany of crumbs to be picked up along with the predictable, unavoidable onslaught of leaves to be raked amongst skeletal trees, coupled with an assemblance of more than 100 years of surviving life we’ve managed to pull together here on planet earth.
We share my Dad, his death, also her second husband most recently taken from her, both tragic, sudden and devastating…the latter more so for her, as my assigned step monster and I were far from fond of one another. There’s her two strokes, her mysterious Multiple Sclerosis thing that no physician can quite make out what to do with, and of course my frustrations and failures, battles mostly lost out there in larger-than-life cities that’ve swallowed me whole. It breaks her heart, she says, to see me struggle. We also share her Lorazapam but I’m praying my dear mother thinks the missing pills are the work of a tooth fairy, some foreboding fly-by-night-figure with weathered wings who can’t keep track of what cargo she’s supposed to pick up and what proper legal tender to leave behind for us molar-less humans. Maybe I could talk this impish pixie into taking me with her, exchange and swap me leaving in my place a kind of changeling? Creepy, yes, but I’d like to think I’m open to change. Regardless, she doesn’t care much either way as long as she gets a sweet deal for the pills when she gets home to her corrupt cloud. I could be wrong. I’m just hoping she doesn’t organize a proper Law & Order-like investigation – my mom, not the hopped-up fairy-duster with wings who pawns her wands and wares – mother has her own fantastical explanation for how things operate here on planet earth. We are both trapped in this portrait of unhappiness and illusion and we both have our own ways of coping. So, this is where we’ll repair, or at least, attempt to.
They think she may also have Cancer so they keep removing sections of her skin, making her look as though she’s been picking and scratching at scabs on her face like a crazed meth addict, but they say it’s a necessary process. I feel awful for her because I know how self-conscious it makes her feel. It’s more than a little unnerving, but I think I’m getting used to it. They thought I had Hepatitis-C when I got back from California – another reason to eject myself from the pricey American medical matrix I couldn’t afford – but luckily, they also said that I’m one of the freak cases where the bad blood swimming around in me just kind of vanished. It hasn’t shown-up on any of the latest tests so I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Also, none of the pens work here. (She holds on to the unusable ones, for what?) I feel a spooky ironic overtone that flows un-fluidly along with the dozens of clocks tick-tocking away in my mother’s kingdom, marking time in this dungeon of threadbare opulence, clearly not mine for thousands of hard-earned reasons, all belonging to her. I hear the cuckoo clock chime, “Not mine, not mine, not mine…”
After zoning out in front of the television for must be an entire afternoon, an intense numbing boredom comes on coupled with hot and cold flashes, a soul-curdling recipe. I get the feeling that I’m even more alone in the house than usual, therefore free to forage with ease as opposed to when my mother is nearby keeping close watch, so I run frenzied into the bathroom, open the medicine cabinet to hunt for helpful drugs of any kind. To come across only Women’s A.M and P.M One-a-Day Vitamins is a sorry tale, but I down some. I also discover chewable Vitamin C and Evening Primrose Oil, so I ingest a large quantity – William Burroughs quantity – knowing full well this’ll do little else than arouse a more fragrant scent and jaundiced colouring at my next outing at the urination troughs. The buzzing serenity of fortified bone structure is not the desired effect, but the evening in evening primrose sure makes it sound calming, like some sort of valiumy-valerian-licorice-root-like-soother, so I pop those puppies too. Tonight, I eat you all.
Bingo! I come across something that seems to be prescribed by a Doctor. This could be good: Medroxy-progesterone and Conjugated Estrogens, though after a quick glance in the DSM reference guide, I learn this omelette of witchly womanhood won’t help the likes of me. Suddenly I feel faint and imagine being absorbed onto a drafty 70’s game show soundstage – a confusing affair, this unwanted Logan’s Run-like television portal. A kaleidoscope of colours dance around me, coming with it a Chuck Woolery-ish game-show host-type guy who introduces himself by thumping me senseless over the head with an enormous metallic microphone. I’m now orbiting Planet Distraught – a scant galaxy away from my new home, Planet Bizarro, a Starsky and Hutch shoulder-roll over from Planet Abyss, ghostly ravines most are lucky to avoid in their lives. My fears sometime speak to me. Today they mention in passing that I am the void inside a volcano, not unlike Mars, with all its mysterious craters and hills.
Oh oh, she’s hunted me down. I hear Mom doing her moccasin shuffle on the other side of the door. A frightful and twisted unglam prêt-a-porter we’ve stumbled upon here. “What are you doing in there?” she queries.
Realizing I’ve picked the booby prize of pills behind the glass, and not having the interest to stick around and accept whatever the drab parting prize is, I carefully position the tiny bottles back in the cabinet behind the sliding mirror. I open the bathroom door, obey my mopey mood and respond, “Nothing mom. Why are you always on me?” while slinking past her into the living room where the 100-year-old Steinway baby-grand piano sits – an amazing piece of handiwork: brilliant, kind of deeply rich maroon, mahogany maybe, inherited from my grandmother’s old house, the piano I learned on atop a hardwood floor which made the perfect beast resonate wonderfully with an echo of ages. I’ve always felt fortunate, how I was introduced to the passions of such an eclectic range of music: everything from Debussy’s Clair de lune, Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre, to Vince Guaraldi’s Charlie Brown jazz numbers, to pop song singles by Christopher Cross, Toto and yes, Hall & Oates.
Mom studied at the Royal Conservatory as a kid, her Rosedale values and upbringing, now a cruel template, but thank god, she’s managed to save all this wonderful timeworn sheet music, not to mention plenty of hardly-played classic vinyl albums for me to pick through.
The rare instrument hasn’t been played much in years, still there’s the familiar scent of genuine lemon oil, as mom still manages to look after it so it doesn’t crack and age prematurely. The strokes and MS have left my mother’s motor skills fragmented and discombobulated. Maybe she’s a little jealous, as I still have a say in how my left hand glides across the keys, playing tunes she once performed with one hand tied behind her back. She tears up when I play this beautiful monster that haunts both of us daily for many reasons, though I’m pretty sure I’d just be guessing at what they are.
I used to get Mom to sit at this piano and play popular songs I wanted to learn. These were magical times. I’d put my hands on hers and say, “Go” and “Again,” then, “Is that it?” It was another world, how deciphering the hidden meanings of the notes, clefs or time signatures on the page, too impatient to sit through proper lessons, I learnt by listening. Blessed with an uncanny musical ear, a unique gift of improvisation and an aptitude to figure out just about any song, my style of self-soothing, suspended chord clusters and dreamy yet sorrowful minor nines, my salvation at times. To live vehemently and vicariously through the resonating connected strings, the pedals, note by note, all of it and me, the voracious skimmer, making the music my own, as it was all I’d have left after spending all that I was. I cherish this big old crazy box of wood. “One day you will be mine,” I whisper to it.
Someday, my poor fatigued mother will pass on and it will be my turn to read a horrifically-sappy eulogy at her funeral, a W.H Auden poem I’ll cut, paste and partially plagiarize – alongside my two cents. I foresee some rotten hazy winter afternoon drizzling sewage at some cemetery named St. John Wartz on the Hill, like it was at my Grandmother’s burial, that day when those pall-bearing strangers so callously did their job. Standing there, I stood quivering, squeezing my Mom’s hand so tightly, almost breaking it, these seconds between us…clenching on to her, needing her to offer up something, maybe answers. I became angry and resentful that she didn’t have the goods to make those minutes disappear. Christ, anything would have helped sooth while Granny slipped further away from me, the coffin gaining speed, lower and lower in the ground. That was the moment I knew there’d be no returning to that house down on Alvin Avenue around the corner from that ornamental parkette, near the schoolyard with its pure nostalgic sounds and my tennis courts that were all ease and innocence; those weekend sleepovers, permission to indulge in Earl Grey tea and stay up late, sometimes viewing slides from her world travels when she was younger, that was the greatest: safe and cared for. The gentlewoman who was all grace and under whose loving aegis I’d first experienced cards – double solitaire, and bridge as mysterious to me now as it was then. She was active in church, lawn bowling and thinking of others first. I like to imagine her as just away, off in Belgium, maybe Geneva, some exotic, mystical spot representing Canada at an Anglo-Saxon cuisine conference or playing in some prestigious international bridge tournament that’s gone into triple overtime. Incapable of unkindness, she is well liked and needed elsewhere for now. Some governing card council has to hold on to her, temporarily. She has information. Knows important stuff, like, exactly how to set a pristine, profoundly welcoming table, knows where everything and everyone should go. How to exquisitely prepare and wheel out the cut-up celery and carrot sticks and the green olives with the things in them. And of course those Triscuits and Turtles Chocolate treats that have played a role in my life ever since. She had a way of understanding me with just a look, and also had the best sense of humour I’ve ever met in anyone her age. So, I’ll do my best to be mature and let others appreciate and enjoy her for a while.
*
Great. Mom has left me another list. “Alright, I said I’d get to it.” Amidst her obsession with the daily rituals that I myself would prefer to pass on, I will do my best to placate. I’ve got to get out there, before the terrible winter weather returns. Again, both front and backyard need tending to: seemingly never ending amidst some desperately needed humour. I’m sure if she could, she’d find a way to keep a tally of me failing to attain the made-up global leafage accumulation measure, some proper per-square-capita-per-day of leaf luggage I fall short of; seems it’s never enough, as the leaves fall faster than I can stuff them into the goddamn Hefty bags. Out of breath, I suggest to Mom we play Beat the Clock and ask her to keep time – how long it takes me to gather all the leaves and shoot the lot of them onto the neighbour’s lawn while she rifles through her purse for medication. Mother doesn’t find this game funny. This, I can tell, as she begins breathing heavier, shaking her head back and forth. So, I up the stakes, almost knocking her over with an unexpected bonus round question in my best Howard Cosell voice, “This is the last match of the day. You can have what’s behind Garage Door Number 1 or settle up and pay off your son’s accumulated allowance for the last fifteen years.” Weighing her options, she opts to head back in the house to hunt down a calculator, I assume. I yell out an offer to paint the entire house if she can pull an albatross, a prescription pad and a chess board out of her ass. Purse…I meant purse. She’s back in the house going through her wicker bag as I bounce into the garage, remorseful, in that I really meant to propose that other crazy Monty Hall contest, Let’s Make A Deal. I don’t think it would’ve made much difference. The triple espresso latte with twelve sugars I made for myself earlier is peaking in me. I’m at my emotional zenith and seem to be in a feisty, playful mode as I bounce into the garage and happen to come across enough material to construct a flag from a neighbour’s tossed-out-wooden-leg and an old white pillowcase lying mockingly amidst the hammer and nails area – though may’ve been a handkerchief for someone with Gigantism. I tie the cloth to the wooden leg and with a black marker, write S U R R E N D E R on it and retreat behind the flimsy partition.
This surrender scene with the flag I find myself wrapped up in reminds me of that brief stint in the All-Addicted, Inner City, Non-Traveling All-Stars at that Royal Palms Rehabilitation Center (Bukowski’s old digs). I was forced to sing in this recovery choir:
“We are the soldiers in the army, we had to fight, although we had to cry,
we had to hold up the blood-stained banners…we had to hold ‘em up until we died…”
or pretty close to that. A soothing ditty I can assure you, and yes, it’s been a battlefield. It never fails though, when one is forced to sing anything there will be no sincerity, no passion. In an attempt to get on the choirmaster’s good side, I joked with him that I have some experience playing the triangle of self-obsession, that maybe he could keep me in mind if they have an addict orchestra I could suit up with, but the comment did nothing more than make the guy mad and doubt my level of dedication and sincerity.
Rest time was a luxury no-no at the Royal Palms. You were never allowed to just hang out in your room and stay in bed if you felt like it, and you couldn’t talk back or offer excuses to the higher-ups in charge or you’d get what little privileges you had revoked. “Don’t think you can try that crap on me, mister. You know how I can tell if an addict is lying? His lips are moving.” Not entirely true. In retrospect, my lips have spent all kinds of time moving without anything close to a lie coming out of it…not for days in a row or anything; I’m just saying it wasn’t terribly kind for the staff to say it was an absolute.
It wasn’t enough we were up at 6:00 A.M scrubbing repulsive toilets and lime-entrenched shower stalls, there was still the herculean task of cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner with the full-time kitchen staff for a couple hundred loud, mostly ungrateful, insensitive guys. The folks in charge still expected us all to be fresh and chipper, alert for group sessions or if the need came to bellow passionately in that pointless choir. Were they trying to kill us I wonder? We were supposed to have our parts down, memorized and solid, so when it came time to do step up and perform an absurd solo, you didn’t make the whole damn group look lazy or inept or God forbid, even worse – unmusical.
Phone calls were attempted by me, dialing out on a scuzzy Pacific Bell rotary-dial phone in the cafeteria; desperate to tell anyone who would listen that this just couldn’t be where I belonged. Someone must have made a mistake. There were the counsellors who I could handle, even have a heart to heart with on occasion, and then there were the ones who wouldn’t give me the smallest break, who went out of their way to belittle me. Larry the muffin man was one of these guys. I liked to imagine him as a steaming hot but rancid buttery muffin with legs. It seemed to take away a good deal of the power he felt he had over me and the other klutzy castaways. Come to think of it, Larry the blueberry dough boy was the first staffer I met when I checked in. His comments stick out in my mind like, “The bellhop’s off today, so you’ll have to carry up your own bag, Sonny boy,” and later, “You can’t accept collect calls here, who the hell do you think you are? It’s time for meditation, get off the fucking phone. This ain’t the Hilton, dude.”
Then there was the night my mom tracked me down on my birthday from her hospital bed in Toronto. I heard an announcement over the intercom that there was a call for me, but by the time I raced down to the front desk from my fifth floor room – barefoot in cowboy pajamas – she was eagerly cut off by helpful, kind and loving Larry. “No, don’t hang up! I’ve been waiting for that!” I yelled. An important call, a rare moment, as my mom and I weren’t conferencing too often. I didn’t let her in on every little place I happened to check into. “Ah ha, too late. You snooze, ya lose. Got to be quick around here. I’m sure whoever it is will call back. Get back to bed.” Bastard.
*
In the future, if at all there is one, I’m guessing mom and I will muster up the courage, even take part in some small victories: times we’ll look forward to an event or happening, maybe a day trip together somewhere, the pinnacles in-between the tears when the pain and agony from being forced to press on takes a break, when genuine feelings might raise above the surface for a quick breath.
Mom and I must learn to share more than when the tea is just right. So maybe I can still drum up a good old college try, “Fight the good fight” – as Granny used to say. Who knows? Questions come up, a lifetime worth of them, and Uncertainty – an ugly term I’m getting to know all too well, is a belt I tie ‘round myself first thing every morning to kick off the day, that doesn’t come off until I retire at night, which is sure a funny word for calling it a day.
I’m just hoping Mom hasn’t devised her own sort of drug testing kit, because as weird as things can get around here, I wouldn’t put it past her.
—
Mr. Timber Masterson is an avenging participatory journalist by nature: he’s an ex-pat – meaning he’d welcome a pat on the back from his ex for his small victories, but that doesn’t seem likely at this stage. A Canadian AND American citizen, he’s received Toronto, Ontario and Canada Arts Council Grants towards completing his writing projects; He’s ventured to Literary festivals south and north of the border that most writers have never heard of and since January 2014 his blog is up and running, http://timbermasterson.com/cou
