The Days of Reading, Pools, and the Worst Music You Could Imagine

And then,… it wasn’t.

We made it back to my mom’s house by mid-afternoon, the kid and me. It was ridiculously hot, and there was nothing we could do outside,… at all,…. Except for the fact that Grammy—that’s what my kid calls her—has a pool.

How can you live in Florida and not have a pool? It’s beyond fucking hot down here. Seriously, it’s like walking on the surface of the sun. Imagine the biggest fucking parking lot you’ve ever seen. I mean like thirty-square-miles of parking lot. And the only space you can find is right in the middle of the lot. (I don’t know, you got a late start,…. It’s Christmas season,…. Whatever)…. You gotta park in the middle of this huge fucking parking lot and walk to wherever it is you came for that has this huge parking lot. (Who’s stupid enough to do this, John?.... Uh, anyone who’s ever been to Disney World,… or Six Flags,… or the annual AVN Porn Convention.) Then imagine they turn the heat up to eleven…. That’s fucking Florida in June. You literally walk to the street corner to get a newspaper and you need a fucking nap.

So we went in the pool. Of course we did. Oh,… and we made plans to go to the Stoneweood Tavern and Grill for dinner. Mom had left us a gift card she had received as a Christmas gift, so dinner would be on Grammy. (Why ain’t you used the gift card in six months, Grammy?)

So,… as we’re about to get in the pool, the daughter asks me if she can bring her laptop onto the patio,… she wanted to listen to her music.

It’s funny stuff: time and space and music and the relational quality of their intersections. To this day I can tell you that the most emotionally evocative thing in the world that can snap me the fuck back— to another place when I was another person—is music. If you play “Kiss on my List” by Hall and Oates, I’m at the skating rink in eighth grade,…. If you play “Luka” by Suzanne Vega, I’m driving to my summer job at the Operations Center for Barnett Bank in 1987,…. If you play “Let’s Go” by Wang Chung, I’m heading for Crescent Beach in Zippy’s passenger seat going seventy-miles-an-hour with a six pack of Miller High Life in my lap catching about sixty feet of air when we hit that fucking train crossing near Starke (and, by the way, Zippy wasn’t supposed to be the dude’s name—his name was Dave—Zippy was the name of the stupid Ford Fiesta,… but I’m the only guy that remembers that, right Zippy?),…. If you play “Girls, Girls, Girls” by Mӧtley Crüe, I’m at ANY strip club on the ENTIRE west coast of Florida from 1988 to 2003.

So, my kid,… who used to be a smaller kid,… had to sit in the kid’s car seat in the back of the car (you know,… when she was smaller). And resultantly, she had to listen to the music that I would play (her little fucking baby arms couldn’t reach the stereo from all the way back there,… stupid little baby arms)…. Anyway, the point is that she had no choice but to be subjected to what I was listening to…. Indigo Girls,… Duncan Sheik,… Fiona Apple,… Grateful Dead,… The Jayhawks,… The Smiths,… fucking kid should have gone on strike!

And then, a funny thing happened (actually, it’s not that funny, it entails me getting fucking old),… she grew up,… and started listening to music that SHE liked,….

And then,… she grew up so much that she got to move up to the front seat,… and she didn’t have little fucking baby arms anymore,… she had full-grown fucking big-kid arms. She could reach that god damn stereo now. She could insert CDs,… she could change stations,… she could adjust volume,… and she was MY kid,…. Something inside of you dies a little bit when you reach a milestone like that,… your kid is getting older,… your mortality stares you in the face a little more threateningly,… you just LOST YOUR FUCKING STEREO, MOTHERFUCKER!

So,… then I listened to what SHE listened to…. And,… strangely enough,… I liked most of it.

She turned me on to some really great stuff,… Fall Out Boy (I don’t care what you say, they didn’t sell out), Motion City Soundtrack, Matt Pond PA, The Higher…. Circle of Life, indeed, bitches.

Meanwhile,… back at my mom’s,… the kid wanted to put her music on while we fought off the blistering heat in the pool,…. Ah, what the hell, I was just going to watch a baseball game anyway. I could do that without the sound, right? Don’t need sound to count from zero strikes to three, do I? What am I, an asshole?.... Don’t answer that.

“Go ahead.”

“Thanks,” she said. (Did I mention that she’s polite?)

And she put on Say Anything,… oh my god, do these guys suck!... Five minutes in, and I can’t take it anymore. “Anything else?”

And she puts on Of Montreal,… oh my god, are these fucking guys possibly worse?.... Why, yes,… yes they are! “Killing me, kid! Gotta find something else!”

MGMT.

Vampire Weekend.

Passion Pit.

And that’s why I killed all the neighbors on the block, your honor.

The truth is, it wasn’t all that bad. I had gotten through the relative trauma of the day. I had my daughter with me. We were going to have a nice dinner…. And, she wanted to watch a movie with her old stupid dad that night. I told you before about the tremendous collection of DVDs my mother has,…. I mean, she was as good as Blockbuster (of course, they’re going out of business, so mom ain’t all that shit).

We figured out that she had never seen “Primal Fear” with Richard Gere and Edward Norton,… (Jesus Christ, Marty,… if that’s what you think, I am disappointed in you,…. There never was an Aaron, counselor.). So we sat there in the living room watching the movie and drinking IBC Root Beer.

Ten-thirty rolled around. I took my crazy pill.

Three days without drinking. I let the kid have the master bedroom,…. The truth is, I wanted the room with the cool Brookstone ambient sound machine.

And then,… she stuck her head in the room,…. “Daddy,… and it’s fine if you say no,… but I was wondering if my friend could come down here and hang out with me,… with us, I mean,… just until we go home on Wednesday,…. Her mom is out of town, and she’s at her house all by herself, and,….”

Another kid? Not just me and you, baby?.... “No problem, kiddo.”

“Thanks, Daddy,…. I love you.”

She should have added, “even though I make you listen to shit music.”

I eventually fell asleep.

I didn’t dream at all that night.

Next Time,…. I’ve Seen Blue Skies Through the Tears in my Eyes. And I Realize,….

Square Peg. Square Hole. Wrong Size

There’s lots more where these came from.

Those people who need a heinous beating, that is.

Meanwhile,… back on the bipolar ranch.

I woke up Sunday morning. Hap had already made his breakfast. I think he’s had the same breakfast every day for the last 148 years (okay, maybe forty,… still,… that’s a shitload of time for consistency in a morning food eating habit, don’t you think?). One egg, over medium. One piece of wheat toast, lightly buttered. One cup of coffee, just a little cream…. Me?…. I’d get bored after, oh, about two weeks into it and have to shake it up with a bagel, or a waffle, or grilled turtle penis, ANYTHING! Jesus Christ, Happy,… egg, toast, coffee? For forty years? That’s like having sex with the same woman for,… never mind,… scratch that.

My mother was already up, too. She hates flying, and I would imagine it was going to be no fun flying to Illinois to go to a funeral. She probably hadn’t slept very well through the night either. She looked tired. She looked like shit, to be honest. She looked like I felt.

They asked me if I wanted breakfast,… I wanted coffee,… that was it.

Then the checklist started,… “this is where the dog food is, I left the key to the car here and the key to the front door there (I never have them on the same key ring in case they get stolen),… (of course you don’t, mom, because the guy who stole your car knows exactly where your house is,… or the guy who came to rob your house just fucking WALKED there knowing he had a ride waiting for him in the garage), there’s coffee in the cabinet but I ran out of cream, the grocery st—(“I know where the grocery store is, mom.”), I wrote down Gary-the-neighbor’s phone number, garbage comes on Tuesday but it comes really early so you’ll have to take it out Monday night,…. The pizza place up at the corner is pretty good, but their crust isn’t thin enough,….” And that’s when my head exploded.

“Is it time to go yet? Can we just go?”

Over that god damn Sunshine Skyway bridge we headed. Crystal clear June 27th. Maybe nine in the morning. I didn’t care. I kept having to stifle tears in the back seat of the Camry as we drove the fifty-or-so minutes to the airport. As we passed the 38th Avenue exit, the tears became harder to manage. I was literally seven minutes from home. And I wasn’t going there.

Hap read all of the bumper stickers as we crossed the bay on the Howard Frankland bridge and make little remarks,…. “How’s My Driving?.... You’re doing okay, partner! (hyuk hyuk, hyuk)…. Hooters,…. I don’t like their food, honey…. Social Distortion,… what does that mean?” No music,… just Hap and his bumper stickers…. I would have jumped off this bridge right then, but being only twenty feet above the water, all I’d get is wet. So I told him to shut up. (Respect my elders? Fuck you.)

We made it to the airport, and my mom pointed out the remote pick-up lot,…. They have arrival times on great big billboard-size LED displays. About fifteen minutes after it shows your flight has landed, you drive around to baggage claim, and there are your passengers. I would have marveled at the innovative thinking of the people who run the Tampa airport if I hadn’t been so depressed.

We stopped at Ticketing and Check In, and I got out of the back seat hugged my mother and drove away. I needed some music finally. What? No satellite radio? What the fuck is this?

I’ve had satellite radio for years,… since just after it came out. It wasn’t the novelty of being able to drive from Miami to Seattle without having to change the station. It wasn’t the proliferation of every kind of musical genre you can think of. (Why the fuck am I going to listen to Salsa? I don’t listen to salsa, I eat it…. Think of a different name for your shitty music,…. Or come up with a new name for salsa—Jennifer Lopez sounds good,…. Would you like some chips and Jennifer Lopez? Why yes,.. yes I would!) To be honest it wasn’t even the fact that they had “Fifty channels of commercial-free programming.” Honestly, I just wanted to be able to TELL people I had satellite radio. It was status for me. (See how shallow I am?) I was late to the dance when it came to cell phones. People waiting for fucking busses had cell phones before I did! I wanted friends and neighbors to get in the car, so I could say, “hey,… look at that,… satellite radio!” I did it for completely the wrong reasons,… like a lot of things I’ve done in my life. Satellite radio worked out for me,… Prince Albert piercing, not so much. Nowadays I couldn’t live without satellite radio,… terrestrial radio sucks asspipes.

Of course, today,… I had no satellite radio.

I was supposed to go down to the 22nd Avenue exit,… turn left and go to my sister’s house to pick up my daughter (she had spent the night with her cousin on Saturday). I didn’t. I got off one exit earlier,… I was going home,…. NOBODY wanted me to,… but fuck ‘em, I was going…. Fucking dogs went nuts when I pulled into the driveway. We can always tell when someone pulls into the driveway,… before they even get out of the car. That’s because of the younger dog. The older dog (a beagle-spaniel mix named Otto) never used to bark at cars or people or bicycles or anything. Then we got the puggle. Now Sheldon is a cute motherfucker, don’t get me wrong. But there are times,… I’m guessing four times each day,… that I want to kick that fucking noisy bitch to Orlando. Sheldon is the only dog I’ve ever known that can howl and bark at the same time. It’s a painful sound,… it’s like someone grabbing you by the testicles and depositing you forcefully into an industrial-sized fan. (For those of you who don’t have testicles,… I’m looking at you, ladies,… and you too, Clark,… I don’t know how to explain it,… I mean,… I don’t have woman parts,…. Does it hurt when someone kicks you in the labia? And what is the singular of labia? Is it labium?) So now,… when the puggle starts his bullshit, Otto has to jump in too. He’s only forty pounds, but his voice is so low, he sounds like he’s gonna fucking eat you,… as soon as he’s done with his doody,…. Anyway,… the point is,… the wife knew I was home before I opened the door.

She was sitting at the dining room table. Looking at her laptop screen. Doing homework. We just sort of looked at each other for about a minute before she stood up and walked toward me. There wasn’t much we could say to each other,… it was really awkward. I felt like shit for having been such a douchebag to her for the last several months, and she felt like shit because she thought it was her fault that my mother had to get involved.

“Do you wanna go have lunch,” I asked.

She said, “I guess.”

She had a beer with lunch—actually it was Happy Hour, so she had two. I had water. We spent about forty-five minutes at that shitty little restaurant where all the servers used to wear fucking suspenders with the buttons all over them until management realized that it made them look like fucking assholes. We said maybe twenty words to each other the entire time. We just weren’t fitting together. And that’s when it struck me,… we were going to have to start all over,…. And that put me at an extreme disadvantage because she already knew how much of a bucket of shit I really am. .

Somehow, I made it through that lunch without crying more than three times. As we were driving back to the house I realized that I had to just drop her and go,… the kid was waiting at the cousin’s house. I started tearing a little bit. I was able to muffle the sound,….

And she reached out for my hand and held on to it.

Back in the driveway,… with the dogs going fucking ballistic,… I hugged my wife,… for the first time in seventy-two hours. We promised to talk again that afternoon or evening.

And I drove to Snell Isle to pick up the kid.

If I were going to be stuck an hour away from home, at least it was going to be with her. It was going to be just like the old days when I was a stay-at-home dad—the second time I was in college. It was gonna be just me and her.

And then,… it wasn’t.

Next Time,… The Days of Reading, Pools, and the Worst Music You Could Imagine

People Who Deserve a Heinous Beating, Volume I

“And that’s how I ended up banging a goat.”

I’ll tell you one thing. If I ever hear those words, somebody’s gonna get a foot in the ass. Hold on,… that’s not exactly true,…. Somebody will get a foot in the ass after I’ve laughed for about four hours….. Come on, goat fucking isn’t funny? What are you, high? Goat fucking is hysterical,… but then also serious enough to earn you a heinous beating.

Which brings us around to the topic of this new blog installment. Free entertainment for you, fuckers! I hope to shit you’re fucking appreciative.

Wait,… hold on,… I have to throw out a caveat…. A lot of college professors, especially when you get into like senior-year and graduate-level classes, require students to “read critically,” and “synthesize the material,” and then—“write a commentary.” A commentary, we as students are told, is a carefully considered analysis of the material we’ve read in the past week—which, by the way, doesn’t grow in an arithmetical progression once you get into graduate school,… it’s more like exponential progression—committed to paper. They are generally informal and usually very brief,… one or two pages at the most. Commentaries are not reviews of the works we’ve read; rather, they involve discussing the historiographical school of thought in which the piece is written, its thesis, its source material and evidence, the methodology of research and writing the author used, literary style, and a lot of other shit. More than one professor has told me that when writing a commentary I should “imagine [myself] sitting down with the author and having a conversation with him or her.” So that’s how I write my commentaries,… except I always add the word “naked” to the end,… in most instances. There are exceptions,… believe me,… nobody wants to see E.P. Thompson naked,… especially since he’s been dead for seventeen years.

So here are my instructions to you for reading this blog: read critically, synthesize the material, DON’T write a commentary, and DON’T imagine yourself having a conversation with me—naked or otherwise…. I don’t have a problem with you imagining me naked,…. I just have neither the time nor the inclination to imagine having a conversation with YOU—naked or otherwise,…. Although if we are going to have a conversation, naked would probably be better,…. However, I might get distracted (some of you guys out there have hogs big enough to block out the sun,… seriously,… it’s like a penile eclipse)…. But the real point is,… DON’T IMAGINE YOURSELF HAVING A CONVERSATION WITH ME. You crawl inside this mind, you may never find your way out,… it’s like fucking IKEA in there. Also, there is the damage,… it’ll remind you of Vonnegut’s Dresden.

Anyhow,… let’s get back to the subject at hand,… with one more small caveat,… this episode of the blog is meant entirely to entertain. I am neither inciting nor even advocating the actual physical thrashing of another human being at the hands of some dumb fucker who reads this blog. If you do, indeed, take my words too seriously and go out and pummel some asspuppet from the following list,… you will be Target Number One in “People Who Deserve a Heinous Beating, Volume II.”

Furthermore, I have decided to intentionally NOT include people who OBVIOUSLY need heinous beatings: terrorists, rapists, kiddie porn collectors, Michael Vick, and the dude who played Principal Rooney in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”…. I mean,… come on, give the kid a break, he just wanted to go to a Cubs’ game…. Plus, I think he fits into that third category, anyway.

And so, without further delay, I proudly present to you the beginning of what will be a continuing series: People Who Deserve a Heinous Beating, Volume I. (What a long introduction,.… Who do I think I am, Michener?)

You know who deserves a heinous beating?.... Ex-wives…. Tell you what, let’s expand that to all ex-spouses (see ladies, I got your back). I mean how can that relationship (between two people who used to live together and then thought it was so awful that they go into a courtroom and have legal paperwork written up that says they no longer have to live together) ever be any good ever again, or even mildly tolerable? Seriously,… if my ex-wife had wheels, she’d be a bitchcycle. And it’s even worse when you have kids,… ‘cause kids can be manipulated. Case in point: my ex-wife, knowing that I am a card-carrying atheist (we actually have cards,… I’ll show you mine if you want to see it), sent my then-four-year-old daughter to me for the weekend with explicit instructions to sing as many of her bible-day-care songs as she could remember. All I could do was say, “that’s tremendous, sweetie,” when what I really wanted to say was, “you sang very well, but don’t fall for that indoctrinational bullshit.” Ex-spouses stink, and I don’t like them!

Here’s another group of fucks who deserve to be strangled with barbed wire: people who say they GET ALONG with their ex-spouses. Hello? Dumbass? You are divorced for a reason. Either she got a credit card in her own name without your knowledge and got you so far into debt you had to get that shitty “credit counseling,” or he played golf four times a week and ignored you, or she blew your brother in the back seat of the minivan that YOU bought. It happened. And nothing in the world should ever dislodge that loathing from that little place in your heart where it resides. Hold on to that animosity. Own it. Wear it on your sleeve,… or your taint,… or wherever it’ll fit. Believe me, it’ll save you some day.

This is another guy who should fall in a puddle of AIDS: Phil Collins. Don’t get me wrong on this one. I was a huge Genesis fan,… “No Reply at All,” “ABACAB,” “Home by the Sea,” “The Cage.” I even liked a lot of his solo stuff: “Against All Odds,” “I Missed Again,” that duet he did with Phillip Bailey of Earth Wind & Fire, and that song “I Don’t Care Anymore,” that everybody says was about Phil Collins actually witnessing a dude drowning—by the way, if you believe that shitty story, you probably belong on this list too. But now he’s gone and released an album of eighteen covers of,… wait for it,… old Motown songs. That’s right,… the greatest rhythm-and-blues songs from the 1960s have been remade by a sixty-something, balding white English dude with a disturbingly awkward nose shape. You shoulda stuck to what you knew, Phil. Then again, you’d probably still make this list just for “Sussudio.”

Here is a group of dillweeds that I wouldn’t mind coming into speedy contact with the wrong end of a claw hammer: dipshits who don’t know the difference between identical and fraternal twins. Identical twins are the result of one sperm meeting one ovum and germinating,… and then splitting into two,…. These two new germinated eggs now have the same identical genetic makeup. That’s why they look so much alike—although in some cases it’s really very easy to distinguish between the two,… like Gigi and Jackie DiManio when I was a kid,… Jesus, I haven’t thought about them since I was like thirteen,…. I wanted to put it in ‘em both back then,…. That would have been a story I told forever,… to anyone who wanted to listen,… and quite a few people who didn’t…. Fraternal twins, on the other hand, are the result of two entirely different sperms (is that the correct plural form of “sperm”?) meeting two entirely different ova and germinating independently of the other. These twins do not have identical genetic makeup. They might as well be coming out of the mother years apart. They are completely different people. I,… you see,… am a twin…. I have a twin sister. Now,… obviously, we have two entirely different genetic codes (remember that two-sperm-two-ova exposition from above?). But if I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard, after introducing her as my twin sister, “really, are you identical?”, I could buy a fucking island (not a big one, but an island nonetheless). It used to really annoy the piss out of me,… until I came up with a retort that lets the asker know what a complete fucking simpleton he is: “Yeah, we’re identical,… except for that whole penis thing.” Dipshits.

Another bunch a shitbags that deserve to die in a fiery-yet-highly-avoidable car accident: restaurant servers who say they’ll be “taking care of you this evening.” I go out to eat fairly often. I try to stick to places that either have tablecloths or those paper table covers so that kids can draw on the table with crayons and still not ruin the tabletop. I scoot my chair in as far as I can before the server gets there, and keep my hands in my lap. And I wait for the server,…. As soon as he or she gets there, I’m just waiting for that introduction,… again, with my hands in my lap,…. “Hi, folks. How ya’ doin’ tonight? My name is Candace and I’m gonna be taking care of you tonight.”…. ZZZZZZIP! That’s right,… the junk comes flying out. Wait,… you said you were “taking care of me!” When someone says they are “taking care of me,”… how am I NOT supposed to add the word “orally” to the end of that sentence? I don’t care if your name is Candace,… or Mai-Ling,… or Gladys,… or Bill. If you’re gonna “take care of me,” I can guarantee you a tip of at least thirty percent. If you tell me you will and then you don’t, I might cause a ruckus so big that it ends up annoying this whole side of the Waffle House. I actually got slapped for doing that once,…. By my ex-wife,…. We don’t get along.

There’s lots more where these came from.

Next Time: I Guess I Should Clean up the Whole Bipolar Thing

A Short Aside

Yeah,… I am,… you’re still reading, so what am I supposed to do?

(This is actually a defense mechanism. It’s a weird night.)

I’m confused because I normally have this really cool transitional phrase from the end of one episode to the beginning of the next. (Those of you who are brilliant enough to have figured that out from the reading thus far,… you,… you’re almost as smart as me for having written them.) And I can’t very well just traipse off to an entirely new subject and be expected to incorporate the last sentence of a completely different story into the first thought of a story I just thought of writing about, can I? (Holy shit, was that a long question!) Well,…. I’m gonna do it anyway.

And I had a plan.

That’s actually bullshit. I had no plan. I just decided to do this. It’s late, and I felt like writing this shit. Just appreciate it and move on.

There was this one time,… when I was in college,….

The second time. The first time was a complete waste of everyone’s time. Everyone involved totally wasted their time,…. And in the instance of my parents, their money, too. I mean WASTED! That first year I went straight from high school into college. Seriously,… straight in. I graduated on June 6th, and I started the Summer B session at college June 25th. I had two-and-a-half weeks of Summer before I had to be back in school,…. Who the fuck thought of this schedule? Did you do this to yourself? You did,… You DID do this to yourself! . . . You’re an asshole!

But that was my first time in college,…. I said I was gonna tell you a story about my second time in college.

I was twenty-seven and I had re-enrolled in school. Eckerd College had a program specifically designed for older-than-typical students returning to school on a night-time basis. The classes were one night per week,… for eight weeks,… and you were assigned about fifteen hours of homework every week,… for each class you took. (I took two classes at once for five terms and three classes at once for seven terms. It’s a school that really sells (and really buys into,… and for the most part, supplies) a liberal arts education.

And let me say,…. I buy into the liberal arts education too. I think it is incumbent on the student to be exposed to all of the various disciplines. I think it provides the student with the one ability a college SHOULD provide,… you learn how to learn. You leave after four years with the grey matter it takes to adapt to any situation,… in nearly any profession,…. RAH! RAH! RAH! (But seriously,… I like it.)

So,… the people who run the school tell you to go to a few early-in-the-program classes,… get re-acclimated to studying and incorporating it into your schedules,… take classes from a variety of disciplines,… (math, literature, history, organizational studies, information systems, blah, blah, blah),…. (Long sentences tonight, Johnny,… what’s up?),…. Learn a little of everything before you decide what you want to know a lot of. So, I did. Sort of.

The first term I took the first required class (one of only three required classes for ALL graduates). The second term I signed up for two classes: on Monday night I had Film and Literature,…. On Tuesday nights I had to go to Survey of U.S. History 1877-present. I was infinitely more excited about the Film class. Like I said, we met for eight weeks,… each week (including the first one,… we watched a film relating to a piece of literature. We watched the films in the actual theater of the college…. Great big, 250 seat auditorium for about fifteen fucking students. And we watched some cool movies,… “Hiroshima, Mon Amour,” Godard’s “Breathless,” “Citizen Kane,” “Dubliners,”…. Just a very cool class.

I was far less excited about the History class. I had done well in high school history, much to the surprise of my teachers: Mr. Lee, Coach Miklautsch, and One-eye Potter. I made up these nicknames myself,… uh, except for Coach Miklautsch,… he was actually a coach (does girls’ basketball count?),… and “One-eye.”…. My sister made that one up,…. So,… if you’re following, I made up NONE of those nicknames. Mr. Lee taught tenth-grade World History. I learned nothing. But I got As. Coach taught eleventh grade U.S. History. I learned the Colombian exchange and that Grover Cleveland was a president and Grover Cleveland Washington was a baseball player. One-eye taught me that radical, left-wing teachers can get jobs teaching high school.

So I walked into this sophomore-level survey of history class not expecting much. I was still working as a restaurant manager, so my schedule would sometimes make me late for the 5:30 start time. This first night of class was one of those nights. I didn’t get there until about fifteen minutes into the class. The teacher looked at me a little sternly. He was short,… and a little thick,… and rosy-cheeked,… and the sweatiest fucking bastard I had ever seen in my life,…. It was all I could do to keep from laughing in his face, the short, fat prick.

He handed me a syllabus and motioned for me to sit down,… (he had just begun discussing it). I looked at the syllabus,… wanted to see what readings were due and when,…. He started talking to the class again. I wasn’t listening,… I was reading.

He saw that I was reading and cleared his throat to get my attention. (I get it, you fat, sweaty motherfucker,…. I get it.) So I listened to him speak about the class and the term and what it was that he expected,… and everything I thought would be blah, blah, blah.

Except for this,…. He was fucking amazing! He talked about the topics the class would cover each week. He told us about the two exams and the paper we would have to write. He said he was going to have one guest speaker and one film during the term…. And he got so caught up in the thing that I couldn’t stop listening. He was so excited, that you couldn’t help but getting excited along with him.

During the required class the night before, I could see people getting tired and yawning and mentally just checking out—some even fell asleep during the film. The teacher finally let us leave after four hours—the classes were supposed to be five. The history class was different, for me at least. I was just riveted. Couldn’t believe this guy was this excited about this history shit,… couldn’t believe I was either.

So, I busted my ass in that class and got an A…. I also declared History as my major…. So much for the whole liberal arts and taking a bunch of different classes shit.

So,… here I am in graduate school,… and when I sometimes wonder how got myself into this mess, all I have to do is think of that original history professor,…. Then it makes sense.

I might get back to my original story next chapter,…. I may come up with something else,… who knows? But,… since I start off every installment with the last line from the previous one, why not make it difficult on myself,….

And that’s how I ended up banging a goat.

Next Time,…. Who really knows? This Blog Stinks!

You Can't Go Home Again

I put on my sneakers and went out for a walk.

I told my mother and Hap what I was doing before I left. “I’m not doing this for fitness purposes,” I said, “I just need to get out and listen to some music,… look around and shit.” My mother told me that the trip up to the corner where the grocery store was located was exactly a half-mile, so the trip there and back would be one mile. “Kindergarten mathematics, mom,” I said,… “I’m crazy. I haven’t lost my ability to add,… and, again, not for fitness.” I had plugged my ipod into my laptop earlier that morning, so I had a nice full charge. I put the earbuds in my ears, turned the volume all the way up, put the thing on complete shuffle and headed for the corner.

I’m not totally convinced that the random shuffle on the ipod is entirely random at all. In fact, I think the fucking thing is lazy. It’ll find a band or an album it likes and three or four of the first ten songs it plays will all be from the same one. This afternoon, it happened to be repeating two albums in particular. Boston’s first album and Neon Trees latest album,… I wasn’t about to forward past either of these though,… one new classic, one old one. Both albums are what I call “wall-to-wall” collections,… every song is completely listenable,… a very rare quality in albums (or CDs for you younger readers,… I have to remember to stop fucking dating myself).

I walked slowly. I smoked cigarettes while I walked,… like I said, I wasn’t doing this for fitness purposes. However, I quickly found myself up at the corner,… half-a-mile doesn’t take forever even if you’re just ambling. I turned back around with the idea of heading back toward mom’s house. Right on the hard corner out in front of the shopping center with the grocery store was a gas station/convenience store. (“Hard corner.” Lingo from my days as a real estate developer. I was an asshole back then, too,… but at least I was sane.) I really,… REALLY,… wanted to go in and get a beer for the walk.

Instead I forced myself to face south and head back in the direction I had come. I lit another cigarette. When I got to the street where I would have turned right to go to my mother’s, I instead kept going south. I was going to see where this road led,… what I could see along the way. Another Neon Trees song came on,… nice. There were little hand carved and painted signs signifying directions for the golfers along the course that lined the homes in the area. “To the 12th Tee,” and an arrow pointing right, or some such shit.

I fucking hate golf. I used to love it but now I hate it…. Well, that’s not exactly true,… I enjoy watching golf on the television—the way those fuckers can control a little tiny white ball while hitting it 350 yards or so,… making it draw or slice depending on the layout of the fairway,… pretty impressive. I hate PLAYING golf. It’s a frustrating avocation and it costs way too much money just to practice,… to say nothing of the greens fees to actually get on a course. Why do I want to lay out that much cash just to get pissed at myself? Furthermore, I think it’s a god damn elitist activity primarily enjoyed by rich, older white dudes who take their games and themselves way too seriously. Fuck ‘em,… fuck ‘em in their fuckholes.

I ended up heading south for another forty-five minutes or so. That was when it struck me that I had to walk another forty-five minutes just to get back home. Holy shit, was it hot, too. Not a cloud in the sky at one-thirty in the afternoon in Florida in late June. Really not enjoyable. Another Boston song came on, but I was more interested in the little bead of sweat that just dropped into my right ear from my hairline. I tried to pick up a little speed as I went back toward mom’s because I had just smoked the last cigarette I had in my pack. As I walked past the same ponds and mailboxes and tee boxes, I came across two buzzards on the side of the road,… right beside the sidewalk. Turkey buzzards,… ugly fucking birds. But what struck me at the time was that they showed no fear at all. Didn’t try to fly away as I came near them. I literally passed within four feet of them, and they didn’t even offer me a second glance. I imagined what they were thinking: “move along stupid bipolar motherfucker,… nothing to see here,… why would we be afraid of you,… we’re fucking buzzards!”

By the time I got back to the house, I was drenched in sweat. I had been out for more than ninety minutes. My mother asked where I’d been and then admitted that after a half-hour or so, she drove up to the corner I had originally headed for to look for me. I didn’t know if she was worried about my safety or that I might have headed for the liquor store or the little shitty fern bar in the shopping center. Ahh,… what did it matter,… either way she was worried about me.

That afternoon the U.S. played in a World Cup soccer match. Every four years, the World Cup comes around and everybody around the fucking globe comes to a standstill and watches the sport for a month. Everybody except Americans. We watch it until the U.S. team loses and gets knocked out of the tournament. But they had reached the quarterfinals and all the talking heads on ESPN and the sports websites were actually talking about soccer gaining a foothold in the American sporting consciousness as a result of the U.S. team’s success thus far coupled with the high television ratings the games had garnered. Then again,… the games were in South Africa. They were televised in the morning and early afternoon, and with the unemployment rate in double figures in some parts of the country, what the fuck else were out-of-work men going to watch?.... Soap operas? And then,… the American team lost to Ghana? Ghana? Really? Fucking country has around twenty-four million people, and we lose to them? Americans, of course, stopped paying attention to the World Cup immediately, and the talking heads went back to baseball and Tiger Woods and where was LeBron going to play next season. Soccer stinks anyway. Fuck it,…. Fuck it in its fuckhole.

My mother made dinner that night for she and Hap and I, and we sat down at the table like a 1950s nuclear family. They even said grace. They genuflected and bowed their heads and recited the prayer they said every night. I stifled the laugh I wanted to bleat out, which was a shame because it would have been the first time I laughed in weeks.

My mom went over the plans for the trip to the airport the next morning. She covered every single imaginable detail: when we’d have to wake up, when we’d have to leave the house, airline, departure time, where they needed to get dropped off,… I swore she was going to tell me which underwear I had to put on. I think she saw me roll my eyes once and just let the conversation drop.

I told her that after I dropped them off at the airport and before I went and picked up my daughter, I was going to drop by my house and see my wife. She didn’t like that idea,… not one bit. I told her I didn’t care if she didn’t like it, I was going to do it,… what the hell was she going to do about it, anyway,… she’d be getting through the security checkpoint at the airport and taking off her shoes and shit (fucking Richard Reid sucks too).

And then,… something odd happened,… my mother got angry,… and she told me about my ass. She wasn’t having any of it, and if I wanted to be an asshole, she could just go back to her original idea of taking me to a hospital. Also, she had already talked to my wife knowing that I would try to talk them both into letting me go to the house, and my wife had agreed that it was a bad idea. And I capitulated,… of course I did,… it’s what I do.

And as I trudged off to bed, I was both pleased and pissed: I had gone a second day in a row without drinking,… but I was still being kept from my own house.

But I wasn’t going to give up entirely this time,… not yet.

Tomorrow would be another opportunity.

And I had a plan.

Next Time,.... Square Peg. Square Hole. Wrong Size.

Five More Days Here?

I had made it an entire day without drinking.

For me, at the time, that was no small accomplishment, and I went to sleep that Friday night in late June with a small sense of an emotion I hadn’t felt in some seven or eight months,… pride. (“Holy fucking shit, John! You were proud of yourself for going a whole twenty-four hours without consuming alcohol? Boy, your standards are pretty fucking low, aren’t they?”…. Why, yes. At the time,… actually, yes they were.) And I decided to adopt a new mantra,… “Baby Steps.”

Before I had gone to sleep, I talked to my wife on the phone more than once. I told her that I didn’t understand why the fuck I had to be separated from her and my home and my dogs so that I could assuage my mother’s trepidation about my current state of mind and general instability and moroseness. And,… much to my surprise,… she actually agreed with me. “I want you home, too, baby. Why can’t we just talk some sense into your mother and get her to bring you back home tomorrow morning?” she asked. Sounded like a great idea to me. My wife had used that Friday night to release some of her pent up emotion by going to her friend’s house for a barbecue and some laughs. She deserved that momentary diversion—I had been a literal shitbag to her for the last several months (I was actually a walking bag of shit—I have pictures. They’re not cute. Except for this one of me and the puggle, Sheldon. But that’s only because ANY picture with him in it is cute.) Anyway,… the point is,… she seemingly wanted me to return as well. I had told her on that Friday night before crashing that I’d talk to my mom in the morning and then put her on the phone with my wife, and we’d see if we couldn’t convince her to bring me back. My wife even offered to drive down and pick me up herself.

However,… mom was having none of it. She explained to me that she was doing what she was doing for my benefit. She still wasn’t entirely convinced that I shouldn’t be committed to a hospital facility for observation for the next few days. That was her first inclination, by the way. When she had arrived the previous day it was her intention to take me straight to a place where trained professionals could keep their eyes on me. The only reason she agreed to put that decision on hold was because I had agreed to be taken down to her house as an alternative—of course, as I related in my last chapter, I reneged on that agreement as soon as we had gotten in the car.

However, as my wife and I had planned to do the previous night,… I talked to my mother and asked her if she would at least agree to speak to my wife on the phone because I believed that my wife’s opinion might sway mom into a different conclusion. Mom agreed. (YES! She’s going to talk to the wife, and the wife is going to persuade her to let me go home! The wife is going to tell her that, together, she and I could actually beat this thing and get me back to where I needed to be without any inconvenience to all three of us! It’s going to be two-against-one, and mom will have to cave to that, right? This is going to work!)

And then,… it didn’t. Instead of the wife convincing the mother, the exact opposite happened. Somehow my completely rational and thoroughly well-intentioned mother’s rationale influenced my wife’s, and brought the wife around to her way of thinking. By the time my mom handed the phone back to me, it was two-against-one, all right,… just not in my favor. I had to resign myself to the fact that I wasn’t going anywhere. ("Okay,... relax, John,... Baby Steps.")

I was going to be comfortable there, my mother assured me. There would be anything I needed within arm’s reach. There were books to read (I had brought my own anyway,… “To Kill a Mockingbird,”… At least it wasn’t “The Bell Jar.”…. Although I had read that the previous week—here’s a tip gang: when you feel like you’re going crazy, don’t read books about people who are going crazy,… or “Slaughterhouse 5,”… which I had also read last week.) There were over three hundred DVDs in the closet in the office—some of them still in the shrink wrap. There was a grocery store and a pizza joint a half-mile away at the corner.

And,… there was a development she needed to talk to me about. She was going to turn seventy the following week. Her husband Hap (who I mentioned in the previous chapter) was seventy-something. Resultantly, most of their friends were creeping up in age as well. My mom told me that one of their closest friends, who lived in Illinois, was scheduled to have gall bladder surgery the following week. He was very nervous about the procedure, so he called them to get some perspective. They spent nearly an hour with him on the speaker phone the previous Thursday night. Hap could speak to him from the point of view of the patient because he had already endured gall bladder surgery. My mother offered him comfort as a result of her having been in the medical field for most of her adult life. The friend hung up the phone feeling much better about the prospects and actually was “looking forward to the surgery,” according to mom. Then,… sometime in the night before the sun came up on Friday,… he died,…. Massive stroke. Irony sucks!

My mom has a dog. A black miniature schnauzer named Tiger. They named him after Tiger Woods as Hap is a golfer and a huge fan of the sport. (Of course Tiger-the-dog had been neutered as Bob Barker implores all pet owners to do, and Tiger-the-golfer had not been,… although probably should have.)

My mother bought a miniature schnauzer the year after one of my older sister went to college. She had left the house with only my mom, my twin sister and I there. So mom got us this dog. We named it Calvin after the designer’s name on the back of my mom’s jeans she wore when we picked him up. Calvin was a nervous wreck most of the time. He would shake and quiver for minutes at a time at the slightest hint of something irregular or out of the ordinary in the house. If a stranger came over, he would have tremors until they left. He was a fucking weirdo of a dog. But he was only the second dog we had ever had in my entire childhood. We had a mutt named Brandy when I was a toddler, but I didn’t even remember her,…. So I took to this bundle of nerves as no teenager ever had. Old Fucking Yeller wasn’t loved nearly as much.

Tiger was altogether different. Calvin had been grey—Tiger was black. Calvin was about thirty-five pounds—Tiger was barely over twenty. Their faces didn’t even bear much resemblance toward each other…. And Calvin had been OUR dog—Tiger was THEIR dog. (I love my two dogs,… I’m not so wild about other people’s dogs.)

Anyway, the point is,… Mom and Hap were going to have to fly out the next day (Sunday) to go up north for the wake and the funeral….. I’m not religious at all. In fact, I’m an atheist. I don’t get the whole point of religious rites and services like wakes and funerals. When I’m done, burn me the fuck up and spread me out somewhere you think I might have liked being: the beach, a serene mountaintop with a view, a sports bar stool within eyeshot of the two or three biggest HD flat screens,… whatever…. But mom and Hap, who were very close with the departed, felt compelled to go and pay their respects and to help his wife through what was surely a terrible time in her life.

And my mom asked me,… “will you please stay here and take care of my dog for me?” (“Wow! You’re flying out of town and entrusting the security of your pet to a bipolar man with a drinking problem who’s getting absolutely no relief from his medications? You’re fucking crazier than I am!”)

“I guess,” was all I could come up with. I wasn’t very excited about anything at the time. ("Baby Steps, John,... Baby Steps.")

The bottom line was I wasn’t getting home until Wednesday at the very earliest now. I would have to drive them to the airport the following day and go back and take care of their dog, who reminded me not in the least of my own dogs or my childhood schnauzer. Now I fucking hated Tiger. Little motherfucker was keeping me glued to this house for the next five fucking days. He’d be lucky if I didn’t kick him around the golf course out back.

And then there was this,… the quickest route to the airport in Tampa is to drive over that Goddamn Sunshine Skyway Bridge, through St. Petersburg (PASSING WITHIN THREE MILES OF MY OWN FUCKING HOUSE) and over the Howard Frankland into Tampa.

But there was no way around it that I could ascertain. In return for me agreeing to dogsit for four days, I would guarantee my own freedom, in at least the immediate future, from the specter of hospital commitment and confinement.

Also,… my daughter, who until just this past Thursday had been spending the majority of her summer vacation at my house, was available for and willing to come back with me down to my mom’s house. There is a pool there and neat new places to go out to eat. There’s a shopping center just across the highway. She didn’t need any of that inducement. She has told me often that I am her best friend. Now,… I’m not so ignorant or arrogant as to believe that entirely,… but I’m not so cynical as to believe that there isn’t at least a little bit of truth to it. My kid was going to come back with me.

Saturday morning turned into Saturday afternoon. Normally, I would have lunch and a beer or two to wash it down. My mother made me a ham and turkey sandwich,… and gave me a Diet Coke. (Diet Coke sucks shitbags.) I had ten or twelve hours to go until I could reasonably expect to get any sleep that night. I had to find something to keep me occupied until I could get away from that fucking airport and pick up my kid. ("You can make it 'til then,... Baby Steps.")

I put on my sneakers and went out for a walk.

Next time,…. You Can’t Go Home Again.

Is That a Light I See at the End of the Bipolar Tunnel?

Maybe I’ll write about 1979 and the Betts boys one day.

But I need to get back to the present day and update my current story.

It was a Friday night in late June when my mother picked me up to drive me back to her house,… forty-five minutes south of my own home. It was a miserable experience. I was completely lost somewhere inside my own mind. I had an elevated heart rate,… I absolutely could not concentrate on a single thought for more than a few seconds,… and I cried,… a lot,… loudly and painfully. I begged my mother to turn around and take me home,… I pleaded with her.

Also, there was this,… I threatened her,…. Not with any type of physical violence; I could never,… would never resort to that. But I did actually say—to my own mother, who presently had only my well-being and even sanity at the forefront of her mind—that I would “resent [her] forever, if she didn’t turn the car around and take me back to my own fucking house.” What a fucking ingrate! Very shortly afterward I told her that I didn’t care if she took me back home and I asked her to simply pull over and stop the car right there on the interstate and that I would find my own god damn way home. I may have been crazy, but there was no way that I was going to be dragged out of my house and forced into exile somewhere in the next county. She, to her credit, remained stoic and focused on what she felt was necessary.

I wasn’t improving—even with the psychiatrist visits and the cocktail of medications he had prescribed for me. As I’ve related in a previous chapter, I never eliminated drinking from my daily routine,… in fact, my alcohol use had actually increased since I had capitulated to the wishes of my friends and family and gone in to see the psychiatrist in the first place. Even while actually liking him for the seemingly concerned and encouraging person he was, I still hated that motherfucker. I had grown even more belligerent and paranoid in the five weeks that I had been taking that medication. Without question, I was masking the drugs’ ability to control my brain chemistry. I was degenerating into someone and something I had never been. And now, as a result of my extreme depression and anger, I was being swooped away from my life.

The route between my home and my mother’s house takes you over the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. Unless you want to go all the way around the bay and take the Crosstown Expressway to I-75 (and add a good thirty minutes to your drive), you HAVE to go over that fucking bridge. Since the opening of its new span, at least 140 people have leapt from the highest point of the bridge in attempts to take their own lives—130 have succeeded (those are pretty good odds if you’re looking to be successful). I am absolutely convinced that my mother was concerned about that portion of the drive, and I noticed her, as the car started its ascent up the north side of the span, paying more attention to my positioning in the passenger seat. I would also be lying if I said that the thought didn’t cross my mind. I knew that bridge and I knew what would happen if I went flying off of it. Fortunately for me, I’m far too self-important to actually go through with any plan of suicide. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I had threatened my wife with the prospect of it at least twice in the last four months,… but I would never go through with it—I was probably just begging for attention and reassurance from her…. We got through that portion of the drive without speaking to each other, my mother and I.

I was exhausted,… both physically and mentally. I hadn’t slept the night before. I had spent the hours leading up to midnight in an uncontrollable rage that scared the ever-living piss out of my wife and the hours subsequently wavering back and forth between panic attacks and fits of convulsive wailing. I could barely keep my eyes open as we got closer to my mother’s house. I hadn’t eaten since dinner the night before, and she demanded that I get some sort of food in my stomach before going to sleep. I told her I wasn’t hungry (even though my stomach grumbles were giving me away), but she wasn’t hearing that. She called ahead to her husband and asked him to order a pizza for me. She asked me what I wanted on it, and I grudgingly told her. Food was going to be on the way, and, even though I wouldn’t admit it, I was thankful. I really was behaving like an asshole.

When we walked into the house, I caught sight of my mom’s husband, Hap. His actual name is Harry, but everyone calls him Hap,… or Happy. It’s a totally fitting moniker for the guy, too. I have never,… not once,… seen him without a smile on his face and a laugh in his throat—this time was no different, and I fucking resented him and his contentment. He has the most distinguishable laugh I (or anyone else, I would venture to submit) have ever heard. It’s truly one of those “hyuk hyuk hyuk” laughs. The first time I met him I thought it was odd. A little later it was just fucking annoying. But now (at least until I had started the symptoms of my utter misery), it’s endearing,… almost serene. It’s inspiring and reassuring that there still are “happy” (pun completely intended) people out there. This guy could whistle his way through a fucking hurricane. His demeanor was absolutely the same as it always is when we got there. He broadly grinned and asked, “How ya’ doin’, Big Daddy?” He had that great big, ever-present smile on his face. I thought to myself, “How am I doing? How the fuck do you think I’m doing, you shitbag? I’m sitting at the bottom of a well deeper than Baby-Fucking-Jessica, and you’re asking me how I’m doing? Fuck you!” (For those of you too young to remember, go ahead and Google the obscure reference,… just go to Google and type in Baby-Fucking-Jessica,…. Actually don’t do that,… the results will probably be disturbing,… and the FBI may come to ask you a few questions.) The point is, I was pissed off.

The pizza got to the house, and I smothered it in crushed red pepper before scarfing it down at a near-record pace. For the past dozen-or-so years, I’ve battled chronic heartburn. (Super,… my two favorite foods are Italian and Mexican,… every time I eat anything spicy, I have to chew at least two or three Pepcid AC’s before going to bed or I’ll wake up with a sensation of pain in the middle of my chest so indescribable that I won’t even try. And I didn’t have any god damn Pepcids,… neither did mom.) It was about 8:30 pm, and I didn’t think I could keep my eyes open much longer,…. Except for this: both mom and Hap were enjoying a nice, stiff Vodka Gimlet. In addition to not eating since the previous night, I hadn’t had a beer all day. I saw them drinking their cocktails and Holy-Shit-On-A-Popsicle, I wanted one now. I knew that Hap kept a regular supply of beer in his refrigerator in the garage. He usually carries two types of beer: Heineken and Natural Light. I don’t like either—the first has an aftertaste that I don’t care for, and the second is just piss water. But I thought about going out there and grabbing one for a solid minute. I decided not to (what???). I went to the guest room instead.

My mother has this really cool accessory in the guest room. It’s a little box from Brookstone that plays relaxing noises to fill up the silence. Babbling brook,… rolling beach crests,… rainy afternoon,… and a couple of others that I don’t remember (I can’t recall ALL the details, people, kiss my ass). Mom came into the room right behind me. She is such the consummate host that she needs to ensure everybody’s comfort when she has visitors. She explained how to operate the TV and the ceiling fan and where the extra pillows were. “Jesus Christ, woman,” I thought, “I’ve made it forty-three years in this world,… I think I can figure out a fucking ceiling fan!”

And I went to sleep. The exhaustion would have to substitute for the alcohol as a sleeping aid for this night. With all of the racing thoughts in my head—and with the knowledge and fear of the middle-of-the-night heartburn I was going to suffer through—I closed my eyes and went to sleep.

I had made it an entire day without drinking.

Next time,…. Five More Days Here?

I Swear I’ll Finish 1978, Then I’ll go Back to Being Bipolar: Really

I haven’t even gotten to sixth grade yet.

Still in 1978,… we ended with Disco.

And, thankfully, disco ended in the ‘70s,… although I’m not so sure how different I feel about today’s popular music. Lady Gaga and Beyonce and Kanye West and whoever this Ke$ha girl is annoy the ever living piss out of me much more than disco ever did. Of course, I was eleven at the time and the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack was number one on the Billboard charts for like 137 weeks in a row (okay,… it was fourteen,… I embellish sometimes, people,… it’s called dramatic license, live with it). I must say I vastly preferred Yvonne Ellimen’s version of “If I Can’t Have You” to the Bee Gees’. I loved that song! I’d sing along with it every time my older sisters played the album,…. “If I can’t have you, I don’t want nobody, baby. If I can’t have you, ah-ah-ahhh.” Then there was the time, years later, when I amended the lyrics to, “If I can’t have you, I will settle for your sister.”

The Summer wound down, and I would soon be headed back to Phillippi Shores Elementary School where I had attended fourth grade before going to the Pineview School for fifth grade. I would get to go back to having my old friends back. At least that eased the tension of the ending of the Summer. During that Summer I had forged a relationship with my older sister Allison that heretofore would have been impossible. We just simply did not like each other and never, EVER, got along. The Tampa Bay Rowdies were a professional soccer team that played its NASL games at Tampa Stadium, and the family got to attend one of those games. It was the only time in my recollection that soccer (professional soccer, anyway) seemed to matter to a large audience in America. Rowdies games attracted big crowds,… some big enough to rival the attendance number of Buccaneer games. Well,… at the game we went to, they had a promotional giveaway for the first however-many kids through the gates—they gave out mini soccer balls with the team’s green, yellow and white colors and team logo. They were cool,… to an eleven-year-old (like I said in the last chapter,… kids are stupid). But the ball was cool even to Allison who is three years older than I. She and I, who before the Summer of 1978, had been near mortal enemies, spent hours running parallel to each other down Belgrave Drive and kicking the ball to each other as if we were playing on the same team and trying to advance the ball toward an imaginary goal. We invented a game (as stupid kids are wont to do) in which we tried to keep the ball in the road as we kicked it, and we’d count how many passes we were able to complete to each other before the ball ended up in someone’s yard because of an errant kick. “Kippy” (that’s her nickname,… the source of which is a different chapter) and I loved each other that Summer. We went back to adversaries when school started, but that Summer was awesome.

When I finally set foot back on the Phillippi Shores campus, it was like I could breathe again. The thin, foggy veil of discontent and resentment was yanked away to bring a clarity of eyesight I hadn’t known in the past year. There was Scott Miller,… and Mike Mercurio,… and Kay Saunders,… and Kelly Cafiero. This was going to be the best year of school ever. And it wouldn’t hurt that I already knew the sixth-grade math textbook backwards and forwards from having completed it in the fourth grade when I was here.

For the first few weeks, everything was great, aside from my teacher, Mrs. Miller. My friends embraced me and asked how I could have survived a full year at Pineview with those egghead kids (children are cruel and closed-minded, too). I was back to being a central figure in class and at recess. I was among my people. But Mrs. Miller didn’t care for me one bit from what I could gather. My explanation at the time—and looking back on it now, I’m not so sure it wasn’t mostly true—was that I was bored. I had learned most of the stuff being taught the previous year at Pineview. In fact, I had been taught at something close to a seventh- or eighth-grade level: I even took Spanish,… a class that wouldn’t be required until we got to public High School. However, I’m sure that at least a portion of my misbehavior was attributable to me being just a kind-of regular smartass who would cut up and disturb the class and Mrs. Miller at the same time. She sent me to the principal’s office a couple of times in those first few weeks for insubordination. She saw me as a major distraction; I just saw her as a major bitch.

After those first few weeks, I noticed a shift in the attitudes’ of my friends, though. They distanced themselves from me. I heard whispers from kids talking to each other like, “conceited” and “better than us” and the worst insult in the sixth-grade lexicon: “stuck-up.” They sensed—and it’s entirely possible that I projected—that I exhibited some sort of feeling of superiority to the rest of them. Three times a week we had to walk through the hallways of the school from our regular classroom to either the chorus room or the math pod. About two months into the school year (I’m guessing early October), as I turned the corner by myself—by that time I was a social pariah,… persona-non-grata—and I heard Mike Mercurio’s voice,… loudly,… saying, “GET ‘IM BOYS!” Five kids jumped me as I turned that corner. I got kicked and punched and generally worked over for what seemed like an eternity (it was probably twenty seconds). Surprisingly, I withdrew some after that. This was going to be the worst school year of my life; Shit, I should have stayed at Pineview if I had sensed that this would happen! I was ostracized from the group: excommunicated. So I withdrew even more. Perhaps I should have noted at the time that this was my first case of significant, prolonged depression,… but, of course, I didn’t.

Also, there was this: the fourteen-game lead the Red Sox had in July was mysteriously dwindling. It got cut to ten games,… then seven,… then four. Those fucking Yankees were on a tear of epic proportions and were closing the gap,… quickly. And then, the Yankees overtook the Red Sox for first place,… this was going to be the most devastating collapse in the history of the game…. From a fourteen-game lead on July 19th to behind by three-and-a-half games in the last two weeks of the season…. However, the Red Sox did something they had done sporadically since that July high-water mark,… they started winning,… in fact, they won ten of their last twelve and tied the Yankees for the best record in the division on the last day of the season. That set up a one-game playoff to see which team would represent the American League East in the Division Series against the Kansas City Royals (yes, young baseball fans, the Royals were once a good team,… before the fucking Yankees started buying players—and thus championships—at ridiculous sums and bloating their payroll upwards of $200 million per season). However, the one game would be at Fenway Park and not Yankee Stadium. That game was played on a Monday afternoon. (What? Day Baseball? In the Playoffs?) I had football practice at six o’clock, but I didn’t want to miss the end of the game which started at four. I begged my mom to let me stay home from practice just that one time so I could watch the ending, but she pulled out the “you made a commitment to the team” card. What shitty logic. Logic that I, of course, would one day use with my own child. We had only ten minutes left before we had to get going to Phillippi Shores—which was coincidentally the location of the pee wee football practices for my team. Ten minutes? It was only the sixth inning! And the Red Sox had the lead three-to-two. And then,… it happened,… as I sat there in my full football uniform: pads, cleats, jersey, pants,… Bucky Dent came up to bat. He was a scrawny little shortstop who never hit home runs,… so that wasn’t a worry. But there were two Yankees on base. Mike Torres was pitching for the Sox. He had had a great year for Boston, so I was confident he could induce an out from Bucky Dent. However, he hung a slider,… right over the middle of the plate,… and Bucky Dent hit it high and deep,… and over the Green Monster in leftfield for the go-ahead runs. “Johnny, if you’re going to make it on time, we need to leave now.”

This was before the days of ESPN and the internet. By the time I got home from practice and showered, I had to go to bed. I wasn’t allowed to stay up for the eleven-o’clock news to see what the final result was—hell, I was only eleven. I slept poorly. When I awoke, the first thing I did was grab the sports page only to learn that neither team scored a run for the rest of the game after I had left the house the previous day. The Red Sox lost that game 5-3, and the Fucking Yankees went on to beat the Dodgers four games to two in the World Series,… for their second championship in a row. From that day forward even to today (and probably for the rest of time to come),… to EVERY Red Sox fan in the world,… that games hero’s name changed,… He was now Bucky Fucking Dent.

I played my best game of football on the last day of the season, when my team “Cheyenne” beat the vastly superior “Arapaho” team. I chewed up yardage as a running back on offense and I sacked the quarterback a few times. I even tackled Arapaho’s monster running back once or twice—he had been barreling through kids all year. Yes,… the league was the Ringling Redskins Football League and every team was named after a different tribe of Native Americans. (I hate that term, and I know several Indians who would prefer to be referred to as Indians instead of “Native Americans.”) Interestingly, no group that waves its protected status flag in front of everybody’s faces has ever demanded that the league change its policies and transition to more politically-correct team names—as they have to the Washington Redskins, Atlanta Braves, Cleveland Indians and several colleges. The Ringling Redskins have kept their teams’ names the same since then. Political correctness sucks assballs anyway.

I don’t recall much more of 1978,…. I do remember that at the end of sixth grade, in 1979, my family moved from the house on Siesta Key at Belgrave Drive to a bigger abode across town on Tangier Way. My first day in that house, I was throwing a tennis ball against my new garage door when I saw two kids (who looked about my age) just whizzing down the street on their shiny BMX dirt bikes. I didn’t have a dirt bike. These kids were going to haze and hate me just like the kids at Phillippi Shores did,…. I knew it!

Except,… they eventually became two of the best friends I have ever known.

Maybe I’ll write about 1979 and the Betts boys one day. However,….

Next time,…. Is That a Light I See at the End of the Bipolar Tunnel?

We Finish 1978 Before I Go Back to Being Bipolar

1978 was longer than I remembered.

I spent my final day at Pineview in early June. I was getting the hell out of that school and going back to my friends at Phillippi Shores. It was a huge relief to my ten-year-old mind. I hadn’t wanted to go there in the first place. I felt like I had been manipulated into going there. And then I felt duped into thinking that if I at least gave it a shot, I would be allowed to leave and go back to my old school whenever I wanted,… only to find out that I had to gut it out through the entire school year. But I had made it. School was over, and the following week would be,… my birthday.

Birthdays are huge things to kids,… and rightfully so, I think. Each year that you get to add another number onto your previous age is world-altering. There’s an entirely new paradigm for a kid going from ten to eleven. I think that holds true all the way to eighteen,… or even twenty-one,…. (Forty-three,… not so much.)

I got a birthday card from my grandparents,… with a solid five-dollar bill in it. I got a card from my mother with a TWENTY. And another from my father—who had just moved from Tampa to Miami—with another TWENTY. Woo-hoo! Forty-five smackers, baby! At eleven, I was fucking rich. When my mother asked me what I wanted to do with the money, I told her I wanted to take her out to dinner at my favorite restaurant: Gigi’s Italian Ristorante,… and I wanted to bring my best friend, Scott Miller. She agreed and we set it up for a day the following week. When we got to Gigi’s, I made a huge production out of the fact that I was treating the table to dinner with my own money. My mother let me act like a big shot,… ordering the dinner selections for everyone at the table (I had the lasagna),… walking the bill up to the cashier myself and telling the lady behind the counter that everything that evening had been on me (even though that wasn’t actually the case,… the dinner came to slightly over twenty dollars, and mom told me that I should only spend one of my twenties on the night out,… she would cover the rest,… and the tip). It was later that night,… after we dropped Scott back off at his house,… that she explained to me that it’s not proper to call attention to oneself and brag about being the one taking everybody out on his dime.

At this point, I’d like to make clear that I don’t have mommy issues. To this day, I will defend everything that she’s ever done in trying to raise her four kids. She has been the doting mother for my entire life. Every now and then she tells me that she thinks she can fault herself for trying to be overprotective or sheltering of me as a kid: that she never let me take any lumps on my own growing up. I really don’t believe that’s the case,… and I’ll knock out anyone who tries to pin my shortcomings as an adult on her. I have to own those myself.

But,… back to 1978,… and my eleventh birthday. In addition to the card with the cash in it, my mother had bought me a few presents as well. The ones I remember specifically, to this day, are the three record albums I got. I was really excited to see the gift-wrapped packages that HAD to be vinyl LPs (the size and shape gave them away, duh),… with my name on them (I have a twin sister,… she didn’t get any records that day). I had asked for three albums: Paul McCartney & Wings’ “London Town,” any Bill Cosby live comedy album, and a concert album: KISS “Double Live Platinum.”

“London Town” was a big seller, and I loved the song “With a Little Luck.” I still remember the lyrics. I had become a big fan of Bill Cosby during my year at Pineview, because when it rained, and we couldn’t have gym class outside, the “Coach” would bring us to his portable classroom and play either a Bill Cosby comedy album or a videotape of the “Football Follies.” (Okay,… it was 1978,… it wasn’t a videotape,… it was a real, honest-to-goodness reel-to-reel film. It’s just possible that maybe some of the younger readers of this blog wouldn’t even know what a reel-to-reel is.) So, I wanted a Bill Cosby album. “Double Live Platinum” was another big hit in 1978 (interestingly, it was certified platinum in June,… but it never sold two-million copies,… so it wasn’t actually double platinum,… them are some cocky motherfuckers), and it was a double record,… two LPs in one cover (maybe that’s why they called it DOUBLE Live Platinum,… maybe they weren’t so cocky,… oh, yes they were!)

So,… after eyeing those wrapped LPs while I was forced to open the cards first—because the sentiment was actually more important than the material gifts,… at least, that’s what my mom told me, but try convincing me of that when the cash started falling out of those fucking cards—I finally got to rip the paper off of them. The first one was Paul McCartney and Wings’ “London Town.” Bing-fucking-go! Exactly what I wanted. The second was Bill Cosby’s “Bill Cosby is a Very Funny Fellow… Right!” Sweet! I score again! I didn’t think I had ever heard that one before, and again, this was exactly what I had asked for. The third gift was a little thicker than the first two. (It’s “Double Live Platinum,” baby! Johnny’s gonna go three-for-three! There’s gonna be those makeup-wearing dudes on the cover! The cat one, and the one with the stars on his face,… and the other two whatever-the-fuck-they-weres!) I ripped off the paper. It was a double album. It was a concert album. It was,… “4 Way Street”??? By some fuckers called Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young? (This was a lot of years before Neil Young played with Pearl Jam, and Steven Stills’s sperm played with Melissa Etheridge’s girlfriend’s ova.) What the fuck was this piece of shit? Who the fuck are these guys? WHERE THE FUCK, EXACTLY, IS MY GOD DAMN “DOUBLE LIVE PLATINUM”???

My mother explained to me that when she saw the album cover, she decided to ask some other parents around the neighborhood just who these KISS fellas were. She had been told that they were heathens,… bad role models,… quite possibly devil-worshipping, Satanist cannibals. No way I was getting that album after that. I think I tried to listen to the CSNY album once,… one time,… for about twelve minutes. It sure as shit was no “Double Live Platinum.” I never did get that record,… in retrospect, mom probably did me a favor.

By mid-July, the Red Sox had a fourteen-game lead over the Yankees in the American League’s Eastern Division. They were going to the playoffs for sure this year—no way they could fall down with a fourteen-game lead at the All-Star break. It would be the first time in the playoffs since they lost the World Series to the Reds in ‘75. They lost the seventh game that year after Carlton “Pudge” Fisk hit a dramatic home run for the Sox in the twelfth inning of game six to force the deciding game seven,… which the Red Sox lost. But 1978 was gonna be different!

However,… that brings to mind a different story altogether,…. (Jesus Christ On Toast, John,… another fucking tangent?.... Well, yes,… this is MY blog, fuckers!) Later in life, when I was twenty-four and lived with, but was not yet married to my first wife, we took in her troubled half-brother for a month during the Summer of 1991. His name was Ernie, and he was about eight or nine at the time. He had a really difficult time with his attention span, a quick temper, and a very bad habit of interrupting people when they talked to him. Well,… one night, as a treat for him as he had been behaving well for us, I decided to take him to a minor league baseball game. The White Sox had a low-level farm team in Sarasota where I was living at the time. I got tickets, and as he and I drove to the game, I explained that I had read in the paper that morning that Pudge was going to play for the home team that night. He asked who Pudge was, and I told him I’d explain at the game. We had good seats,… right behind home plate about eight rows up. Early on in the evening, I told him to sit tight in the seats while I went to the bathroom. “But if anyone gets anywhere close to you, you scream your head off and say, ‘I don’t know this person’ as loud as you can, okay? You know the drill?” He told me he got it. And an elderly couple sitting right behind us told me that they’d keep an eye on him. I didn’t go to the bathroom. I went to the souvenir stand and bought a new baseball. I took it out of the box and scuffed some dirt on it. When I got back to the seats I handed him the ball, told him it had been used in the game, and that one of the ballplayers stuck his head out of the dugout, and gave me the ball especially to give to the kid I was sitting next to. It was a little white lie,… and he ate it up,… kids are stupid.

In the third inning the oldest player on the team, wearing number 72, came up to bat. I wanted to take advantage of the moment and provide this kid, who everyone else had given up on at the age of eight or nine, with one of those old-timey, nostalgic father-and-son type talks.

And I said to Ernie, “you see that guy batting right now?”

“Yeah,” he said back to me.

“Well,… his name is Carlton Fisk, but everyone calls him Pudge.”

“Why do they call him Pudge?”

What I wanted to say was, “I don’t fucking know, you shitbox! Quit interrupting me and let me tell you this old-timey, nostalgic father-and-son type story!”

What I did say was, “I’m really not sure, son, but they do. Anyway, the point is, he’s a guy that has been around the game of baseball for a long time,… almost twenty years,… and right now he’s down here in Sarasota rehabbing an injury before he goes back to Chicago to play for the big league club.”

“What’s ‘rehabbing’?”

(“SHUT UP, INTERRUPTING SHITBOX!”) “It’s when you get hurt and you have to get yourself healthy again by treating the injury slowly and letting your body get back to full strength…. Anyway, the point is, he’s playing here tonight, but he gave me one of the great memories of my childhood,… when I was about your age….” And I went on to tell him the story of the ‘75 Series and Pudge’s dramatic twelfth-inning home run…. It turned out to really BE one of those stupid, old-timey, nostalgic father-and-son type moments.

Then, the elderly guy behind me tapped me on the shoulder. I looked at this near-seventy-year-old guy sitting with his near-seventy-year-old wife. (There was nothing special about a couple like that in Sarasota,… it is called “God’s Waiting Room” for a reason.) He said to me, “I’m not eavesdropping, but I couldn’t help but hear you just tell that story about Carlton Fisk.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

He pointed to his wife and said, “that’s our son.”

That’s my second-best baseball memory.

Shit,… I’m done with another chapter and I haven’t even gotten to sixth grade yet.

Next time,… I Swear I’ll Finish 1978, Then I’ll go Back to Being Bipolar: Really

Something Light Before I Continue

1978.

It was a bad year for popes. It was a bad year for Ted Bundy and David Berkowitz. It was a bad year for The Flying Wallendas.

From what I remember,… it was a pretty good year for your writer…. And you’d be surprised at what I remember. It was a year when the Spring smelled like rain, the Summer smelled like pool chlorine, and the Autumn smelled like the cut grass at football practice. I don’t remember what Winter smelled like,… but growing up on the gulf coast of Florida,… it probably smelled like more pool chlorine.

Midnight of January 1st was the first time I remember being allowed to stay up until we rang in the New Year. I was ten years old and I recall feeling all grown up,…. I was asleep by ten after twelve.

By the end of the first week of the year, I was back in school. It was the fifth grade, and I was spending the school year at the Pineview School for the Gifted in Sarasota. I didn’t want to go to Pineview; I wanted to stay at Phillippi Shores Elementary where I had spent fourth grade. I had already moved from school to school almost every year since kindergarten—that year was Wilkinson, first and second grade was Gulf Gate, third grade was Pleasant Street in Athol, Massachusetts when I lived with my grandparents for a year while my mother finished nursing school (that’s an entirely different chapter,… which I’m sure I’ll get to another time), and fourth grade was Phillippi Shores. By the end of fourth grade I had worked my own way through the fourth grade mathematics textbook,… and the fifth grade one,… and the sixth grade one. After I got through with that one, the school had run out of math textbooks, so I started the sixth grade one over again. My teacher, Mrs. Hobson, had suggested to my mother and the people at the school that I be tested for the Pineview school. I went through IQ tests, personality tests, and problem-solving tests. They measured my IQ at 141 and approved me for the program.

Like I said before,… I didn’t want to go. I wanted to stay and keep the friends that I had made in fourth grade. But my mother prodded and cajoled me into enrolling at Pineview,…. “Just try it for me, Johnny. If you don’t like it, we can always put you back in regular school.” After two weeks, I was begging to go back to “regular school.” But my mother told me I wasn’t giving it enough of a chance,… if I stayed the whole year, I’d probably really like it.

So, we go back to 1978 when I started the second half of fifth grade there. I still hated it. But 1977 had ended on a fairly decent note—there was that whole New-Years-staying-up thing, there was Star Wars, and there was the Tampa Bay Buccaneers actually managing to win two games after losing the first 26 of their existence. I was actually in attendance at the second of those two games,… the Bucs beat the Saints in New Orleans in the second-to-last game of the season and then came home to the old Tampa Stadium (which ESPN’s Chris Berman would later nickname “The Big Sombrero,”… I fucking hate Chris Berman) to face the St. Louis Cardinals. I was in the stands with my father as the Bucs won 17-7. I bought a cardboard-paper head visor at the game and wrote “I WAS THERE 17-7,” on the underside of the bill. I kept that fucking paper visor for years.

So, we go back to 1978 at the Pineview School (Jesus Christ, John, will you stop going off on meaningless tangents?). I still hated it. But we got to eat our lunch outside,… wherever we wanted,… as long as we were still on campus. Some other kids and I would always—and I mean every day—eat our lunches really quickly so we could play football in one of the courtyards. One day, early in 1978, I got burned for a touchdown by Danny Shmalo. Danny decided he would take the opportunity to gloat and shove it in my face,…. So I decided to take the opportunity and punch him in the face. He started ducking his head just in time to take a glancing blow off the side of his head,… I broke the fifth metacarpal in my right hand. I didn’t tell my mother about it for three days,… by then it really fucking hurt,… that was a Sunday. But she worked at my stepfather’s podiatry office, which had an x-ray machine. The x-rays confirmed my broken bone, which had to get splinted. I told my mother I had broken the bone by falling at school and hitting a tree stump that jutted out of the ground—I certainly wasn’t going to admit that I had punched Danny Shmalo in the head. I finally told her the truth,… in 1989.

In March of 1978, the intercom buzzed in my science class. “Would you please send John Chaplin down here to the principal’s office?”…. I thought to myself, “holy shitcake, what is this about?” (Okay, I was ten, I probably didn’t think that,…. It was probably just “holy shit.”) The science portable was the furthest possible classroom from the office, and as I walked, I thought how warm it was outside for an early Spring day. It smelled like rain even though it was cloudless. When I got through the door, I saw my mother sitting there. The “holy shit” feeling was even bigger now. She didn’t smile,… she said, “let’s go,” and guided me out the door. Nobody in the office even watched us leave, and at that point in time, I desperately wanted a witness. She didn’t look at me when we got in the car or when she headed west on Bahia Vista Street. “Where are we going,” I finally managed to ask. She still said nothing. When we got to US 41, she took a right and headed north. She veered right when we got to the 301 junction; we were headed downtown. I thought to myself, “crap,… is she taking me to the police station? What the hell have I done?” (Okay, I was ten, I probably didn’t think that,… . It was probably “what the fuck have I done.") But she took another right before we got all the way downtown. She was going to Payne Park! She was taking me to the Spring Training home of the Chicago White Sox! She finally turned to look at me after the fifteen minutes of the drive we had spent in complete silence. “You know the Red Sox are in town today.” My mother had come and busted me out of school to take me to a baseball game. And it was the Red Sox! I watched my favorite team for nearly three hours. I still remember the entire team. Hobson, Burleson, Remy and Scott around the infield; Rice, Yastrzemski and Evans in the outfield; and Fisk behind the dish. We had to sit on the steps beside the metal bleachers because the stands were full, and by the end of the game, my ass was killing me. It was the best day of my life to that point.

At the end of the school year, one of the teachers decided to host a fifth grade prom during her class period (fifth grade prom,... what a stupid idea). Saturday Night Fever had been released in December of the previous year, and the soundtrack was a smash. The Bee Gees were everywhere, and disco was as in as it would ever get. I practiced for hours in my living room with one of my older sisters, and by the time the day of the dance came around, I was ready. I danced with Heather Mahan for the entire class period. She was a good dancer and kept up with me even though I was a GREAT dancer (I know,… fairly cocky,… but that doesn’t make it any less true,… suck on THAT, bitches!). But the thing that pleased me most about that day was that fifth grade was one day closer to over, and I would get to go back to Phillippi Shores.

Wow,… 1978 was longer than I remembered.

Next time,… We Finish 1978 Before I Go Back to Being Bipolar.

And Even Worse Before it Gets Better, If it Ever Does

I was going to keep drinking today,… and tomorrow,… and all weekend long.

And that’s exactly what I did. It really didn’t matter to me that the prescription bottles told me to avoid alcoholic beverages. Well, wait,… that’s not exactly true. Two of the three told me to “avoid alcoholic beverages.” The third told me to “not drink alcohol TO EXCESS,” while using the medication. Bingo! That’s enough for me. If one of the bottles told me it was okay to drink as long as I didn’t drink TOO much,… well then, shit,… I can drink. And if I’m gonna drink one beer,... I might as well make it ten. Or fifteen. Whatever. Listen,… ain’t no bottle gonna tell me what to do.

So, Thursday was beers. And then Friday was a few beers (read: nine). And, of course, Saturday had to be a few beers,… it WAS Saturday after all. And Sunday is the day I start out by reading the sports page, listening to Jazz or New Age music,… and drinking mimosas.

Oh,… I still had to work all those nights,… so all those nights’ drinking was accomplished after eleven pm. Saturday was the night it got bad. Really bad. I had had my wife’s internet passwords for some time. Email,… facebook,… bank account,… you name it, and I had it. So I, with about a stomach full of alcohol, went online. I erased her emails—that she needed. I “unfriended” a dozen or so people on her facebook account. And then I drained her bank account by transferring all but a few bucks to my own account. I did all this because she had the unmitigated gall to go out with her friends from work and not get home until after I was home from work—at 11:00 pm. Also, she didn’t answer her cell phone when I called to tell her I was out of work and on my way home. When I got to the house, and she wasn’t there, I felt a rage unlike any other I had felt in my life. So I started to drink. I called her cell phone again—still no answer. The anger doubled in intensity. She reached the driveway about five minutes later and said she hadn’t heard the phone ring. Tangentially, I have mentioned in a previous chapter, my growing and seemingly uncontrollable paranoia. I demanded answers, and she was unwilling to argue with me,… which only made me more angry and paranoid. She must have been up to no good. She most definitely was doing something out there that was intentionally going to hurt me emotionally. By the time she got to sleep, I had hatched my hacking plan.

I woke up Sunday morning with a really bad hangover and regret that is unbelievable. But I certainly wasn’t going to own up to it. I certainly wasn’t going to tell her about what I had done. I would let her discover it on her own (except for the bank account—somehow, even in a drunken stupor I realized that THAT was going a little too far—I had already replaced the money I STOLE from her). I rationalized that she had hurt me so significantly and cold-heartedly, that I was going to hurt her right back. Sunday was awful. I felt uncomfortable, ashamed and worthless. I also felt utterly alone: completely ostracized in my struggles to even recognize myself and what I had allowed myself to become. I think I was still struggling with the doctor’s diagnosis of my condition. “I am absolutely positive that I don’t have this brain chemistry issue,” I thought. “There is no way I need to be put on a fucking mood stabilizer for bipolar disorder.”

I had to work on Sunday at 4:00, so the mimosas were out. I still had the newspaper and sports page, but even that didn’t ease my sense of growing doom. My wife discovered in no short order what I had done the previous night. She confronted me with it, and I denied it. I DENIED IT? SERIOUSLY? Who the fuck else could have done this, John? Do you really think you’re going to get away with something like that? So I owned up to it. And, of course, she lost her mind—quite rightfully so and completely defensible—and I drew my own line in the sand, and we argued the entire day. I eventually called off from work. It was going to be impossible to face customers and managers with a pleasant demeanor that evening,… I was fuming! So,… after I decided I wasn’t going to work,… yep,… I started drinking again.

And I continued on that trend for a few weeks. I stopped eating except for once a day (about four or five ounces of sliced deli turkey for lunch), and drank my dinner when I got home from work at nighttime. I lost weight,… at an alarming level. I had started March at 257 pounds (by the scale at my local grocery store—somehow I had smashed the one we had in the closet). By May 31st, exactly three months later, that same scale told me I had lost forty pounds. It, of course, wasn’t healthy. I looked better than I had in about twelve years, but I had accomplished all of the weight loss by starving myself and swallowing more stress than I can explain. I ate the little amount I described above,… but I insisted to myself—and anyone else who would listen—that it was a result of me being on my feet and walking as much as I did at my job.

And well into June, the mood stabilizer and anti-depressant the psychiatrist had added to the cocktail still were having no effect on my mood. I never felt any better, I had insisted. I owned up to the continued drinking of beer when I visited him in mid-June, and he explained to me that I was masking the ability of the prescriptions to provide me some sort of relief. If I wasn’t going to stop my intake of alcohol, I wouldn’t allow the drugs to work,… they were a complete contraindication.

By the end of June, I was a complete and utter wreck. I had dropped another few pounds and continued to treat my wife shabbily. I even started harping on my sixteen-year-old daughter. She had always turned to me when things were going wrong in her life to the extent that she just needed to feel safe. It wasn’t so long ago that I was a teenager myself. I remembered how difficult it was to grow up,… and she knew that. I had been, until that point, the one person she could count on to make things better; I was her rock. And then I turned on her. There was nothing she could say or do to make my mood any better. I argued with her about trivial things, but the absolute worst thing I did was to ignore her. On nights that I worked, I got home late enough that she was usually in bed. The other nights, I barricaded myself in my bedroom by eight pm,… poking my head out only briefly enough to retrieve another beer. She finally said, “it used to be fun coming over here and now it just isn’t.” Mortified by this statement, I tried to make her feel wanted and welcome and safe again right after that. It didn’t work, and I gave up again and retreated to my solitude.

Then an event occurred that woke me the fuck up! Immediately! I didn’t hurt or attack anyone,… except for verbally. I didn’t threaten anyone,… except for myself. But I was removed from my house. I spent four days away from my wife and my home by going down to my mother’s house in Bradenton. The alternative, she explained to me in a language that I easily understood, was being committed to a hospital for observation. I had completely lost my mind.

I, indeed, had gone temporarily crazy.

Next time,… Something Light Before I continue.

It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better

And you’ll be all alone.

That was my thought as I walked out of the psychiatrist’s office. I stepped out into the parking lot with two prescriptions and no optimism about the future. I’ve never been good with optimism, anyway. You see the glass as half full, and I wonder why you pulled out such a big fucking glass in the first place. The doctor—I was still wondering if I should really call him that,… I mean he may be able to prescribe medication, but I wouldn’t go see this guy for a bloody nose—explained to me that I should do some thoroughgoing price shopping for the mood-stabilizer,… it could be tremendously expensive in some traditional pharmacies. He mentioned one potentially good supplier (read: legal drug dealer): one of the national warehouse chains where you can buy two-gallon jars of mayonnaise and a six-month supply of mouthwash if you had a membership. “Call around,” he said, “you’ll be glad you did. And don’t forget to include the one place I told you about. You don’t need a membership to use their pharmacy.”

So, I moped to my car in the mid-May stagnation. It had been a particularly long and cold winter. Up until late March, the daytime high had been ten degrees lower than the average overnight low—it was a miserable season. Now,… with the temperature pushing ninety, and the air so thick you needed a towel after walking a few paces, I pined for the days so cold your sack needed a sweater of its own. (Welcome to Florida,… it’s not the heat, it’s the stupidity.) I got home by sheer muscle memory. I don’t remember paying attention to the road—I do remember stopping to get another cup of coffee at the 7-11. Blueberry coffee. Now, normally I would tell you that fruit is the devil. But one day, after buying what I believed to be a French Vanilla flavored coffee and driving to work, I discovered,… in the middle of a seven-mile bridge,… that the moron who prepared the coffee at the store had put blueberry-fucking-coffee in the French-fucking-vanilla pot. I was furious. I don’t like fruit. I certainly don’t like fruit-flavored coffee. But I needed coffee and I was in the middle of a seven-mile bridge,… in a traffic jam,… and I was late for work already. So I drank the stupid blueberry coffee,… by the time I reached my office, I had a new favorite coffee. Okay,… so I’m pliable, kiss my ass.

I finally got back to the house. I still struggled with the diagnosis the psychiatrist had arrived at. Bipolar—one who had two distinct and diametrically opposed poles. “This guy can kiss both of my poles,” I said out loud,… for nobody but the dogs to hear. They didn’t know who I was talking about, fuck ‘em. I cried for a little bit,… maybe fifteen minutes (that was a walk in the park for me around that time), and then I checked my email and my facebook page. And then I cried a little more. I called my wife at work to tell her how my appointment went. She told me that she had considered the exact diagnosis to which the psychiatrist had arrived already,… several times. She reminded me that she had told me once that she thought I was, indeed, bipolar. She then reminded me that I had told her to fuck off immediately thereafter. “So,… what you’re saying is, ‘I told you so?’ You’re basking in the limelight of your prescient prognostication of my misery? Is that right?” So then,… she told me to fuck off.

I called around to the pharmacies as I had been instructed. (What an obedient puppy I could be.) The big drug store chain headquartered in Illinois quoted me a price in the mid $140 range. The big drug store chain headquartered in Rhode Island quoted me a price in the high $130s. The local Grocery store told me it would be around $130, and the giant superstore where all the locals with less-than-full-mouths of teeth shopped had a price of nearly $120. Finally I called the warehouse club that the Crazy Doctor told me about. I called the number I got from the website and pressed zero for the operator. She asked me to hold on for a moment while she prepared to look up the price for me…. And she hung up on me. I’m sure it was a mistake with the phone system or something,… but that just made me cry for a while. After fifteen minutes or so of bawling, I gathered up the nerve (with the help of a Xanax) to redial the phone. The same woman answered the phone and apologized profusely. She asked what the prescription was for, the exact dose and the quantity. After I told her, she asked me to hang on again. She didn’t hang up on me this time and instead got back on the line and told me what the cost of the medication would be: fourteen dollars and sixty-five cents. What a ridiculous discrepancy! I asked her why everybody else wanted so much for the same exact thing and her store asked so little for it. Her response was very enlightening,… “I have no idea.”

The warehouse club was a half-hour drive away. But to save over a hundred bucks, I’d push my grandmother out of an airplane or give a handjob to a moose or something else just as undesirable. I asked the woman on the other end of the line if she could fill the prescription while I was on my way up there so I wouldn’t have to wait. She explained that she couldn’t: they needed to verify the prescription on paper. I asked her long it would take to fill after I brought it in, and she informed that normally it would be about an hour, but they were short-staffed that day, so around ninety minutes. Super. Fan-fucking-tastic.

I listened to my favorite midday talk show on the way to the warehouse club. The guys on the program were castigating some celebrity over some egregiously bad behavior he or she had exhibited. It was hysterical;… I didn’t laugh;… I cried instead.

When I got there, I was stopped at the front door by the burly gatekeeper and asked to display my membership card. I told him I had been informed that if I were just going to the pharmacy I didn’t need a membership. This guy eyed me up and down—as if trying to determine what my ailment was. I was sure that he, seeing no outwardly visible symptoms, had figured it out immediately. I knew what he was thinking: “fucking bipolar motherfucker.” But all he said was, “okay.” The same woman who had answered the phone earlier was behind the counter. She remembered the conversation, and I was convinced that she had the same perception of me as the gatekeeper.

“Ninety minutes,” I asked.

“Ninety minutes,” she said, “at least.”

It was lunchtime. I wanted a beer. I found a real, honest-to-goodness dive bar. The kind with the windows blacked out so that you couldn’t tell if it was night or day outside. When my eyes finally adjusted, I asked the bartender for a beer. She scratched her ass and asked me if I wanted a draft or a bottle. “Both,” I said. I sat there for an hour and fifteen minutes and drank four beers,… maybe five. It was one-fifteen in the afternoon, and I felt nice and loose,… warm inside. And it was boiling outside. I got back to the pharmacy, and the woman behind the counter asked me if I needed consultation from the pharmacist on the medications I was picking up. “No,… I’m fine, thanks.” When I got in the car, I looked over the instructions. The potential side effects included dry-mouth and excessive salivation. It could possibly cause drowsiness or trouble sleeping. And then I saw the big warning on the side of the bottle,… “AVOID ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES.”

I needed to get home. I needed another beer,… or ten. I was going to keep drinking today,… and tomorrow,… and all weekend long.

Next time,… and even worse before it gets better, if it ever does.