Randy T and I stayed stoned the entire summer, watching television with the sound off and the stereo cranked, sharing his bong, falling asleep on his floor. I’d show up at home every few days to drop off my laundry and raid the kitchen for leftover lasagna and chocolate cake to take back to Randy T’s. My mother fretted a bit about my random comings and goings, but the old man was thrilled I’d been taken under the wing of his young protégé and encouraged my newfound independence. He didn’t care if I was out all night as long as Randy T delivered my sorry ass to work by eight o’clock every morning.
Randy T lived for rock and roll and hit the big arena shows when he could, but the closest big city was Charlotte and, back then, it was still just a puckered asshole on the South Carolina border. So every few months Randy T would head north to the university towns in the Triangle or to Richmond or, for the right band, all the way to D.C. itself. Which is where RFK Stadium was and where the Stones were playing the second week of August. But I was only eighteen, and as much as my father loved Randy T, hanging with him in Gastonia was one thing, the District of Columbia another. Randy T and I dug that the old man might not trust him to chaperon me in a city that was ninety percent colored to stand around with a bunch of drug addicts to watch a bunch of drug addicts. It’s cool, Randy T said, we would leave Friday night after work, crash in Silver Spring with his brother who did something with drinking water for the government, get fucked up, pass out, wake up, get fucked up, catch the band, drive straight home, stayed fucked up all day Sunday, and roll into work Monday morning as if we hadn’t done anything all weekend except take the truck out to fill the tank.
But on the big Friday afternoon, Randy T took sick. So sick that the lady at the last job of the day got worried and called the dispatcher. The old man drove out to the customer’s house, panicking when he arrived to find Randy T mumbling incoherently, his forehead scorched and his glazed eyes dead. We raced to the emergency room and the staff took custody of Randy T, throwing him on a gurney and whisking him behind the curtains. The old man was rattled. He wanted me home, safe, but I stood my ground and insisted he drop me off at Randy T’s apartment. I was stranded, no wheels of my own, completely baffled by the four-on-the-floor of Randy T’s pickup. A few hits on the bong gave me courage. It was Kerouac time. Time for my own Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. I stuffed the tickets, a pair of clean BVDs, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and a bar of Palmolive into a backpack and slipped a few joints into my socks. I cadged a ride in the parking lot from a lady I knew from the pool who was heading to the Publix out near the interstate. By three in the morning, I was north of Raleigh, shivering and cotton-mouthed.
The yellow eyes of a northbound tractor trailer emerged from the thick summer mist. The driver downshifted and the air brakes brought the big cat to rest. The engine purred, idling as the door to the cab swung open, welcoming me. A voice told me to toss up the backpack; a hand reached down to steady me as I mounted the cab.
He looked like Jimmy Dean, the country singer, not the actor, with big friendly blue eyes and a long, clean-shaven jaw. Cold for August, huh? he said. Where you heading? D.C., I told him, and he laughed and asked if I had an appointment at the White House. He offered me a bag of trail mix and a warm can of Pepsi-Cola. Stones concert, I said, trying to sound worldly and jaded, as if it were something I did every week. Cool, he said, the Stones are cool enough, but he preferred the real thing. He flipped the top of a cassette case filled with white boy blues—Michael Bloomfield, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers.
By the Virginia border, I knew he was a native of St. Louis which, according to him, was where the blues were born. He’d done seven semesters at Washington University, but dropped out because it was all bullshit, not real, not like this, barreling through the guts of America saddled to forty tons of steel and rubbing shoulders with the “real people,” the tractor-trailer jockeys and mechanics and hash-house waitresses who held the answers to the mysteries of life. Once he had a little nest egg, he was going to Nashville to give Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings a run for their money.
I tried to embellish myself, trying on attitudes and experiences to make me seem worldly, experienced, someone who might interest him. I was surprised when he clucked with disapproval when I told him about Randy T and his stash of bongs and pipes. That shit will fry your brain, he said. Then he smiled and asked if it made me horny. Yeah, I said, sometimes it feels like I’m carrying a lead pipe down there. You oughta get Randy T to help you out, he laughed. Yeah, I said, distracted and exhausted by the chills riffing through my body.
He cranked up the heat to stop my teeth from chattering. He reached over and felt my shirt. You’re drenched, he said. Then he put the back of his hand to my forehead and pointed to the bunk behind us. You’re burning up. Hustle back there and get outta those wet clothes. Wrap yourself in the blanket and sweat it out before you get pneumonia.
I crawled into the bunk and peeled the clothes from my skin. He told me to retrieve the Band-Aid box tucked into one of his boots. I found a couple of joints and we passed one back and forth. He switched on the overhead light and asked what I thought of the artwork. He’d pinned a gallery of nudies to the walls of the bunk. Not airbrushed Playboy girls-next-door, but old, hard-looking babes with peroxided hair and black eyebrows. They had puffy tongues and long, dangling tits with tips like rotten pears. A girl in a double-page centerfold had dumped a can of beef stew between her spread legs. Stoned, I counted the little pieces of peas and corn in her pussy hairs. I was flat on my back and the Pepsi sloshed in my stomach. Go on, relax, do what you want, he said. Shoot anywhere, don’t worry about it. I turned my head to tell him I was just going to crash and saw him pumping his long red snake.
I came as soon as I touched myself. Yeah, yeah, he said. He stared at me wild-eyed in the rearview mirror. Come up here and suck me off, he begged. I want to feel my cock in your mouth. His voice was harsh, threatening. I wanted to be home, in my own bedroom, safe. My head started throbbing and, trapped, with nowhere to run, I rolled over and escaped into a dream. I was floating in the surf. My neck was stiff; I couldn’t turn my face away from the midday sun. I threw my arms across my eyes, trying to hide from the blinding white light. I heard a voice, then felt the heat of a body between my legs. He rubbed his cheek against mine, then licked my scorched face with his tongue, trying to cool me down. He found my mouth and tried to force it open and, when I resisted, he bit my neck, an affectionate little nip. I felt him lifting my legs and his cock searching for my ass.
He’d pinned me against the mattress. I tried to kick him away, but my feet flailed over his shoulders. Hey, little buddy, relax. His voice was calm, gentle, but he pressed his forearm against my neck with just enough force to let me know how easy it would be to break it. When I started to cry, he kissed me and told me how easy this could be if I only just let it happen. Push down, he said, push, push like you’re taking a big shit. The pain lasted less than a minute, just like he promised. I don’t want to hurt your little cherry, he said. He kept his word, riding me slowly and covering my face with little kisses. I sank back into the dream, deafened by the sound of wave after wave of warm salty water crashing over me.
I opened my eyes to a white ceiling. The room was cool and clean. I turned my head on the pillow and saw a plastic bag of clear liquid hanging from a metal hook. My eyes followed the tube down to the white bandage on the back of my hand. I was naked, exposed, sandbagged in ice packs. I let my eyes drift back to the ceiling. I felt my lips crack and split when I whispered a single word. Mom. I fell asleep, my hand in hers, knowing she wouldn’t leave the chair by my bed until I was safe again. Somewhere in the room, the old man was crying.
The hospital told them a trucker had brought me to the emergency room, delirious with a fever of one hundred and four. He’d said he found me half dead at a rest stop on the interstate. My mother always regretted he hadn’t left his name and address so they could thank him for saving my life
. The doctors said it was meningococcal meningitis. Randy T and me both. Highly contagious, spread by direct contact, coughing, sneezing, sharing unwashed eating utensils. I let them believe it. I knew it was a long red snake that had poisoned me.
I spent all of September and the better part of October recovering. Chicago was out of the question; a medical deferral postponed my arrival in the big city until the winter semester. The plan was to get a head start on the Great Books except that the Batman and Robin were more engaging than Gilgamesh and the epics of Homer cried out for a graphic edition, illustrated by the artists of Marvel and DC.
“You’re still weak. Don’t worry, your powers of concentration will return by the time you get to school,” my mother reassured me.
But something lingered, a sense of dread that remained after the doctors confirmed the symptoms had resolved and I’d escaped without permanent neurological damage. I rarely wandered far from the Monument to Heat and Air, passing on the Clapton and Steve Miller Band tickets offered by Randy T. The promise of road trips and the lure of marijuana had led me to the cab of a tractor trailer, wrapped in a blanket and drenched in sweat. I preferred the solitude of my room, the lights ablaze through the night. I tossed and turned, sleeping fitfully, dreaming about endless stretches of empty highway leading to a dark strange city where no Dark Knight waited to protect me. The Joker of my nightmares looked suspiciously like a scarred and painted Jimmy Dean, mocking me as a coward, too sickly and weak to defend myself.
It seemed abrupt, a spur-of-the-moment decision, when I announced that Chicago seemed too cold, too far away, that college could wait a year, maybe two. Nocera Heat and Air’s payroll could accommodate me while I decided what to do with my future.
“Like hell it will,” my father announced, surprisingly calm and rational for a man prone to combustion and outbursts. “If you don’t go now, you’ll never go,” he said.
“What makes you such an expert on higher education?” I snarled.
I’d always known I could infuriate him. Over the past few years, I’d learned it was easy to one-up him. But never before had I known I could hurt him.
“I know you think I’m stupid. You’re right. I am. I know I’m not smart like you. But listen to me. Just this once. I’m not telling you. I’m asking you. Please.”
He walked away, defeated, his hopes and dreams for me having crashed and burned.
My mother waited until he’d left the room, then pounced, angry, accusing.
“All that man wants to do is help you. Why won’t you let him do that?”
Words once used to protect me were now turned against me, as compelling as they had been when they’d vanquished my father ten years earlier.
All that boy wants is to be with you. Why can’t you give him that?
Davidson College, close to home, familiar, an unlikely nest for predators and deviants, was thrilled I wanted to fill a space vacated by a first semester dropout. How different would it have all turned out if there had never been a bout of meningitis and a long red snake? Would I have blossomed in the Windy City or would I have been crushed like a bug by the profound thinkers nurtured in the intellectual hothouse of the University of Chicago? Maybe it all turned out for the best, my being cloistered in a humid, remote Southern outpost, my stature as the leading (and only) Trotskyite unchallenged, no one around to expose my limited comprehension of the vagaries of dialectical materialism. I sure did like to say those words, though. And the girl I would marry sure liked to hear them.
Diagnosis
I tell Matt I’m Humpty Dumpty and he’s fucking with my head.
“That’s my job,” he says.
Okay, then, whose job is it to put me back together again?
He’s not happy with me tonight. He says he sees a pattern here and asks if I recognize it. I shrug my shoulders. I shouldn’t have told him about the “therapeutic” massage, complete with happy ending, in my hotel room in Orlando. He reminds me I’m on probation and the State of North Carolina wouldn’t look kindly on commercial transactions for sexual release. He asks whether I understand the meaning of the term self-destructive. I tell him he’s being melodramatic.
We move on to discussing medication. Or, rather, he’s talking about something called SSRIs and I stop listening. Something behind his right shoulder is distracting me. A small abstract watercolor. Not abstract exactly, more geometric. Squares and pyramids strategically aligned by color. It has to be new. I’ve sat in this room every week since late last summer and never seen it before.
“Is that watercolor new?” I ask.
“What watercolor?”
“The one behind you. The one with all the shapes.”
“No. Why do you ask?”
“No reason.”
I scan the room searching for further evidence of my waning powers of observation. Desk, chair, sofa, crucifix. Those I remember. This paperweight, the Venetian millefleur, I remember that too. The psychopharmacology reference guide on the side table. That I haven’t seen. That’s definitely new.
“You aren’t listening to me, are you?” he asks.
“Sure, of course.”
Actually I stopped listening when he told me what I didn’t want to hear. He’s gone too far. He’s overstepped his boundaries. He’s diagnosing me.
Depression.
“Call in FDR!” I say.
“What?”
“I have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
I think my stentorian Hyde Park mimicry is pretty funny, clever at least, but it doesn’t get a laugh. He’s holding a manila folder with papers attached by a strong metal clasp. A medical record. My medical record. I’m reassured by its brevity, just a few sheets of paper. It would be thick as the phone book if I were crazy. It had never occurred to me he was keeping a medical record. He’s not my doctor. He’s my counselor. That’s what the State of North Carolina ordered. Counseling. I pay him a lot of money and he counsels me to stay off my knees in public toilets. That’s the State’s only interest in making me do this, to protect its upstanding citizens from stumbling upon acts of depraved perversion when nature calls while they’re doing eighty miles an hour on its beautifully landscaped interstates. The State of North Carolina has no interest in How I Feel.
I tell him he has it all wrong.
“How so?”
I can’t be depressed. Don’t depressed people sleep all the time? Lately, I can’t sleep long enough to finish a dream, tossing and turning and twisting the sheets between my legs. Don’t depressed people want to be alone? I’m constantly seeking out crowded rooms, noise, distractions. In fact, I crawl the walls when I’m alone, pacing, smoking, smoking, smoking. Aren’t depressed people passive? Not me. It’s easy to get a rise out of me these days. People stare at me from the safety of their own cars, shocked by my bulging veins and grinding teeth when we’re crawling at fifteen miles an hour. Don’t depressed people cry at the drop of a hat? Well, meeting one of the diagnostic criteria isn’t enough. Besides, it’s not as if I actually cry. It’s just that I feel like crying.
“It’s not a sign of weakness, you know,” he says in his professional voice.
“And it’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he says.
“How would you know?”
Christ, I’m down his throat. He doesn’t react. He’s not startled, not taken back. He’s observing.
“I know because it’s a disease,” he answers. “Just like hypertension and diabetes. I’m writing you a prescription.”
“No.”
“Don’t be an ass.”
He’s slipping up. At least it shows he’s not completely complacent about this.
“Sorry,” he says. “Tell me why you don’t want to try medication.”
“I not only will not take them,” I declare, sounding like a petulant five-year-old, “I’ll never even get them. I’ll never have it filled.”
“You’re not being rational. That’s the depression talking.”
That’s the depression t
alking.
Where do they come up with lines like this? Do they teach them in medical school? Clever Diagnostic Quips 101?
“What are you feeling right now?”
“Nothing,” I say. “I’m not feeling anything.”
I’m lying. I’m feeling exhausted. Too tired to invest any more words and emotions in denying his diagnosis.
“You’re always feeling something,” he says.
“Okay, you win. I’m feeling depressed.”
Maybe that will shut him up. The clock says only twenty more minutes until I’m released. I’ve let him win. Maybe he’ll take pity and set me free early.
“Too easy,” he says.
“What?”
“Too easy. How does depression feel? What does depression mean to you?”
“Abraham Lincoln.”
“Excuse me?”
“Abraham Lincoln.”
“Okay. You got me there.”
“Abraham Lincoln. Diagnosed with depression one hundred years after he died. After he died, for Christ’s sake. What does that tell you?”
Eureka. He’s befuddled.
“I don’t understand,” he says.
“It’s easy. Do you think one hundred years ago people walked away from the White House, shaking their heads and clicking their tongues, saying, ‘Man, Old Abe, Honest Abe, he seemed a little depressed to me today’? Of course not. They’d walk out and say, ‘Abe was awful quiet today.’ Or, ‘Old Abe seemed to be somewhere else.’ Or, ‘Abe was a little short-tempered, not like him to be that way.’ The word depressed probably didn’t even exist back then. Who invented it? Your buddy Freud? His buddy Jung? Hell, whoever it was, they got it wrong. Depression isn’t a disease. It’s a description!”
Probation Page 7
