Drunken Angel (9781936740062)

by Kaufman, Alan

  “What now?” he said. Looked old, faded, his face torn up. Couldn’t seem to get more than a week or two sober before hitting the pipe, getting into even worse predicaments, and crawling back into recovery beaten to a pulp, flat broke, discredited, on hands and knees. This last time, he’d been diagnosed with hep C and his liver was giving out. Now he had about four days back, his denim still bore fresh-looking blood and puke stains. The bottoms of his eyes were green bags of disease.

  “You eat yet today?” I asked.

  He shook his head no, dragged so hard on a smoke his collapsed cheekbones drysucked his face into a granny look.

  “Well, how about we go get some grub?”

  “You got dough? Or you thinking Fort Hamilton?”

  “No. But I know this,” I said. “I ain’t eatin’ one more salad of fresh-mown lawn grass and tomato rings at the Fort Hamilton Church Free Lunch.”

  “Getting particular, huh?”

  “Tell you what. There’s an open mike in North Beach that runs every Wednesday afternoon. Starts at three and runs to five. What say me and you hoof it across town, I’ll read, sell some books, and we’ll blow what we make on big plates of beef lo mein down in old Chinatown?”

  “Bet.”

  It was a couple of miles, but we had nothing else to do and just sauntered along, slowly, to conserve our strength. He hadn’t eaten in over sixteen hours, I in about ten, and those hadn’t been spectacular feedings. So we both felt light-headed and paused frequently to rest, sitting hunched on the sidewalk, shoulder to shoulder, passing a cigarette back and forth. At least the weather held.

  “I feel like a butterfly nailed to a wall,” he said, adjusting sunglasses with a tap from a grubby fingernail.

  “Why do you say that? Don’t you like being sober?”

  “Do you?” he asked skeptically.

  “It’s better than the gutter, man.”

  Willie Deuces looked incredulous. “What do you call this?” he said, pointing to the pavement holding up our tired hungry asses.

  “I call this grooving on Haight Street in the weekday sun, with nothing to do but go read poems and maybe stuff our faces with Chinese chow.”

  “Man, you’re on Pink Cloud Number Nine,” he said.

  “Just practicing gratitude. It works, you know. Everything starts to look better. The world gets its shine back.”

  “Who’s your sponsor?”

  “Eugene.”

  “He’s a good one. Hard-ass, I hear.”

  “He keeps it real.”

  “You look a lot better than when you walked in. You were pretty torn up. And nuts. I can see whatever you’re doing is working.”

  “I go to a meeting every day, man. Sometimes two, three, or four. Meet my sponsor every week. Pray to this thing I don’t even believe in completely yet, though I’m starting to. There is something. I don’t know what it is. But it’s not me or you and it’s there when I need it. Some kind of Higher Power.”

  “At least you’re staying with it. I can’t seem to get a month clean. Keep going out at one week, two weeks. Three weeks. Three days! Three hours!” He shook his head. “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. I don’t know why I can’t seem to get this thing.”

  We stood to our feet and shuffled along some more down the hot sidewalk, keeping one eye on the sky, checking for shifts in the wind, hints of gray, but it stayed blue and we ogled and grinned at the pretty San Francisco girls in their hippie dresses and Bettie Page haircuts and sweet tattoos of she-devils and swallows.

  “So what makes you feel like a butterfly nailed to a wall?”

  “I don’t really want to be in sobriety, okay? I’m not even court ordered. I don’t much like sober life.”

  “So what makes you keep trying to get this?”

  He didn’t answer right off. Face withdrew into sadness. Then said: “I once spat up a piece of my lung when I was hitting the pipe. And I got so desperate when I ran out of crack that I figured the piece I’d spat up must have crack residue on it, so I put it in the pipe and smoked it. I guess when you smoke your own lung it’s time to quit. What do you think?”

  I grinned. “I’m trying to think of a name for that. How about Addictive Respiratory Autocannibalism.”

  “I want to fly free, man. But my wing’s nailed to the wall. All I can do is flap around and look better and better, but when do I get to fly?”

  I didn’t try to answer, though I knew just what he meant. But to me, this sobriety thing was limitless. To me, the blue sky above our heads was a miracle. Passing clean-and-sober time together was a miracle. That I didn’t have a ball-peen hammer of a hangover smashing my brain was a miracle. That my body did not groan and scream with pain was a miracle. That I did not crave alcohol was sheer science fiction. That I could just walk around breathing and being and talking and doing without a black sucking abyss on my insides demanding more booze was more happiness than I had ever known. There was no dense wall of impenetrable glass dividing me from Willie Deuce and every other human being on planet Earth. His presence resonated in me, fed a part of me that craved companionship. I didn’t know his real name or anything about him, but it didn’t matter. There was no separation. We were recovering alcoholics kicking it on Haight Street, alive when we should have been dead, disporting in a kind of living afterlife, since whatever we once had been was to all intents and purposes gone. We were both new in the city—he came from Southern Cal—and for me the city still held wonders, a sense of magic. You felt it not just on Haight Street but in the Mission, North Beach, even the Tenderloin, where what had gone down in the Fifties and Sixties revolutions, the ghosts of old bands and countercultural legends—Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Richard Brautigan, Charlie Parker, the Dead, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Sonny Barger and the Hells Angels, Hunter Thompson, Kesey’s Merry Pranksters, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Diane Di Prima—arose like specters from the sidewalks, beckoning to new unknowns with an electrifying thrill that charged the clear blue air with a sense of purpose and possibility.

  My virgin nerve endings, which had lain dormant for years blacked out on vodka, tingled now with a sense of joyous freedom. And what was freedom? First, freedom from addiction. No longer a slave to my thoughts or impulses, or to chemical dependency, I could dance beneath the open sky with one hand waving free! That was huge. I grasped that recovery from alcohol and all substances must serve as the baseline for freedom’s pursuit. But once that was solidly in place, the possibilities were limitless. Political freedom. Sexual freedom. Personal freedom. Artistic freedom. Spiritual freedom. Were they all one and the same? Did one find freedom in all these ways through the diligent pursuit of a single freedom? I didn’t know.

  Was desperate to find out. And that little voice of the whispering Angel said: When you have become what you wish for through your own experience, then you will truly be free.

  But what should I wish to be? On this, the Angel was mute.

  At the North Beach open mike I read the title poem, “American Cruiser,” from my book and received a rousing ovation from the twenty or so people present, mostly other poets come to read their own work. Among them was a black woman in a wheelchair who was not a poet.

  She waved me over. “How much for that book?” she asked.

  “Three dollars, ma’am.”

  “Give me one, please. No, give me two. I want to give one to my son.”

  She removed a small bead-covered purse, unsnapped it, and counted out six singles, all she had.

  Heart wrenched, I held out the two books and said: “Ma’am, it would be my pleasure and honor to sell you two for the price of one.”

  “Nonsense!” she snapped, wagging the bills at me. “Take your money. Give me my books. That’s a beautiful poem you wrote, and real poets like you gotta eat, just like the rest of us. You don’t look to me like you’re getting properly fed. Big tall good-looking fellow like you should eat well. Who’s taking care of you, son? I can see your momma’
s not around for a thousand miles. Is that right?”

  “Right now, I’m in God’s hands, ma’am.” And to my own amazement, realized that I truly meant it.

  She began a reply but the words caught in her throat and her eyes grew moist. Though I took the money, her hand remained aloft, inviting me to hold it, which I did. She said: “Not too many people would give that answer these days, son. You’re a very beautiful man. A very beautiful man! And you are God’s poet. It’s God puts words like that in a beautiful man’s mind. Will you sign my books, please? Make mine out to Lucille and his out to Bobby.”

  I did as asked, thanked her, and went around to other tables hawking my wares. To my utter amazement, the books sold. Willie Deuce rejoiced at the prospect of lo mein.

  “Dude! You made about twenty-five bucks in there!” he panted as we cut across Columbus Avenue, past City Lights Books, and down Kerouac Alley to Sam Ho’s Noodle Shop, a little dive with steamy old dumbwaiters and crawlspace tables, but the food was cheap and plentiful and we each ordered big plates of egg rolls, bowls of wonton soup, and heaping portions of beef lo mein.

  We didn’t speak until the food came, realized there was nothing to say, and fell to it, slurping down the noodles, spooning in the wontons, ravenous, crunching down on egg rolls; washed it all down with big drafts of hot tea. It was a great feast and we made it last. Not a speck of food left. Finished off with fortune cookies that we recited to each other.

  Willie Deuce read his: “To have good friends you must be a good friend.”

  I read mine: “You have only one life. Live it clean and sober.”

  He looked at me. “You made that shit up.”

  I smiled and said, “Let’s go have a cigarette.”

  Bellies full, we walked over to a good spot in the sun, a wall off Columbus Avenue, and, sliding to a sit, contentedly lit up cigarettes. Willie Deuce put his hand out and shook mine. “I know you don’t want to hear me say thank you and how much I appreciate you taking me along like this, buying me this good meal—”

  Before he could finish the thought, I peeled off ten bucks, stuffed it into his shirt pocket, and said: “And are you also eternally grateful for the tenner I just gave you and you will never be able to repay me?”

  Willie Deuce laughed. “Don’t get all hard-assed on me, now. We both know you’re a good man. No point avoiding that fact, bud.”

  “Okay.” I grinned. “I’m a good guy. Just take care of yourself, okay, Willie Deuce? Don’t drink today. Agreed?”

  He stood up, smiled. Walked off.

  I never saw him again.

  60

  IN A TENDERLOIN SPECIALTY PET SHOP I BOUGHT a pretty little goldfish that I named “Debra.” Only later did I realize that Debra is the name of my brother, Howard’s, wife. What possible psychological implications this might have I dared not even to consider.

  At first, she was just a nice surprise when I got home to my room—to find her gliding in her small round bowl, alive, a life other than mine. The pleasure that I took in her surprised me. Fed her a pinch of food, watched her nibble on a flake, her mobile color form antidote to the drab rooming house.

  And then, one day, I came home hurting inside. Though I’d gone to a meeting, and written some poems, the whole reality of my life, being nearly thirty-eight, had crashed in on me. I was living flat broke and still newly sober, managing a run-down flophouse in a sketchy neighborhood, a member of a poetry avant-garde that had little chance of breaking through, let alone of earning money—and to make things worse, at the meeting, a fellow named Charles who had the same length of sober time as me, six months, showed up dressed to the nines, hair styled, with a knockout girlfriend on his arm and leading a leashed Saint Bernard.

  He announced to the group that he could no longer attend our meeting because he’d just landed a great new high-paying unionized job as a master carpenter, and in addition he’d just acquired a cherry vintage black Chevelle SS. He owed it all to recovery, he said, and he looked forward to more great things that his Higher Power had in store for him. Hoped he’d be able to drop in on meetings now and then just to stay in touch.

  At his mention of a Higher Power, my insides lurched. Still couldn’t claim to have found one or even to have given it much thought. Eugene, my sponsor, had told me not to worry about it. “Anytime you find another alcoholic standing in front of you,” he had said, “looking you in the eye and talking about sobriety, consider that God is there, speaking through him or her to you. Or anytime you’re sitting in a meeting, consider that God is there. For now, think of God as an acronym for ‘Group of Drunks.’ ”

  Those were instructions I could follow. Needed to be baby-fed sobriety a teaspoonful at a time. Too much too fast spooked me. When I told Eugene that, he said: “Sure. That’s right. That’s why we say fear is just an acronym for ‘Fuck Everything and Run.’ ”

  Always quick to catch him out, quickly I shot back: “But you once said fear stands for ‘False Evidence Appearing Real.’ Which is it?”

  “Both. You’ll see.”

  And he was right.

  But now, there was Charles. My age, same time sober. But he was dressed in fine threads, driving a sweet car, hooked up with a high-heeled blonde bombshell, and master of a gigantic and lovable Saint Bernard, a terrific breed, especially when one considered their traditional use as brandy-bearing rescuers bounding over avalanche snows to deliver a keg full of schnapps right to you. What drunk would not love such a creature?

  One day, I confessed my envy of Charles’s good fortune to Eugene, who said: “I’m skeptical of whatever it is that you think he’s got. What you’ve got is far more important.”

  “What I’ve got? I’ve got nothing! A crazy nonjob as custodian of a dumping ground for psychos, malcontents, and petty hoods. A little book of poems that maybe fifty people have read. And a goldfish in a bowl. I’m penniless, heading into middle age, and still eating in soup kitchens. And my ex-wife won’t even let me talk to my daughter. What I’ve got? I’m pathetic!”

  “How many meetings did you get to today?”

  “Three. I was feeling so poor over Charles’s good luck.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, while you were feeling sorry for yourself did you do anything to pitch in and help at the meeting in any way?”

  “Yeah. I stepped up to make coffee for one of the groups when their regular coffeemaker didn’t show.”

  “And you wrote today?”

  “Yeah. A new poem.”

  “You ate?”

  “It tasted like mud. But it was food.”

  “This guy with the Saint Bernard, he’s been in recovery the same amount of time as you, but look at what conclusions he’s reached. That he can handle a relationship, care for a Saint Bernard, hold down a full-time job, keep up a high-maintenance car, and he’ll do that by dropping in now and then on meetings when he has time. Let’s see how well that works. How’s that goldfish of yours, by the way? Debra?”

  “Swimming.”

  “Well, that’s wonderful! I would have thought she’d be dead by now. What’s it been? A whole two weeks that you’ve fed her and changed the water in her bowl?”

  “Something like that.”

  “So have you figured out why you gave her your brother’s wife’s name?” He was grinning now from ear to ear.

  A black cloud of gloom overtook me. I leaned forward, hands clasped anxiously. “What do you think? Any significance to my choice of that name?”

  “Not unless your brother’s married to a goldfish. Then I’d say we might need to have a professional look at you. But you’re nuts anyway, so what does it matter? You’re doing better than I ever expected. I already told you, you’re the worst alcoholic I’ve ever met, and I’ve seen some bad ones. When I first met you I wouldn’t have given five cents for your staying dry a single day. But you’re doing great. The hell with Charles. I’ll tell you what. You just decide that from here on in, since your life is already a great big loss, you’re going to be a pathet
ic recovery loser who does loser shit like go to lots of meetings and helping other drunks and writing poetry. Let Charles get the bimbos and Saint Bernards. You’re the loser who puts recovery and spiritual life before everything. We’ll see who comes out on top.”

  When I entered my small room, Debra would circle the bowl, small, orange, and streamlined, backlit by a soft lamp. I leaned close, said: “Hi, Deb!” She looked incredibly pretty to me, beautiful even. Had doe eyes and a pert little nose and naturally large wide lips without any silicone. Filling a water glass, I used a small net to transfer her out of her bowl while I cleaned it and changed the water. I returned Deb to her fishbowl and sat with my face close to the convex glass. She came over.

  “Look what I got you. A friend!”

  I removed from my pocket a tiny rubber deep-sea diver that I’d found in a toy store, and dropped it in. She darted away. It sank right to the bottom and lay there, looking dead. She swam away to avoid it.

  “What’s the matter, Deb? Don’t you like the dead deep-sea diver? That’s what I feel like. That’s what I find when I go down deep: a diver half dead. I’m so tired.”

  I placed Debra’s bowl on a chair where I could watch her circling from my cot. She always seemed to pause on the side facing me, as if she wanted to see me as much as I wanted to see her. And in this way, it seemed, we kept each other company.

  “Can it be?” I asked her. “Do you have feelings? Are you as lonely as I am? All alone here in this crazy little room and you all alone in your crazy little bowl. Did last night’s gunshots from the projects scare you? They woke me. The gangbangers go on the roof and shoot off their guns. They get high and aim at the stars. Can you imagine being in so much pain that you shoot at stars with a gun? I’m in pain, Debra. What have I got to show for my life? What have I done? Did you know that I have a daughter, Debra? Her name is Isadora. She’s in Israel. I have no money to see her. I worry about her. I miss her. Every day, I miss her. It’s a constant ache in my gut, hurts all the time. How was your day? What’d you do? I saw the food flake gone. Which reminds me, it’s your dinner time.”