“Danimal,” was a guy that I really got along well with. He didn’t hide from himself in sports and television. The drinking was probably the only thing wrong with what we did. And with him, having been influenced by the Jazz age, it was just one of life’s everyday tools.
Maybe it was Danny’s lot in life to be an example to people, being that almost everyone liked him. Then people could easily see the destructive forces of denying love to a child, and what alcohol does on top of that hurt. The drink isn’t bad, it’s the damage done to a young mind caused by an improper balance in a person’s development. It’s the pain of what’s missing when a boy needs a father- the pain of the unanswered questions that only a dad could give you, the sting caused because dad was too selfish to be dad. It seems he didn’t care enough to give anything of himself to anyone beyond what he wanted them for.
Why do we let the heartless live? Only because we hope they will change for the good. We hope they will learn the importance and value of love and see how it affects the whole world. But who’s to say who’s heartless and who will not change? Who’s to say who’s what but themselves of themselves? I begged myself to find out of myself. I begged myself to see, while fighting against man’s social diseases to live. I have learned to struggle free, to be but my struggle is not over, nor is my work in this life done.
My lessons in life would continue with, yet, another dysfunctional relationship. My efforts with my own mother were continuing but so was the struggle with trying to get along, and to work, with all of my family members. Togetherness was foreign. It seemed like the Conklin project would go from difficult, to highly improbable, as it progressed- almost like I was being dared constantly, like: “Oh yeah? Well then see if you can do THIS”. But I kept at it, trying to prove my worth, trying to give of myself to gain their approval and acceptance. A ‘thank you’, a hug, some sign of affection, but I got nothing more than the truck I was going to get for my work. I was trying to stop drinking but my broken heart was burning. It was impossible for me to function in the least with that constant burning.
On Sunday evenings, I rode my bicycle down the Muskottawa Trail that led toward the town of Ravenna, so that I could decompress with some beer. It was always a welcome journey, enjoying the stars and the fresh air. It was a six-mile ride for a jumbo bottle of beer but I didn’t mind at all. Six miles to a place I had never been to before in the daytime was a challenge. I had no idea where the trail went to or if I’d even find Ravenna by taking it but it was better than sitting in the van, where I slept in the back yard.
After managing to find Ravenna, where the trail went right through, I purchased my beer and headed right back in the direction of home. The trail took me across a bridge that was an old train trestle, where a large stream or small river was rushing through, creating a roar in the distance below. The stream spoke to me with its rock crashing waters. This is where I stopped and sat to drink my beer and smoke with the sounds and the stars- basking in what seemed like the only beautiful love the world had to share with me that I could take for my own.
What seemed like miles later, I had stopped for a rest at a crossroads. When I went to proceed I became confused about which way I had been coming from. This confusion caused me to spin around, finding no sign to indicate where the trail was. Finally, I decided that the trail was the one that was a bit smaller in width. It then occurred to me that I may have gotten turned around in my confusion. A panic set in. A few deep breaths later, I recalled how the various explorers circumnavigated the globe using the stars. Feeling I could use the stars, I located the Big Dipper. It was the position of the Big Dipper that helped me to decide which way to go, and it’s a good thing I looked because I was going the wrong way- of course.
One Sunday night, on my way back home from getting my two jumbos of beer, I hit a bump in the path as I neared the house. Having already drank one, the other one in my backpack to have when I got back. This bump sent me flying over the handlebars, face first onto the asphalt. Somehow, I managed to land without busting myself up anymore than scraping a palm from trying to push the Earth out of my way. The bike came down after me, making a pretty ugly heap in the pathway. When I regained my composure to inspect the bike and the unharmed contents of my pack, my attention then turned to the bump in the road. It was then that I recalled a very small bump from when I had earlier traveled through. What I found was a long fallen tree that measured two inches at one end, and four or five at the other end, stretched across the path. The small bump was the thin end. Someone had placed the tree across the path to impede with trail-riders in the evening. There were a couple Busch beer cans laid by it, the same kind my mother’s boyfriend kept around the house. Someone must have thought it was real funny when they had taken a moment to think of it, probably laughing about the prank, while they imagined a person tripping over it in the dark- ruining their trip to the beer store. I imagined the giggling as they did it. Strange as it was, and scary as it was to almost lose my beer, I couldn’t be sure if it wasn’t my own practical joke. Or maybe it was one of my grandpa’s jokes, in my subconscious. I never exactly recalled but I could see me doing something like that. Confused about the situation, I proceeded back to the house, and climbed into my Uncle Bill’s old camper van with Dusty and my jumbo. We listened to the radio I had strung out there on an electrical extension cord. It made me happy that we had these moments to be together.
When some money started to come together for me, I’d drive to Danny’s. He agreed to come and see what I had been doing, and to help me with some painting, providing a bit of a buffer between my family and I. He kept landing these apartment jobs, where people had been evicted, eventually coming into a bathroom renovation for an excessively large breasted troll. She seemed nice enough but the bathroom was in a trailer for the Twenty-first Century- they were calling them “Modular Homes” by this period and it was a complete culmination of cobbling and corruption.
The heat flew right out of the place and it was a Pig Sty but we could drink and work, and smoke weed, so we didn’t care- it was a paying gig. Her daughter threw herself into my attention. She went on and on about her friends and their band, and the carnival, and her dad. The child, having been what is known as being, “over-exposed”, was misleading with her seeming maturity between her being very well spoken and having what looked like a fully developed body complete with a D cup.
At some point her mother, Julie, placed herself in my scope of vision, guiding my attention to her and her breasts, saying that Casey was thirteen and that she had a habit of attaching herself to men. Myself, very unaware of ego and the dynamics of the family relationship that I was in the middle of, I fed right into the madness and took the bait. She was not a woman that I would have given any attention to if I had ran into her in public but she asked me to give her a chance. I’m not sure if I was genuinely interested or if I decided to become interested because it was there, capitalizing on the possibilities that this simple matter of convenience created for me- although nothing about it was simple except for the mistake of allowing myself to be prey- “haste makes waste”. Oh, but the words of advice in Proverbs, “beware of the harlot” were clouded over by alcohol and selfishness, and the very foolish partaking of instant gratification. None of this would be realized until illuminated in the light of reflection, motivated by an untimely series of life changing catastrophes.
At some point I think I said to myself, “Any woman with that pimply of a face has to be capable of loving a person. With Rosacea that bad, she’d have to be loyal”. Despite her having to actually “rehab” the working bathroom for me to use it but I never thought twice about it.
The place looked like a third world country. Doors were ripped off of their hinges, and the stops were ripped loose and hanging, which should have clearly indicated a lurking violence but I allowed myself to drift into their reality with my foolish heart. At some point she set the hook in my ego with statements about past failures at relationships, and how men with no purpose and very little use, only wanted her for her money. A sensible, self respecting man with the least amount of dignity could see that bit of manipulation while in a coma but not me…mom say’s, I never did listen.
Your life is a business. Chose your business partner wisely- from some failures there is no recovery. My business decision resulted in a serious scolding from Danny, becoming involved with a customer, but he dealt with it, while there was not much that he could do to offer change to the situation.
Few days would pass before she would come out to Conklin for a pint of Guinness at the Irish Pub near the house I worked on and where I stayed. For some reason, I insisted on following her home in my own vehicle, hitting a deer on the way, which ruined the front end of my truck. The plan was that I needed my truck for a buffer but not to provide a cushion for deer, it was so I could leave her house on my own, hoping I wouldn’t have to gnaw off one of my arms to do it. Part of me was also imprisoned by my ego, after all, it was bad enough that I was “living at moms” and really had no money at all- just an uninsured truck and the urgency for anything that instantly gratified me. So, seems how I really only had enough gas to get there I was stuck for a few days, until I needed to make it to a doctors appointment in Grand Haven.
A day or two later, Danny and I would go to Grand Haven for that doctor’s appointment that I had made at the Community Mental Health (CMH) department. We paid RB a visit at the music store, where he worked. We purchased a guitar strap and some strings for my guitar. We decided to look at the truck while we were there because the transmission was chattering and jerking a bit on our way out. What I found was that the transmission cooler had received a bit of damage from the impact with the deer, tearing a hole in the cooling fins. The auto parts store across the street had some J.B. Weld, so I purchased it to try for the first time in my life. Luckily, I had done enough repairs in the past to take care to clean the surface with some electrical cleaner that they had at the music store. The repair had worked like magic, and I was now sold on J.B. Weld- Paul Harvey was right.
Sooner than later, even after Danny’s protest about our plans of going south to find a new home in a musician community somewhere, I moved in with her. This, I am quite positive, was a decision made out of my anguish over the inability to relate with my own family. There was nowhere else to live, and I couldn’t provide to myself alone. Staying with Danny was always cool but I wasn’t really living there. There wasn’t any running water, and this woman clearly needed a man. The daughter’s father had just died of Liver Cancer from drinking and drugs. Everything prodded my heart.
Yeah, she was one of the ugliest women I’d ever seen but I was willing to try anything; anything to get away from the torment of subjecting myself to scenarios that left me without affection that I so desperately needed. The added appeal was that it was close to the music scene and doctors that I needed to get to, and it was right in the locale of the trout stream we were always trying to get taken to as kids- my friend Jimmy and I, the Rogue River.
It seems the kid learned to abuse my availability or maybe it was a combination of her and her mother preying on my ego, and my need to be useful, and my drive to prove my worth to them. Casey had just turned fourteen in December. The ride was necessary because they were not fortunate enough to live within the Rockford school district to be included on the bus route. Her mother, Julie, had taken her out of the Comstock Park School after the child’s tantrums caused her to become suspended repeatedly. This was coupled with pity over the father recently dying in the home while in hospice with them.
Casey had a friend at Rockford, and a chance for a fresh start. At Comstock, she had been the subject for much discipline and scrutiny that had to be the product of a lack of discipline in the home, making the child’s lot a miserably distorted perception of reality. Part of her grief was due to the repercussions of her unsupervised choices in clothing. Casey insisted on wearing totally inappropriate things to school, and had no sense or guidance at dressing or caring for her self. This was an extreme problem for the school, having a persistent and blatant disregard for the dress code.
She wore these boots religiously, that her grandmother purchased for her after a long pattern of begging, whining and badgering. They were in the fashion worn by Paul Stanley or Gene Simmons of KISS, the original Punk band. These were worn day in and day out, as if they were the only pair of footwear the child had. They were black knee-high with platform soles, and had a series of Velcro strap fastenings all the way up. They were cheap to begin with and were rank and cheesed out from lack of proper hygiene and the use of socks. I felt so bad for so many reasons, having no choice but to clean them up, putting polish on them to hide the scuffed off finish coating, picking the matted lint and hair from the Velcro because they wouldn’t stick, and replacing the insoles. It took a weekend for that. And, me, having no authority- it was one of the only things I could do to feel like I was helping.
Aside from the boots, she wore radical clothing like stuff that was very risqué for a thirteen year old girl- a skirt that was nothing more than a waistband with a six inch ruffle attached to it, possibly designed for an eight or nine year old child if it wasn’t actually for a toddler. It did not cover her full figured rump, leaving a whole lot of butt-cheek out in the wind. It was the same thing with the shirts she wore, so small they looked like sports bras. She was dressing to show these over-developments off which made her a target, a 36D, topping it all off with her mothers leather coat. It was now obvious that she was an early teen by the copious amounts of baby fat popping out everywhere that stays on youths who never leave the house for anything outdoors. I could see her being targeted. Just imagine being me, and being seen letting her out of my truck in the front of the High school in Rockford, an affluent community. It was a bad way to start the day for anyone.
As for getting the girl to school, the major difference between me doing it, and her mother taking her was that she always showed up to class perfumed with the smell of pot. I am almost certain that the school knew about it. Julie smoked it like the end of the world was upon her, leaving the kid to reek of it. Her slovenly and lackadaisical lifestyle was a constant mismanagement of time, along with every other resource that is crucial to running a household. Ten minutes from the time she had to be twenty minutes away, no matter what it was for or how important, she would stop to roll a joint for the road. We were always late for every appointment. For me, pot wasn’t about getting high. It was medicinal and disciplined for relief of anxiety and to focus, as well as taking the edge off of my arthritis pain. That was it. I smoked in the early evening during the week, and in the morning, taking a puff or two on the toilet.
So, between the mom, and acorns not falling far from the tree, I was a squirrel among nuts. My feelings that I was providing a great service by filling a familial void made me overlook the reality, which only fueled the façade. How desperate I was to replace my family, to feel normal again, to be the man I was. I wanted to be the father, the husband, the leader, the earner and provider again. In my mind, the keys to the equation were there, and the product was possible. I could see my own children back in my life.
The distractions and distortions of reality caused by the excessive amounts of alcohol and estrogen, combined with my enormous deficiency of…. something, I don’t know what, maybe just plain BRAINS or maybe my inner drive to do everything in life the hardest way possible was chiefly planting seeds for my grief. It was all too much for my senses, I guess. I suppose it was like Gremlins or an Iceberg- there was cuteness and a sense of wonder that attracted you, all the while a hidden force of destruction that, once discovered, is too late to combat with a favorable outcome. Had I not been so distracted, I would have paid closer attention to their claims of being “White Witches”, which I shrugged of as nonsense.
Oblivious, I walked right into the trap and started dancing to their songs. The magic went right to work, and the next thing I knew, I was cleaning up the disasters as soon as I got back from taking Casey to school that first day. My understanding of the adults operating in a household is that they set the living standards and see that everyone under the roof helps to maintain them- things like policing the cat box, as it demands in order to be tolerated in a living space. The kitchen has to be free of dirty dishes, and the counters need to be kept clean. The stovetop has to be cleaned after cooking meals while the foodstuffs can be wiped off easily. Oh, what a fiasco!
There was always a lack of dishes at mealtime. It seemed that the leftovers held some priority or sentimental value, being set in the refrigerator using the dishware for a length of time that could earn them rights of the unsalvageable, then to be tossed into the trash- programming or an accustomed practice in this particular households evolutionary pattern- either way, disturbing.
My secret inspections of so-called personal space led to the discovery of lots of missing dishes and flatware, mountains of soiled clothing, and items to prove a lurking deviance and lack of parental authority that could prove disastrous for myself. Some things I left alone, to be subtly coaxed from their locations by my seemingly innocent guidance through questioning the possible locations: …”get a chair and look really good in your closet, like up on the shelf, maybe it’s in there”. A future move would reveal more, maybe too much but I still didn’t get it.
Yeah, it was a nightmare but next to the unobtainable affections within my own family, and my outright fright of what I’d seen in the streets, it was a welcome challenge with rewards that were, to me, of immeasurable value and wealth of religious proportions- my Holy Grail. At least I was now closer to Danny, Bruce, and the guys. And even though having their own dysfunctions, they all loved me and believed in me, supporting who I was. That was important to me, to feel like people valued me as an individual. My life maintained a balance by having their company to surround myself with when I needed a break from the absolute chaos- to recharge.
