LOVING THE LIVING...& THE DEAD

COULD YOU MAKE THAT GENERIC, PLEASE


Harry was slumped over his breakfast tray; his beatific face sublimely nestled into a blueberry muffin. The only problem the nurses could discern was that he looked to be on the far side of blue, and, as far as they could tell, not a whisper was coming out of him.
In that instant the boredom of bedpans and blood pressure ceased, and a code blue was issued. All of a sudden from lethargy and sullenness, an immediacy sprang to life harnessing all their energy and focus on their lifesaving call to duty; I would imagine much like how a S.W.A.T team would feel being roused in pursuit of a cop killer. One thing was for sure: it beat the hell out of morning rounds, or meetings.
Unfortunately, besides taking the briefest of histories and current medical needs, they didn’t know shit about Harry, except that he almost bought it last night in the emergency room. He had screamed then about how much pain he was in and to prove it, threw up on one of the poor admitting nurses who had the bad luck to draw him. He had tried to warn her. He told her that among the many problems he has, he had a diabetic ulceration inside the cavity that remained after having four toes amputated. He was in so much pain it was making him nauseous. She said he couldn’t be seen until she had taken some history, including the type of insurance he had. It was then that his projectile vomit caught her a little below the opening in her blouse. Her first instinct was to brush it off her chest before it ran down her cleavage, but, luckily, she stopped herself before her hands, too, got into the goo.
Finally making his point, he was escorted into the bathroom where he rinsed out his mouth and was then led to a gurney. As soon as he was inside the ER and lying on his side, he calmed down and soon afterward was asleep. It was only when the same nurse came back to get the insurance information from him, this time wearing a surgical mask on her face and a plastic gown covering her torso, that anyone noticed that his chin was resting on his chest; a chest which was not going up and down and up and down and up and down.
Blessedly, all thinking stopped. For how long, nobody could know. All the powers of the emergency room, was focused and put into action. For the first time that night they were mercifully back to reciting the multiplication table the old way. Their reaction time was spellbinding. A nurse began stripping him of clothing and shoes. Into a new vinyl bag they went; it looked much like a large trash bag, only clear and thick. Another shook him, while still another nurse began to run a line into a vein; and another began attaching those electrodes to his chest and hooked him up to a heart monitor. The first nurse who was done with her assignment, ran back in with a bottle of glucose, should he be diabetic and in insulin shock. Harry, groggy, and in a fog, had tried to lift his eyelids. They fluttered. To Harry, it was all a berserk swirl. Jump cuts. A spastic’s dance.
One other thing moved in Harry’s struggle: his eyeballs. They rose into the back of his skull. We might consider that trivial, but they were all signs! And all they needed. Working even harder, having more purpose, (if that was possible), they began to rush in with antidotes for everything that Harry might have taken, as they hurled questions at him: Drugs? Poison? Dreams?
Harry, after a time, was coming around. And for some reason he was angry. Each question they asked he screamed out a wobbly “no” to. There was a nurse situated behind Harry’s head who dutifully recorded each “no” to their questions. They asked if he had mistakenly took more medication than prescribed or obtained illegally, drank, or wanted to end his life. Each time he answered he seemed to become more awake. Who’s your primary doctor, phone number? Harry was like a resistant submarine breaking water. A doctor went behind him, put his hands underneath his arms, and hoisted him up to where his head was lying on the pillow. Once satisfied that he was out of the woods, they returned to triaging more mundane patients. A little while after that, Harry was resting comfortably, his color having returned to his cheeks, (he now looked like a skinned pig slung over the back of a Chinatown butcher, the head lolling over the butcher’s shoulder), his vital signs stable.

It was a busy night as far as New York City’s sickness was concerned; there was never any shortage of disease. It was standing room only; so much so that they had to put people on stretchers in the hallways. A chorus of moans, grunts, mixed in with the smell of fear and antiseptics, greeted the new patient or civilian.
Harry had been down there twelve hours. Once they were sure he was well enough to travel, Dr. Dallas who thought Harry looked like his father, (and kept asking him if he was), persuaded whomever to allow Harry, even though he was a medicaid patient, to be brought up to an exclusive room on the fourth floor. It was a room that cost nearly a thousand dollars a day on top of what the patient’s insurance would pay; in Harry’s case next to nothing. But the hour was getting late, and they had no beds to put him in save this one. So after a little arm twisting, Harry got a break and was wheeled up to the next best thing after heaven.

Harry opened his eyes just when night was giving in to light, and thought he was in The Waldorf. At the very least, a Holiday Inn. He had no recollection of a nurse taking his blood pressure, temperature, and history last night, after he’d been brought up here. All he now saw was the wooden furniture, desk, desk chair, television in a beautiful mahogany bureau, and a red sienna leather lounge chair next to the bed he was in. There was a wooden closet near the door where, Harry figured, his duffle was stored. Holy shit, Harry thought, this is way bigger and nicer than my goddamn postage stamp apartment. He thought a mistake had been made and soon someone would be up to throw his ass out. Careful not to make a sound, he got up, tiptoed to the closet, found his duffle that held his toothbrush and paste, and made his way into the bathroom.
First he took a piss, but didn’t flush the toilet. C’mon, what are ya crazy? He pushed the lever. Fear rippled up into his chest. The sound the toilet made could have woken up King Tut. He put his finger to his lips. Ssh, he said to the swirling water. Almost sixty and still out of your fuckin mind, huh? He laughed and looked into the mirror. The face that looked back at him smiled, and made his eyes twinkle. Not bad, Harry, not fuckin bad, the face said. Just be cool, quiet, but stand your ground and you’re gonna stay here; nobody can throw you out. You’re here. That’s all you know. If a mistake was made, tough shit, it was their mistake.
Slowly, Harry turned the faucet on until a slow, but steady, stream of water reached his toothbrush. He loved the way that morning brush cleared up that disgusting mine field that was in his mouth. After washing his face he looked into the mirror again. Satisfied with everything except his hair, he turned to leave, but examined the shower first and shook his head reacting to another surge of happy disbelief. Tough shit, he said again to the voice inside his head, left, and crawled back into bed.
Panic seized him when he closed his eyes. Again, out of the bed, back to the closet where, after closing the slight crack that the door to his room made, searched out his duffle. Lying at the bottom it was, but with the huge plastic bag with his evening’s clothes and shoes on top. He, again, slipped his hand under the vinyl, and slow as a caterpillar, pulled the zipper open. His heart was beating faster as his hand was feeling around its innards. He squeezed the two individual pouches. Faster, Harry felt between underwear, t-shirts, and other garments until his fingers nibbled on the toes of the correct sock stuck into a corner of the bag. He felt the container that once held a hundred Bufferin. A puff of air came out of Harry’s mouth. He zipped up the bag and returned to bed.
No sooner had he pulled up the covers, when a nurse’s aide, dressed in janitor’s blue, came in to take his vital signs. He always thought that waking someone up to do this was a curious habit that hospitals had. Was it something written into the bylaws, or understood like the “silent you” before some sentences, for a nurse’s universal revenge?
Without a good morning, she went about her work after seeing Harry’s opened eyes. He could have been dead, but that hardly mattered. How times had changed since nurses were charged with doing those tasks. From Kate Smith to reggae. From rectal thermometers, to glass ones kept in alcohol with a mercury vein running up the middle, and finally, to almost the immediate digital kind with a throwaway plastic sheath. Harry looked at a bored, none to intelligent face, and regretted this crippled dance to modernity.
How am I doing? he asked, not out of curiosity, but a need to not only hear his own voice, but hers, too. The nurse, she be in soon, she answered. Her face didn’t reveal whether his readings were indeed good, or bad--not that he really wanted to know--and not that she gave a shit. If the listener cared enough to follow her, she really said it was about money needed, a job is the means, and if you’d like to empty bedpans, I’ll be glad to do what you do, and what, by the way, happened to the streets are paved with gold bullshit?
Anger, sometimes, breeds intelligence, Harry thought. What can you do with that; no matter, he answered himself, and closed his eyes.
Shit, closing my eyes must be the kiss of death, came to mind, as the door opened emitting light and allowing a nurse--a real one--to come into his room.
She’s white! What’s this!? was his next observation, as she came closer to his bed. He smelled blood. Good morning, Mr....
Call me Harry, Harry said, while thinking she had a voice saturated with innocent sincerity. Could be fake, a put on, he reasoned, but it still sounded good.
Harry then, good morning, she said.
Good morning to you, too.
I’m here to give you your Lantus. Where would you like it?
Happy to be on vacation, Harry looked around his body and all the spots the insulin could be administered to. Arm is O.K. She came to his left side, rolled up his sleeve, her fingertips brushing against his skin, and slid the syringe in. How did you know? he asked, with enough good humored surprise as necessary.
Know what?
Know that I took insulin.
Her body leaned away from him as her eyebrows arched and her black pupils widened. Oh, you gave at least some information to the resident and night nurse. Don’t you remember?
I don’t remember shit,” he replied, with so many different inflections that he stood in wonder at himself. They both let out little chuckles. What’s your name, he asked, capitalizing on this quick surface intimacy.
Angela, she replied, her body relaxing once more. I heard you were a bad boy in the ER last night.
Sorry about that; I told her the pain was making me nauseous. I am sorry, though. Please tell her if you see her. Please. And that really was the last thing I remember...I think. Angela in good natured fashion shook her head.
Maybe you can tell me about the pain, and some more things we didn’t get from you last night, but need to know now, today?
Fire away, and fall back.
Harry divulged what information he thought necessary, no more. Yet the way that information came out made you feel as if he was laying bare his whole life and soul. The parts he was asked, but left out, seemed to be nothing more than a man who tried to remember, but couldn’t. And what he let out, each word, each sentence, was crafted through long practice, to get the most mileage out of a gas guzzling dinosaur.
He was lucky to live not far away from the hospital, but unfortunate, (and don’t forget miserable), that he lived alone and had experienced for the last decade the complications of his childhood illness: amputations, pain in his lower extremities, loss of feeling, bypass surgery, and now this ulceration in his foot that was driving him nuts. But, despite it all, he’d never lost his humor, thirst to create, a great appetite to live each day...blah, blah, blah, etc., etc., etc.
Angela, used to hearing symptoms, not narratives, had become hooked. “Keep turning the pages; what happens next?” came her automatic, and somewhat unconscious response, after every period. Until the natural nurse in her rose up. You look tired, why don’t you get some sleep now?
I’ll try, but every time I close my eyes someone barges in here trying to save my life. The nerve of them, she quickly replied, and again they both let out small, conspiratorial laughs. Try, I’ll see you later. I’ll put up a “Do Not Disturb” sign, she said as she was walking out the door.
Harry got so immersed in her, he forgot about his pain. But not for long. No sooner had she shut the door then he was up and over to the closet. He opened up that little Bufferin bottle and shook out a few pills: Dilaudid--yellow for two and orange for four milligrams--and cute, tiny, white demerol pills. It was a combination that worked the best. It took Harry a long period of time and experimentation to arrive at that, but it was not an unpleasant trip.
Back in bed, he rang the little bedside button, and a voice came on the intercom--another strike against modernity. Yes, said the voice. I want to make sure my nurse remembers my pain medication, Harry said, loud enough for him to be reasonably sure it carried to the mouth behind his bed.
I’ll remind your nurse.
The ground was now prepped and the order in, but he was not at all sure that whomever this disembodied voice belonged to would deliver the message to nurse Angela. Harry, with some reservation, (and after he put the pills under his pillow, like baby teeth), once again closed his eyes.

Harry had painstakingly built into his body an internal alarm clock. It would go off every six to eight hours when his nerves began, with the faintest of shivers, to inform him that they were alive, but not at all that well. He knew what to do to ease them before they got fully jangled. The lack of preparation had happened to him in his distant memory past, and boy oh boy was that terrible, but he made sure that that would never happen to him again. Days, sometimes weeks, before he needed to, he began doing what he had to do to avoid another, boy oh boy. Sometimes though, Harry got fagged out, spent, tired, drained really. He needed a vacation. Not having the resources to go island hopping, or to a Roman spa, he took what best can be described as an all expenses paid, Medicaid vacation. After going through the list of hospitals Harry carried around in his head, he would chose one that matched whatever amenities he wanted to have at the moment. It was not that easy. Hospitals had a physical look and a personality all their own. Rooms, bedding, view, food, were only part of their makeup. They also had powers of observation that, depending on the hospital, were either turned on or not. As was the level of care, specialties, discipline, and rules. They, of course, effected what type of staff--interns, residents, doctors, and nurses--were allowed or attracted to work there. Lenox Hill, if it was a candidate for office, would be labeled a liberal conservative: east coast, upper east side, smart, and stuck-up.
It seemed like a second between when he closed his eyes and woke up. He looked at the wall clock which read, almost eight. Harry swung his legs over the side, gripped the styrofoam pitcher on top of his night stand, and poured some water into a paper cup. He looked around, quickly grabbed and swallowed the tiny teeth that had turned into money. Aside from wishing he had gotten up a half hour before he had, he was still pleased that he gobbled them before breakfast, before he drank hot coffee,--but preferably tea. An empty stomach coupled with a hot beverage was the perfect environment he found to allow the pills to come on and do their job--balm and heal. It sounded like a vaudeville team. Maybe burlesque tits and ass. Seriously sexy.
Speaking of sexy, a cute little island babe came into his room carrying a tray. Breakfast. But goddamn he couldn’t eat it without taking an insulin shot. And he couldn’t do that before taking a glucose test. Listen, this is Harry, I need to take a blood test and insulin shot before I can eat, he said, his mouth a few inches away from the intercom. When he needed to do that--which was a minimum of four times a day--there was always a certain urgency which made his voice sound strained. I’ll be right in Harry, came Angela’s response. Immediately, Harry felt his upper body sag. Relaxed, he turned to the tray, lifted the plastic round dome and saw some hardened scrambled eggs. Oh, man. Fuck that. Can’t do it. Just can’t. Won’t, simple as that. That’s it. There was a piece of whole wheat bread, some butter, (maybe), a nice looking large blueberry muffin, and a cup with a lid on top. Before he pulled the lid off, he saw a decaffeinated tea bag underneath the bread. Wanting the caffeine, he was a bit disappointed.
Just spoke with your doctor, Angela said. She’d come in like a gunslinger, two fisted, a syringe in one hand, testing equipment in the other, and extra ammo: another big syringe sticking out of her jacket pocket. Also, she brought a bottle of insulin, her pretty face, and her dumpling delicious body. Harry might be sick, but he wasn’t dead.
Eddie, you spoke with Eddie? Good man. He’s a goddamn good man. Harry couldn’t help but lower his eyes. Eddie was like any other croaker he came in contact with on his merry-go-round in again/out again bout with life. Only Eddie wasn’t a cut throat practitioner of the Hippocratic dictum; he really believed he was not doing any harm, but was helping the patient instead.
Besides, being white, educated, and old could be, if played properly, the holy trinity to gain access to those Wizard of Oz antidotes of common crucifixions: Marriage unraveled; parents dead; money evaporated; body betrayed. And Harry, if the truth be known, was very distinguished looking, could bullshit his way out of Berlin in the thirties, (even though he was a Jew), and be charming as he did it; well, the world, as the saying goes, was his oyster--at least the Disability/Medicaid world. As soon as the docs heard a literate, funny, and engaging utterance, out came their prescription pads. It was just a matter of time before he had them ratcheting up his dose. Not having to pay for visits the “seek and ye shall find” apparatus was in play. It wasn’t too hard to hunt down more than a few doctors who’d do the right thing, get out of his way, and have their secretaries fill out forms. Often, Harry would spy his name on charts on certain dates he knew he was out to lunch. Never there. Docs were making fiction money. And mucho, and how. Not here. Not there. You know, man. Cool. So nice to still be a hipster, glued to this modern, daisy chain, forgery.
Angela sat on Harry’s bed and put the machine on the corner of the table. Do you want to do it or do want me to do it?
I’ll do it. Harry stuck himself with the penlet and put a drop of blood on the testing strip; in five seconds they got a reading: 133. Good. Very good.
Your doctor gave me some instructions, guidelines, but they were so confusing he finally told me to listen to you; seems you know as much as him, she said, and a lovely crimson blush came into her cheeks. She smelled nice, too. Fresh. Like honeysuckle on that certain moment in spring, when it simply couldn’t wait anymore. Harry breathed deeper. He wanted to put his head under her dress; nothing dirty; he wanted just to rest there; maybe just his lips and the tip of his nose nestled against the soft flesh of her thigh. Damn, he said to himself, that sure was quick.
Angela, I could use some pain medication, Harry said, even though he felt the first inkling of what he’d already taken begin to work.
I’ll give you the insulin first.
Would you mind giving it to me in my arm; I’m so tired of injecting myself in my stomach? She smiled, happy to accommodate his request, knowing what a task it must be to stick a needle in yourself five or six times a day.
How much should I give you?
Well, I can’t eat the eggs, you can forget about that, and the bread goes with the eggs... So, if you can swipe another blueberry muffin...we’re in business?
She smiled conspiratorially. It’s sugar, Harry. Are you sure you can eat that?
Sure, I’m sure--as long as I cover myself with enough insulin, I can eat just about anything. Anything. He looked at her, with an embarrassed boyish smile and blush planted on his face, until it became uncomfortable--for both of them.
Harry, I’m trusting you...so,...
Guaranteed, Harry said, or your money will be generously refunded, the redness all but gone as he spoke. But, all right, we’ll play it safe...just a little safe. Harry showed Angela his two fingers, the thumb and index ones, just the tiniest bit away from each other.
You’re a rascal, you know that? she said, and grinned. Her fingertips brushed against his arm again; she raised the sleeve on his hospital gown and deftly gave him his shot. Your doctor said either percocet or dilaudid, but dilaudid, Harry, that’s for terminally ill cancer patients. And I’ll tell you what: I suspect, after what you told me, you might be in a lot of emotional pain that you’re using these drugs for.
Well...I think you might be right, but I’m still in a significant amount of pain, that’s no lie.
How about I give you a shot now, and alternate the percocets, but just if you need it, if you call out for it, how’s that?
Sounds good to me. Angela told Harry to lie on his side and with a syringe that was much larger than the first, being an old fashioned glass and metal kind, (Harry just loved the look of it), she slowly inserted it into the fleshy part of his upper arm. The long steel needle needed to penetrate the first layers of flesh.
What a pretty face can do to me, Harry was thinking as Angela was administering to his needs.
After the shot things got a little blurry. Harry began feeling sweaty, and his eyelids seemed to weigh pounds, but he concentrated to keep his head up--and he did--until Angela brought him another blueberry muffin. As the door closed, Harry inhaled deeply then exhaled, making the paper napkin ripple.

Next he awoke to the sight of doctors and nurses hovering above him.
Apparently, Harry was found slumped over his tray; his Elysiasn face nestled blissfully into a large, cushiony looking, blueberry muffin. One of which was flattened against his nose.
If it weren’t for morning rounds, Harry might have fought his last fight. The young, brightly scrubbed interns, their uniforms as starched and white as the Klan’s hood, trailed a chief resident who, after seeing Harry’s ear buried into the pastry, and his ol “Schnozzola” with a popped blueberry on the end of it, called a code blue, draining the newer one’s blood from their faces, the more seasoned interns into alert, and the nurses into full bodied action. A crash cart, wheeled by a deranged resident, barreled into the room, paddles at the ready. Angela called out that Harry had diabetes, and so an I.V. glucose hookup was run into his arm, lest he had fallen into insulin shock. Also, she informed the doctors that she had just given him a shot of dilaudid, but he was fine, he was fine, she repeated like a mantra. Just in case, get some narcan, a doctor instructed.
Harry, is that his name, a doctor asked.
Yes, Harry, Angela repeated.
C’mon Harry, stay with us, the doctor implored.
Harry, c’mon baby, another voice chimed in.
But the doctors were baffled. Harry, according to the monitors and test results so far, should be able to do The Charleston in the middle of the room. His pulse and breathing, while being slightly shallow and slow, were still well within the bounds of normal; his tox screens, except for the little morphine that Angela’s shot put there, showed nothing else; his blood sugar read like most humans: 123. Fearing that either they or the tests missed something, they continued to work on him.
I think I’m in heaven, Harry said, upon first seeing Angela. It was still a struggle for Harry to keep his peepers open; in fact, for a brief second he looked, with his eyelids fluttering, like an old, faded, funny, male ingenue, or something out of some fag transvestite review.
How do you feel, how do you feel, came at Harry from all directions while a blood pressure cuff was put around his arm. He thought his arm was about to suffocate; all his attention was distracted there; he felt like trying to make a muscle and break it apart. Easy, easy, Harry said to himself. Yeah, they fucked up your high a little bit, but you still feel cool, and there’s always later. Easy, buddy, easy. Buy some time. Be gracious; show some class.
Whoa, what happened? Harry asked.
You tell us, the doctor replied.
Man, how the hell do I know--one minute I was here, the next gone. Whoa. Lemme get back to myself, Harry said good humoredly. You guys probably saved my life.
From what I don’t know, the doctor said. But I’ll be happy to take the credit.
Whaddayamean ya don’t know?
Just what I said, I don’t know.
They had unhooked him from the miracles of modern science, and were now taking all the bells and whistles back to wait for their next chance to perform.
Well, Harry said, when you doctors don’t know what the fuck happened, you call it an “episode.” Harry couldn’t help but grin.
And neither could those gathered around his bed, especially Angela and the head doctor.
When it happens twice, he went on, you call it a law suit.
The grins stopped.
Only kidding, only kidding. I’m a schmuck, I don’t sue, even when they thought nothing of allowing this blind doctor--who even had a seeing eye dog--to do a little neurosurgery on me. Nothing very complicated, they said; nothing to it; just a little growth on your amygdala. It could have been my rectum for all this doctor knew. I think the expression, “can’t tell his ass from his elbow,” came from my operation. You see the shape I’m in; maybe that explains it.

Harry, they don’t even kid around like that, Angela said, after the doctors and staff filed out of his room. Just hearing the word, “sue,” is enough to make their testicles go into a vacuum. Angela!
Harry!
Angela!
Harry! Harry, I’m not as prim and proper as you might think--or want to think.
Angela, I’m not what I appear to be either.
None of us are.
Angela’s face was simply radiant. Harry, without wanting to, was slip sliding away. She left him happily munching away on the remaining blueberry muffin, but not before she promised to bring him back a tea. She was debating whether or not to tell him that a blueberry precariously hung from his nose when she returned.

Harry had some business to take care of; it was on his mind ever since he opened his eyes and saw those mostly hideous, but necessary, faces above him. Most faces were hideous. No sense in arguing, Harry thought, they just are. He crept over to the closest and dry swallowed another two tablets; he wanted to give the initial intake a little more fuel; a boost; a nudge; shove; glad tidings. Back in bed he drank the last of the now cold tea, and laid back in bed. Could be worse, could be worse, he said to himself, much worse.

This time the nod came to Harry slowly, blissfully, nice. That liquid heat ran up the back of his neck and spread across his shoulders. Intuitively he knew he could play with this feeling for as long as he wished, turn it this way and that, and still go to sleep whenever he felt like it. It was one of those moments that made doing what he did to obtain it worth every penny, every second of bullshit. There weren’t many places--or times--that would allow him to feel this much at home...safe. Safe from those persnickety pain in the ass elements that would play with his head, like dying and leaving a mess. Here, for as long as he could stretch it out, would be beyond the grave’s tentacles; beyond the gas man; beyond the chit chat of what passed for conversation between humans; and way beyond the simplicity of bowling balls and heroes.
Harry remembered the first few times he did dope--Christ, what was it now?...forty, forty-five years ago?--he couldn’t get to sleep at all. Must have been the quinine, or somethin with the cut. Or maybe it was the newness of the whole thing, but he couldn’t for the life of him, fall asleep. Not that it was unpleasant. No, not a bit, but...well, but nothin, he just couldn’t get to sleep. No big deal.
Then there were grace periods of, well, nothin. Nothin. Not a drop, or a drug--illegal, that is. Clean; a clean feeling. No filters. Barriers. No, (or little), fear. Sometimes that could last for a day, or a decade. No tellin, with Harry. Strange, huh? But then, like the old joke, “slowly, slowly, he turned”...he went back to the cooker, in one form or another. And anything could return him to that dark place. No tellin with that either. Sometimes six months before the actual action, volition, or whatever you want to call it, he set himself, or was setup, to be, once again, open to the seduction. That last sentence, or thought, had that faint smell of a lie breathing on it. The truth, better stated, was that Harry was both the seducer and the seduced. He knew exactly what would get him hard, and was willing, if it called for that, to make it a very long courtship before he would demand to get laid.
Unless, of course, it was a chick that Harry was head over heels about. Someone so lovely, so enticing, that Harry would have waited forever before he demanded any goddamn thing. After the act, however, that was another story. One chick told a friend of Harry's that her first mistake was telling him that she loved him. The second was, after having told him, she hung around, and stayed.

After five days the doctors were no closer in understanding what caused the seemingly arbitrary nature of Harry’s condition. One after the other they ruled out, in seemingly alphabetic fashion, today’s hit parade of diseases. There was no such thing as “consistency” as to when Harry would have these bouts of near unconsciousness. They thought him incredibly lucky to be found when he was, walking that ol precipice of death. One time they were ready to send him to the I.C.U., fearing that he was near extinction, only to find him, when they came back into his room, requesting cable television for the reruns of The Sopranos.
Even though Medicaid was picking up his tab, they didn’t flinch in ordering every conceivable test that could solve the riddle of Harry. The hospital figured that since Harry was lucky enough to inhabit one of their exclusive suites they’d write the whole goddamned thing off, and every other poor bastard, at the end of the year. It wasn’t quite the, “in for a penny, in for a pound,” ethic; it was more like how can I turn this bullshit around and make it work for us.
Harry, meanwhile, was living The Life Of Riley. It was Alfred E. Newman’s, What, Me Worry? take on whatever life could throw at him. It was arms behind the head, leg crossed over the other, foot dangling, television on, and getting loaded with impunity. He was also pleased with himself for dealing so well with the guilt that he felt when he was with Angela. He wished he could level with her, but even though in the previous days she had shown every indication of being cut from a different swatch than the rest, was still, he thought, too square for him to risk such a racket by coming clean. And it was so hot out that he could feel the days heat and humidity drip through his windows; his windows that looked out to Park Avenue; he couldn’t even contemplate being in the furnace and shit box he called home.

Is it possible to get a haircut around here, he asked Angela.
A haircut?
“Yeah, a haircut. Don’tcha want me to look good being your patient and everything.
You’re too much, Harry.
Answer the question, baby.
You need money for a haircut.
That’s a problem.
Hmm. What can we do. Let’s see. I could, I guess, advance you a little cash.
A little cabbage, yes, you know I’m good for it.
Never had a doubt.
How sweetly you lie.
Part of my charm, Harry.

What else do you lie about, he asked Angela the next day. He couldn’t get the last line she said to him out of his mind. Sometimes, after hearing something someone had said, they look completely different. Almost like another dimension was added. He was positive that before Angela left his room the other day he saw a few creases that life had driven into her face; they weren’t ugly, quite the contrary; they allowed Harry to enter.
Nothing...much, she replied.
Being cute, huh.
You think so; cute, I mean.
He looked at her, studying her, weighing her, Cute, no, I don’t think so.
What then.
I don’t know. Hard to say.
Hard to say, or you don’t want to say it.
Hard to say. Except that thirty forty years ago I’d be in deep trouble.
Is that so.
That’s so. Smart and looking the way you do, damn, always been a very lethal combination for me.
Harry, don’t do that.
Do what.
Harry, the woman was always in more trouble than you were.
Ya see, that’s what I mean. Trouble. Fucking trouble. I’m tellin ya...
Harry, enough. A smile broke across her face and carried Harry out with her.

Did you send up a barber or a foot doctor, were the words Harry greeted Angela with.
She stamped her foot and laughed. Her hand covering her mouth.
You don’t have to say it. Oh, my god!, comes next. I know.
Again she stamped her foot and kept her hand where it was.
I didn’t think that what I had to say to you before would be met with so much retribution. Jesus Christ.
Harry please, no more. I’m going to urinate on myself. Please.
“Urinate,” hmm, how proper we are.
Please Harry, I’m begging you.

Harry looked forward to Angela getting to work in the morning, and Angela couldn’t wait to get in. A few times she even showed up an hour or more before her shift was to begin. People started to talk. Harry felt this tingle that worked it’s way up his balls and into his stomach until it tickled his brain. Not since his early thirties had he felt this way. Usually the word, “Fuck,” was the first thing he uttered upon opening his eyes; now, his thoughts moved more to getting up, showered, shaved, and dressed; he even felt less of a need to raid his drugstore as of late. But Harry kept them there in case it all came crashing down--which was always a likely possibility.
And Angela had finally met someone who was unlike the someones that she kept meeting. Could have been his age, what he knew, the way he thought, the sound of his voice, looks, personality, or smell. Who really knows why we want to get close to the people we want to get close with? The irrational are more rational than the rational in understanding what’s what with that.

Angela came in through the door as Harry was kneeling in front of the wooden closet. It wasn’t anger, or disappointment, judgment, or fear he saw on her face. It was more like, What are you doing on the floor praying? and then she smiled. But again, it wasn’t a smile of compassion, understanding, sarcasm, or contempt. It confused him, but didn’t stop the blood from rushing up to his cheeks, making him feel hot all over.
I thought you were gone.
No, not yet; I’ve been spending so much time in here that I needed to catch up on some paperwork.
You’re flattering me.
You don’t have to do that, you know.
Do what. I was just rummaging around for a pad to write on, that’s all.
Harry.
Really.
He didn’t want to go down this road, but lying was really the only road he knew. The words, even if it were a one word sentence, kept sticking in his gullet. From nowhere he began to stutter like he did when he was five, when each word he uttered had the potential to kill him.
I’ll see you tomorrow, Harry. Have a good night. Again her words were light, neutral, and impossible to understand.
Stay...please.
Harry put his palm on the floor and pushed himself upright. He put his hand through the crook of her arm and led her over to the lounge chair. He tightened his grip, but gently guided her into a seated position. He sat down on his bed and pushed the hospital tray out of the way so there was nothing separating them. Angela, he began, what’s going on here?
I think you know.
I don’t know shit, Angela; why don’t you tell me.
No, Harry; we’re going to do something different this time--for both of us. Why don’t you tell me.
I feel like the old man at the end of, Moonstruck: “I’m confused.” Harry lowered his head and dabbed at his eyes as if he were crying.
You could charm the spots off a leopard. But, of course, you know that. You count on that...and why shouldn’t you...that’s what kept you alive these many years.
Sonofabitch.
If you keep trying to deflect this thing, we’ll never get anywhere.
‘Anywhere?’ He pondered the word. Where would you like this thing to go?
The one dim fluorescent light that was on, made the room look like the tenderness of a welcoming saloon.
No, Harry, she said, low, but resonate, where would you like to go. And please don’t tell me about the thousands of reasons why we shouldn’t go there, why this is crazy, absurd, and then go into your personal trough of misery--or perhaps ecstasy--to cement the impossible. Lets keep it simple: Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby?
Her smile tempered his heart with light, putting out fires so old and damp as wet ash they’d now become moldy with contradictions. I don’t know how you know all the stuff you know, but I’d like to know what you know.
Come home with me, then.
Come home with you?
That’s what I said. I wouldn’t have to talk so fast you’d miss, (or I’d forget), the good parts.
How can you be so sure.
Sure. Who’s sure. That’s what discovery is about. It’s art, Harry. Great art is work. A lot of work.
He stared at her for what felt like a long time. The night nurse came in to check his vitals. She said hello to Angela and then went about her business. Angela and Harry just watched her, and each other. They remained silent until she left the room.
I wish I had a cigarette, Harry said.
Makes two of us...and I never smoked.
Harry laughed despite himself. He knew what came next. Angela, you know what I was doing by the closet when you came in.
I knew two days ago.
You did?
I did.
What the hell can we do to fade that?
Do you want to “fade” it.
His body cleaved in two. The battle was defined, as it always was, but now, once again, verbalized, which somehow made it more real.
Wait, Harry. Think about it. I know it’s not an easy decision--if it’s really a decision at all. Tell me in the morning.
Maybe we both got lucky here; what do ya think?
Maybe you got lucky; I was always lucky. Oh, I see, you think I’m lucky to have you. How did I not know that that was, you were, a golden gift from the gods.
Harry just shook his head. Is it always gonna be this tough a ride with you?
Until you realize that you were always lucky, too.

That night Harry couldn’t sleep. At about two, he thought about taking a few of his pills, but decided to hold off. If he was going to start anything with Angela, it couldn’t be predicated on a foundation of shit. There had to be a reasonable semblance of good honest intention going in to this thing. He thought he had to talk with her about quitting. And wanted to know how she thought the best way to go about it would be. Harry knew that one of the reasons he was drawn to her was because she was a nurse; it was a profession that was loaded, (no pun intended), with fireworks and pitfalls of various kinds, and he was subject to explode or fall into any number of them.
Looking at this honeydew rind of a moon, he decided that he’d give himself one day to enjoy himself in his own inimitable way, and the rest of his life to enjoy with Angela. Off and on, for over forty years of his life, he had researched pleasure and escape that only an ego made of mush was built for. Sometime, the next afternoon, a road would be chosen, a vehicle established to see him down it, and perhaps a destination that he and Angela would agree that both wanted to go to.
Angela didn’t sleep either, but not for the same reason. She was nervous, apprehensive, and decided to clean her apartment. No sense in waiting for the last moment. Or worse, waiting for him to come to her, and finally get there. A sliver of a moon, she thought, the melon must have been very good. She had lived, and survived, her home and men who recreated that home over and over again. With her help, of course. No longer was she willing to pitch in. Angela was no fool, and no stranger to who Harry was; no pie in the sky for her. She knew it would be hard work, but interesting work. She felt drawn to him as soon as he opened his mouth...and not because of what he was, but what he secretly wanted to become, and could become if he gave himself half a chance. Age and circumstance were on her side. Now, if only time would give her a goddamn, and well deserved, break. A little luck.
Finally, at around five she finished and was so dirty that she decided to take a shower right there and then. Afterward, she laid down in her bed, put her hands behind her head and in a moment was asleep. Such a deep and restful sleep that she overslept and late, hurried off to work.

As was his habit, Harry accepted the shot of dilaudid before breakfast. Now, it didn’t get him that high, but still made him feel very nice. Content, safe, and secure in this blanket of near forgetfulness. When the nurse brought in his testing equipment and his insulin injection he told her he’d take it himself and engaged her in some meaningless, but funny, conversation. When he knew she was distracted enough, he secreted the empty syringe under his blanket and waited for her to leave his room before he got it and put it, along with his pills, in his duffle.
He got up and walked over to his window. The traffic was beginning to build on Park Avenue. The bustle of cars, and cabs, and people going someplace. Someplace!? Where the hell were the places that all of them were going to? Damned if I know, he thought.
Looking further upward at the high sky of a deep baby blue, he thought of 9/11 and the exact same color and canopy that day. Huh, interesting, he muttered. On that day, Harry was on the north side of The Brooklyn Bridge when the sky exploded. The ball of red, orange and yellow fire, then black smoke, rinsed the sky of reason. It was enough to knock Harry back against the doors of a high school; the heat followed immediately after. It felt like the outer edge of a furnace. It was official: Hell was New York City.
When breakfast came, he politely asked the orderly if she couldn’t get him a metal spoon to eat his oatmeal with--those plastic spoons feel like they’re melting in my mouth--and smiled at her. I be back, she said.
Harry was sipping his coffee, fully dressed after shaving and showering. He knew he’d have to sign himself out, but knowing that Angela and he would work this all out this morning wasn’t all that concerned about it. Geez, c’mon already. Where is she? he said to himself after a due amount of time went by when she should have been there already. C’mon.

Where the hell were you.
Getting things ready for you.
Harry was instantly calmed. Well in that case...
Yes, don’t worry even though I know you must be going crazy. I know that. I thought that we have two ways to go: one, I could get you into a rehab unit and they’ll do what they have to do and then you’d come to my place, or, two, I could get some methadone and do the thing myself. I worked in a detox unit for seven years and know what I’m doing...
So, that’s how you...
Harry, sweetie, Ray Charles could have seen it.
Harry thought he was invisible. All right, you got me--now what the hell are you going to do with me.
Enjoy you.
Harry didn’t ask her how she would get the methadone. It wasn’t his business. If she said she could get it, she could get it. That’s all he needed to know. That he wouldn’t be sick.
All right, I’ll sign myself out.
A.M.A., against medical advice.
What else is new?

I’ll just do it one more time, give me a jolt before I pack it in, he decided after a brief, if one-sided, debate. Harry sat on the toilet, his sleeve rolled up, a belt wrapped around his arm, with the tongue between his teeth. He held a syringe in the other hand. He had taken three four milligram dilaudid, crushed them into the metal spoon, added water, and with a pack of matches, cooked the mixture in the base. Slowly, he guided the syringe into his one useable vein and watched as the blood came into it, like a rose coming to life, its petals moving to the side of the plastic cylinder. Gently, he guided the plunger down and watched as this slightly water colored orange mixture went into his vein. A pumpkin exploded behind his eyes.

***

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2005-2015

WITNESSING YOUR OWN EXECUTION: FROM CHAPTER VIII: CONFESSIONS OF AN UNCONTROLLED DIABETIC

PUSH THE PEDAL TO, AND THROUGH, THE FLOOR

"No one
to witness
and adjust, no one to drive the car."
--W.C. Williams

The blizzard was on its way, although it was still October of 1979. Trendy bars are one of the country’s social barometers, and I was working in one of them. Rumblings of the storm began in the men’s room, spread to the women’s john, made it’s way into the kitchen and finally, to the table tops and bar proper. First, spoken about in whispers and, later when it had gained the arrogance of the heavens’ participation, shouting its’ preeminence over the lesser pretenders to the social circle of wealth and power. Cocaine was coming to a theater near you.
If I had been watching I’d have noticed plenty of signs to indicate I had lost my bearings and the demons were slinking in. The drinking was obvious. My sarcasm and anger which masqueraded as irreverence and humor, black as that might be, took over. A willingness to entertain, at first, those who offered me reefer and drugs, in lieu of cash, as tips after a night of alcohol was a sign, but I had finished, A Case of Insanity and that, if nothing else, persuaded, or deluded me, into thinking that all was right with the world.
My brother was moving back to Brooklyn sometime before Christmas, leaving me to rent his apartment, as illegal as that might be, for as much as the traffic would bear. An apartment to rent, in the heart of Greenwich Village, was like having “the letters of transit” in Casablanca: I would never be lonely again. It also would bolster my cash flow, enabling me to work as much, or as little, as I wanted, and concentrate on my writing and it’s aftermath, selling the script.
Oren & Aretsky’s was getting almost ridiculously out of control. Indeed, the inmates were running the asylum. One evening, as Kenny and John were counting the night’s receipts and I was tallying the liquor count for the day bartender to replace the booze that was poured, they exclaimed that they were two hundreds dollars short. They recounted twice and still came up with that exact amount. We knew we were stealing of course but were very crafty about it. There was no way we could have been off by two hundred bucks. We huddled around the register and looked at each other, befuddled. John, after drinking most of the later part of the evening and who could best be described at being three sheets to the wind, gazed into the register, seemingly trying to study it’s secrets. Then, with bloodshot eyes and all the seriousness he could command, looked at us and said, “Maybe we should count the dimes again?” Kenny and I looked at each other in utter amazement, poured John another and poured ourselves a hefty drink as well and left, leaving it for the bookkeeper to sort out. The two owners knew that some of their profits were going south, but that was really par for the course in the saloon business. However, they wanted to know “how much” was on I-95 heading for warmer climes. They hired Ron, an exceptionally handsome and charming guy in his mid-thirties, as manager. He was given the responsibility of running the saloon and taking a complete inventory. Ron, a few days after coming on board, announced to the staff, and especially the bartenders, when the inventory would take place. In effect, he told us what side of the street he was on and, essentially, gave us license to steal. In fact, the day before the count was to begin, Ron, long before there were SUV’s, pulled up in an old station wagon and loaded many bottles of Champagne, wine, and liquor, which, I’m pretty sure, stocked his home for many months to come. The fox, once again, was guarding the hen house.
Ron was a friend with one of the great characters I’d ever met, Ray Garcia. Ray was the maitre d' of Tavern On the Green, the legendary restaurant located in Central Park. Ray once told me he was good for well over two grand a week in cash. He’d arrive at my bar late at night, have a Remy, leave between twenty and forty dollars on the bar for a tip and be gone. He was a charismatic Latino, who wore elegant tuxedos, black patent leather shoes, but no socks, ever. I knew his game, and he knew mine. We liked each other from the start.

I’d sit in my chair, or lie in my bed, and fantasize about all the things my screenplay would bring me if I sold it. Money and power of course played prominently in my mind though those were least in importance, while identity and retribution were. All those who’d fired me, doubted me, cursed me, and helped to make me feel worthless, were the powerful elixirs that fueled my flights of fancy. When I was much younger and watched The Roy Rodgers Show on TV, I wanted to be adopted into what appeared to be a loving family who’d not only accepted but championed life’s differences. Roy and Dale had adopted children from all over the world to be one harmonious whole, or so I then thought. I wanted to create a similar family, albeit with adults, from the proceeds earned selling my screenplay. However, my fantasies were far narrower, less forgiving, juvenile, controlling, rage and fear-based. I wanted the same type of outcast as myself, who was literate, artistic, funny, melancholy, and forlorn and, who conformed to a similar and fractured philosophy that informed me, to view me as their savior. It was only those people who’d drink from the goblet of my success. For the others, I had nothing but contempt. In reality, it was me who wanted to be saved.
It was not the quality of my dreams, but the reality of my drinking that led me back into the offices of Dr. Bernstein. The nights and days that I was working were laced with Chivas during the shift and Martel Cordon Bleu, after I got off. The nights that I was off found me in The Cedar, drinking with a friend or two. However, I did not believe I was an alcoholic. In fact, that thought never crossed my mind, and why should it. I never woke up in the morning craving, or needing a drink nor, if days went by without a drink, was I required to inebriate myself. Emotionally, however, I was a textbook example of alcoholism, drug addiction, or most any substance abusing disorder. I was doing what any escape artist did; free myself from the day-to-day grind. Tragedy or crisis, I’d prefer to take “straight-up.”
I sat in Bernstein’s waiting room thinking what I was going to tell him. The words that formed in my mind were half-truths. I could not be totally honest with him or anyone else for that matter. I felt depressed, irritable, and slightly paranoid. I should have been there for a lie detector instead of blood test. I, no matter how good my initial intention, was playing hide and seek with the truth. I was scared in fact to tell him, or anyone else for that matter any part of the truth, as I knew it. If I did that, he could very well suggest (demand) that I give up the booze and I thought I’d probably stand no shot at getting any kind of medication that might soothe my nerves and make me forget who I was for a little while. I was the only one who knew some of the recesses of my mind that I was hiding in, and I was not about to give myself up.
Sitting in his examination room, I tried to concentrate on his map on the wall of all the fish in North America. The closest I had ever been to a fish was in Lundy’s, a seafood restaurant in Sheepshead Bay. There’s not that much to engage your mind within an examination room except yourself. Shit, anything but that. Bernstein came in and all the dramatic dialogues I had had since I made the appointment evaporated. I tried to think of nothing. Nothing’s wrong; nothing to worry about; nothing I can do now.
Bernstein looked as he always did, handsome and healthy. He extended his hand, and we shook. “How are you?” I asked first, trying to perhaps make him the patient. It didn’t work.
“I’m fine,” he said and smiled. “How are you?”
“I’m O.K. Pretty good. Hangin’ in.”
“Is this a multiple choice test?” he quipped, and added, “I haven’t seen you in awhile. What have you been doing with yourself?”
I told him about the bars, and the screenplay, and the drinking. He looked at me and listened without the air of judgment I felt he, or anyone in positions like his, would have. He considered what I said and then, without commenting on what he heard said, “Let me examine you and then we’ll talk.” He took an unusually long time in checking my vital signs and then examined me some more. He called in a nurse to draw blood and after she was finished I got dressed and waited to be called into his consultation office.
Sitting opposite him I expected to hear the worst. “I don’t like the way you look,” he began, “your blood sugar was somewhat high, nearly three hundred; high, but not alarming. What concerns me is your overall physical appearance. Your pallor is sallow, not what it had been and you appear pretty nervous.”
“Well I am nervous. I’ve been working pretty hard like I told you before. I know I’ve got to cut down on the drinking.”
“Well the drinking could be a contributing cause, and it is a concern. If you need to see anyone I could make a recommendation.”
“No, no I don’t need to do that. No, I don’t need you to do that. I’ll cut down and see what happens,” I said, eager to ingratiate myself and wrap this up.
“I’d like to read your screenplay. You know I’m a fan.”
“Yeah, absolutely. And thanks. Is there anything else?”
“Yes, I’d like to see you back here in a month.”
“Yes, sure O.K.” I stood up and we shook hands. It was a good while longer than a month before I saw him again.

There’s an emptiness or depression that settles in after I complete a major writing project. It must be similar to postpartum depression that women experience. You’ve gone to sleep and awakened with your characters. You’ve worried over what they feel and how they’re feeling. In some cases you’ve experienced, with them, nearly their whole lives. A void remains where people once were if you’ve done your job properly. I tried to force myself to do things that would fill up my time, even going into work two or three hours early, just to be someplace where I wasn’t alone. As long as I could hear voices, see or detect movement, I was calmed to a certain extent.
Jean and I were seeing more of each other. She had wanted to break off her relationship with a man she called Jeff. She said that he was not the kind of man to anger by doing something he could not tolerate. I didn’t really understand that but made no demands on her. I was trying to psyche myself up to type, print, and push my screenplay. I was also becoming more aware through therapy that I could no longer work off my anger toward women through either sleeping with or manipulating them. My fantasies for revenge and retribution were not directed at women at all, I thought, but men. It was men, and the institutions made by men, that I wanted to break through and/or destroy. But I was wrong: I was an equal opportunity hater.

Christmas time in New York City, 1979, ‘tis the season to be angry. My anger, perhaps hatred, was directed toward anyone having a good time, shoppers carrying the tiny mittened hands of children, families planning their holiday reunions, The Salvation Army, Santa and his helpers, reindeer, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, gifts, Christmas trees and bells. I wanted nothing to do with that stuff. At the bar, I would fantasize poisoning the drinks of those who mentioned the upcoming festivities. And then I heard from Brasz.
Brasz, who could give less of a shit about anything that smacked of religion, wanted to come up from New Orleans and spend the Christmas recess with me. He was feeling particularly miserable himself, having just gotten divorced for the second time, and hadn’t, up to this point, received much commercial success with his paintings. I welcomed the company even though my pad was so small you had to go outside to change your mind. In fact, I awaited his arrival like a man drowning who sees a life preserver coming his way.
It didn’t take us long to catch-up with one another. In a sense, he was much more honest with me than I with him. He laid out his divorce without embroidering it nor reveling in it. C.T., Cecil Taylor, whom Brasz saw before coming to my place, had, he said, penetrated his defenses by saying to him that, “he had brutalized his young wife.” He meant emotionally, not physically. He expressed a desire to return to New York City and begin putting the pieces of his life back together, away from the South and the life he’d had there. “It’s up here, Savage,” he said, “the art, the painting, you, my friends, family even. I just want to get back here. I’m tired of the scene down there.” I nodded my head and told him, without telling him too much, about the last couple of years and what I was doing now. I touched on the high points, the screenplays, bar scenes and women, including Jean, the newest woman on the horizon. I saved my failures and drinking for last. I casually mentioned to him that I thought it would be better, better for my diabetes, not to mention my imagination, if I smoked a little pot instead of drinking so goddamn much. Brasz, not liking alcohol to begin with, quickly concurred...if I could control it. After so many years of not smoking pot, I didn’t think it would be a problem I told him, knowing I was lying as the words were coming out of my mouth.
We were supposed to meet his parents at a nearby restaurant. His parents, especially his mom, were pretty hip when it came to pot, and we had plenty of time. Brasz, at that time, smoked reefer constantly. He went to his suitcase, opened it, and produced a bag of pot and rolling papers. He deftly rolled a joint, lit it, and handed it to me. In the time it takes to blink your eyes, almost seven years of abstinence was inhaled, then expelled. The high hit me in seconds. In a minute or so, I became afraid and started to feel the onset of an insulin reaction. I felt shaky, disorganized, paralyzed and weak with fear. Brasz, who was watching me, must have seen how white, sweaty, and blood-drained I was and asked if something was wrong. I asked him to get me a Coca-Cola. I gulped it down and felt better, but not much. I knew, however, that the sugar was in my system, which calmed me down. I never did meet his parents that night. He told them that I’d gotten sick, which was already, “old news.”
“What else did you bring?” I asked him the next day. He hesitated for a moment and then told me he had brought up some coke as well. I thought about that for less than a minute, then tried a little of that, too.

It is somewhat unfair to place Brasz at that place in time that was to serve as the beginning of yet another run. No one can stop anyone from doing what they are hell bent to do. The ones who do stop, I believe, are either those who really want to be stopped or are bullshitting to begin with. Nobody put anchors on my arms and forced me to shoot drugs. No one forced my mouth open and made me guzzle booze down it. Drugs and booze, though they whisper, talk, or shout out to you, are inanimate. Whatever life, will, and power they possess, you, and only you, impose it. You have to pick them up, and embrace them. You have to fool with them. You have to love them. You. Anybody who says differently is either lying, or has never been in love.
If it wouldn’t have been Brasz, it would have been someone else, if not today, then tomorrow or the next day. Someone across the bar would have said something, left something and I, saying “fuck-it” or a variation of that hyphenated form of defeat or emotional surrender, would’ve taken the bait, accepted the “tip” and taken off from there. It would be too easy to assign blame to those friends or family members who either condoned, helped me and, in some instances, purposely lit the fuse. At certain points in my life I was weaker than others. All the nuts and bolts, all the Fox locks, Medico locks and Fichet locks were unscrewed or unscrewing. The demons, once handcuffed inside my stomach, were slithering through.
Jean knew nothing of my past or present actions. I wanted it that way and would fluff off her questions about my drinking or drug usage. She wasn’t the type of woman who asked for, much less demanded, explanations for a person’s behavior. Either she’d accept it, or leave. She wanted to “do” for whomever she committed herself to. Many people mistake “kindness” for “weakness.” I’m one of those people. Actually, Jean cared too much about the person she loved and not enough about herself. She was self-effacing to the point of it being destructive for herself and, in this instance, me as well. However, some relationships go past the point of no return almost immediately. Each represent something else to the other and the other has absolutely little or no idea at the time what that might be.
Jean had access, through her soon to be ex-boyfriend, to top quality drugs, specifically reefer and coke. Many times in the past, I’ve known women who had the same conduit open for them. These drugs were given to them as gifts, to do with what they wanted. In this instance, however, they were certainly not gifts. In fact, they were fraught with danger. When the subject came up, I didn’t want to appear too excited, fearful of her withdrawing her offer. What I did say was that I could use the cocaine for my rewriting and typing and the pot for creativity and a way of leveling out the coke. I was lying of course, but say something long enough and you begin to hear a smattering of truth and, a short time later, you believe it’s gospel.
During my years of abusing drugs, cocaine had little appeal to me. Occasionally, I mixed it with junk. That was called, “speed balling,” going up and down, like a roller coaster, but I never went out of my way to do that. In fact, I thought it a waste of time, not to mention money. Cocaine was known as “a rich man’s drug” for good reason. The high lasted twenty to thirty minutes, leaving you wanting more, immediately. That was good, while the money lasted, which, in most instances, was not very long, while with one blast of heroin it was, “Goodnight Irene.”
I reasoned, if “reason” could ever be applied to my way of thinking, that unlike scag I wouldn’t “fall in love” with coke, thereby making it a “safe” drug for me, and, if what I had learned was true, coke was not physically addictive, allowing me to stop when the rewriting and typing were completed. What I failed to understand was myself. Had I been a caveman and discovered that dinosaur dung would get me high, I’d be out there with a shovel and extra-large width rolling papers.
I’d meet Jean once or twice a week and each time she’d give me one to two gram vials of rock cocaine and beautiful budded sinsemilla as well. I’d enjoy my new found ritual of chopping the rock into powder, so bright you could almost see your reflection in it, making lines on a mirror, inhaling and waiting for the surge of adrenaline and power, the tingling and the numbness. At other times, the coke was a yellowed rock, and, when cut, smelled like cat’s piss, while at other times she brought Bolivian flake cocaine, pure as the driven snow. I became, in a short period of time, well-versed in the gradations and potency of snow.
The stars of my cocaine constellation were almost aligned. One piece, a large piece, presented itself in the form of tenants for my brother’s apartment. For weeks I’d been interviewing people who had responded to the ad I’d placed in The Village Voice. I was charging roughly three hundred dollars more than the pad actually rented for, or nine hundred bucks a month, which was still cheap, considering the size of the place and the location. None of the people who I’d seen seemed like good candidates. One afternoon, before I had to be at work, I met Paul and his friend, Artie. Paul was in his early thirties, handsome, Jewish and a graduate of Harvard. Artie was one of the original producers of Woodstock, the concert. The apartment was for Paul and his girlfriend, Judy. He told me the rent, for which he’d pay me in cash, was not a concern, and the security I required, within his means. I was comfortable with him and told him the apartment, upon my receipt of the security deposit, was his. We shook on it. He inquired, quite naturally, if I did any blow. I nodded. He produced, from the pocket of his sports coat, what I took to be three to five ounces of powder and didn’t bother to ask me for a mirror or any of the accouterments that went with the ingestion of cocaine. He merely took out a straw, placed it in the bag and gave it to me. The only thing he did was admonish caution. We sealed the deal over the next hour. My constellation, now complete, was the nose of Zeus, with a straw protruding from it.
Before too long, I was shooting the coke. I was curious to feel what the “rush” was like. Comparing “snorting” to “shooting” is like comparing Spam to Filet Mignon. The “rush” from the coke froze you, shocked your system, stopped time. It also made me want to continue doing the drug endlessly. With all the will I could muster, I held myself in check by doing essentially two things. I sniffed rather than shot the coke when I could get it, and I spent much time with Brasz going around town, talking about the writing I’d done and the painting he was doing and, as strange as this might sound, laughing. We shared a very skewered view of life, and each of us had a very funny way of presenting it. Beyond that, I can’t really explain why or how our friendship worked, but for a very long time, and through many upheavals, it did. When speaking with Jean, I sometimes resisted asking her to bring whatever she could to our next rendezvous. Although, often times, she’d bring packages of reefer and coke with her. I couldn’t refuse if that occurred.
Brasz had decided to go out to Queens to spend some time with his family before returning to New Orleans. When he left, he took one of my lifelines with him. However, I still had some controls inside and outside of me that governed my actions in regard to a full scale, all-out, no-holds-barred, assault on my body and mind. I was still in therapy with Handelsman. I needed to show up for work, and I wanted to try and sell my screenplay. As many as two out of the three contributed to my undoing, so had they kept me propped up and functioning.
When Paul arrived with his girlfriend, Judy, to give me the money required to move in, he asked straightforwardly if I wanted to be paid in coke rather than cash. Bartering coke for services, he told me, was something he did all the time. Wanting the cocaine, but needing the money, I opted for the cash. Although, in the weeks and months following his arrival, different arrangements were instituted that would, if they appeared in a work of fiction be both comedic and tragic, the Janus face of drama.
The high point in 1980, literally, at Oren & Aretsky’s came the afternoon I had a bar full of people mesmerized by the American Hockey team playing, and beating, the Russians at The Winter Olympics. The high point, figuratively, was a succession of days and nights all through that year, and the year beyond. I had become friendly with another staff member at the bar who opened with me for Saturday and Sunday brunches. He too, enjoyed his cocaine and his liquor. We lived near each other and cabbed to work together. Once there, we spilled some of what we brought on ashtrays, or the bar itself, and began our day, wired. I then went and began chilling a pitcher of Beefeater martinis in a stainless steel cocktail shaker, and packed that in ice. Once he prepped the kitchen, and I the bar, we indulged in more coke while we drained the cocktail shaker. By noon, we had a pretty good buzz on as the afternoon unfolded.
From this vantage point, it seemed like everyone in New York City either used coke, sold coke, did both, or knew someone who did. As I said, customers who knew me, or wanted to impress me, gave me the drug, gratis; I gave them a drink. In the course of these exchanges, I met some wealthy and arrogant stock brokers who used a lot of the powder and were always looking for new connections, for it. They asked me if I could help them. I didn’t like the sonsofbitches but figured there’d be something in it for me, and there was. They’d give me the money and I’d make the arrangements, always taking a cut, both in money and coke. I was able to be somewhat honest with them for quite awhile and used the Dylan credo, “to live outside the law you must be honest,” until one evening, when they were unable to pick it up when they were supposed to. They called and asked me to keep it overnight and bring it down to Wall Street the next day. Needless to say, by the end of the evening, less than half of what they had purchased remained. I couldn’t replace it, nor did I have anything like lactose or milk sugar to cut it with, but I did have Sweet n’ Low packets. They each contained one gram. I mixed two of them in with the coke and gave it back to one of them the next day. “I should give him a cup of coffee to go with it,” I thought, while I handed the package over. They never called, or came back to the bar. I said to myself, “Fuckem if they can’t take a joke,” but on the other hand, I felt dirty. The longer I was involved using drugs, the lower I’d stoop to obtain them. It seemed every time I opened my zipper to pee, I heard “Taps” being played.

One afternoon, while finishing the typing on, A Case of Insanity, Jean telephoned. She sounded desperate and in pain. She was staying at her friend’s apartment, which was near mine, and I hurried over to where she was. The apartment was dark. No lights were on as I made my way into the dining room and sat down at the table where she led me. I tried to look at her in the winter afternoon’s dimness and saw her eyes red-rimmed, from crying and, as my eyes began to get adjusted to the light, I saw a discoloration around different parts of her face. I got up and went to turn on the lights. When I returned to the table, her face showed sickened hues accentuated by bruises and cuts. Every time she breathed, I saw the effort it took, and the pain she tried to conceal.
“What the fuck happened?” I asked.
She hesitated. “Jeff got angry,” she finally replied.
“And what? And did this?”
“Yes.”
“Why can’t you breath right?”
“I just came from St. Vincent’s. He broke a few ribs too. He threw me down the stairs and I’m all taped up.”
She began to cry. I got up, went to the bathroom, got some tissues, and returned to her. I took her hand in mine and sat there, watching the tears run down her cheeks. After she stopped crying, I asked her why he’d done something like that to her. She explained that he had suspected her of seeing some one else and when she confirmed it, he became enraged. When he left, and she was able to move, she got some of her things together, took whatever she could from his drug cache, and cabbed over to St. Vincent’s Hospital.
“Can I stay with you?” she asked.
“Yes, sure you can,” I replied, but I was torn. I didn’t want her to live with me. I didn’t want anyone to live with me, but under the circumstances, I would have felt like a complete asshole if I’d said otherwise. I picked up her suitcase and we began a journey that, unbeknownst to us at the time, would take up the next ten years of our lives.

pgs 148-154, From Chapter VIII: JUNK SICK: CONFESSIONS OF AN UNCONTROLLED DIABETIC

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

THE STUTTERER'S STEW: FROM CHAPTER VII: CONFESSIONS OF AN UNCONTROLLED DIABETIC

A LONG-SHOT, AT BEST

"I guess nothing ever works for us. we’re fools of course--
bucking the inside plus a 15 percent take,
but how are you going to tell a dreamer
there’s a 15 percent take on the
dream? he’ll just laugh and say,
is that all?..."
--CHARLES BUKOWSKI


In the program, we had learned the concept: “Act As If,” which meant that even if you don’t “feel” something positive, “act as if” you do and that positive feeling will eventually assimilate into your being. So, as I dragged my bag, and ass, up 43rd Street to Madison Avenue, in the sweltering New York City heat, I “acted as if” I was “cool,” strong, directed, and assertive. I kept fingering the thirty-five cents I had in my pocket, lest I should lose it.
Sweat had begun to pour off me by the time the bus came. I deposited the thirty-five cents and took a seat between two sweating people. Without air conditioning, you had the discomfort of sticking to their flesh as you tried to slide between them. I looked around at the people riding with me. I knew no one, yet I knew them all. I imagined I carried the stigma of being an X-addict. I felt I had a huge X in the middle of my forehead. I looked at my bag of clothes, the track marks on my arms, and thought of another Project Return slogan: “Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.”
Diane lived on the top floor of a brownstone in a once quiet, but now fashionable section of the city, on Madison Avenue between 91st and 92nd Street. The burgundy carpet and wood banisters were aged, the carpet shorn, the wood banisters scarred and burnished; the stairs smelled musty as memories crept through my nose, as I climbed up the five flights. If this was new, what was old?
Diane was nervously skittering around the apartment when I opened the door. She was very obviously trying to busy herself and not think too much about what was to come next. It was the kind of moment that I’d had all too often where the distance between me and a person I loved was represented by ice, so thin, that the slightest weight upon it would cause fissures and breaks. They’d begin from the core and spread, web-like, to the parameters of the frozen water. I would, with a certain amount of excited trepidation, place my foot gently upon the surface until the first sound birthed from my heel preceding my toes’ rupture of form. It’s interesting to note that I loved both the crunch and the squiggles of aborted lines my weight produced.
She turned around when she heard me enter. Her hands fluttered to her face and made a gesture of welcome, while her smile belied the apprehension in her heart. She was far too well schooled and gracious to allow another to feel her misgivings and doubt. I dropped my bag and went to her, took her face in my hands, and kissed her. There are many things you try to do in any given kiss. This kiss had too many messages. Trying to simplify, and perhaps obscure, what those messages were, I led her into the bedroom and said, “I told you I was going to get a pass this weekend.” We made love in the summer heat for what seemed like a long time. It was very hot, and we perspired freely. Spent, we lay there and allowed the air to cool our bodies.
She had an old brass bed, fluffed with lace and pillows. We ate our tuna fish sandwiches and drank coffee on it. It tasted like the most exotic fare to me. I smoked a cigarette while we listened to Miles play with Trane, Bye Bye Blackbird. I felt I had gone to heaven. We showered, dressed and went for a walk on Fifth Avenue. The sense of freedom I had was intoxicating. It was one of those rare times when I could laugh simply because someone had thin legs, or dressed in the most incongruous way, and children looked astonished slurping ice cream cones which dripped on their shirts, which were splattered with chocolate, strawberry and dirt which now looked like a Pollock painting. My dick got hard because a breeze blew against my pants or the material against it aroused me. My nipples grew erect because the fingers that nestled in the crook of my arm belonged to someone who was just in my bed and I’d brought the bed outside, and it moved with me. I thought we made a fine couple. We were nearly the same height, our hips moved together, bumping and grinding, while my arm went around her back and my hand rested casually on that wonderful space, her hour-glassed curve, between her hip and rump. She’d say that she should have been born during the Victorian period. Her body and spirit told her so.
She said that she felt we were “soul-mates” destined to return as brother and sister. I gave her a copy of Cocteau’s, Les Enfants Terribles, which served to excite her and prove her point. I had a few misgivings. That kind of intimacy unnerved me. In fact, “intimacy” was something I wanted only on my own terms. I moved closer, or further away, at my discretion only. Should the other person ask for, much less demand, more of me in ways that I could not easily define, or made me uncomfortable, I was usually, and quickly, “in the wind.” What dictated my ability to get closer to another human being, in this case a woman, was need, most often my own. A neurotics dream is always empty. It cannot be filled by anything tangible. I can remember many months from where we are now in this story, on a rainy Sunday afternoon, after having made love to Diane, I lit a cigarette and called either my father or Julio, the founder of Project Return, about some inconsequential bullshit. After I hung up the phone she said to me, “Why after we make love do you have to call a man up?”
I looked at her a bit dumbfounded and replied, “I don’t know. I never thought about that before.”
“Well, maybe you should. Maybe you should think about it.”
I looked down at the floor, not really wanting to meet her eyes. An anger, born out of embarrassment, crept up around my chest, and I felt my face flushing. I took a drag off my cigarette and tried to think of a way to squirm out of her apartment. I didn’t think of that moment until I began writing this book. Prior to that afternoon, Diane, because of who she was, tried to possess me in ways that I simply was not ready for and, in fact, frightened the shit out of me. I was tethered to invisible entities. I could not articulate that then and did not have the faintest notion of that truth. What I did know was that Diane and I were just beginning to know each other without the cushioned barrier that narcotics supplied. In these last fifteen years, I have seen more relationships end because one partner stopped using the drug or drinking the booze that either started or solidified the union. Consequently, much of the behavior, attitudes, and needs that attenuate that lifestyle ceases. The union, in essence, is worse than new. It is now without the old comforts that memory suggests. Life without the anesthetic is a motherfucker. Lois Wilson, the wife of Bill Wilson who founded Alcoholics Anonymous, is known to have said, “Giving up drinking is easy; it’s life that’s hard.”
We returned to her apartment near sunset. The sunlight coming into her windows had that blood red glow as it washed over the room. I sat in the kitchen and watched Diane brew some tea. “Norman, do you think you really did the right thing by leaving?” she asked with her back to me.
“I do, yes, emphatically, yes,” I quickly responded.
“You don’t think you should have...”
“No, I don’t. Don’t worry, I know what I’m going to do. I thought of it while we were walking,” I lied. I felt it would come to me any second.
She turned around to face me, waiting for an answer. I tried to buy some time by patting my knee for her to come and sit in my lap. She obliged. I put my arm around her waist and cupped the underside of her breast. “Don’t start,” she said, and laughed. “You don’t know what the Hell you’re going to do, do you?”
I looked up into her face, smiled and shook my head. She bent down to where my face was and kissed me softly on the lips.
“Don’t panic,” I said trying to sound upbeat and confident, “whatever you do, don’t panic. We’re going to get through this weekend just fine. We’ll go out, eat something, see a movie, come back, get The Times and boom, it’s Sunday. Sunday, we’ll go for a walk get something to eat, maybe see another movie; keep busy, ya know? We’ll keep busy and then it’s Monday. Monday I’ll go see my uncle and borrow some money, maybe a hundred and get a hack license. I’ll drive a cab. I need a job right away and that’s the quickest and easiest thing I can think of doing, plus I make a couple of bucks in tips everyday and can start paying my own freight...how does that sound?”
“Whew! You can really bullshit when the chips are down, can’t you?”
“Part of my charm. It goes with that envious blues feeling.”
She got up and I slipped my hand under her dress. She gave me one of those “you got to be kidding” looks.
“Hey, without the dope my dick’s like a propeller.”
“Polanski’s movie just opened today, The Tenant. We can eat at that little Italian place that we like and go to an early show.”
“Polanski? Sounds good to me.”
“Maybe you can shut down the engine for a few hours or fly on automatic pilot?”
“Coupla hours? I can do that on my head.”

Monday morning I went to a cab company on Eleventh Avenue and 60th Street to inquire if they’d sponsor me for a hack license. You needed a company’s signature to get the process moving. I saw the shape of some of the other potential employees who joined me. It seemed they’d sponsor a dead person if they thought they could drive. At that time, a beginning driver got 47% of the meter for the first six months plus tips. This was still a time in New York City when, even owners, were somewhat human. My next stop was Uncle Stretch, a relative I never liked much.
Stretch became a very wealthy man after he turned forty. A frustrated actor, ladies man, and bon vivant, he reminded me of Willie Loman’s brother in Death of a Salesman. Stretch went into the real estate jungle, bit some flesh, nibbled the edges of legitimacy, got the right people drunk, or laid, or both, and came out a rich man. He never let you forget it either. Although he never let you forget much of anything, even when he was poor. “You O.K. kid?” he asked as I walked in. I knew he knew I was no longer in the program. I was no longer somebody else’s problem.
“Yeah, Stretch, I’m fine,” I replied, the words sticking in my craw. When I didn’t like someone, it was real hard to ask them for anything, not impossible, just hard.
“What can I do for you?”
“You can lend me a hundred ‘til I get a hack license.”
He eyed me suspiciously and said, “You sure it’s for that?”
“Sure I’m sure.”
“No fuckin’ around?”
“Hey Stretch, if I was fuckin’ around I wouldn’t have come to you, would I? So, please, don’t make me feel like a schmuck. I’m askin’ you for a hundred when I know you’re carrying a lot more than that, and, if I’d asked you for more, you’d give it to me.”
He took out a roll from his pocket, peeled off two fifties and handed them to me. “Can I buy you lunch?”
“Gimme another hundred and I’ll buy you lunch.”
As he was laughing, I turned around and left saying, “Thank you,” over my shoulder.
I went to Long Island City to go through the process for my interim license, a written test and physical examination.
The written test was a breeze: Where’s the Empire State Building? (sticking out your ass, I thought) and other toughies like that. I was a little worried about the physical though. My arms hadn’t completely healed and there was the matter of my diabetes. I decided to hope, and lie. Fortunately, the doctor was young when Broadway was a prairie. He never looked at my arms, and when he asked if I had any of this or that, I just did what Nancy Reagan advised, “Just Say No.” They stamped a few papers, I paid a fee and went back to the cab company. The dispatcher told me I could begin the next day. I had a job.
I chose the early shift: In by 7 a.m. off at 4. I drove a Checker cab. It was fun in the city and shook like a sonofabitch on the highway, but even that was a hoot. In even the best of circumstances, dealing with the public is hard, but dealing with the public in scorching, humid, New York City traffic, where the pollution and heat are beyond belief can, at times, be suicidal. On the other hand, driving again was a kick, and some passengers were eccentric and/or interesting, and somehow it gets to be 3:30 and you put on your “Off Duty” sign and made it in. Your shirt was soaked, the passengers have blurred into a stew of shoulders and faces, but there’s money in your pocket and you’re on your way home. You’ve worked, and worked hard. There’s a sense of accomplishment, and money in your pocket to prove it.
I was smarter this time around. I was more protective of myself. That first week I called Julio in his office. He took my call and registered his disappointment but told me to come by or call anytime if I felt the need. It reassured me that the president of the program told me not to be a stranger. It wasn’t like white, money hungry Areba, who had to have a deposit before saying “Hello.” I walked through Central Park listening to the thumping rhythm of conga players and smelling the sweet aroma of boo.

Compulsion to me, in large measure, is seduction, and being seduced, is very pleasurable, even if the end result is misery and pain. If I were given a penicillin shot as a kid and had had an allergic reaction to it that brought me very close to death, or had nearly dried up all my tear ducts, as so often happens, I doubt I would fantasize about my next injection, but I’ll be goddamned if I don’t walk by a liquor store, or drug store, or hospital, and don’t stare a little too long at the displays in the window, or wonder what kind of prescription the person in front of me is filling, or think about all those lovely medications that are inside the confines of locked cabinets in hospitals. Even the simple act of lighting a cigarette can be fraught with seduction. The smell of burning sulfur, after the match is struck, reminds me of cooking up dope. At the beginning, when you’re clean from drugs, everything, or nearly everything, reminds you of when you were getting high: the streets you walk down, the connections on the corners and in houses, neighborhoods, times of day when you usually scored, episodes of eluding cops and muggers, routes that you took going to and coming from. Manhattan was one network of subterfuge. And you miss that too; you miss the drama. But Diane didn’t miss that drama and had a hard time understanding why I did. What she (and I) didn’t know is how much I was drawn to a life of fantasy; how even the love between two people, when stripped of its most fevered and childlike dimensions, implies work.
I really didn’t want to think about too much except getting up in the morning and driving a cab and staying away from drugs, which didn’t include alcohol.
I should say, that at this juncture in my life I didn’t include alcohol as a drug, hence a substance to avoid using. In fact, Therapeutic Communities gave those they were treating, ”drinking privileges” when they, at a certain point, demonstrated behavior and took on responsibilities that clearly indicated their commitment to drug and/or narcotic abstinence which preceded their reentry into society. Even the federal and state governments in funding treatment programs made a strict delineation between alcoholics and drug addicts, never equating the two. Today, however, those agencies are aligned to a great extent and, even in some quarters, given equal billing. Therapeutic Communities these days no longer give drinking privileges and, in fact, strongly suggest that their graduates attend AA and/or NA meetings.
It was enough for me to get up in the morning, go to work, come home and be with Diane. I needed my life to be simple and she was complicating it, goddamn her. She wanted to get married. She must be crazy, I said to myself but to her I said, “Now’s not the time.” I was so conscious about slipping back into the abyss of addiction that I talked about drugs all the time. So much so, it must have seemed to Diane as if I was still using and, in that regard, I still was. I was caught in the fear that only those who have rewired their neural networks understand and, in a perverse way, have come to love. But, marriage!? Christ, it scared the shit out of me. I knew, or thought I had an inkling of what her motivations or anxieties were, and in a pique of righteous outrage, did not care to talk about much less consider them. I asked her what the rush was. I asked her to give me some time to ground myself. In the moments that it takes to get a thought fleshed out, I ran a few hundred scenarios through my mind that sprung from fear and need. I didn’t want to lose her, and I needed a place to stay. I wanted to negotiate this, stall for time, make her see my side and join me there; anything, but make a decision. Besides, as long as I was staying clean, working and taking care of myself physically, I was doing a hell of a good job for both of us, I righteously felt. Also, the fact that I was not fooling around with anyone else should be enough to signify my commitment to her. Well, some days it was, and some days it wasn’t. She too had her own time table. In those days, I hated those who had a different schedule than my own. I wanted every person, every star, planet, organism, and god, secular or heavenly, to understand and conform to my needs, especially when I thought they were so humble and virtuous. It turns my stomach to say it, but I was something of a misguided idiot when it came to putting my values, my ideas, my desires, my needs, my my my what a jerk I could be. Diane would have to cope with her anxieties the same way I was, alone. It mattered not one iota that it was she who stuck by me, fed me, housed me, and tried to understand me. The poet in me said to her, “I’ve got nothing, and I want to share it with you,” and she loved me for that. I had not come to the point in my thinking, or had yet realized and understood, that although we are alone with our share of pain, loneliness, confusion and fear, a union of two can, if strong, provide a sanctuary, a hedge against the war that is fought within and without.
When reasonably healthy, there wasn’t a grateful bone in my body. In fact, I could be, and in many instances was, a first class prick. I didn’t feel myself as “needy;” I felt like I had my balls back; and I was frisky. I probably scared the hell out of Diane. The more independent I felt, the more I distanced myself from her. Like a child, curious with his own image, and entranced by the spaces around him, I felt the need to explore. We had reached that point where arguments--a carousel of angry horses--were as predictable as death, with language, simmering with accusations, anger, and the bluish black hue of gangrene: “You did this, so I did that.” “Well, I only did that because you already had done this.” “I wouldn’t have done that if only you were listening to me, but you really wanted to do that anyway, so be honest.” “That’s a lie; you’re just lying.” “Shut up already, just shut up.”
“Can’t we have a conversation?” she’d say, “can’t we ever talk?”
“This ain’t talking, this is finger pointing time and I ain’t gonna buy into it. I’m getting out of here.”
“That’s just like you. You never stay around long enough to resolve anything. Either you leave, or just stop talking.”
When I knew she was right I had no stomach to fight. I had an inclination to run. I have always thought that the truth was very much like answers: over rated. A person is only able to deal with certain things at certain times. Anything else, overloads the circuits. We had a stalemate, but a stalemate to me meant looking for an out, not another game with the same player. I still did not have the capacity to work with, and through, the net of lace and steel that constitute the filaments of another person. And so we fought and made love; fought some more and made love. It began getting too crazy, frustrating, and threatening for me. I called Julio and made an appointment.

“Well, what do you want to do?” he asked me, a Marlboro pursed in his lips, underneath his neatly trimmed mustache.
“Split,” I answered.
“Where?” he inquired. I could see light dancing in his eyes.
“Shit, I don’t know man, that’s why I came to see you.”
“Well brother, you can’t live me with. I love you dearly, you know that, but shit, Linda would have my balls. She has them anyway, but I spoke with your father...”
“Yeah?” my ears pricked up.
“You know, he can use you now. He lost a lot of bread with that store in Queens, man. He needs someone he can trust. Not forever, but for now. How do you feel about that?”
“I don’t know, man,” I replied, but I lied. I wanted to go home. I wanted to get away from Diane. I wanted to prove I wasn’t such a fuck-up to him, with him.
Julio, besides being a superb administrator, was, without formal training, a brilliant clinician when it came to the drug addicted. He read me like a book, but he knew how a decision needed to be arrived at independently. He let me digest the desire, feel the fear, and assimilate the emotions. Then he said, “I think you can handle it. Besides, I think it would be good for you in a variety of ways. You’ll be busy from morning to night, and he’s smarter now and understands more about you and himself. You understand more too about your shit and his. And brother, workin’ for him “straight” would relieve some that fucking “guilt” you feel.” He paused then continued, “I’ll call him.”
I went back and sheepishly told Diane. It wasn’t easy. She saw me as another man leaving her. I told her that it wasn’t so. It just meant I was going back home for awhile to try to build a better foundation than driving a cab could provide. We’d still see each other as often as we could, but staying like we were would only disrupt our relationship further, possible destroy it. I didn’t want to do that and neither did she.
“One day you’re going to have to stay someplace, with someone, long enough to work out and through the difficulties,” she said.
“I know, I know,” I replied, but I really didn’t know and couldn’t really hear what she was saying. I had one foot out the door and the other foot in Brooklyn. She didn’t stay while I was packing.

pgs 99-105: From Chapter VII--JUNK SICK: CONFESSIONS OF AN UNCONTROLLED DIABETIC

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015