MARY TYLER MOORE IS DEAD

and I can't say I'm sorry.
I spoke to her once
while she was in Canada
filming some bullshit
and I was holed up
in my Greenwich Village pad
bloody and bandaged and minus
four toes and still trying
to dream and she
was in a phone booth
with a second or two,
she told me,
between takes.
I'd tried for years
to get my memoir to her: Confessions
Of An Uncontrolled Diabetic.
I tried through my doctors,
her publicist, her husband's colleagues,
and finally through her assistants.
The years were 1982 through '85
and she was living in the San Remo.
I was convinced that between the insulin shocks,
insulin shots, piss testing, food deprivations,
depressions from sugar highs, anger from the lows,
a commonality of Brooklyn, doctors, fears and
foreboding, she'd get behind the work if
she read it, though I never particularly liked
her work: too pretty, too perky, too sweet,
too American, but, hey, she held some ins
to my outs.
She was worth a shot.
Getting published,
getting validated,
getting out of this thing
called "life" was worth
whatever lies
I had to tell.
An actor friend of mine
knew one of her assistants
and so I traipsed up to the San Remo
and dropped the book off for her
with the militarily clad doorman.
After a year
I forgot about it.
And then a phone call
on a rain slicked day.
She was probably sorry
she didn't get my answering machine.
After my hello
she told me who she was.
"Sorry," she said,
"I can't get involved with this."
I just held the receiver.
"Best of luck," she said,
and hung up.
I could hear her voice catch.
I heard, "I'd really like to, but..."
kinda tone.
I'd suspected the work cut too close
to Mary's bone and wasn't surprised
a decade later when she wrote about
her alcoholism and the less savory
parts of her so called charmed life.
"Fuck her," I said at the time
and went back to what I did best:
hide
behind words
& substances.

I might have another eleven years
to go--give or take--and am not displeased
about the arc my life has taken
before and after Mary.
Redford must have sensed, too,
her drunken selfishness and filmed it.
Really,
it was her most honest role.
I should know:
I've played it
once or twice
myself.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

SAVING LIVES

in the Bronx--
the drug addicted,
mind addled,
soup labeled,
helpless hapless hopeless
& restless,
the bottle babies
of inflammable juice,
the deluded,
the schized,
the solipsistic,
the sycophants
paranoid jeepsters
& romantics
trilled, tripping
& tripped-up,
the deranged
& derogatory
mise-en-scene misers
or porno prosthetics...
---and those are
the run-of-the-mill
crippled from birth
& channeled
by betrayals
great & small, but
are not beyond
my reach.

There are those,
though,
who are
beyond me:
a woman who gave
a placenta soaked
all the news that's fit to print
paper to a lady going to work
with her two premature twins lying
above the fold;
or a man who watched
his dad & mom,
hand in hand
go back into their home
that his dad had taken
a match to;
or a man thinking
his teeth are ice cubes.

There are no courses
to teach this; it is
a university difficult
to get into, but
once accepted
even fewer
who graduate.
It's not something
you aspire to
in all its
permutations.
But once enrolled
you must take
every and any elective
that life serves up. You can say
it's a calling
where you're always dialing
the wrong number;
it's a blizzard
in a hot house;
an ant
with diabetes
wearing
an insulin pump.
You've survived
without knowing
how or why.
You've made it
an art.
And now it pays
the rent
as it saves
your life
as well.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

BLACK & BLUES OF RED LIGHTS--FROM CHAPTER VI: CONFESSIONS OF AN UNCONTROLLED DIABETIC

A hotel for transients and a massage parlor bracketed my home for the next month. During the 1970’s dope and sex ran like rivers through Times Square in reds and neon's giving light to the pimps and pushers and the stiletto heels of women and the wigs of transvestites who were followed, none to quickly, by the worn heels of policemen’s shoes, who gave less than an fiddler’s fuck about pursuing them.
Project Return, in those days, was a poor program, serving mostly blacks and Hispanics. I was one of two white guys, out of three hundred, in the program; the other blanco being Joe, a brilliant chemically mercurial Ohio nut, who possessed no valance. Phoenix House and Daytop Village were our rich cousins. Like the founding of America, those there first were loathed to share the wealth. The facility itself lacked certain amenities in the dead of winter: consistent heat, hot water, running water, working bathrooms and nutritious food. Besides that it was paradise. There were about thirty of us living in the facility learning about the program before being promoted to the Treatment Facility, located on 43rd Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. Each morning I’d take my insulin injection in front of a staff member, who’d then put back the syringe, insulin and alcohol in a locked cabinet. He would then check the number left against the total count and I’d go and have breakfast. I’d begun dealing with the fact that I had diabetes, a dangerous disease that demanded vigilance which, unfortunately or not, had to be acknowledged and dealt with by people who could, and probably did, (in my head,) equate having a disease with weakness. And since these men had, for the most part, spent a portion of their lives in jail, my masculinity was even more threatened. In the first few days I was there, we had orientation sessions about our expected behavior in the facility. There were the cardinal rules that, if violated, were grounds for expulsion: No drugs; No sex; No violence or threats of violence. There’d be no ”selling wolf tickets” which were verbal threats designed to challenge one’s “manhood.” There were other suggestions, one of which was, “Do not sneak up on anybody; do not touch anyone on their backs; do not make sudden gestures that might be misconstrued.” Some of the men who I was living with were men not to be trifled with.
The first important thing that effected my diabetes that I had to adjust to were the meals. I’ve heard that meals in the “joint,” (prison), were similar: high caloric, simple carbohydrate starch foods: pancakes, syrup, powdered eggs and bread, bread, and more bread. Lunch: Father John (who was a real priest, and who’s parish was in Greenwich Village), Sandwiches: Two slices of bologna, a slice of cheese on a roll which was as round as a beach ball. Dinner: meat, which was mostly gristle, deep fried chicken, potatoes, pasta, rice, and more rice, pasta and potatoes. Everybody ate it, and nobody complained much, except me.
Each person coming into the program had to get on welfare. Besides getting funded by other parts of the city, state and federal governments, food stamps were granted to those who showed special needs. I was one of those people. I’d always wanted the light to shine upon me, but not that way. Not only did I buy food that only I could eat, but I also brought in soda, juice and/or candy, like Milky Ways, to fight insulin reactions. When the soda, juice and candy were pilfered, which they initially were, and since no one owned up to that, I had to, in groups, confront the entire facility. The idea was that it would be close to premeditated murder to steal something that would help keep a person alive in a medical emergency. Not many would, or could, buy that argument, especially when they were sitting across from a reasonably healthy person. Others could give less of a shit who died, as long as their sweet tooth got filled. But struggle is a strange thing. Live with men long enough, and engage with them to fight the same demon, a similar foe, piss in the same toilet and shower in the same stall, wash with the same soap and eat the same food, build a common home and something happens. You still might not like the cocksucker, but you begin to respect him. However, men are also men, and being men, are animals, and because they are animals and also human which gives them the capacity to think, it makes them, at times, more dangerous than animals.
Alcoholics and drug addicts, while not like the proverbial myth of the “hooker with the heart of gold,” are, once they’ve given up the drink and/or drug, simply emotionally damaged people. It is also true that addiction is pleasurable and huge chunks of real life are difficult and painful, and they want nothing to do with that reality. Whether their addiction can, or should, be classified as a disease, a physical and emotional bodily pursuit to compensate for a lack in natural hormones and other secretions, a flaw in their character, make-up, upbringing or environment or all of the above, is not for me to say. What I can say, and will say, is this: If a scumbag stops using drink and/or drugs that person is still your ordinary run-of-the-mill scumbag, until he or she decides to work their ass off to change that as well. At Project Return, as in life, I met plenty of scumbags, and some of them, one of them, most of them, was/were stealing my candy.
We were good at lying. We had to be: “Who me? No, man, no couldn’ta been me; I waz visitin’ my dead aunt in Baltimore, man, you crazy.”
Even caught red-handed: “No man, that ain’t no Milky Way you be seein’, you see some guy, who it might be I can’t really say, but he be breezin’ by me and handed me this wrapper man, and stupid as I am, I just latched onto it. I tried to shake the motherfucker loose, but it just sticks to me, you see?”
“C’mon John, I saw you take the fuckin’ candy.”
“Me!?” You saw me take the candy!? Not me, you didn’t see me; it was not me you saw.”
“Yeah you, I saw you. You.”
“Who you gonna believe,” he said, pausing for effect, “me or your lyin’ eyes?” On and on and on it went until I got up some nerve, spoke to a staff member and called a special group to confront the whole house. It’s so easy to remain as passive as I was and watch as your life slips away from you. People will tear small bits of flesh until only the bones remain, and they’ll justify it. “Hey, man, you were just lyin’ there not doing a damn thing to save your poor ass and I needed those shoes, your job, your wife, your space. If you wanted to live so goddamn badly, you shoulda said somethin’. How the fuck were we supposed to know?” A good question. I could talk about many things, but how I felt wasn’t one of them. I did not like to verbalize what I was feeling, and for good reason. It simply never felt safe enough for me to do that. Like it or not, I simply had to grow up.
Growing up is painful at any time, but some people begin growing up emotionally from birth, instead of at twenty-five years of age. Since I still go kicking and screaming from, and to, any and all responsibilities, I can say with certainty that the structures I have had to build inside my body and psyche, ones that have enabled me to work and love with a degree of maturity, were, and are, fought for everyday. It was never a question of rebuilding what was destroyed. Instead, it was almost a matter of building from scratch. Nobody gets out of this life without paying dues, some more than others.
After speaking up, confronting the house about the Milky Way thief or thieves, and staying alive through the medium of verbalization and, working my ass off, I was promoted to the Treatment Facility, or The Wild West. The “Treatment Facility” sounds like something that neo-Nazis had thought up for a remote corner of Idaho and the two Jews who live there, but it was really the place where the addict was either going to “grow” or “blow.” Either they were going to go through the pains and frustrations of “growing up” or they were going to “blow” this opportunity and usually end up in a jail, an institution, or die.
I slept on the top bunk of a metal framed, double bunk bed, with a mattress as thin as a wafer. Underneath me was Starling Lee, nicknamed, “Heavy,” a three hundred pound black man, who was born and raised on the streets of Harlem. He’d been sent from Rahway Prison in New Jersey, where he was doing time for assault with intent to kill, to Sing Sing, in upstate New York where he’d been convicted of manslaughter and was about to serve seventeen to twenty-five years. However, he was not without friends who had friends. A judge had offered him a way out, a “last chance”: Go into the program and complete it, or do the seventeen. He opted for the program.
Starling had begun using heroin in the 1940’s, when a fifty cent cap would last for days. He was one of Billie Holliday’s morphine connections when she’d come to the city to play. Starling was not only a jazz aficionado but had hung out with many of the musicians as well. He’d been in and out of jail since he was a kid. His body still contained metal from three gunshot wounds. He’d used so much dope for so long that most of his veins in his arms had collapsed. His hands and forearms were swollen like balloons from trying to shoot dope into his arms, missing and finding nothing. Eventually, he’d have to pay someone to find a vein in his neck in order for him to get the “rush” he was looking for. He’d point to the veins in his arms and say, in his voice, sounding like sweet gravel mixing, “I got a Cadillac in this one here, a little ol’ Chevy here, and a goddamn Rolls Royce over here.” Starling not only made it through the program, but he worked for the program as well after he “graduated.” As you might imagine, the young kids looked up to this giant of a man. He really did have a spirit that infused the work with a joy of being alive and clean of narcotics and jail cells, some real, and some self-imposed.
We were an odd couple only in appearance. We listened, when we could, to the albums I brought with me: Monk, Miles, Cooke, Holiday, et al. I told him stories about Sam, The Towne Hill and The Copa and he told me tales of Monk and Miles and Sonny and Billie; how he had breakfast in Monk’s kitchen with Monk doodling on the piano while eating scrambled eggs, the grease on the keys as thick as a thumb; Billie kissing his cheek before she went on stage to sing; the nights of hanging out at Minton’s with Cluck and Bags and Monk. I was like a sponge. We’d sit and watch the thick blue smoke from our Lucky’s or Commanders, and listen and laugh to Monk’s solo on Bag’s Groove or sing to Sam’s Night Beat late, while the house was going to sleep. Those were wonderful times.
But it was treatment I was supposed to be getting, not a cultural sabbatical, and, in fact, it was treatment I got. Areba had only twenty or so people to deal with at any one time. Our home, at full capacity, held one hundred and ten crazy-assed dope fiends, men and women. In some ways, the women were harder to treat then the men. Men could be men in the street and still get over without giving up their identity, but women, in many cases, lost whatever they had of their femininity in order to boost, rob, hustle, mug and, in some cases kill, or nearly kill, to support their habits. In many ways, they’re tougher than men and not at all ashamed to demonstrate it. Also, their stories were more heartbreaking and tragic. There was one woman who, while bathing her young son, nodded off to sleep, killing him. Some would say that she deserved whatever harsh consequences awaited her, and they might be right. However, it is my experience that no one can punish anyone as stringently, as punitively, as relentlessly as an addict punishes themself. It is never ending and endures whether they stop taking drugs or not.
“Treatment” in a therapeutic community is designed to be a pressure cooker. There were confrontation groups three to five times a week, day long marathons, conducted monthly, designed to break down one’s resistance's in order to accept truths and admit vulnerability. There were individual sessions as needed, and the daily regimen of your job function: service, kitchen or maintenance crew, acquisition team--”acquisition” being a fancy word for “hustling,” where those of us who could bullshit the best, got to go out, with an old, battered and shorn tax-exempt certificate, to any and all variety of merchants and other business owners, to “acquisition” what was difficult, if not impossible, to obtain, such as fresh fruits and vegetables.
Finally, for those people who had been in treatment the longest and, who now had the responsibility of junior staff members, were the top positions of Chief Expediter and House Coordinator. The house hummed all day long and into the evening. The service crew cleaned all day long. Therapeutic Communities are the cleanest facilities in America. The hint of dirt is enough to get the whole house on a ban. A “ban” is when privileges are denied, such as going out of the facility, watching T.V., or engaging in any social activity. A ban could also be designed to curtail an individual’s activities. The kitchen crew was the next step up in responsibility. You had to get up earlier to prepare breakfast, and were the last to leave after the “family” ate dinner. To compensate for this the kitchen crew was usually granted privileges such as not having to work on the weekends when an alternative crew would be assigned to prepare meals. (And so on up the ladder of success.) I had very little desire to progress that way. That kind of recognition mattered little to me. What mattered was getting passes on weekends to see Diane. I wanted to discover what it was I was going to do with her, and with the rest of my life.
Hector, a thin, Puerto Rican of medium height, who had deep brown eyes, an acne scarred face, Mick Jagger lips, a quick mind and a wicked sense of humor, was the Director of the Treatment Facility. All staff were ex-addicts and most were Puerto Rican as were the founders, Julio Martinez and Carlos Pagan. “Sabige,” he’d say, “you a stupid motherfucker, you know that? You with your B.A.’s, your M.A.’s, your Ph.D.’s, PPP’s LSD’s QXZ’s all them fuckin’ degrees man you just stupid, man.” He’d pause for effect. Usually, he caught me mopping a floor, staring off into space, trying to sneak a smoke, or all of them at the same time. He usually denied me passes of any kind on the weekends on G.P., “general principles,” and kept me on the lowly service crew for nearly four months while people were usually promoted in two to four weeks. “Deny Sabage, and let him deal with it,” seemed to be part of the plan. Hector’s other refrain to me was: “Your father, he stupid too--I see where you get that shit from man. He could bullshit, just like you man. He would of made a good addict man, we tell him that the other week man and he love that shit: lyin’, schemin’, gettin’ high. He eat like a motherfucker man, that get him high I think, no doubt about that shit, man.”
My father had been coming once a week, sometimes with Diane, to attend groups designed for the “trainees’”, (the moniker of the residents there) significant others. Hector continued, “But you man, you don’t wanna be like him man; no, you wanna get the hell out of the city man, be a farmer like me man. This shit too evil man, too hard on the soul. Someday I’m goin’ back to PR, man, be a fuckin’ farmer...fuck this city shit man.”
After months of dusting the air and cleaning the bathrooms, sometimes with a toothbrush, they put me on the kitchen crew, which was an adventure. Up at 4:30 in the morning to begin preparations, I had the job of putting out the bags of garbage from the night before. One morning, I felt something against the front door making it difficult to open. I pushed and pushed and finally succeeded in getting the door to where I could go out, sideways. I found the reason for the difficulty. A dead body leaned against it. It was the second time I’d seen a dead body since being in the program. The first was when a staff member asked me to accompany him to the city morgue, near Bellevue, to identify a guy I’d made friends with in the program, Alfred Rickets. Al had gone home on a pass that weekend and, on his way back to the program, was pushed on the tracks of an oncoming train off the elevated El in The Bronx. I went with Fat John, a staff member, identified his face which graciously still was intact on an otherwise mangled body and was pretty shaken up for days afterward. It was shortly thereafter when I was promoted to be in charge of the kitchen crew, an opportunity I really didn’t want. I had to get up earlier than everybody else; I was in charge of seven people, a hopeless and thankless task, preparing meals in addition to keeping track of, and ordering, the food. I’d never cooked before in my life. After doing this for about a week, the house called a group designed just for me. It was a “Roman Encounter.” A Roman Encounter is when a person sits in the middle of fifty people or more and turns to face them one at a time while they tell him or her not in the kindest terms, what they feel about them.
“What we supposed to do with that fuckin’ pancake man, throw it or build with it, I know we can’t eat the motherfucker.”
“I needed a motherfuckin’ gun for that chicken last night. That chicken was bleedin’ so much, I felt sorry for it. Don’t you care what you’re servin’ your family?” That was it, of course. I didn’t care, I just wanted to get through it. The pride and quality that one should have for their job was lacking they felt. I was awakened in the middle of the night by some senior member of the facility, wearing a white glove with a speck of grease on it. My eyes slowly focused. “You gonna kill us tomorrow morning, man, with all that grease on the grill. Better get your ass down there and clean it good.”
Eventually, in group, I was able to delve into the emotional depths of what food in general, and the kitchen in particular, meant to me. It was a rancid blend of love and disease. Besides the obvious discomfort of having the responsibility of preparing meals for a hundred people, and being in charge of seven who were as crazy as me, there, intertwined with the present, was my past, where food was the hub and the kitchen the wheel. The last thing I wanted to be responsible for was feeding myself or others. The last thing I wanted to address was diabetes. The last thing I wanted was for my life to revolve around what I had so despised and rejected, namely my body. This was compounded by those in authority who had initially dropped me in that god awful situation. In short, I was angry as a motherfucker. I got it out, and got it right. I was put back on the service crew in a manner of speaking.
Staff had other plans for me. They, while trying to keep my ego in check, had begun to use me to “acquisition” goods and services that they had a hard time obtaining for themselves. I was only one of two other people in the facility with a valid drivers license, the other being George, a recent admission. He was a fat, tattooed chef who had spent too much time imbibing chemicals and powders that had nothing much to do with gastronomy and everything to do with hunger. I found myself hustling everything from cartons of cigarettes, fresh fruit and vegetables, to mattresses, linens and couches. I went to The Gotham Book Mart, where I had a slight friendship with Brown, who then owned the store. I thought some of the people in the program would like to do Gelber’s play, The Connection and was able to get ten copies of it. Nothing much happened with it. The same was not true for The Village Vanguard. Starling and I went to see Max Gordon, the owner, whom I knew from my poetry reading days with Fran, and who Starling knew from his forays into the West Village to hear people he knew perform. Max told us to check with him before a performance and he would, if space was available, give us a table or two to listen to some jazz. We caught the first set of Sonny Rollins before going back to the program, drinking club sodas and laughing at our sober glasses and Sonny’s arpeggios.
This quasi-freedom was making me itchy to get out and get going. I was getting edgy, restless. I’d been in treatment for almost six months. If you counted Areba, Lenox Hill and Mt. Sinai Hospitals I had been “institutionalized” for over a year. The next “phase” in Project Return was “education” where you either got a GED, (General Equivalency Diploma) or a job while living in Project Return’s facility on East 52nd Street. It also afforded one the freedom to come and go with few restraints while you learned what it was like to reenter the world of work and responsibilities while building a little bank account. Most people who’d come in with me had already made the move. They were holding me back for reasons I couldn’t fathom, except for one. I was proving very useful to them.
One day in group, George was pissing and moaning about being used by the program. “I’m just driving around all day picking up all your personal shit, the program’s shit, and not getting my shit together,” he whined, “I came here to get help, not to pickup Carlos’ shit.” The staff member who was leading the group shouted back at him to just do what he was told and stop being such a baby while doing it. George incensed, reached into his wallet, removed his drivers license, and ate it. “Now I can’t drive, you sonofabitch, I guess you’ll have to use me some other way now!” he exploded. I also felt used, but was not as famished. It would take a few more weeks for my “shit” to hit the fan.
One hot Saturday morning in June, I was standing outside the facility smoking a Lucky. I was pissed because another request for a pass to see Diane was denied. Instead, I was supposed to drive the van over to a Health Fair that we were participating in somewhere uptown. Carlos, the second in command at Project Return, and a guy I never liked too much, drove up in his car. “Hey, Jewish, come over here,” he said. He, for some reason liked to call me “Jewish” instead of my name. I never warmed to that form of endearment. I strolled over to his car.
“I thought Maxwell told you to get the fuckin’ van,” he said as he was getting out of his car and coming towards me.
“He did, but I ain’t goin’, not until I speak to you,” I replied.
“We got nothin’ to fuckin’ talk about man. You gotta get the fuckin’ van, go to the fuckin’ street fair, run your mouth about what we do here in this fuckin’ program like save motherfucker’s lives like yours, then come home here and do what you have to do.”
I wanted to punch him in his mouth. I wanted to strangle him on the sidewalk, walk over his body, take his car and split. Instead, I calmly said, “No, not me. I don’t have to do that. You might think you own this plantation, but I ain’t no slave.”
Even in the bright sunlight his face turned redder than red. Barely able to contain himself he said, “Well motherfucker, no one sent you a fuckin’ memo to come here. You were just another greasy motherfuckin’ dope fiend who’s ass we saved. Just go and pack your shit and leave.”
A crowd of people from the facility was standing around us now. Starling was tugging at my sleeve but I brushed off his hand. “That’s right Carlos, nobody sent me a memo, but nobody, including you, can throw me out either. I’ll leave when I’m good and ready unless you want to make an issue out of it. One more fuckin’ thing. You didn’t save my ass, I did. Me and the other people in here, but certainly not you.” We glared at each other for a few minutes. “I’m gettin’ out of here,” I finally said. I turned and walked back into the facility, up the two flights of stairs to my bunk and began packing my belongings. Maxwell and Starling followed me and watched as I threw my clothes into the bag I had brought with me when I entered Project Return.
“I’m gonna miss ya man,” Starling said.
I stopped what I was doing, went up to him and put my arms around his massive bulk and hugged him. I was grateful that Starling was too smart to try and talk me out of it. “I’m gonna miss ya too, but this ain’t goodbye, ya know what I mean?”
“I hope not; ain’t too many white motherfuckers to get down with these days. It makes my shit feel legitimate.”
“Don’t be sayin’ that. Hold onto my record player and records til I can get back to them.”
He nodded and pulled me to him. “If I didn’t like women so much, I could fuck ya.”
“Thank God for that! My asshole would look like a Dunkin’ Donuts commercial.” I turned to Maxwell. “You could do me a favor.”
“I’m quiet because I figure you’re here long enough to know what you’re doing. What’s the favor?”
“I need to make a phone call, and I need thirty-five cents for a bus ride.”
“Sure, just wait till that skinny motherfucker is gone. I got to make this month’s rent, ya know what I mean?”
“Thanks.”
I packed my stuff, talked with Starling some more than went downstairs to make my phone call. Diane picked up. “What’s for lunch?” I asked.
“Good, you got your pass,” she said and I could hear the smile in her voice. In the next sentence I would erase that.
“Not exactly. I’ve decided to leave. What’s for lunch?”
“Tuna fish,” she said, her voice a little tremulous.
“Great, I’ll see ya soon.” I hung up. I got the thirty-five cents from Maxwell as well as my insulin and syringes and walked through the front doors. Everybody had already left for the Health Fair. I pushed my way up to Madison Avenue and stood on 43rd Street waiting for the uptown bus. I was scared and kept looking around, as if somebody or something was following me.

pgs 94-99--From Chapter VI: JUNK SICK: CONFESSIONS OF AN UNCONTROLLED DIABETIC

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

THE CRUST OF ADDICTION, INSIDE THE PLAYPEN--FROM CHAPTER VI--CONFESSIONS OF AN UNCONTROLLED DIABETIC

My folks were, by now, suspicious. My behavior and appearance looked and sounded all too familiar. While in Lenox Hill Hospital, a friend of the family, the same person who had assisted in getting me into New York City Community College, had recommended a psychologist, Dr. Irving Handelsman. After some prompting I made an appointment. I called and spoke with him, but before I could see him, I would have to take some psychological tests on 86th Street. He’d see me a week after that.

Christmas morning, 1972. Diane had gotten up first to go home and change. We were going to The Palm Court in The Plaza Hotel for brunch and then out to her family’s home in Princeton, New Jersey. I made sure that although I was spending more and more money on junk, I’d have enough to cover the tab at The Plaza. I was running with Raymond on my lunch hours up to Harlem to score. When I couldn’t go with him, he brought the stuff back to me. I got up, lit a Lucky, went into the bathroom, shaved, showered...and fixed. I remember putting on a Billie Holiday album and listening to some of her last recordings on Verve, when she was singing with Ben and Sweets, The Hawk, and the rest, sounding oh so old and young in the same moment. It was rumored that she would have to drink a fifth of scotch just to get her vocal chords to loosen before she could attempt to sing. If you could sing like that, would you make a pact with the devil? Would you be willing to live with that amount of pain in exchange for the jolts of ecstasy that come with living life a few speeds below God? I will never know, of course, what it felt like playing Bird’s alto break on Night in Tunisia, nor Billie’s way of twisting the word love around her tongue and mouth like she invented and owned, not only the existence, but the essence of it. However, I do know something about hitting the right chord with a word or sentence that came from a place I knew nothing of, and that’s magic enough for me. And so, I sat on the corner of the bed and listened while she sang, and I tried to sort out why the love of a beautiful and smart and talented woman, the talent that I obviously had, but just as obviously did not believe in and thwarted, that the friends, the job, the family, was not enough to dissuade me from doing what every fiber and bone in my body was telling me to do: destroy it.
Diane looked lovely when she came back to the hotel. We walked to The Plaza and then into The Palm Court. There is something eerily beautiful on holiday mornings in New York City, especially to those who live here year round with little or no means of escape. It is quiet and respectful. The hotel was decorated in plush reds and greens burnished woods and plants and ferns small and large and larger, Christmas trees and Christmas wreaths as centerpiece and ornament giving one the impression that this was how it looked for as long as The Plaza had been in existence. The attention to detail was still there. The silverware weighed heavy in your hand; the dishes were china, the glass, crystal; the service effusive; the food wonderful and plentiful; the cost...worth it.
We cabbed it to Penn Station and caught the train to Princeton. Her parents, she explained, were “disappointed” with her over her two divorces and lack of a “real job,” which translated into “failure” in their worldview. She needed, in their humble opinion, either by benefit of marriage or her own endeavors, to achieve financial independence and so carve a place in this world that would be a hedge against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. “Jewish guilt or Catholic, what’s the difference?” I thought, they were “all variations on a theme.” Today, however, I felt removed. After all, it wasn’t my family we were visiting. But I was curious to observe the dynamics of this family. For to watch heredity in action is fascinating, even when you don’t know a person very well. However, it’s enthralling when you not only know that person, but love them as well.
I was Woody Allen, to Diane’s Diane Keaton, in Annie Hall that afternoon. I felt like a Jewish caveman coming from the brisket of beef emotionalism of my family to the clipped-edged bread of Diane’s folks. Her father, dressed in a worn cardigan, button down shirt, corduroy slacks and loafers, sat in his old glove of an armchair and hardly turned his head when we came in. You might think he saw his daughter just this morning instead of last Easter. She went over to him, he nodded hello, and allowed her to kiss him on the cheek. He turned his head when she introduced us. I went and shook his hand. I asked him how he was, he said, “Fine, thanks.” and that was that. Her mom was a little more demonstrative and friendly, but not much. As nuts as my parents are, I thought, is preferable to this ice. But what the hell is “preference” in this regard? I “prefer” to get shot by a cannon instead of a bazooka? I “prefer” to get cancer instead of leukemia? Fucked is fucked. Sometimes, our sight is limited to only what we can see.
We stayed as long as was necessary. I don’t remember much about their home, the dinner, the conversation, or the ride back to the train station. Diane and I spoke about our families and how each was crazy in its own way, whether suffocating close and overprotective, or cold, aloof and castigating, each family induced feelings of failure and guilt. Merry Christmas, and pass the heroin, please.

That Tuesday, it rained all day. A cold and dirty New York City rain was falling when I left to meet my father at Handelsman’s office. I asked Diane to come along, though I told her to wait for us at a pub across the street, on Lexington Avenue and 38th Street.
My father was already there, sitting on the edge of a sofa with his back to me, talking with Handelsman. Handelsman saw me and motioned me inside. I took a seat in a swivel chair, at the farthest end from them. He looked like who he was: a retired Naval officer, in his late fifties, of medium height, well built, close-cropped bristle of gray hair on top of penetrating blue eyes. He spoke in short, direct sentences. My father turned to face me. I knew something was wrong. “Norman, no sense in wasting time--your time, my time or your father’s money--I think you should go into a drug program, tonight if possible,” Handelsman said, looking directly at me.
I paused, for effect. “What are you talking about? I’m not using any drugs, what are you talking about?”
“You’re trying to bullshit me and your father, but I’m not buying it and I hope he won’t either. I got your tests back. I’m going to say it again: Immediately, tonight if possible, go into a program, full time, 24 hours a day. It’s the only thing that we’ve seen work with addicts. And you’re an addict, no doubt about that.”
I puffed up, pretending I was egregiously wronged. “Listen, I don’t know why you’re saying that, but I’m not using drugs. I’m smoking some reefer, but I ain’t using dope and I resent you saying I am.”
“Resent it all you want,” Handelsman continued, stone cold sober, looking at me like he could see through me--which, of course, he could. “You’re shooting that shit into your veins right now. The only successful therapy for you is in a program.”
“I’m not going into a program. Why can’t you treat me?”
“I can’t. You’ll come once or twice because you’re curious, or maybe looking for magic, and then stop. You can’t do anything that’s difficult right now, and therapy is difficult. I can’t treat you; you’re simply not old enough. Emotionally, you’re just an infant, not old enough for therapy. But go into a program, complete it, and come back after you’re clean, then I can help you.”
“I’m not going into a program,” I protested. The lights in the room were starting to spin. I could not look in their eyes. My father, who had been staring at me, now turned to Handelsman.
“What should I do doc?” he asked him.
Handlesman faced him squarely and said, “Don’t be an asshole. Do him some good, but most importantly do yourself and the rest of your family some good. Cut him off. He’s been sucking on your tit for too long anyway and as long as your tit is out there and it’s fat with milk he’s going to keep on sucking it until it’s all dried up. He’ll never get any help and will probably die. I can’t make it any plainer than that.” He turned to face me and continued, “Grow up and get some help Norman, then maybe we can do something and you can be something.” With that he stood up.
Outside, I said to my father, “He’s fulla shit. I’m using a little pot, that’s all.”
My father looked long and hard at me and said, “Don’t lie to me willya? Jesus Christ, just don’t lie to me. I feel so stupid. So much like a jerk. You know that expression, Fool me once I’m a fool, fool me twice you’re a fool?”
“I don’t know,” I mumbled.
He wanted to say something but stopped short. I thought he wanted to have someone beat the shit out of me like I had seen him do many times to those he caught stealing from him, even those who had worked for him for many years, perhaps, especially them. But all he said was, “The car is parked in a lot a few blocks from here. I’ll drive you back.”
“Diane is with me; I want you to meet her.”
“I’ll get the car and meet you on the corner.” He walked away and for the first time I could detect a slight slouch in his gait.
Diane sat in the back seat on the way to The Navarro. I noticed him looking at her in the rear view mirror. I couldn’t tell if he was attracted to her, impressed, or just wondering why a woman like that was with me to begin with. If one were to look inside the car at the three figures sitting in there, no one would have guessed that we knew each other at all.

My use escalated in proportion to my fear and, I became reckless, going up to Harlem alone and at odd hours. I saw ghosts in doorways, cops in rain gutters, and stickup men and murderers waiting for me around every corner. I felt something was coming and it was coming soon.
One day to the week after the meeting with Handelsman, my parents came to my room. They looked pretty beaten themselves. “Norman,” my father began, “we’re letting you go: no money, no contact with us and especially with your brother. We’ve already sat “Shiva” for you. (“Shiva” is the Jewish word for the period when a family sits in their home for a week mourning the death of a family member.) I, we, your mother, and me want what’s best for you...and for us...always have. We want you to go into a program, but that’s up to you. We just wish you good luck.” They had stood the whole time. Now they both turned and, without saying another word, left.
I was stunned, but to keep from becoming hysterical, I used some of the junk I had stashed in my room. In fact, whether or not they would have cut me off or had given me thousands of dollars would have mattered hardly at all. For alcohol and drugs, by this time, was a prelude to, or an ending for everything. If I felt lousy, I used. If I felt good, I used. In order not to get too high, or too low, I used. I had long ago passed that line of demarcation where chemicals were used to enhance or alter my experiences. Now I used them to not experience, and used heroin because I simply did not want to feel.
But for a moment I panicked. I felt the air was being sucked out of me. I called Areba. They would not even talk to me without a deposit from my father. I called my mother. She told me there was nothing she or anybody else could do, and hung up. After a period of time, I calmed down and tried to figure my next move. My rent was paid through December, another week and half. I’d move in with Diane. I still had stolen merchandise to take back for cash, and I still had a gig. “O.K. don’t panic, you’re cool for a few weeks anyway,” I told myself and further admonished, “Get some fuckin’ backbone, will ya?”
New Years Eve, 1972. I was now out of The Navarro and living with Diane. I’d been able to lie to her for the time leading up to moving in with her about my stopping to use, blah, blah, blah, but I knew, in my heart, that Handelsman was right. I needed a 24 hour residential program to watch my ass constantly if I stood any shot at all at beating this fucking demon, but I also knew that I would not go in anywhere as long as I had a dollar in my pocket, a roof over my head, and a way to go. Steve, my old Seagate buddy, had invited us over to his apartment in Brooklyn, on Shore Road, overlooking the Verranzano Narrows Bridge, that I’d seen being built from my bedroom window in the early 60’s, to celebrate the new year. Neither of us felt much like celebrating, but we went because the alternative of being alone with each other was getting to be worse. I had a few bags of dope which I used before he picked us up and kept one for later. Raymond and I had spoke before about hooking up later in the night. Drug dealers were always more generous on the new year, and we didn’t want to miss what could be dope heaven. So with one foot planted in the past, another in the here and now, and a third waiting until I could make an excuse to leave, I sat and tried to tolerate the next few hours.
It was a small gathering. Donny and Tony and their girlfriends, Steve and his future wife, and Diane and I. To be honest, I don’t remember much of what we spoke about. I just kept watching the time and waiting. Finally, I went into his bedroom and called Raymond. Then, I went over to Steve and told him flatly that I needed to leave to meet someone and get some junk. Donny, seemingly disgusted with what I had turned into, kept his distance. “Fuckem,” I thought. I’d always remembered a line from B. Traven, Morals is the butter for people without any bread. Steve said he’d drive us back. I made no apologies but said “goodbye” and left. Diane, who could not as yet identify, nor articulate what she was feeling, sat beside me and understood that this was what it was, a struggle, a battle of herculean proportions. What she hated was her powerlessness to stop me, her inability to do battle with an inanimate substance that I’d invested with so much power over me, that was larger than this life, a life that was filled with betrayals, insecurities and fears. Steve dropped us off on 23rd Street and sped off. He would have stayed with me all night if I let him. I put Diane in a taxi and walked across the street to Raymond’s building, buzzed twice, buzzed again, and waited.

New Years week, Diane and I went to The Museum of Modern Art, to see an Avedon retrospective. I stared at his picture of Pound, with all those meaty creases in his face, his eyes were mad and beautiful and suffused with grief, fucking grief. I was done. I was just waiting for somebody to stop me. We walked back on this cold January night along Fifth Avenue from 53rd to 91st Street not saying much. There was nothing much to say. I told her how well we fit together, how our hips and flanks rubbed against each other walking and how we were probably thinking the same thoughts. She squeezed my hand tighter. Both of us knew the end was near, but we didn’t know how it would be played out.
The next day at work I noticed shoppers hanging around the book department who seemed “off.” They seemed to be watching me as I went from my register to the back to get change. Some of them who left turned up hours later. I knew it was time to leave. And I did.
Diane came home that day from work to find me in her bedroom shooting junk. Enraged, she slapped my arm that held the syringe. The needle ripped from my vein and landed on the floor. I sprang up and slapped her across the room. It was the worst thing I had ever done to a woman in my life, much less one I loved. I sat down on the edge of the bed and just stared. She came and sat beside me. “Norm,” she almost whispered while stroking my head, “I love you, but you’re going to have to do something. I’ll help you, but it’s you who’s going to have to do it. But, I have to tell you, whatever you decide to do, you can’t do it here.” She went into the bathroom to wash her face. When I heard the water running I went, picked up the syringe, injected the junk into my other arm, and told myself something I’d been saying for many, many years: “Tomorrow.”

Paula, the woman who had told me about Areba at Addiction Services Agency, now told me about programs that were free: Phoenix House, Daytop Village and Project Return. Both Phoenix House and Daytop were 12 to 24 months while Project Return was nine. Phoenix House was still shaving heads (a punitive measure designed to penetrate the denial system of hard core addicts), and Daytop’s therapeutic community was located in upstate New York. Still thinking like an addict, I opted for the shorter program.
Project Return’s storefront was in Hell’s Kitchen, on Ninth Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Streets. Chris Maples, the director of this facility, was a big, white, walrus looking man in his early thirties. He didn’t speak as much as he drawled, like he was from the midwest instead of the city where he’d grown up. The storefront was a small, ugly establishment that, upon entering, had a desk and a few chairs. There was a larger section in the back room that was setup like a classroom with many cheap folding chairs and a blackboard. I sat opposite Chris as he explained how they could arrange a hospital for me to detox in or I could go to a hospital of my choice. Either way I had to come in “clean.” “There’s something else that you should know about, Chris,” I said.
“Lay it on me,” he responded, deadpan. It seemed he had heard it all.
“I’m diabetic; I use insulin, needles, syringes everyday. I need to eat pretty much on time, need certain...”
“Whoa man, hold on a second...wait a minute baby,” he said with his mustache curling into a smile. “You mean to say,” he continued, “that you ate good out there shootin’ dope? You were really picky about what kind of food you’d put in your mouth...and takin’ care of your sickness man, that was a real priority?...are you sayin’ that to me?”
I stammered a bit, felt embarrassed but finally said, “Well, not really, but I do have to eat right, that goes hand in hand with what I have to do and I thought...”
“Yeah, I know what you thought, but don’t think too much--that’s what got you in so much fuckin’ trouble to begin with. We’ll take care of your fuckin’ diabetes man, and the food, well, it ain’t from the fuckin’ 21 Club but you’ll survive. Either you want to do this thing or your bullshittin’ yourself.”
“No man, I ain’t bullshittin’ myself; I just wanna make sure.”
“I know what you’re tryin’ to do, and I know what you’re really trying to do even if you don’t. You want to clean up but you’re gonna make it so hard that you say to yourself, ‘How can I do this man, I gotta take care of myself and this and that bullshit and sooner or later you’re gonna run yourself right out the fuckin’ door man, and into a bag of junk. Now, just get yourself detoxed and we’ll help you do the rest. You won’t eat like you did in the past, but you won’t starve either. And whatever you need, if we don’t have it, we’ll get it. Now get the fuck outa here, and call me when you’re ready to be discharged and I’ll have a staff member pick you up at the hospital. I don’t want you to spend one fuckin’ day by yourself on the street. You got that?”
“Got it. And thanks.”
“Don’t thank me for shit. I did nothin’ to get a thanks for.”
“Then thanks for nothin’.”
“Get the fuck outa here already, and try not to kill your stupid self before you get into a detox.”
I left as the next beaten up, thin, Puerto Rican took my seat at Chris’ desk, and the process began all over again. It was January and it was cold. Junkies had a harder time navigating the streets in the winter. Residential programs might be a pain in the ass, but they usually had heat.
Back at Diane’s, I made two phone calls, the first to a woman who I knew had detoxed a little while ago. She said Mt. Sinai was pretty good. She used the word “pleasant” to describe her stay. The next phone call was to Carol to ask if she was holding any dope. She was, and I went over and got some.
After a weekend of waltzing around each other’s feelings, Monday was almost welcomed, even though it meant I was going to Mt. Sinai to be admitted and Project Return after that. I imagined myself a convict about to turn himself in. I can’t help it. I’m always looking for romance, no matter how mundane and pedestrian the situation is. Besides, living it is always more boring or horrific than remembering it.
Sitting across from the admissions person in the emergency room, I had the distinct feeling that Mt. Sinai did not want to deal with drug addicts. They liked their nuts “shelled” not messy, unpredictable, intractable and “borderline” as drug addicts were generally classified in those days to be, and maybe even now as well. They had an outpatient service for addicts I was told. Quickly, I told the gentleman that only that morning I had been in a train station and imagined myself jumping into the oncoming express. He found a room for me.

They really weren’t equipped to deal with a drug addict. A psychiatric wing in a hospital is equipped to treat with a host of mental illnesses such as the many forms that depression can take, schizophrenia of certain varieties, affective and personality disorders that Jean be part of a chemically dependent persons’ profile. But chemical dependency, if that is the primary disorder, is not something that traditional hospitals were prepared for in 1972. I believe Dr. Otto Kernberg coined the term, “Borderline Personality Disorders.” The border that exists between neurosis and psychosis. I’ve always considered it more than just ironic that artists have defined the internal condition much quicker than scientists have. Maybe Homer predicted it all, but a wonderful saxophone player, Dexter Gordon, who played in “’Round Midnight,” wrote a tune in the 40’s I think titled, “Disorder At the Border,” intuitively felt “borderline.” Dexter, interestingly enough, was a drunk. At that time the professionals had not yet integrated the psychobiology, neurobiology, and the field of psychoanalysis that are now regarded as the cutting edge in treating these disorders. Now there is a scientific basis that during the period, usually preverbal, that the child’s body, in its reaction to stress--whether one traumatic episode or a cumulative series of episodes--in an effort to restore balance, “dissociates” from that stress or “object” and then “splits off” from that object which can, and often times does, result in lifelong patterns of reacting to external and internal stresses. It has been equated to an early condition of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Scratch the surface of an addict of any kind, and you’ll more likely than not, find the Janus face of “mom” deep deep into the abyss staring back at you. I wonder if that’s what Nietzshe had in mind. Addicts, as borderline personalities often are, were not good candidates for traditional verbal therapy because of their low tolerance for frustration. They were not, on the whole, very verbal in regard to identifying feelings because their traumas had taken place before they had the ability to speak; a primitive or archaic trauma(s), and usually, when they could identify what they were feeling, ran from it. They were not particularly good candidates for pharmacological interventions because of what drugs did for, and to them. In short, they were a very difficult population for traditional modes of psychotherapy and psychiatry at that time. Mt. Sinai did know enough about addiction to detox me using methadone. The process lasted about a week. Aside from individual therapy with a psychiatric resident and his attending physician, there wasn’t much else with the exception of getting my diabetes under control. My blood sugars were stabilized by keeping me on a restricted diet and, after the drugs started to leave my body, my head cleared. That was a good, and not so good, thing. I felt lighter, faster, but now, in a rush. An addict wants things yesterday, and since they had what I thought then was a “basket-weaving” approach to mental illness, I reasoned I could speed up the process. The sooner I could get out, the sooner I could go through Project Return, and the sooner I could get out, the sooner I could get back with Diane, and the sooner I could do that, the sooner I could get back with my family, and everything would be O.K. In not so many words I told this to the attending psychiatrist assigned to me. He persuaded me that just honoring a three and a half week commitment would be a step in the right direction. I couldn’t argue with him, although his interns also benefited from my decision. Fifteen of them were able to probe a white, Jewish, articulate, college educated dope fiend in sessions lasting an hour at a time. Their inquisitions felt like a beehive of dentists looking for cavities with those little silver hooks. I stared into those scrubbed-faced, bright-eyed interns and saw what a disappointment I must have been to my folks and, twisted role model for my brother. They listened to my story, asked questions, and split. Not even a “thank-you” at the end. I guess they’re used to working on cadavers which, as long as it’s nobody they knew, or love, are free of reciprocity and are, best of all, wordless.
Hospitals in general, and psychiatric wings in particular, are fascinating places. Our minds are so eccentric and so wonderfully misshapen that lending, or trying to lend, order to them so that they might function in a disordered, irrational, inchoate world leads, most directly, to many complications. I had the chance to see, and in some instances get close to, other patients struggling for equilibrium in this topsy-turvy world. There was beautiful Valerie, a fifteen year old who had the body of a ballerina, a mind of her own, and a wildness of will. Coming from divorced Park Avenue wealth, she’d had a history of running away and finding men in bars who would take her home, fuck her, and throw her out. Brad, a sixteen year old, acne faced introvert, also from divorced Fifth Avenue old money, found men to seduce and then hurt him, and had come down from a preparatory school near Saratoga, to play havoc with his body and family. Mr. Patrick, a grizzled sixty year old who, when I first met him, couldn’t talk and had to be fed by the orderlies and, after many shock treatments, began to see a curtain lift. The others wore paper slippers and did the “ol’ thorazine shuffle,” where they’d walk along, holding a railing, spit dribbling down their chins, not knowing, or caring, where they were or why they were there. And there was Carol, twenty something, who fucked interns, residents, doctors, orderlies, nurses, and anything else that showed a pulse. She had tits I wished the horses I’d bet on had for noses. We laughed and sang and tried to sort through the mess that we found ourselves in. We all walked through the same fire, but our flesh burned differently. Some people never see this side. What boring lives they must lead.
My fantasies, before sleep would claim me, were, as I view them now, childish, grandiose, bourgeois, and, finally, when all is said and done, delusional. The only thing now that keeps my embarrassment at bay is that it was simply the truth. And to me, as I recall and recollect, touching. It took a lot of work for me to be able to say that now, but at that time I’d imagine myself strong, healthy and responsible. Responsible to my diabetes, and responsibly concerned for my family. I’d imagine myself going into Project Return and coming out the other side with the riches of the world before me. I’d be driving a Porsche again, with Diane beside me, as we’d tool through a countryside, bucolic and inviting, my accomplishments, fused and translated into status and stature. I’d have the respect of artists, and the notoriety that accompanies success on the grandest of stages. I’d make up for the terrible anguish I had put the people who loved me through. We’d all be together again, this time out of love and desire and not out of a need that bordered on sickness. It does not make me proud to say that, but this work would be a lie if I didn’t.
Besides a young do-gooder social worker, who kept persisting that she be allowed to get in touch with my parents to facilitate a “constructive dialogue” between us and whom I had to tell that should she get in touch with them without my permission I would find her and strangle her in the night and probably get away with it since I happened to be in a “fuckin’ nut house” at the time, I had a pretty good stay at Mt. Sinai. Besides using the time to heal emotionally, there was a gym upstairs that allowed me to physically heal and get stronger as well.
February is Diane’s birthday month. She visited me on a frigid evening, looking beautiful and wearing a coat she loved, a fur, three quarter length, very elegant. Eyes followed her wherever she went, but on this night there was an added sensuality that made you, whether man or woman, consciously or not, follow her sight and scent until they no longer registered. We walked into my room where I kissed her lightly and wished her a happy birthday. She took my hand and led me into the bathroom, closed the door, and leaned her back against it. I smiled as she untied the belt and slipped the fur from her shoulders. There was nothing else to undo after that.
The day before I left, I spoke with Chris Maples at Project Return, and arranged for a staff member to be there when I got discharged. I didn’t want to give myself one day out on the street. I thanked some people for what they had done for me, gave out and took some phone numbers, and left. Maxwell, a young black staff member, accompanied me to the Induction Facility on Forty-Eighth street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. But first, before getting there, we stopped for a hamburger; the first real food I had had for three and a half weeks and the last real food I would have for months.

pgs 88-94--From Chapter VI, THE DESCENT: JUNK SICK: CONFESSIONS OF AN UNCONTROLLED DIABETIC

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

SO STUPID IT MAKES PERFECT SENSE

There was Seymour
and now Robin. Before
those two gents
there was David,
Ernie, Sylvia, Anne,
John & John and,
I'm sure other
John's; & please
don't forget Vinny,
Dino, Marilyn, Amy,
and many lost fools,
like myself, who couldn't
find their way home
with a map.

It has always been
a hard life; work,
love, bread, adulation,
has little to do
with it; it's just
fucking hard.
You can turn over
the rocks & discover
a new enzyme, a new hormone,
a new molecule, insanities
lurking around the corners
of your birth, teachers
with bad breath & dandruff,
mustard sandwiches & Draino chasers,
and would be no closer in discerning
the link and linkages
of how you view yourself
or the world.

Tonight,
if you're not knotting
a rope or loading a shotgun,
if you're not shivering
in your closet more afraid
of the light than the dark;
if there's a pop tart
or a pancake or a cup
of black coffee for
tomorrow morning or
a slice of almost green bologna
for tonight's fare...
that is enough, it is enough
to turn on your radio
& blast yourself away
& into a space
that gives you space
and that will be
good enough--it has
to be.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014

ADDICTION

The Betty Poems

I know that feeling well:
you can't wait
to be alone
inside a room,
a stall,
a hallway,
where no one
can see you,
find you,
talk to you,
confront you,
pressure you,
upset you,
deconstruct you,
unmask you,
torture you,
demand of you,
finger you,
command you,
annoy you,
remind you,
deny you,
kill you,
love you,
acknowledge you,
praise you,
cherish you,
worship you,
adore you,
look at you,
measure you,
accept you,
cheat on you,
misplace you,
lean on you...
and just sip
from the lip
or inject a tip
of a bottle
or a syringe
of mother's milk
into your mouth
or vein
that soothes
the creases
in your soul.
It's like walking
into a Chinese laundry
on a blue winter's day,
and the steam heat
embraces you as does
the old familiar Chinese couple
behind the counter
for a hundred years,
and you know
their love
has its own rhythm and
you'd love to have
that rhythm
but you don't;
and then
you smell the steam
from the old irons
held in their beautiful crooked hands
swollen with arthritic pain
as you drop off your stains
knowing they will come back
pressed out and you can once again
be clean and fresh.

Be sure
not to lose
your ticket.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013