THE FROZEN POND

For W.H. Auden


The ice,
thick
with innocence,
began to fissure
& melt
in late
July.
Mufflers,
& gloves,
& little hats
floated
to the surface.

The old folks
clucked
their tongues;
strange
to notice
a betrayal
not
of their own
doing.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

SIMPLE MATH--THE LESS YOU GOT, THE MORE YOU WORK TO GET IT

LIQUID HANDCUFFS


Winsome was boppin along, listening to some Miles on his iPod. It was Friday, and he was dressed casually: cut off dungaree shorts, huge spattered Hawaiian shirt, baggy, double layered socks tucked inside red Converse high top canvas sneakers. For effect, he wore a multicolored boating skimmer on top of his head and shades. If one didn’t know better, they’d think he was going for a sail instead of being on the C train, coming from 145th Street and Convent, and getting off at 34th and Eighth Avenue.
Bags Groove segued into Simone’s, Love Me Or Leave Me. Her Bach like playing and Julliard education played well against the previous piece fronted by Miles. He, too, went to Julliard. Damn, I’m bad, he said to himself, sometimes I don’t even know what I’m doin, but I just feel this shit, you feel me? An older black bald-headed dope fiend once told him in the joint that feelings predicted intelligence and don’t let nobody tell ya no different.
He parted the doors and exited into Hades; the heat and smell, let alone the density of pressed rush hour bodies, almost made him retch. This is not the kind of thing for me to be doin, you feel me? he mumbled, and gripped the handrail as he made his way up into the early blaze and fray.
It seemed the summer had no brackets; it was just one sweltering ninety-five degree day after another; the only thing that changed was his underwear. Soon, city workers would be walking around with shovels so that they could throw the bloated and dead bodies into carting boxes. Nothing was as bad as a New York City summer where the air conditioners, if anything, made the city even hotter or, the constant, artificial Arctic, cold seeped into your bone marrow and froze any thought that could be birthed.
It was a good thing that Winsome was motivationally lazy. Only two things did he minimally work at: one was making it to fifty; the other was being cool while he did it. Of the latter he knew some people who came easily by it, while others...well, lets just say that they had to be in the know to know just how stupid it would be not to think about what really should be thought about: being cool always, of course, was one of them. Style, brother, was the answer to just about everything. In fact, he preferred these days to do a tedious mind-numbing thing with style, than doing a dangerous thing without it. Most people he knew were just mad stupid and there was nothin to be done about that. Besides, he wasn’t going anywhere; the state and the Feds, science, and himself took care of that a long time ago.
He even gave up shooting dope when that scene became too hard; he was about thirty-five at the time, almost fifteen years ago. It was a young man’s game. And if yous wasn’t rich by thirty-five it just ain’t happenin. And, sheeet, talk about, “mad tedious,” and “mind-numbing,” you ain’t seen nothin til ya have to go to a mothfuckin MMTP, a methadone maintenance treatment program or be in the joint or be dead. Ain’t no other ways to go for niggers.
Even the good ones were mad crippled. I might be a nigger, but I ain’t like these niggers here, fuck no, Winsome would say every time he got on the block that the clinic was on and began the slow, grim, Bataan death march. He passed the human lampposts, some bent over, their heads below their knees, sucking their own dicks, oblivious to the sweat dripping from their foreheads to their necks to the sidewalk; he passed the ones who were still conscious but trying to get bent, bartering or buying one medication for another; passed the cigarette hawkers selling Loosies; and then opened the door to the clinic and climbed those industrial bleach smellin stairs to the emphysematous elevator. Pearls before swine, my brothers, pearls before swine--and that goes doubly for some of the niggers that run this program, too.
The fourth floor waiting room looked like a cattle car; all kinds of cows and heifers kickin up against the stall. Old and young, mostly black and Latino flavored, but some white asses standin and sittin. All of them were waiting. The black, front of the line, staff, had a wall, a door, and a glass window, separating them from the diseased. They used it to the max. If you pestered, or got cross with them, treated them with any kind of disrespect you were fucked. They would simply forget about you. It was, to an addict, the DMV, only ratcheted up to the nth degree. Your dose, that you should have gotten ten minutes before you got there, was a good thirty to sixty minutes away from your hungry cells. Shout, stamp your feet, curse, only made it worse. If you put up too much of fight, you got escorted out, and then you were really screwed. Junkies were neutered a long time ago, though most didn’t know it. Most just talked, but didn’t do a fuckin thing--except when desperate, and that wasn’t very often.
But complainin, that was another story; they were tacitly encouraged to bitch all they wanted. Besides, it’s an addict’s God given right to punch holes, even in heaven. Once again, the smell of bleach and ammonia were wafting around the cramped space, making everyone surly.
On his way over, Winsome was greeted by a few nods of the head or desultory halfhearted waves, but inside the waiting room he was known by many. Not only had he been there for fifteen years, but nearly everyone liked him. He had an easy way, but told the truth as he saw it, without trying to shade much.
Because of the heat and a pissy air-conditioner, folks were mopping their brow or their cleavage. Sometimes both. Sweat could be seen glistening from the tops of plump breasts. But most weren’t interested in that kind of sex now. The only sexy thing was inside the bottles they were waiting for.
How you makin it, man, Earl asked him.
I don’t know how, but I’m makin it, Winsome replied.
I hear you, man; I hear you.
You?
Same here, brother. I’m tryin to get these motherfuckers to put me on a goddamn three day week.
And?
And nothin. They hearin, but they ain’t listenin. I’m tired of this motherfuckin ride six motherfuckin days a week, man.
They got liquid handcuffs on your ass. Even me with three days still is chained to the motherfuckin city man; even if I had a place to go wouldn’t make no kind of difference, my ass belongs to this bullshit, man. I thought it would take the pressure off, but instead its made me more aware just how much of a motherfuckin slave I am. I gotta get off this motherfuckin juice.
Ain’t that the motherfuckin truth.
I gotta.
But Win, man, you been sayin that for the ten years I know ya.

Win, you goin to the bereavement group.
Not it I don’t haveta.
Everybody has ta.
Sheeet, I ain’t “everybody.”
You just a crazy niggah, that’s all you is.
Crazy, not a nigger.
My niggah.
Yeah, well, maybe your niggah.
The bereavement group was put together to have those who picked up their dose on Fridays, and who were a little--or a lot--further up the food chain than someone who came into the program yesterday, needed to go to in order to get their take home dose--at least for Saturday and Sunday.
It sounded like variations of Monk’s, Epistrophy, and looked like Mondrian’s, Boogie-Woogie, only going in the same direction; a static, herky jerky, movement. Each conversation, to Winsome’s ears, sounded alike, but different; a blur, washed of rhythm and color, yet each, if one paid attention, hit different notes, yet sang the same tune. A tune of a sainted victim. Even the isolated ones, (maybe especially them). The stick figures who hoofed over here singularly were sitting, with one leg going up and down, or fingers drumming a knee, or trying to stare vacantly into some distant past, or future. Each, alone or with people, contained, fixed in place, squirming into themselves.
The heat’s a motherfucker, man.
A motherfucker.
A real motherfucker. It’s mad hot.
Yeah, it’s a real one all right.
You stayin or splittin.
I just hope I ain’t gotta stay. You feel me? You might think after comin to this motherfucker for as long as me I woulda built up some motherfuckin trust--you might think that, but you be wrong. Wrong as a motherfucker. Damn. One goddamn time in almost fifteen years I get a dirty urine--which I keep tellin em was a false positive--and they make me feel like a left back retard. One time. Besides, hell, that’s what I’m supposed to do--get high, but here I am, all this time, and I get high--which I’m tellin ya was motherfuckin bullshit--but once. And goin to this bereavement thing. Bereavement my ass. I’m sorry I haveta come to this motherfucker. Ain’t that bereavement enough. You feel me? Sheeet.

They stood and talked, stood and talked; talked about the weather; talked about welfare; talked about getting fucked by landlords, the phone company, bosses; talked about the amount of how many milligrams they’re on or up to and how many more they’d like to be on to feel nice; talked about babies and jobs and picnics and deaths and drugs and stickups and beatings and school and lies and schemes and anything to not talk about this, this exactly, nothing more, nothing less, just this and what, if anything, they’d planned to do about it. Somehow, this was worse than their apartments without air-conditioning; worse than an infant with no milk; worse than a red light in your rear view mirror; this, somehow, went to the truth of the lie that, try as they might, to jettison, was all the more powerful because of it. It showed their ugliness to the world, or really just to the people on the train or bus, or those they jostled with on the sidewalk. A gangrenous soul, a cyst, a malignant tumor, a pus pimple that, if shown the light would not go away, but would spread or burst on themselves or worse, those around them. Almost the same rap and the same feeling week after week after week.

Hey, Win, what’s up bro.
Chillin, just chillin.
Back in this silly ass motherfucker again.
Word-up, Willie. I heard youz was in the joint, man.
Nah, that was a bullshit bust, man. They busted my ass cause they can do it, you hear what I’m sayin?
I heard somebody snitched on your ass.
I was out the same motherfuckin night, man. Tried to snitch me for not payin my ol lady, but that’s some bullshit, man. Really. Tried to tie me up for some ridiculous shit just so he can bone her, you know what I’m talkin bout. Sheeet, she wants to ball his ass, too. I ain’t got no kinda luck, man. Fuckin cops check and they see I’m given her as much bread as the courts call for. If I could, I’d get the fuck outta here, if I could get outta here. Just go, man, find another motherfucker to live, you know where I’m comin from man, like a new start, you dig, But I’m tied to this fuck. Stupid to go somewheres else and do the same motherfuckin shit.
Get on the Bupe, man. They say that shit will free your ass up.
Yeah, I heard about that shit. But I don’t trust these motherfuckers. Must be some kinda angle they be playin to get some niggers on some other kind of shit than this orange shit we be drinkin forever, man.
Nah, man, I don’t think it’s like that; it was designed for white people.
Why ain’t you on it?
I’m gonna be. Get my dose down to thirty milligrams, then I can switch over.
Down to thirty, huh? Shit, that would take me...sheeet, I be dead by the time I get that low. But maybe I should try and do the same shit cause this shit is killin me.
I’m tellin ya, brother, in a short time we all just come in once a month, get a script andaseeyalater. And anywhere in the world we could go and just hook ourselves up with the shit and that’s it, man. And people don’t look at you stupid on this shit; I mean this stuff was made for the rich people, you know what I’m talkin bout? They go to a private fuckin doctor, man, and get a prescription for the shit. You feel me? This shit be designed for white people with bread, but once you on it, man, you just get yourself a clinic anywhere and a doctor to give it to you. Shit, they can even give you refills. But even if we only gots a thirty day supply; give me enough for thirty motherfuckin days and I could be king. You feel me?
Shit, I’m gonna do the same motherfuckin thing.

They kept drifting in, one by one and couples. There were no more seats or benches so they stood; horizontally, they’d look like detritus on the beach after a fierce winter.
Ari, the facilitator of the group, stopped at the receptionist’s area, behind the glass, and said something to them. They all laughed. It seemed like he stopped at their desk every Friday. None of them looked at the faces that pressed against the window like Rwandan refugees looking at a food shipment that was just dropped, but guarded by soldiers.
When he opened the door, the crowd filed passed him as if he didn’t exist. It was their only form of protest. If that in any way bothered him, he gave no sign. Some would quickly whisper to him that they needed more medication, or reimbursement for the subway, or a letter for Medicaid, or something that they needed yesterday. Go Go Go, he would say to each of them in turn, lightly patting them on their backs, (but pushing them, too), toward the room that the group was held in.
Motherfucker is crazy.
He ain’t crazy that way, Winsome replied, and don’t you think he is. He counts on that shit; but he’s a crazy sly smart motherfucker; always lookin for information and then he French fries your ass. Don’t sleep on him. You feel me?
But Winsome needed Ari, badly.
And Ari knew it.
The welfare folks were threatening to throw Winsome out of his section eight housing on his ass. If they did that he might as well look for another pad on the moon; shelters were out of the question and there was no one who he could hole up with that he wanted to hole up with. The woman he was seeing did what Winsome suggested she do a few weeks ago: she took it “on the arches.” Winsome missed her less than a beat. However, he did miss the bread that she generated from two places: a scam she had going with Medicaid, and the half ass job she was doing slinging a little crack to people outa the apartment. And there lied the trouble. The welfare folks got wind of what she was doing and had the right to throw his ass out with her, if not send his ass to jail--with her, too. It was a law that you can’t sling rocks in government housing. Period. End.
Winsome had told her over and over that he couldn’t risk losing the place, and she kept him at arms length, but her pussy was right up against his dick. He needed Ari, (not his dick), to stand up for him; needed him to write letters and go up in front of the welfare board and testify about him being oblivious to what the woman was doing and about him turning his life around, good character...blah, blah, blah. Winsome didn’t care if he told them that he took a dump on the head of the mayor as long as he was able to stay where he was. It was the only pad that Winsome ever had that he thought he was more than a transient in; he kept it spotless, and had nothing personally to do with anything bad from his past. Even when he was growing up, his mom could never stay in one place for too long. It took her a year or so to get most of the people she knew to like and trust her, and another year to take as much of their money as she could.
There were only two things that Winsome took with him wherever he went: the first was his father telling him before he finally split, he really wanted a daughter for his first born and how he didn’t want to change the name he choose so that’s how he came to be called Winsome, (now he dug the name, but it was a bitch growing up with it); the second thing was an indelible photo of his mom being a living breathing “ho.” She brought home man after man after man. When he got older, still a teenager, and still in some hell hole with her, he saw most of the men she spread her legs for in the next room, the living room. He saw her sometimes widen them for anyone with a goddamn pencil for a dick. Not even smart enough to be a pro, (she was certainly beautiful enough), he’d think over and over again. She couldn’t help but to laugh at some, and then they’d slap her good. Fucking embarrassing.
Now Ari was trying to make him bend over. For the last few weeks he was making demands upon him that were sickening to Winsome’s way of life for a long time now. He wanted Winsome to do two things for him: score some good reefer and introduce him chicks he could fuck. He told Winsome that on both matters there’s nothing like a colored man to obtain good weed and snapping pussy. Instead of grinning in this half-assed male conspiracy, he grimaced. Ari took offense and told him so; he accused him of lying and told him that as far as he was concerned he’d let him kick in jail before he said word one to the welfare board--let alone write him character reference letters. Winsome slipped and slid around him for a couple of weeks, but the noose was tightening.

Well, sheeet, when are you gonna get some teeth, man. Enough bereaven already, sheeet. You been gummin your food too long now. Get yourself some choppers.
Winsome tried to hide his laugh by ducking his head down. His skimmer nearly fell off; he caught it with his hand. Damn, my tribe is funny, he thought. Pain and laughter, how else can you make it, he asked himself. I’m a shallow guy, a laugh has got me by, he said to himself.
Mr. Butler, Ari said, to Winsome, what have you been grieving about lately.
That the last woman I was in was The Statue of Liberty.
Seriously....
I am serious.
The laughter rose in the room and Winsome knew there’d be some kind of hell to pay. Better back up; better be cool. Yeah, Mr. Ari, serious, I be serious. Here it is: I’m grievin that I’m still, near fifty, tied down to this motherfucker, but I’m sicka grievin. I wanna go on that Bupe program, man, that, whatdayacallit, Buprenorphine shit. Then, after I do good for a time they let me come once a month and shit, and then I could be a little more freer to do what I want, you know what I mean.
There are certain protocols that have to followed, first of all my name is Mr. Rabinowitz, you realize that don’t you.
Yeah, I do. And I’ll do whatever it takes, man. Whatever them protocols be I be doin em; I’m serious, man. Let’s start first thing next week.
We have an agenda to follow, Mr. Butler. We can’t just do anything anytime you want to.
Yeah, I know, I know, but I’m ready now. What’s the big fuckin deal?
To you it might be nothing, but we have an agenda that we have to follow.
Yeah, I heard that already. When we meet next week you tell me exactly what agenda that is.
You see, there you go again, Mr. Butler. Always your schedule. It just so happens I’m all booked up next week. It’ll have to wait another week, maybe two.
You’re too much, man.
What do you mean by that.
Just what I said, too fuckin much.
Too much what.
Too much bullshit, man.
I could take this conversation as a threat.
A threat. What the fuck you be talkin bout? Ain’t no one threatenin you or nobody else. So don’t even play that shit.
Sure sounds like a threat to me.
Rabinowitz got up and went out of the room. All eyes turned toward Winsome. Winsome’s blood started to freeze.
People in the room leaned over to one another or just talked into the air: he ain’t done nothin; he tryin to bait the motherfucker, we saw it, we all saw it; that’s some bullshit, that is; why he bein so motherfuckin tough with you, what you done to him. Winsome made no comment. He rested his chin in his two cupped hands and looked toward the door. I don’t know Win, you best be outta here.
Where I’m gonna go, huh? I need to get medicated, man.
He know that that motherfucker.
Sure he know that.
Two man-eating security guards came into the room followed by the counselor. Mr. Butler, get up please and come with us.
Listen, man, I gotta get medicated. You can’t throw me outa this motherfucker without medicating my ass.
You should have thought about that before you threatened me.
There were some grumbles in the group, but as soon as Rabinowitz fixed his attention on each of them in turn, their heads lowered and the grumbles stopped.
I didn’t threaten your ass. You just sayin that because I wouldn’t get you no weed or get you laid. Yeah, that’s right, y'all heard right. That’s what he wanted me to do. I should sue your white ass, motherfucker. Sue it. Winsome's eyes were bright, and his face was lit up red. And yeah, he continued, you can take what I asked you to do--that Welfare letter--and shove the whole thing right up your motherfucking ass. You feel me?
The guards came closer, as Winsome took a step toward the counselor.
I’m sick and motherfuckin tired of enslavein my own motherfuckin ass. Won’t have to listen to assholes like this no more. Holdin out that orange motherfuckin juice like it was holy water. Motherfucker. Should make you take a bath in it.
Get him out, please, Rabinowitz said.
The two guards came up to Winsome, each put a ham like hand through the crook of his arm and gently led him to the door.
And yeah, you Crisco lookin motherfucker, my name is Mr. Butler.

Winsome knew he was good for another ten twelve hours before the sickness came on. He thought about a great many things, revenge being on top of the list. But first things first.
He remembered that the doctor, Dr. Horowitz, who owned the clinic, was a religious man. Many times in the fifteen years that he’d been coming to the clinic they had had conversations about a great many things, faith just being one of them. He was one of the doctor’s first patients and had the time to even get to know a few of them. They’d gotten into some deep discussions. Even one where the doctor let slip about God creating the poppy so that hopeless men could dream and the trouble he got into when he wrote an article about that for a journal. The doctor got so involved in telling Winsome about those early years of his he knew when he noticed how much time had passed he’d have to hurry to make Friday’s services. He offered Winsome to ride in the cab with him on his way to the synagogue just so he could finish the conversation.
The sun was setting while Winsome waited by the ornately carved door that he had walked the doctor to the last time and that led into the main sanctuary. The beautiful light from the sunset, made his face seem younger, like an elementary school student. Other worshippers noticed him and soon a guard was at his side asking his business. After telling him who he was waiting for the guard begrudgingly moved off.
When the doctor arrived and noticed Winsome he reached for his elbow and gently guided him off. They stood far after the time for services began, and talked.

***

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2006-2015

A MAN'S WOMAN

There's a woman
who said
she's going
to take care of me.
She told me not
to worry; to leave
everything
in her most capable hands.
It was,
I thought,
a very fortuitous
thing. What's
your name?
I asked.
You can call me,
Mother, she replied.
Mother? interesting,
I said, mother what?
Nature, she added,
but just "mom"
will do.
Yes, I thought,
why waste time?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

JUST A LITTLE LOVE...

THE MISUNDERSTANDING


Charlie woke up with the sun in his face, and his pillow scrunched up and held by both his hands. It looked like he had beaten the hell out of it last night. His mouth felt thick. His body felt every bit of the sixty he was about to be. Smacking his lips and moving around his tongue, he remembered the tail end of the dream: every time he tried to close the blinds another slat broke off. Talk about wish fulfillment, he muttered to himself.
He let that thought roll around his head a little, proud that he still retained that stuff from the time he went to college--junior high school, really. Charlie was what they called, a precocious child. He was a little crazy, but overall a very good student in subjects he liked; the others could go take a flying fuck.
Even this early in the morning the sun was blistering hot. The weather had been 95 degrees, with 85 to 90 percent humidity for the last week now. And today promised to be no different. Without moving, Charlie could feel the sweat in the small of his back, bead up and run down the crack of his ass. Wonderful, Charlie said out loud, another day to enjoy the woodsy outdoors. Another day to be grateful that the gods shown down thy grace on me, he finished, then looked around for the men with butterfly nets to swoop down and take him to the scientific playground of shock therapy, insulin therapy, “ping-pong, and amnesia.”
An ant touched the circumference of Charlie’s ear. He knew it was time to get up. He jumped up and swatted at the ant; the last thing he needed was for it to go traipsing into one of his canals, taking a free ride inside the inner circle. Next, he picked up a pretty hefty duffle bag and went into the mens bathroom. Each park that Charlie slept in had its very own level of care and comfort, even at different places in the same park. He preferred to stay, when he could, in Central Park, near 59th Street and Central Park South. There he was in high cotton. Pretty swank shit. Even the bathrooms were better equipped, taken care of, cleaner and, most importantly, safer. Sure, once in awhile one of their transient brothers had some kind of fit, went bonkers for a few minutes, lost it, but those incidences were few and far between.
If you were lucky enough to make it through the night without being chased from your spot, you could enjoy a pretty good wake up: take a shave, a whore’s bath, shit, a change of clothes, and come back later to wash your dirty garments, all without being disturbed. Of course, the cops and park rangers tried to discourage those smarter folks from doing just that, lest the Duke and Duchess of my asshole get the wrong idea seeing a naked man in a public toilet grooming himself. But even some of those folks who guarded other folks knew they were only a step or two away from joining those former folks, and so they often looked away. Hey, give it a name.
Charlie was glad there was no law forbidding him to smoke in the bathroom while taking a crap. It was one of the few pleasures in life he had left, he thought. Then, while thinking of nothing in particular, a feeling came over him so pronounced it got him excited: A cup of coffee. Acupacoffee, in a real restaurant! With air-conditioning! A spoon, a cup and saucer, sugar, milk, (maybe half and half), a glass of water. Ice water! And a refill; he could always get at least one refill. God damn! He knew he had about two dollars and change from his extended mitt and cup soft shoe from the night before. Charlie began to rummage in the bag, while sitting on the toilet. Reaching the bottom, he felt something cold and round and silver, (not real silver of course), and brought all the loot up to his eyes. A quick check, and two dollars and three cents were lying in his palm. Hell, yes. I’m going to live like a gentleman and get myself a cup of java. That’s right!
Out came a white shirt from the duffle. You can never go wrong with white, he thought. Next, out of the stall and over to the sink where he took off the striped shirt he was wearing and decided to throw it in the basin. Shit, it’s so hot, he said to himself, that shirt will dry real quick. He tried to regulate the water, but because the sink had two separate faucets it was hard to get the right temperature between his cupped hands. Luckily, one soap dispenser still had some of that gooey pink shit, but not at his sink, however, and so he ran back and forth soaping his hands and washing his body.
Wearing just his skivvies, and dripping water, he tiptoed his way back to the entrance, held the door frame with two hands, and leaned his head outside. Nobody there; nobody coming. Quickly he went back to the sink, lowered his shorts, and washed his genitals as thoroughly as he could. You never know, he reasoned, what lurked in that nether world and when you’d get a chance to clean that dank and dense all but piss forgotten region again. After he was satisfied that most, if not all, of the creatures there were dispelled, he took his towel and dried his body.
Charlie decided to use some of that soap on his scalp as well. He couldn’t remember when was the last time he washed his hair. Out came his black pocket comb. Charlie needed two hands to rake it through his hair, purposely pushing down a little harder than necessary to satisfy the itch he felt. Soon, one side of his head had his dandruff, twigs, dead grass blades, piled up; it all looked like dead autumn leaves on one side of his skull, waiting to be set on fire. With one slap of his hand he brushed it all off. He then went about soaping his head and washing it out. Purposely, he left the hair as wet as he could, knowing it would be easier to groom. This time the comb went through easily. After trying a number of styles, he settled on combing it straight back until he looked a little like Pat Riley, only his hair was much longer, and he wasn’t dressed in an Armani suit. Still, goddamn, he looked good.

Hey Andy, Charlie nearly whispered, coming up to the Sabrett vendor.
Charlie, Andy said, almost glad to see him.
Andy, can I leave this shirt here on that rock there, and could you just keep an eye on it til I get back?
Yes, sure, Charlie, but if I get busy...
Of course, of course. I understand; I mean that’s understood, of course.
Where are you going, Charlie.
Gonna get acupacoffee. Charlie’s face beamed as he said those words.
Coffee, well...high time, Charlie. In that case, for a special occasion like this, here, here, take this frankfurter bun. Have you a coffee, but maybe ask for some butter and break off the pieces and eat.
Hey, Andy, man, thanks a million, man. Thanks.
Charlie took the bun and carefully tried to put it in the breast pocket of his shirt. But after Andy just looked at it and laughed, he took it from that place and gently guided it into a pocket of his khakis. In there, only one end of the bun was slightly visible.
Good, that’s good, Andy said. Maybe I give you frankfurter, too. Both he and Charlie laughed until their sides hurt imagining the limp looking frank dangling from Charlie’s pocket.
That’s all I need, Charlie said, between breaths, someone telling me that my dick was on wrong. Again they held their sides. I could piss outa there--talk about paying outa pocket! I’m pissing outa pocket!
When they finally got to themselves, Andy asked Charlie whether he wanted a container of the fake orange juice he had. Charlie shook his head, no. He wanted nothing to diminish his first taste of real coffee.
Charlie took his shirt and laid it upon a rock near Andy’s cart. Perfectly within eyesight. The rock sizzled. Shouldn’t take long, he said. He took care in smoothing out as many wrinkles as he could and was tempted to ask Andy to watch his duffle as well, but didn’t do it. Besides, he reasoned, walking in with a duffle indicated that either he was coming from someplace or going someplace, and those some places had the chance of being important.
It was early enough so that the park was infested with joggers. Bugs of different sizes and shapes were displaying their commitment to life by running around the circumference of the park. A tune from Fiddler On the Roof began to insinuate itself and Harry concentrated hard on something else to get it out of there, quick. What miserable and confused and conflicted days those were. Jesus. These days are tough, but not as tough as those were--house or not. Each day that Charlie came home from school, or playing with his friends, he never knew, as he was putting his key in the front door, what awaited him behind it. Sometimes he shook so bad that he’d throw-up before he went inside.
His mother, schized as she was, was either lying in bed with the covers over her head, or had her head in the oven, or came to embrace him like a long lost child just returned. His father took to having a few belts before he came home. The amount, though it varied from day to day, was no insurance against his wrath one way or the other. Charlie was no stranger to the hospital’s ER, and even knew a few of its doctors and nurses by their first names. He was at that age when broken bones could have come from contact sports, bruises and welts from school yard fights, and the occasional lost tooth from being on the loosing end. A resident and nurse suspected, but nothing much came of it, except the hurricane forced winds inside his body telling him to get the fuck outa there.
And get out he did. By seventeen he had punched his father in the face and blew out of the house like the hounds of hell were chasing him--and they were. He had not seen, spoken with, nor heard from them in forty-three years. In that time he had disproved a psychiatrist and the psychiatric literature that he was shown which said that Jewish people usually don’t end up as drunks, drug addicts, or serve time in prison. Charlie had hit the trifecta, stopping off and staying for awhile at each particular place or circumstance. All in all, it wasn’t a bad trip. Some of it was hideous, but not bad. What they did was open up these secretive places in and outside of himself that were consciously unsuspected. And all Charlie did was play the cards dealt him.

Charlie shook when the blast of cold air hit him. He shivered and wiggled his arms and shoulders. Whoa, Moma, he said. He went over to the counter and took a stool where there was nobody on either side of him. He laid his duffle across his foot so that if anyone was going to try and snatch it he could not only see them, but feel it as well. You never can be too careful, he knew.
A waitress, Shirley, ambled over to him.
Need a menu, sweetie.
No, no, just coffee please.
As she bent down to get a cup and saucer, Charlie saw her cleavage and smelled her soap, Ivory, he was sure. She was good looking in a matronly kind of way; had an easy manner about her; seemed like she’d been doing this gig forever. When she walked to where the coffee pots were, he had occasion to see her legs; they were heavy waitress legs. Shirley returned, set the coffee in front of him, with a silver pitcher of milk.
Would you have half and half, Charlie asked.
Sure, honey, comin right up. Anything else.
Nah, that should do it.
He watched her, noticed the way she walked, bent over, and came back with two tiny containers holding the rich cream. She laid them on the rim of his saucer and then went back down the line giving refills of coffee to awaiting cups. Charlie knew a refill was not going to be a problem.
Oh, yes, Shirley, Charlie said, I did forget something: a large glass of water with a lot of ice, please. And butter.
Butter?
No, forget butter, I don’t know what I was thinking, he said, and pushed the frankfurter roll deep in his pocket.
The glass put in front of him already glistened with beaded water droplets and was used, Charlie knew, for malteds. Damn, what I would give for a chocolate or vanilla malted. Hell, one of each, and then one mixed for good measure. I’d have to sell one of the kids to get that, he chuckled to himself. He remembered when he was a child drinking a chocolate malted and eating one of those big, pencil like pretzels with all the salt on them. For some reason the salt mixed with the malted was heaven itself.
But now heaven was inhaling that wonderful brew that sat below him. He put his hands around the cup that in this cold felt good hot. After making it just right for himself, he brought it up to his lips and sipped a little off the top. Marvelous. He wished he could light a cigarette to make this a complete experience, but Bloomberg fucked that up. Isn’t it a kinda free will type of deal, Charlie thought. What’s with choice nowadays. Government, this government, has to protect us from ourselves? What a crock of horseshit that is. Somewhere in the dim recesses of his mind he remembered Weblan and Marx and their take on government. Marcuse. Sartre and all of those counter lunatics.
Charlie was pleased with thinking this way. It wasn’t often when he let his mind run around and focus on things besides life’s basics.
Could I have a refill, Charlie asked, when Shirley came his way.
Sure, sweetie, no problem.
And it wasn’t. Smooth as silk she took his cup, refilled it, and brought it back to him with two more creamers on the saucer’s edge.
Thank you, Charlie said. Shirley smiled at him and walked away. Who knows, Charlie said to himself, in another time, place, circumstance, whatever, he had a shot with her. He could tell by her smile. It was inviting, warm, had some meaning behind it.
The restaurant was getting full of breakfast regulars and Shirley was busy attending to the rush. A man sat beside Charlie and made a big deal out of his duffle being in his way. Charlie looked unimpassionedly at him and inched his bag away from him. Another guy sat to his right, and Charlie then had to rearrange the whole goddamn thing vertically in-between his legs. It stuck out in the aisle so he had to put it on an angle until no one could trip over it. For a second, Charlie remembered why he left this world behind.
One of the men left behind the newspaper he had been reading, a New York Post. Charlie grimaced at the paper, but took it anyway. He began reading the Sports section, but had trouble with his vision. Shirley must have noticed, for soon she was at his seat offering her reading glasses which hung around her neck. Charlie smiled and tried them on. Surprised that they cleared up his eyesight, he asked her for his third refill and Shirley readily obliged.
You’ll be up all night, she said, as she turned from him.
Coffee doesn’t keep me up, this life does, he answered, and laughed. Shirley turned back toward him and laughed as well. Once you get them to laugh, Charlie thought, you’re in.
When she returned with the coffee Charlie said to her that perhaps she’d like to go out with him sometime. Shirley studied him and said he seemed like a nice enough fella and Charlie quickly concurred.
What’s your name, anyway, she asked.
Charlie, he replied.
Charlie, I like that name; a good honest name.
For a good honest person.
She smiled wider and went back to her other customers. Charlie took a deep breath and began looking through the paper. He now owned the world.

But when Charlie asked for his fourth cup of coffee, Shirley, a bit, begrudgingly, went to fetch it. Charlie saw the expression on her face and knew that he had better make this his last cup before leaving. He kept debating whether or not to ask for her number. One never knows what good fortune, like bad fortune, might be in store for them.

Finally, his brain caffeine charged, and body racing, he asked Shirley for the check. When she placed the check in front of him, Charlie smiled nonchalantly and handed her back her glasses. Shirley returned the smile. The check read a dollar ninety-eight. Charlie had two dollars and three cents, which meant that all in all he had a nickel left. The question to him was: should he leave the nickel or not. If he just leaves the nickel she’ll think that he was somewhat in a hurry and just casually left it, or perhaps just forgot about it; or maybe with all the credit cards he has doesn’t carry much, if any money, in New York City on him. If, after he asks for her number, he scoops up the two cents she’ll just think that he doesn’t believe in tipping no matter what the circumstance. Charlie knew he could sure use that nickel. Ah, hell, don’t ask for her number now, get some more money then come back again and ask for her number making believe that the other day he had just remembered an important appointment and had to dash out of there...blah...blah...blah...but now, well, he’s back.
Even in the air-conditioning, Charlie felt himself starting to sweat. He had a drink of his ice water; automatically he wiped his mouth and thought for a second. He reached into his pocket wanting to grab his change. He forgot that the frankfurter bun laid on top of it. His hand came out with not only the change, but with pieces of the bun mixed with it as well. He took the three pennies and stuffed them back in his pocket. Then he piled the quarters, dimes and nickels in separate columns. Nervous, and without thinking of change, he grabbed his duffle and moved toward the door. Shirley saw him do that from the corner of her eye and went down to where she laid the check. It was then that she saw the six quarters, four dimes and two nickels waiting for her amidst the bread crumbs. Hesitantly, she poked around his saucer, as her heart sank.
Charlie, she hollered, don’t forget your change.
Charlie tried to make his head disappear into his neck and shoulders, as he pushed upon the door leading out. When he got back to the park he quietly went over to where his shirt was still spread out on the rock, trying in some way to avoid Andy’s eyesight. The shirt, when he touched it, was still damp.

***
Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2005-2015

JIMI HENDRIX'S HANDS

came to me
in a dream
last night.
They were
long & black
and feathery.
They played
with the grace
of eels
fingering
my strings;
my dreams
moaned
like Bessie Smith.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

ADOLESCENT HOT

PUPPIES IN HEAT

Junior was a cocksucker. He was handsome and wild, but still a cocksucker, and a mean one. He’d fuck a snake if somebody held its head down.
And Corinne Steinberg almost loved him.
And I loved Corinne.
Junior was Italian; olive skinned, thin, eyes almost black, he had tattoos; he knifed people; he ate goof balls and was a junky, but he was cool; I had to give him that. I was Jewish, tall, but avoided looking too long at my body, blue-eyed, and dark haired; I was smart, I read, I wrote, I pretended. Corinne was beautiful, had a cat’s green eyes, a twenty year old body on a teenagers frame, and she was smarter than me, she liked what I wrote, we talked; she was an atheist Jew, like me.
I had a crush on her in the 8th grade; by the 9th I was madly in love with her. She gave me my first real hardon. It was magic like a Drifter’s song.
Corinne almost loved me, too: we held hands, kissed, talked about us, about our fucked-up parents, school, good teachers, bad teachers, teachers with dandruff or bad breath, plans, God might be alive or was positively dead, friends, and who really liked whom, music, and we kissed some more; she was confused, she said, about us. I understood, I pretended, and tried to kiss her again. She let me. She held back. She let me.
Ugly Wendy, who had an ass like a Montana mule, invited me to her graduation party. She shrewdly figured out, that love, too, was a numbers game: let enough boys get a feel of her tits and one of their hands has got to stick. She had strung up colored lights and balloons on her patio with the words, “We Made It,” on them. I thought those things stupid; I’d started smoking and doing things middle class Jewish kids were not supposed to do, like think. I’d already found Wendy and her friends pedestrian and boring, but Corinne assuredly was not, and was going to be there.
I was lying on one of those plastic chaise lounges thinking of Corinne going to a local high school when I’d be going to an out of town school that my father had been to when, like dreams, she just appeared and sat beside me. I cupped my smoke and gave her a drag. I looked at her; my chest was about to burst. I started to open my mouth when from the corner of my eye I saw a 1959 white Chevy Impala convertible with red leather seats pulling up to the curb and then Junior bounded out of the passenger side. He stumbled over the hedge and up to the patio where we sat. Both our backs stiffened. He slurred, “C’mon,” and grabbed her arm.
“Wait,” I began, and then, in slow motion, I saw a shiny blade he held to the side make a long circular turn and move into my thigh and then, with a snap, he’d broken off the handle.
My brain froze, my stomach seized; I lurched at him, but he already was pulling her away. My dungarees were oozing liquid and felt sticky. I grabbed at the piece of metal with my thumb and forefinger and tried to pull it out. The tips of my fingers slipped in blood slime. Panicking, I looked up for help.
Junior had pressed Corinne against a toolshed not far from the patio. I saw Junior’s thigh in-between Corinne’s legs. His body pushed into her. A look of fear braced her face, but her body arched toward his. I was going down.
Corinne visited me in the hospital and later when I recuperated at home. I could see how concerned she was and how embarrassed that she was the cause of my trauma. I told her it was O.K. and, looking away from me, she just shook her head then salty wet touched my lips.
We wrote and called each other through the fall foliage and first frost of winter. My body, finely tuned to our rhythms, felt the approach of each call, each letter. Christmas, we breathed, our skins would finally be fused. I had barely dropped off my duffle and said hello to my mother, when I rushed to her house a few blocks from mine. Her mother answered my ring and told me that Corinne would be down in a minute. I waited. The same tingle grew in my chest. I blew on my hands. She appeared in the doorway and the first thing I saw was her belly. It looked woman-sexy, like she had swallowed a new life. I felt Junior’s blade go in again.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2007-2015

UNTIL THE MUSIC STOPS--CHAPTER X--CONFESSIONS OF AN UNCONTROLLED DIABETIC

CHAPTER X

KISS THE FATES

..."that the only way clear of the cool/crazy
flipflop was obviously slow, frustrating and hard work.
Love with your mouth shut, help without breaking your
ass or publicizing it: keep cool, but care. He might
have known, if he’d used any common sense. It didn’t
come as a revelation, only something he’d as soon
not’ve admitted."

"V"
--THOMAS PYNCHON


Katsuho came back to our apartment twice over the next few weeks. Once, to pick up her computer and more clothes, and the other to copy all of her favorite music into her iPod. Each time she did so she asked if I could not be there when she returned. I wasn’t. She told me that she would leave my keys at The Cedar Tavern. What she’d done was move into a Y on the Upper West Side and began to start piecing her life back together bit by bit. I was still managing to go to “taxi school” and waiting for her to come back to me. I had no idea just how badly she needed to get away from me and felt she’d eventually return. I would have promised her anything.
A few more days went by and I called her on her cell phone. Reluctantly, she agreed to meet me in Central Park. I’d gotten there early and was sitting on a bench waiting for her, thinking of all the things that she might say and my counter. Many conversations took place in my head before she showed up. I don’t remember if we kissed hello or not. What I do remember is that she told me that she needed time away; that she felt that her being was being taken from her; that she no longer knew what she was doing or who she was. I tried to listen attentively, all the while thinking of what to say to make her, force her, to come back and relieve this terrible “aloneness” that I was feeling. I thought that by not saying anything--and I really didn’t know what the hell to say to all that she told me--would in some way show her that I knew how she felt and would persuade her eventually to give our marriage another try. I did ask her if she was contemplating leaving or divorcing me, and she said she didn’t know. She needed time. I told her, in the most gracious, but still manipulative, way I could, to take it.
Katsuho did not come back to me. She couldn’t. I’ve only recently come to realize that. However, while we were still married and living together, she was introduced to a man, Carl Jacobs, a psychoanalyst, who needed one of his case studies typed. Katsuho took the job. Sometime later, when I knew and she knew I needed help she told me (and impressed by what she’d read in his case study), to call him. He was located down the block from where we lived. I’d always imagined myself in analysis with a doctor schooled in Freudian analysis who had an office in Greenwich Village. It suited the image I had of myself.
I began going to see him, while Katsuho and I were still together. I felt attuned to him the first time we met and his insights into my personality and behavior made a tremendous impression on me. But as I had done so many times before, I used some of our sessions together as a way of manipulating Katsuho into believing that these new and wonderful insights were sure to bring about the changes she and I wanted in our life together. Not that I knew I was manipulating her; I was really bullshitting myself. I’ve come to learn that there is no magic word, or sentence, or paragraph, or session, or drug, or woman, or anything that borders on the realm of fantasy and wishful thinking. Work, therapy, relationships, gratification, health, rent, writing, art, bricklaying, construction, everything, is hard fuckin work. All of the great insights mean shit if you don’t marry them to action. I was still an infant, thinking that by sucking on a tit, any tit, I’d get what I needed to get me through an hour, let alone a day.

I began driving a cab. It sucked. It was hard work, much different than when I drove in 1972. Three months after I started driving, I had the excuse I needed: my mom was sick and my father, who was never good in those situations, needed my help.
For the next few months I flew back and forth from New York City to Miami as if I was going to the corner store for smokes. During this period I helped my father find a nursing home for my mother, contact a lawyer who made it easy to get her on Medicaid--for a hefty fee--and watch as she went from nursing home to hospital and back again. He, while he and I met with the lawyer, had him give me power of attorney over her. It was easy for me to think he made the wise decision. I purposely spent a lot of time with her knowing that my father had always been emotionally unavailable to her and I was trying in my own guilt-stricken ways, to wash away our sins. One day, one of her more lucid days in the hospital, as I was ready to leave, I walked to the head of her hospital bed and leaned down to kiss her on her forehead. As I was picking my head up she said to me, “Have no fear.” I looked curiously at her. She had helped put the fear of God in me, certainly after I became diabetic. I didn’t know how to react. I said to her, “I won’t,” and left.
My father, too, was not doing very well, physically. He’d been very overweight most of his life, and now he was obese, and diabetic. I felt needed. And had no problem taking all the money I needed to help see him through this crisis.
Shortly upon returning to New York, and resuming my therapy, I got a call from my father telling me that my mom had took a turn for the worse. It seemed I’d just unpacked when I was aboard a plane heading south. I looked forward to getting back together with my father, going out to eat in some fashionable restaurants in Bal Harbour, and now drinking with him. Previously, I’d turned him onto high-end vodka and he took to it immediately.
My mother had developed dementia, aside from the multiple medical conditions she already suffered from. When I walked into her hospital room she didn’t recognize me at first and confused me with my brother’s wife, who she called out for repeatedly. Every time she struggled to find a word or sentence she began reciting the alphabet or multiplication table. During the next few days her condition worsened. One day, as I walked from her room, the doctor called out to me. He told me that my mother needed a feeding tube put into her. I thought for a second and told him no. He said that her heart was still strong and she had to have this tube in her to prolong her life. I refused. I didn’t return to her bedside either.
An hour later I was having an espresso and Sambuca at a corner bistro near my father’s apartment when my cell phone rang. It was a call from the doctor’s wife, a friend of my mother and father for the past twenty years. She told me that my mother had died. I asked how. Cardiac arrest I was told. I went back to my father’s apartment. He was not visibly upset, didn’t cry, and neither did I. We went to a local funeral home and made arrangements for her cremation. We came home and an hour later we were sitting at the same fashionable restaurant in Bal Harbour contemplating what we were going to have for dinner.
There were feelings I had that went unarticulated and even now I’m hard pressed to describe just what was going through me, let alone him, at the time. But the truth is the truth. My father and I did not really ever go into any of that stuff you might imagine family might when their mother or father or wife dies. In fact, that night, over dinner, my father began to tell me for the first time of his adulterous affair with a woman I knew in my teenage years who was a customer in his supermarket. She, he said, was what he’d always wanted in a woman, but because of us, his kids, he never left my mother. What to make of his disclosure hours after the death of my mother is hard to discern. It would not be unlike him to blame me for his inability to find happiness while projecting to me what a great, self-sacrificing, dad he was.
I stayed with him for the next few weeks during which we went to see my mother’s body before she was cremated. We were alone in this big chapel when they wheeled her out in a cardboard box in the clothes we picked out for her--one of her favorite Miami Beach blouses that had these sparkly fish--and placed her on this platform on eye level. The first thing I noticed was her expression: fierce. It was the anger and rigidity that she had carried with her throughout her life. I knew that lying inside this woman was “love,” though it couldn’t be seen. I went up to her body, leaned down and kissed her on her forehead. It was freezing. I wondered if they’d packed the inside of her with ice.
My father and I stood shoulder to shoulder, and I looked over at him to see what he was thinking and feeling. I couldn’t tell, nor did he tell me. I assumed he was cataloguing the sixty plus years they’d been married, like a dying person would.
We stayed about a half-hour. I guess we both felt that was sufficient. We really didn’t talk about her again for the rest of my stay. Reluctantly, a few days after, I flew back to New York City.
For a time I entertained the idea about going down to Miami to live with my father and find some kind of job. During the first few weeks I’d been back, my father began falling. I went back down there and found him a nurse’s aide that my father’s insurance policy would pay for. He liked her, and quickly developed a dependency on her similar to the one he had with my mother. And since she lived down the block from him, he quickly enlisted her services--for a few extra bucks--to be at his beckon call. He wanted me to set up Medicaid for him as we did for my mother. I contacted the same lawyer and put the wheels in motion. In regard to money, my father was a secretive and manipulative man. In fact, in regard to everything he was secretive and manipulative; but money to him meant power, and he was not about to fuck with that. To insure that I was not more of a burden to him then necessary, he strongly advised me to get government disability. Once back in New York I did exactly that.
Given what medical conditions I had it was not terribly difficult to get on Social Security Disability. I believed that in a short period of time, once I got my bearings, I’d be able to get another kind of job, get off the government tit, and make a life for myself. But actually my world had gotten smaller: Katsuho was obviously gone and who knew when she’d return. I began to drink more heavily and had stopped going to AA meetings long ago and so I couldn’t call the people I became friendly with there because I had no intentions of giving up drinking.
For quite a bit of time I emailed Katsuho, hoping my writing would seduce her into returning. I’d tell her about my recent experiences in Miami, my sessions with Carl, how my life had changed, were changing, and how, given the chance, we could make this work. She was careful to respond, but when she did, Katsuho made it apparent to me that that was not in the cards. I read, but couldn’t let myself absorb.
The Cedar Tavern had become my world. Joey had been to me the brother I’d always wanted and now he came even more to the fore. I never really had to pay for anything at his bar. I had endless conversations with him about both our lives, and we shared an intimacy, as those who are friends over the course of many decades would. The people who worked there liked me, and I also was friendly with many of the other patrons. And so, from the afternoon to the early evening, I’d be there, reading, writing, socializing, and drinking.
Jacobs was not a strict Freudian analyst. He was vocal, certainly with me. He knew the depth of my illness and used whatever tools he had to break me out of my lethargy. But by the time I left the session and got back to my pad, which was up the block from his office, my inspiration had waned and all my fears returned. I’d go into The Cedar and be sucked up by the darkness.
Very soon that no longer did the trick. One New Years Eve, I had a few drinks at The Cedar and became terribly anxious, almost panicky. My world began closing in on me even further than it had. I bolted from The Cedar and headed straight for Washington Square Park. I knew that drug dealers had hung out there since Broadway was a prairie, and quickly made the acquaintance of one. I told him that I was looking for heroin and he told me to wait for him on 8th Street. In fifteen minutes he was back and pressed a tin foil package into my hand and I gave him some money. I walked as quickly as possible back to my place, but when I opened the foil I knew I’d been “beat.” Just as quickly I walked back to the park, not to find and confront him, but to find someone else and try to be smarter. I did, and was.
We exchanged cell phone numbers and he told me he’d call me within an hour. When he called, I met him in the vestibule of my apartment, opened a bag, tasted it, handed him the money and went upstairs to make the internal pressures abate. Most of my veins had collapsed, but I managed to find a few near my wrist that were more painful to penetrate but carried the blessed liquid.
Jacobs was on vacation and I had no intention of calling him on the number he left. Because I was alone, and because I was alone, I shot drugs with impunity. I now had the cell phone number of a dealer who, even though he charged me a fee on top of what the junk cost, was reliable. In fact, when I didn’t call him, he called me and I almost made myself believe he was a friend.
When Jacobs returned I told him. It took me three months, probably because he took his customary break in February, but I stopped by “checking in” to a hospital, going through Lenox Hill’s emergency room. I’d been living on a diet of dope, sweets, and booze. I began to resent my having to eat any “real” food because of my ingrained attachment to life. My pallor was as gray as the last sight of a battleship sinking. I knew it was time to abandon ship.

A few years after having becoming president of the American Diabetes Association, Jerry Bernstein decided to retire from private practice. I had an impossible time finding a replacement. The doctor I was now seeing had provided me with an ample supply of pain medication, which he wasn’t able to wean me off. He consulted a psychiatrist who specialized in addiction who suggested because of my long history of opiod addiction, I go on a methadone maintenance program. I balked at that. I’d read about a new drug that had proved successful in treating “motivated” addicts: Buphenorphine. When I asked the psychiatrist he told me that it was quite expensive and he didn’t think Medicaid would cover it. I didn’t believe him.
I checked myself into a hospital to get detoxed. The addiction specialist I met with there told me the same thing about Buphenorphine: it’s a good tool, but expensive.
Two days after I got out of Lenox Hill I was shooting dope again. Two weeks later I was back in the same emergency room at Lenox Hill, but this time I landed in the psych ward. It was humiliating. They took away my sneaker laces, belt, cell phone and the rest of my possessions, except for my sweat pants and shirt. I saw one of the same psychiatrists who was assigned to me my previous stay and asked him if he could help me find a Buphenorphine program that would accept Medicare/Medicaid.
The psychiatrist found a program for me on the west side and gave me the information and contact number. The day I was released from the psych ward I made the phone call, but I could not keep myself away from junk. When I arrived to be interviewed and screened by two doctors, one who would be monitoring me and the other who owned the clinic, they told me I’d have to remain clean for at least 72 hours and be in withdrawal before I could be administered the first dose of Buphenorphine. It took another two weeks before I could manage that.
Buphenorphine/Suboxone is a pill that is taken sublingual--under the tongue--until it dissolves. The opiate attaches to the opiate receptors--the same mu receptors that our endogenous opiods attach to from birth--but block the “high feeling” effects of ingested opiods. Like methadone, it can be lethal, if the dosage is overridden. It could cause respiratory distress and failure. But unlike methadone it promotes energy and enthusiasm and reduces cravings. Once finding a stable dosage, I was able to take home a month’s supply, and had to adhere to the rules of the clinic: come once a week to see the doctor, once a week for counseling, and once a week for group. The psychiatrist there had me on hefty doses of a combination of anti-depression medication and my mood lifted. I felt more positive than I had in quite a few years.
My sessions with Jacobs were becoming more intense. The way I would pronounce certain words, put together phrases or the syntax of my sentences were subject to his dissection. My perceptions and assumptions were scrutinized. Sometimes I was afraid to go into sessions knowing he’d have me see the way “the other” might. Gradually, I began to develop a growing intolerance to my subterfuges, both internally and externally. What he was helping me do, which of course I’d never been able to do before, was integrate the disparate and contradicting nature of being alive. The “black” and “white” which had been my bedrock was being dismantled, rearranged, and glued together with a new kind of ambiguity. This is not to say that therapy with Jacobs did not obviate the anger, frustration, and wish for fantasy all at once. Many times I said to him: “fuck you.” And my worst fear was that he’d say, “You’re no longer my patient.” But he’d say, “Fuck you,” back, in those words. And he’d stick with me.

My father decided to go into a nursing home, the same one that my mother had been in. In a way, I breathed a sigh of relief knowing that his care would be looked after by someone other than me, and that whatever money he had left would go to me, or so he said. My brother had been on “the outs” with him and my mother for years--he’d not come down for her funeral/cremation--and I did nothing to encourage my father to try and repair their bond. In fact, I secretly felt pleased that this had happened. My brother and I, especially in regard to my father, was in and out of his grace, translated into “largess.” We alternated years of speaking and not to speaking to him or them. Now, I felt that I’d “won.” How fortunate I felt at times knowing that I was the favored son. Then the outcast, then the favored. Finally, I was ready to pick up all the marbles.
I must have “lost my fucking marbles” believing my father, but I did.
A few days before Christmas, my father called me to let me know that a strange rash had developed on parts of his body and that he’d be going to a mini-hospital unit in the nursing home. A day later I got a call from his doctor that my father had died from congestive heart failure in his sleep.
I thought for a couple of minutes before calling Jacobs, who was on his Christmas break. Quickly, he called me back and I told him what had happened. I said that I didn’t want to go down to Miami to arrange for the cremation, but could do that from up here. He advised against me doing that. Anthropologically, he said, we need to see our dead so that the grieving process can begin.
I made arrangements for a first class round trip ticket. Hell, I deserve this, I said to myself, even though Jacobs had often repeated the line from the Clint Eastwood movie, Unforgiven, Deserve has nothin ta do with it.
I’d hadn’t spoken with my brother for the better part of five or six years, but I called him and left a message that something had happened and to call me back. When he did, I told him that our father was dead. He asked if I was going to Florida and I told him I was. He told me that he wasn’t, which was all right with me. It made me feel superior.
I’d called up the same funeral home that my mother was cremated in and made arrangements for my father to be picked up. I flew in and out of Miami in a matter of a few hours. The only other person inside the chapel was my father’s nurse’s aide. They’d taken a liking to each other, based on mutual need. I was happy she was there. Unlike my mother, my father looked pretty peaceful lying there dead. He was still wearing his hospital pajamas. His aide and I stood over his cardboard resting place and she said softly to him, much like a wife, “I told you that he’d come.” I wasn’t too surprised by her statement. My father, to my knowledge, never trusted anybody, except strangers and then, only until he got to know them.

My father had told me, for years, he was leaving whatever money he had to me. He justified that decision by angrily explaining how my brother and his wife wouldn’t let him and my mother live in their home unless they turned over their funds to them. And so, when I got back to my pad in New York City and opened for the first time my father’s Last Will and Testament and found that he left my brother half of his estate, it shocked the shit out of me. But after a few seconds I began to laugh. Fearing if he told me the truth about his plans I’d no longer do what he wanted--come down to Miami, take him in and out of hospitals and nursing homes, be a friend, a son, a whatever--he did what he’d done his entire life: divide and conquer.
When my brother and I began speaking again, we compared notes. It became apparent to us that from an early age my father would tell my brother and me two different things about the same situation. Whether he feared us “ganging up” and not do his bidding or if he promoted our suspicions of each other to “work us” at his convenience, we’ll never really know. It wasn’t just coincidental that when I was speaking with my parents my brother wasn’t and vice versa. And given the fact that there were huge chunks of time that my brother and I weren’t speaking to each other, and certainly not honestly, there was no way for us to see how our father was playing us off one another. In fact, the flaws in our characters and personalities, and our shared jealousies and mistrust and anger toward each other run so deep, that after trying for almost two years to repair our relationship we are now not talking with one another. He, of course, grew up in the same house with the same parents. And had the misfortune of having me as an older brother. Many of my experiences growing up are his as well, even though there’s more than a six-year difference between us. But in a strange way I might have been luckier. My diabetes provided me with a structure that needed to be adhered to. The disease forced me to develop an intelligence and curiosity that were polar opposites from their world in Brooklyn.

Everybody has the “Dawn Phenomenon.” Between two and four in the morning, the body starts secreting glucose in order to begin waking. In those “wee small hours of the morning,” a recent scientific data show, insulin has a tendency to break down or become weaker. What this means is that diabetics, who have had nothing to eat from the time they went to sleep until the time they awoke and, who had blood glucose readings within the normal range (80-150), could find themselves with a higher or elevated morning glucose reading. There are different interventions to combat this given the differences in each of our physical profiles and our body’s idiosyncrasies. Bernstein knew and understood this. He also understood that positive, absolute control is impossible. Some mornings I’m higher or lower without explanation. This is because each night, or early morning, my body capriciously secretes glucose. I could eat the same thing, at the same hour, in two, three, and sometimes four consecutive days, and my blood glucose readings would fluctuate, some days wildly, even when I’d done the same amount of physical exertion during those periods. I’m not going to say that glucose readings are arbitrary, they’re not. But this, like living and dying, is not an exact science.
Good diabetic control implies structure, work, planning, and deprivation, food deprivation. If you adhere to some rules and regulations, your odds are better of living a life relatively free of too many problems and complications. My gut instincts are to rebel against such a life. I’ve got to try to control them, too. I’m all too familiar with what Nietzshe said, “Be wary of casting out your devils, for that may be the best part of you.” Well, Freddy, I love you, always have, but I’ve got to try to figure out some way to stay here a little longer, not so much to figure it out, but to fuck with it some more. Under the best of circumstances, I’m operating with a cylinder missing. This is not to say that if I take care of the car, I can’t put some serious mileage on her, but I have to take care of the car, and get lucky. I have to try to keep the “revs” somewhere in the middle where the engine functions best, make sure I take her in for periodic mileage inspections and have a very good mechanic.
Jerry Bernstein, my doctor, friend, and confidant, is now working as an educator and administrator in a major teaching hospital complex, Beth Israel Medical Center. He’s just returned from a trip to Russia and has become a great force in the field of endocrinology the world over. I’m happy he still returns my phone calls.
After Jean returned to San Francisco, she fell in love with someone, and they’ve been happily married for over a decade at this date. Jean and I speak often; unusual for the way I used to end my affairs of the heart.
Diane, too, while not married, has moved out of Manhattan and is living in a little town outside of Atlantic City and while we don’t speak often, we try to keep up with each other. I’d carried a torch for her for many years after our affair ended, but some women, no matter how hard you’ve loved them, and no matter how much they’ve loved you, the reality destroys whatever desire, no matter how feverish it had once existed.
Katsuho has become an owner of a business. She’d been working, as I said, as a designer and maker of furniture. When the owner of the shop decided he wanted to go back to North Carolina, he asked Katsuho if she would take over for him. Nervously, she accepted. I told you she has moxie. Except for exchanging emails once or twice a year we aren’t in touch. However, I did get an unexpected email from Katsuho not too long ago. I’m sure she struggled writing it and thought twice before sending it. She told me that she’d gotten married a few months before and said as unambiguously she thought possible, “I am happy.” Katsuho went on to say she did not want me to be surprised when I get a letter from the church regarding her and her marriage. Her husband, a practicing Catholic, felt he could not comfortably practice his faith in a church of his choosing unless he received some kind of Papal Dispensation. For Katsuho, as devout an anti-organized religion gal as one could imagine, I was somewhat taken aback by her request to fill out whatever the church would send and get it back to them. But a second later I thought: What’s true for Katsuho is true for all of us: Love will make you do the damnedest things at various times in our lives, and only the further passage of our time will reveal, from moment to moment, if it was worth it.

And me? I’ve become an “Everythingian.” Knowing that the brain of an ant is more complex than our most advanced computer, how the hell am I going to choose one explanation for how I developed and survived? I could pin it on genetics, certain pre dispositions, psycho and neurobiology, the psychic tensions between Eros and Thanatos, attachment objects, environments, social lubricants and maturation, or dumb luck, capricious and arbitrary. It’s all those, and more.
The field of Evolutionary Psychobiology interests me because it focuses on “adaptation” rather than “disease” as currently understood by medical literature. An “adaptation” is an evolved trait that solves some particular problem for a particular organism that enables it to survive, grow, and of course, reproduce. That’s what we’re about, ain’t we, to keep it going. So imagine a person casually walking around his forest, not thinking of much, maybe a little hungry, maybe pissed off about his wife, or girl, or kid, or tribal leader, or his gods, and he sees an apple lying there. He picks it up, takes a bite, and it tastes different, not bad, but different. In a little while his mood changes. He doesn’t feel so shitty, but a little silly. The next day he sees another apple and does the same as the day before. Before too long he moves his whole fuckin family and builds a house near the apple tree. Then he turns some of his family and friends onto this. For all we know he wrote The Bible tipsy, and later, while sober, invented what we call capitalism today.
Then I began thinking about God in relation to evolution. If there is someone or something orchestrating this mad affair, than that “forbidden fruit” sure did lead to and make a lot of things possible. It enabled a person to either hold on for a little while longer and it provided some incredible insights. And any insight can potentially father future insights and inventions from science to industry to the arts to academia to just about anything. Of course, there’s also a very fluid and dangerous line of demarcation when that same substance tears away at the fabric of a person or society, but the mystery, the magic, is not knowing where that line is. One thing I do know: as of this writing I’ve survived and that’s triumph enough.

I’m reminded of a wonderful story I heard about Miles Davis and John Coltrane when they were playing together. It seems that Trane was at that point where the musical ideas that were exploding in his head were being played out on the bandstand with Miles. The ideas would come so fast and so furious that often times he’d forget that he was playing with other cats, and the sound would just jump out of his horn. After one particularly long solo by Trane, he was walking with Miles off the bandstand during a break in the set. “Miles,” Trane began, “I know that I’m taking all this time during my solo, but I can’t seem to stop. The ideas are happenin’ so fast and my fingers are just flyin’ and I’m tryin’ to keep up with all of them. How do I stop?”
Miles looked at Trane and with all the love that Miles could ever muster said, in a voice that could be described as a kind of marbled grit, “Take the horn out yer mouth.”

There are days when I wish the syringe I was holding in my hand was filled with junk instead of insulin; there are days when I order a club soda in a restaurant and for the briefest of seconds I actually taste Chivas Regal. There are days when I know that a taste of sweet reefer would make this picture better, or book deeper, or food more delicious, or laugh sillier and I’d be able to make a whole lot more sense out of my life than anything else. And those aren’t days I’m feeling particularly bad. I still can’t go by a liquor store, a drug store, a hospital, certain locations in New York City and elsewhere and not be seduced by my history. But so far, I’ve managed not to dance to that tune.
Now, however, at age sixty plus, I feel that I have a kind of foundation, a hedge, against this mad and beautiful refrain that’s been playing in my head ever since I was old enough to walk to a melody that has the confluence of all that I experienced growing up, grooving to my very own originality.

But now it’s time to take the horn out of my mouth. This tune’s over.

###