It started with the teabags, but before that. It’s hard to be certain when an adventure really begins but if I had to stick a pin into a point and make a mark, it wouldn’t be with the worms, it would be with the teabags. Memories bleed into dreams. Or is it the other way around?
There stands a shabby little apartment building around the corner at the end of my street. It’s brown and old and holds four units and the front door window has been smashed free of glass and replaced with a blue, grommet-eyed tarp. For years now. I pass by it almost every day. The building sits like a scab between a sprawling Ford dealership and an endodontic office. Across the street is an exaggeratedly bright, excessively sanitary Walgreens next to a Shell station that hires only the suspicious.
A puzzling young woman lives in the building and occasionally we pass each other on the sidewalk and stop and chat. Exempli gratia:
Her: “Hey, how’s it going?”
Me: “Hi, how you doing?”
“I’m okay. You?”
“Okay.”
That’s how it started.
So I guess it didn’t start with the teabags.
I’ll get to them. Not everything that arrives has a purpose.
I was headed, walking (I don’t drive), to the grocery store to buy more beer. I already had a head full of bittersweet hangover, my hypersensitive alcohol-sharpened acuity quasi-astonishing me with the vivid stings of infinite detail and fine particulars. Perceived reality flew at me like violent weather. It was March, raining. I passed a crashed accident of chicken McNuggets on the wet street and turned to examine the vast upheaval of crushed cardboard, sodden breaded nubbins of chicken-matter and a sweet & sour solution. It looked like a crime scene. A murdered meal. It was an entire order—someone had thrown away a perfectly good twenty-piece meal, untested, untasted. I decided it had been thrown out of a moving car at the height of an argument. A Larry maybe or a Linda or Susan had flung the food out the window to put a drastic exclamation mark on a contested point. I could imagine crying, profanity and threats building to a finale of dinner hurled into the moving night. The sight of the orphaned mess made me a little sad and I stepped beyond the chaos and continued on, wondering if I was going to see the strange young woman with the Louise Brooks haircut who lived in the little brown building on the corner across from the glaringly, blaringly disproportionate Walgreens and so on and so forth etcetera…
I did not. In fact, nothing interesting happened to me on the way to the grocery store except that I got wet. I kept my bloodshot eyes angled down in case of dropped coins and listened to the Sleestak hiss of tires on wet asphalt.
I had not eaten in a couple, three days and began to feel it –- the weight-weary fatigue of undernourished muscle—a lightheadedness—disconnected feelings unthreaded and vague—random thoughts like a mosquito’s nipping pitch rising and fading in my ear. My empty stomach felt like a black hole—not even light could escape the nausea induced by its ruthless vacuum. I’d spent the better part of the morning dry-heaving emptiness into a wastepaper basket.
Before I reached the store I pulled out my money and tried to calculate the math before the dread pressure and stage fright of being NEXT IN LINE. I had enough cash to purchase four 24oz. cans of Klondike Ice (8.5% alc./vol.), a hideous malt liquor that, if you drink it fast enough and avoid getting sick will enable you to achieve an exalted state of warm inebriation and eventually the much sought-after oblivion of a blackout. That’s what I was after. The can claims it’s, “Slow brewed for exceptionally smooth flavor” but this is nonsense. Slow brewed it may be but it’s about as smooth as a box of broken glass.
I stopped and waited for heavy, morning-commute traffic to pass and then crossed the street to an empty parking lot behind a small white office building. The building housed three businesses: a realtor, a travel agent and unknown. The unknown worried me. I pictured nefarious activities. I admired a sign that insisted, NO TRUCKING/NO TURNING/NO PARKING and I thought of the movie Truck Turner (1974) starring Isaac Hayes and Yaphet Kotto. My thoughts were haphazard compromises.
My route to the grocery store turned into a well-beaten shortcut and I left the lot and followed a narrow, single-file path that bisected a stand of trees (clinging with poison ivy) and bushes to the outskirts of a shopping center (or centre). An old guy who suffered from (Tourette’s?) some kind of brain malady was involved in an angry argument with himself. He wore a yellow safety vest over a hooded windbreaker and was collecting stray shopping carts and twitching and spitting invective into the dripping air. “Shut-up, faggot! I’ll kill you! Fucking little faggot! Shit! Suck! Bastard! I’m done with you fucking Swedes!”
I thought, That’s me someday. And then I left the veil of rain and floated into the magnified paranoid spotlight of the store. God, the things I have to do.
Inside was bright and glossy and the air felt different. Astringent, ventilated air. I grabbed a plastic hand-basket, noticed the Muzak version of the Ramones’ I Wanna be Sedated playing above me and then headed toward the produce section. I’d feel (even more) conspicuous if I made a beeline straight for the beer aisle. I had to pretend I was a normal, casual-type shopper, just looking for healthy food. However, my wet sneakers produced deafening squeaks on the polished white surface of the floor, so, deciding I was already conspicuous, I went ahead and squelched over to where they stored the beer and wine. Somehow I managed not to slip and crash to my ass and this led to thoughts of a lawsuit I would never have the courage to pursue.
I passed a man who reminded me of a dead friend and I avoided his eyes. The beer was stored across the aisle from the frozen treats (ice cream, popsicles, etc.) I noted the existence of frozen treats for dogs. These dog products were stocked alongside the frozen treats designed for humans and I wondered how many people bought them by accident. What were they made of? What did they taste like? Do dogs care? There were cute cartoon dogs smiling/panting on the boxes, tongues reaching out greedily; wide, crazy addict eyes of feverish need. The vivid graphics made the human-treat packaging seem bland by comparison. I stood there until my starved, overworked brain began to backfire and stall, scrambling my vision and I turned away from the frozen goods and toward the beer, forcing my suddenly precarious awareness through a rising mist of delirium. I had to get my goods and go. I have fainted before. I’ve had seizures. I have fallen asleep while standing, more than once. And here I was again, somnolent, slipping toward an uninvited REM state. Now, again I had to evade the slow narcotic pull of bleeding dreams.
The adrenaline that accompanies panic revived me a bit, clearing my mind a little. I had to get home. I had to get home and drink and figure out what I thought. I felt like the architecture of my mind was softening and fraying into slow liquid collapse, like intricate, unstable geometry melting into warm gray putty and so on and so forth etcetera…
I grabbed one, two, three, four cans of Klondike Ice and then headed toward checkout. I paused by the magazine rack to check for scantily-clad celebrities. There was only one, on the cover of a fitness magazine. I didn’t know whether she was an actress or model or what but she looked good in a red bikini. A very fit specimen, indeed. I absorbed the image and then moved on.
The store maintained an annoying policy of carding everyone who purchased alcohol, regardless of the blatancy of their advanced age. I entered the express lane. The bored cashier stood studying her fingers. I flashed my (expired) ID at her and said, “Two four six eight.” She entered my birthday into the machine without looking at me or my ID.
The supermarket cashier is a peculiar breed. Putting aside the transitory teenaged cashier who appears and disappears with the cycles of the seasons, the career-cashier is a blank animal whose posture seems bent by defeat. She is the uninterested antidote to the loud, cheerful hard-sell promises on the never-ending products she scans. I used to invest them with dark secrets but not anymore. I have stopped saying, Hello to them. I don’t bother to ask them how they’re doing anymore. It just doesn’t matter, to them, to me, to anyone.
She bagged my beer in plastic and said, “Seven fifty-seven,” in a bored tone. I handed her seven ones and three quarters. All the money I owned. I really had to seriously savor the effects of this beer. I tried not to ponder the cliff-hanging crisis of an impending TOMORROW sans alcohol. The cheerless cashier handed me my paltry change, not bothering to wish me a nice day, and then went back to looking at her fingers.
I doubled, then triple-bagged my beer so that no witnesses on my return journey would know what I bought. It was nobody’s business. I’ve always felt like a criminal when buying alcohol, like I’m doing something wrong. It doesn’t make sense or slow me down any, but for some reason I have a 1920s Prohibition-era paranoid mind. Everything must be sneaked, hidden. I don’t want to have to explain anything to anyone. My mutilations are my own. I have always envied those extroverted personalities among us that manage to be open and comfortable with their chronic alcoholism. The people for whom a drink in the hand is a fashion accessory. Those bold folk unafraid to declare their allegiance to alcohol as if it were a valid existential statement (which maybe it is). They are never embarrassed. I once had a friend named Lance who guzzled so much Yukon Jack that he vomited on his lap, swept it away with his hands and then laughed as if he’d told the world’s cleverest joke. People talked about it for years. That fucking Lance.
The automatic door opened and I was back in the rain. I don’t always comply with agreed-upon methods of description and analysis so I will describe my impressions upon stepping back outside with these words: glaucous, Ganymede, Peter Lorre.
The Tourette’s guy was gone, the errant shopping carts gathered and neatly parked at the front of the store. The carriage corrals were empty. An elderly woman shuffled through the rain with a closed umbrella that she didn’t open all the way to the store and I smiled and nodded my approval.
I departed, pushing the burden of my weight forward. Each small, inadequate step felt heavy and significant with tension and time. I had to get home. I had to be reunited with my things. I felt impatient, violent. Was I fleeing from something or racing toward a goal? Both? The weight in my hand was reassuring with fragile promise yet I felt as frustrated as a spoiled toddler that I couldn’t drink it NOW. I want it NOW! But no, I had to wait to extinguish my smoldering brain. Shut-up! The sound of the rain and wind merged with the persistent ringing in my ears (I have tinnitus) to create the acoustic illusion that it was all one long sound emanating from a vast, resonant continuum. The trembling echo of the Universe’s birth. I crossed the parking lot, not bothering to avoid the puddles. My hair was soaked, streaming into my face. My clothes were heavy with rain. I crossed the street, started down the sidewalk. I passed the Ford dealership, then the little brown apartment building was there and I noticed the teabags. Two of them had been taped to the front door, along with a candy wrapper and a picture of a model’s pouting face torn (not cut) from a magazine. I paused a moment to study this sudden minimalist collage. The tea was Aspretto-brand, Berry Black. It boasted high caffeine content and three laughing children were pictured on the wrapper. Little open frozen smiles. The other teabag was the same. The candy wrapper was for Jolly Ranchers. The whole thing seemed infused with cryptic significance. I turned and continued walking, wondering what to think about it.
I lived (and still live) in a small, one bedroom apartment. I was way too nervous to check my mail so I walked straight into my building, up two flights of stairs and once my door was closed behind me I exhaled tension like a punctured raft, safely reunited with my tranquilizing possessions. I am constituted by the things I own.
I turned on the TV, slipped my copy of Test Tube Babies (directed by Merle Connell & produced by George Weiss for Screen Classics in 1948) into the VCR, opened the first can of Klondike Ice and then collapsed on the couch. Home at last and even before my first precious, restorative sip of beer I felt secure and protected in my familiar world. I had successfully shed all the dread, menace and violence of my life and left it outside to dissolve in the rain.
I started to drink the unpleasant beer. Would my poor tortured stomach accept it?
Nope. The first sip came roaring back up and into the wastepaper basket, still cold and foamy. I was so fucking tired of vomiting.
On the next swallow my stomach cooperated with only minor protests. Then I took a deep, greedy gulp. I leaned back to watch the movie, holding my gorge, smacking and swallowing with a watery mouth. I would not puke again. It was a waste of terrible beer.
I enjoyed Test Tube Babies. I liked the way George, the hapless husband, mispronounces gynecologist with smug assurance. I liked Timothy Farrell as the doctor (ginocologist). I loved the drunken, out-of-control party scene when stripper/nudie-model Bebe Berto shows off her “trick” of balancing a glass of gin on her broad forehead. I’d been intending to write an article on the amazing films produced by George Weiss in the 50s but was having trouble finding the right angle, the right tone. How do you capture the astonishing, late-night hallucinatory experience of those old films with mere words? Every attempt I’d made had been radically inadequate, like trying to accurately describe a dream.
Oh well, I thought. I’ll dope it all out later. I finished the first beer.
On the second beer I started watching Pin Down Girl (1951) aka Racket Girls, starring Peaches Page and Timothy Farrell.
On the third I was finally at peace—minor lachrymose poetry produced.
I don’t remember the last.
Crumbling Asphalt 