“Come on, baby, cry already. It’s no good if you hold it in!”
As Stewart got older and could stand up in his crib, he would watch me at night, all of his little squishy fingers locked around the banister, his plump belly peeking out from under his dinosaur t-shirt, and his hair mashed to one side of his head with the imprint of his pillow.
“Buhhbbaa....”
“Oh, crap. Go to sleep, Stewart,” I’d tell him, avoiding all eye contact.
“Bubbabubbabubbabubbabubba....”
“Stewart, go to sleep, we’ll play tomorrow.”
“Bubbabubbabubbabubeeeeeeeee....”
“Shush! No play time now, I have school in the morning, it’s 2:30!”
“Bubbabubbabubba....”
Stewart would stand in his crib with a string of dribble hanging below his chin and his two little front teeth that had finally broken through the gums, not taking no for an answer. He’d squeal and stamp his feet with excitement.
His cheeks were so fat they shut his eyes when he’d burst into laughter.
“Bubbabubbeeeeeebubbabubba.”
“Okay, five minutes, Bubba, and that’s it.”
“Bubba” had become my little pet name for Stewart over the years.
He certainly got more than five minutes from me almost every night—because he listened intently without telling me to shut up or calling me an idiot. Every night, I’d play with him and tell him stories of jailbreak.
When I got older and settled into Nana’s house, it was time to break Bubba free from my father’s house. I wanted him with me, and not rotting away in that house with my father, where no one cared if Stewart showered, brushed his teeth, or did anything.
I planned to give him a home and a life, and those motherfuckers pulled the rug right from under me. They knew just where to hit me so it hurt—all because I wouldn’t give them the goddamn house.
“Where’s Stewart, Dad?” I asked the old man, knowing any second the explosive diarrhea of lies was going to come from his mouth.
He rubbed the top of his balding head with his fingers trying to conjure up more lies.
“Uhm, you know, Charlie, it’s work looking after your brother. It’s a lot of responsibility. We did what was best for him and got him a good home, where he’ll be cared for and get the proper treatment he needs, from very good people. I wouldn’t worry so much,” he said.
“What? My brother isn’t a dog, you fucking idiot. You don’t just put him up for adoption when he’s 20…and who the fuck is ‘we’? How was this decision made without me? I don’t have a say in this? Tell me where Stewart is, Dad,” I demanded.
“He’s upstate, Charlie…St. Mary’s mental hospital up by Finger Lakes. It’s a residential facility for people…like him, like your brother, in need of care. It comes highly recommended. I think there’s a pamphlet for it here somewhere.”
“Pamphlet? You had Stewart institutionalized? What the fuck? You didn’t give me a chance to say goodbye?”
“I understand you’re upset, Charlie, but we did what was right for Stewart.”
“No shit. It sounds to me like you did the right thing for yourselves. What’s the number where I can talk to him and see if he’s okay?”
Suddenly, everyone I asked was plagued with loss of memory. The kind of amnesia assholes get when they’re covering up another asshole’s lie.
Just like when you brought up money, just like when you talked about Richard and now with Stewart.
I couldn’t find any information for a St. Mary’s mental hospital clinic anywhere in upstate New York, when I searched for my brother.
I should have known better. Damn them.
Today is Stewart’s birthday.
JERRY AND THE ANGRY INGRID
Saturday, January 18th, 2014
Friday night was couple’s night, and Saturday night was the wild card night. The boys went out with the boys, and the girls went out with the girls, but this never sat well with Jerry’s hot-blooded Latina wife Ingrid. She wanted a GPS up Jerry’s ass 24 hours a day and seven days a week.
She needed to know where, when, how, and who with—and if he didn’t comply with the rules, Jerry was on trial with little to no chance of a fair hearing.
Jerry had fourteen missed calls, eight angry text messages, and four belligerent voice mails on his phone from Ingrid all within an hour of us being out. All we were doing was watching the game at Clinkers—the same routine for the last six years of their marriage, and that wasn’t going to change for anybody.
Ingrid and Jerry had what I called a snap/jump relationship—she snapped, he jumped, but I’d yank him right back down again.
The angry Ingrid is what the boys at the bar referred to as The Succubus. No offense to Jerry, but Ingrid was a self-centered bitch and had no redeeming qualities.
Jerry and I weren’t brilliant or handsome enough. Dressing up to us meant putting on our favorite baseball jerseys and gold chains and slapping on our best aftershave. Jerry would say cologne was for homosexuals and Puerto Ricans. There was no chance of us ever getting lucky with anyone even if we’d tried.
Whenever “the Spanish Inquisition” would begin her tirade, Jerry immediately pulled me under the bus with him. “Ask Charlie, Ingrid, he was there!” Yeah, that was the problem. I was there.
“Jerry, why do you let her speak to you like that? Why don’t you stand up for yourself?” I’d ask.
“You talk to me like that,” he’d say.
“True, but I’ve been married to you longer,” I’d remind him. In a way, I was a bigger shareholder than Ingrid was.
I knew him better than she did, and my abuse came from love and 30 years of friendship. I could do those things.
He was the breadwinner of the family and didn’t deserve to be talked down to like that by a former Key Food cashier who would sleep sometimes until 1:30 in the afternoon.
The sad thing with Jerry was when he was telling the truth, he sounded like he was lying. You could hear his balls shriveling up and falling to the sound of a pin drop.
To Ingrid, I was the bad apple to her sexually repressed, imprisoned, and quasi-suicidal doormat husband who was in love with the idea of being in love.
There was no romance or lust in their marriage. He didn’t love her...he feared her, and yet he treated her like the sun and the moon rose out of her ass every morning and night.
I once tried convincing Jerry that Ingrid was so evil that his children were going to hatch out of pods in the attic and kill him. I pleaded with him not to knock her up because she was the devil reincarnate and nothing good could come out of that woman’s vagina. Jerry was just a sperm donor and an ATM machine.
Our wives got along, but I knew it was a sham. “Hi, how are you?” followed with “I’m good, and how are you?” The fake smile was code for “Yeah, whatever, bitch.”
I wanted my wife to admit she hated Ingrid as much as I did. I just wanted to hear it from someone else’s mouth because it wasn’t my imagination how needy, twisted, and cruel the Angry Ingrid was to my best friend. Jerry paid a babysitter a whopping $150 a week to watch the kids even when Ingrid was home.
She threatened him with an unwarranted divorce and swept the twins Tyler and Kendal away to Miami to live with her parents, taking Jerry’s car with her.
I think she was cheating on him—I mean, who dresses like a whore to run errands on a Tuesday afternoon but comes home happy and without groceries after three hours? She sure as hell never dressed like that for Jerry, even on his birthday. She refused to give him head because she said it was unnatural. I didn’t have the heart to tell him, and he would have been in denial anyway.
I was thrilled once she was gone. She’d finally released him from her evil shackles, and he rose from his marital grave to breathe again. Jerry’s self-confidence was back in bloom, and he lived his life to the fullest for the 27 days before the Deviants killed him.
When the Deviants found us, it was Jerry’s fault.
&nb
sp; I must have said it a dozen times: “Jerry, no barbequing. If you barbeque, they will track it back here and kill us...what is wrong with you?” He never listened.
His answer to that was “Charlie, real men need to eat meat, and meat was meant to be thrown over a fire and burnt to shit, okay?”
Jerry’d get so drunk he’d leave his doors unlocked and unattended at night, which was a major problem when the Deviants would show up. His answer to that? “Fuck that, Charlie, let them come in my house and see what happens.”
I didn’t know what had gotten into Jerry, but I was tired of it. It escalated when I brought Dusty home for the first time that morning, weeks ago.
“Who’s that? What’s wrong with him? Is he slow?” Jerry asked, looking at Dusty sideways from the doorway of my kitchen.
“Leave him alone. His parents are dead.”
“Really? Was it the Deviants? How bad was it?”
“No, I don’t think so. But it was bad.”
“So what are you going to do with him?”
“I was thinking of keeping him here.”
“What? Nuh-uh, no way. You can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“This isn’t a nursery for dead people’s kids, chico,” he said bringing his voice down to a stern whisper.
“He’ll stay with me just until I can get him somewhere safe. What do you care?”
“How do you know he’s not sick?”
“I don’t—he looks fine to me.”
“Did they have food?”
“Who?”
“His family—did you check to see if they had food or money in the house?”
“Nope, I wasn’t there long, and why would I even need money? It’s not like we can buy anything with it.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ, man! What have you been doing? I’m telling you we should just go into every one of these houses and take what we can; it’s not like anyone will be coming back.”
“Not this again, Jerry. You want to go into all these houses and steal stuff? Go right ahead. Be my guest.”
“Yes, it’s exactly what I’m saying, and it’s not stealing. It’s salvaging.”
“I’m not doing that.”
“So you’d rather starve?”
“That’s not what I said, and we’re not starving. What I meant is I don’t want to break into any of these houses. I wouldn’t want anyone coming into my house and taking my shit—would you?”
“These houses? So let’s break into other houses!”
“No.”
“That makes no sense whatsoever. It’s okay for you to steal drugs and liquor and knock over Shop ‘n’ Stuff for cigarettes but not food from our neighbors?”
“It’s not right. I don’t know. I just don’t want to do it, okay?”
“It’s not right? What’s right? Dying because you’re too chicken shit? You afraid Mr. Lee will find out we snuck the egg foo young out of his refrigerator?”
“Stop it! I don’t know. I just don’t want that thing to happen again.”
“Open your eyes, asshole. We’re dying, we have no food—we don’t have any phones! Do I have to spell it out for you? We will die if we do not do something about it today!”
“Relax. I have a plan,” I said—but I didn’t.
“A plan? You have a plan? And what’s your plan exactly, if you don’t mind me asking?” Jerry asked, anxiously waiting for me to unveil some elaborate scheme that would save the both of us from the end of the world.
“Okay. I don’t have a plan, all right. We should wait it out just a couple more days. Just a couple more days, that’s all I’m asking, they’re coming. You have to believe they’re coming.”
“Wait it out? No, no more plans. I ain’t waiting for shit no more. I’m tired of waiting. You need to stop drinking that idiot juice, man, because no one is coming.
You have lost all contact with reality. You can sit here in your little box with that kid if you want, but I’m leaving.”
“Leaving? Where the hell are you going?” I asked as Jerry collected his coat and scarf from my living room and headed for the door.
“Out to lunch.”
Those were the last words I heard Jerry say. My last words to him were “Don’t do anything stupid!”
I warned Jerry about the radio. How many times can you possibly listen to “Keep on Loving You” by Reo Speedwagon? I warned him about the locks. I warned him about his stupid little tantrums out in the middle of the street, but he finally bottomed out.
And less than a day later, I hosed him down into the sewage drain.
BULLDOZER
Sunday, January 19th, 2014
Sometimes—like today—I sneak away from the house in the morning just to come in to Clinkers for a couple of drinks before Dusty wakes up. I come in through the back door and sit here at my regular stool writing in silence. Then I stare off into space as the stench of beer vomit, old piss, and mold from the wood pollutes my nostrils and takes me back to the “good ol’ days.” The tabletops remain filthy with sticky rings, various stains, and drunken hieroglyphics.
This place was always a seedy shithole, but it’s even more so now with all the dirt and grime that’s collected on the walls and picture frames since the fallout. I can still see the Clinkers alumni, the “Hall of Shame,” fraternizing across the bar. There were the barflies, the coke and pill dealer, and Pouty Donna, the inconsolable middle-aged hairdresser holding on to her youth for dear life, hoping she was still attractive enough to meet a man who didn’t want just a hand job from the last resort in the Parking Lot of Desire.
Legend has it Donna used to have the Clinker clan tripping over their tongues back in the golden days, before age, the gravity of liquor, Xanax, and innumerable abusive relationships made her a dull afterthought. The boys tossed her aside like a napkin they just blew their noses on for the new generation of promiscuous, perkier, and tighter college asses that populated Clinkers. Yet Donna stuck around waiting for “Mr. Right,” or what I liked to call “Mr. Right Now.”
If only I had a nickel for every time one of the ol’timers said, “Jesus, will ya look at dem tits! They didn’t build them like those in my day!” That’s because back in your day, you guys were still using hammers and chisels. These days, a couple of hours at the doctor’s office and those babies get a new lease on life.
“Talking Head” Ed was the one with the comb over mullet and Canadian tuxedo singing along and playing air guitar to the AC/DC and Bob Seger songs blaring on the jukebox in the back. Trapped inside a psychedelic time capsule, Ed had the irritating habit of chewing your ear off whenever he did an obscene amount of coke.
“Hendrix was a pioneer, man, don’t get me wrong, Jimmy Paige was cool, but Hendrix was my fix, man. He was God, ya know what I mean? There will never be another Hendrix, man.
All these guys today, they SUCK. They don’t know what licks really are, man. Come on, man, ‘Voodoo Child,’ are you kidding me?’
He’d go on about how he jacks off to Hendrix while I thought how nice it would be to shove the broken end of a beer bottle into his windpipe when he invaded my space.
Ed’s fiancé Henrietta, who the boys at the bar nick named “Blumpkin” aka “Garlic knots,” would chime in and try to sell you on how great Ed’s “band” was and how shitty others were. She was a troll with a loud mouth.
Her voice could cut through a crowd of people and music like cats and screws in a high-speed blender played over a loudspeaker. She and Ed were going to “take the world by storm”—even though he was 42 and they both still lived in her mother’s basement in College Point.
Blumpkin would get so belligerently drunk and insecure about herself she’d try to kick the shit out of all the pretty girls in the bar and have herself thrown out because they were “sluts” and “whores.” She accused us men who never tried to fuck her fat ass of being “fucking pigs” though she acquired a reputation for giving head in the men’s bathroom—hence the nickname Blumpkin.
&nb
sp; There were also the weird, tense guys, the lone wolves who sat at the end of the bar with the faraway eyes watching the wreckage unfold in the rearview mirror of their lives. Jerry and I called them “jumpers.”
They probably sat there dreaming up ways of checking out while nursing the sauce and working up the courage to do it. Never socializing with anyone unless it was with the bartender, and that was always short. How could you send out a distress signal without looking too desperate for a shoulder to cry on?
Why make friends now? “I’ll leave a generous tip; it’s almost over, and who’s coming with me?” When they stopped coming to the bar abruptly, it wasn’t a stretch figuring out what happened. It’s closing time. You don’t have to kill yourself, but you can’t stay here.
Tommy Maroni, my dad’s best friend, was always there before the whippersnappers took over. He was a stand-up guy—old fashioned and good looking like Dean Martin, and he wasn’t a prick like my old man. He would give me booze on the sly when I had to come drive my dad home from the bar every night. I was freshly 16 and had gotten my driver’s permit but only was allowed to drive to the bar and back to pick up my father.
The bartenders would call the house in the middle of the night. That was our cue that dad had had one (or more) too many.
My father was a loving man around his friends, but if they only knew what an asshole he was on the home front. The only one who ever had a hunch was Tommy, and he’d give my dad shit whenever I tried prying him out of the bar.
Tommy would sit there with his cigarette magically and dangerously dangling from his lips, hair slicked back like a bullet with pomade, yelling,…“Whoa, Charlie’s a good fuckin’ kid, Seymour. Why you always breakin’ his balls? Come on, amirite? Go home, gedouttahere!”
Tommy had children of his own and was a proud father. He gloated about his two little girls all the time. He would pull out his wallet and take the time to show you the latest picture of the kids, no matter where he was or what he was doing—“Aye, an’ dis one here,” Tommy would say, happily prompting your attention and pointing to his youngest daughter in the wallet-size photo.
I'M NOT DEAD: The Journals of Charles Dudley Vol.1 Page 7