by Moshe Kasher
ANGEL
Remember your declarations! Come with me and walk toward the light. This way to salvation! This way to high school graduation. This way toward contemporary Christian rock music! Come toward the light.
No devil popped up on the other shoulder.
DEVIL
Fuck that square-ass angel! Come with me! Let’s get high and fuck shit up! Fuck high school. Let’s go to HIGH school! Cisco! Gin! Malt liquor! LET’S FUCK SHIT UUUUUUUUUUUP!!!!
There was no struggle to decide.
ANGEL
Come to me. I have kittens.
DEVIL
Come to me. I have pussy!
ANGEL
Follow me, I’ll make your family proud.
DEVIL
Follow me, I’ll make pissing on the carpet seem fun again.
ANGEL
Walk with me, be a better man.
DEVIL
Walk with me, and let’s go jerk off while we smoke weed.
That’s how logic would dictate that the addictive thought process would work. Temptation stacked against prudence. Prudence crumbles. Temptation conquers. That’s how it should work. How it actually does work is much scarier. When it came right down to it, there was no moral struggle. There was no struggle at all. There was simply an empty space in my brain where the night before there had been a firm declaration never to do this again. When the thought to take a hit, hit, I simply forgot I was planning on quitting. I just forgot. It went more like this:
I’d think:
ME
I should get high.
Then I’d think:
ME
I’m gonna go get high.
No struggle. How are you supposed to combat that?
That went on for months. Every night I quit. Every morning I forgot.
Another thing.
Another thing.
Another thing.
Every day was like the last one. Groundhog Day. Wake up. Get up. Steal money. Get high. Steal booze. Get drunk. Wake up. Get up. Steal money. Get high. Steal booze. Get drunk. Wake up. Get up. Steal money. Get high. Steal booze. Get drunk.
This.
Day.
Never.
Seems.
To.
End.
No end in sight.
I’m defeated.
Chapter 15
“Who Am I?”
—Snoop Dogg
I hadn’t expected this. I’d been telling myself for years what every addict will identify as a familiar trope: “I could quit if I wanted to, I just don’t want to.” Then came the day that I wanted to. Then came the realization that I couldn’t. The moment you need control is the moment you realize you’ve lost it.
Donny was having similar results.
We’d meet up and discuss our plans to sober up while drinking forties of St. Ides.
“Maybe we should check back into that rehab,” I said, scared.
“You can’t stop either?” Donny laughed a sick laugh.
“Naw.” I stared at my hands, wrapped around that thick bottle, beer sweat dripping down over my fingers. I finished that forty off and made up my mind.
I told my mother the plan, and a flicker of hope flashed in her eyes.
“I’m going to go to Kaiser and check in,” I told her.
“That’s great. I’m really happy to hear that.”
Donny and I traveled out to the Kaiser Outpatient Adolescent Chemical Dependency Program in Walnut Creek and told them the truth for a change.
We were admitted immediately.
I realized the second I got there that I hated them just like I had hated the people in the last place, just like I hated every fucking adult with power over me.
Oakland Public Schools had also noticed I’d dropped back out of school. Not that it mattered. I was a nuisance to them. More trouble than I was worth.
My mother caused a stink and got me on the waiting list for another school called Spraings Academy, which she was convinced would be the answer for me. Oakland agreed to one more year of funding therapy for me. I’d have another fucking counselor to go to. Oh joy.
I walked into group at Kaiser that first day and realized I’d made a huge fucking mistake. The kids seemed cool enough but then group started. The door opened and a voice from the back of the room boomed, “Hey, everyone. Great to see you all.”
I knew that voice. I knew it from somewhere. I turned and looked.
Tim Fuckin Hammock. New head counselor of the Kaiser program. My nemesis from New Bridge. The guy who hated me and baited me back at my old rehab was now the freshly minted head counselor of my latest one, conveniently transferred to Kaiser just in time to ruin my attempt at getting my shit together. I couldn’t ever catch a break.
He winked at me. He smiled big.
That fucking bitch, I thought.
This was going to suck.
Nonetheless, I was interested in trying. I was trying every night. And failing every morning. Rehab couldn’t take away that hunger. I was starting to get really scared.
I sat in group, wondering what the point of all this was. Tim walked into group every day and sneered at me. He sat down and lectured us about how to change. No one listened.
Donny and I spent our hours in group fucking around, mocking Tim for the wart he’d grown on his cheek in the years since I’d seen him at New Bridge.
We’d take turns, Donny and I, circling around the room making eye contact with the other kids in group and fucking with them. We’d convince them that they had something on their face and laugh as we watched them rubbing away imaginary stains.
Whenever the group psychiatrist, Dr. Dale Dallas, would enter the group and sit in to observe Tim’s leadership skills, Donny and I would yell, “Wokka Wokka Wokka!” at him.
What? He looked exactly like Fozzie Bear.
We’d yell about injustices Tim had never committed.
“Dr. Dallas, is it normal for Tim to be holding my penis while I give a urine sample?” I snickered.
“That’s not a funny accusation at all.” Dr. Dallas squirmed uncomfortably.
“Okay, fine, Tim never held my dick, but can you tell us one more time what life was like with Kermit and Miss Piggy?” I’d ask as Donny cackled one last “Wokka Wokka Wokka!!”
We died laughing.
Tim turned red. Dale Dallas left the room shortly thereafter.
I was trying. I was, I just didn’t really know how to try. Kaiser, like New Bridge, chanted, “Get rid of your friends, you’ll never get better surrounded by those guys.”
How could I do that? No way. I’d just be strong.
Every night after group, I’d go back to Oakland with Donny and we’d go catch up with DJ and Corey and whoever else was around.
Again and again I’d declare to the boys, “I’m not drinking tonight, guys!” I said it earnestly, nudging Donny for his assent. It never came.
“More for us!” DJ would slur and take a slug of the booze.
We sat in a circle, the bottle being passed, person to person.
Each notch closer to me it got, the less clearly I could grab hold of my resolve not to drink.
It was coming to me next.
Ahh, forget it. A drink and oblivion. The pain didn’t go away but at least it quieted down. I get hazy memory when I look into a bottle of gin.
I stumbled home, glowing drunk, stinking of gin, close to the edge.
I fell into the house and hobbled my ass toward the bathroom.
My mother was waiting, standing sentinel at the top of the stairs. “Is this what it looks like when you get sober?” she said, angry at her hopes being betrayed again. “You’re drunk.”
“A bit!” I laughed and pushed her out of the way, making my way to the bathroom for a nice drunken shit.
She chased after me, screaming, but I stopped listening and slammed the door in her face. I plopped down on the toilet and began the drunken defecation. That’s when my mother kicked the bathroom door open li
ke an angry police officer.
“I’m sick and tired of you pushing me around!” she screamed, charging me like a linebacker.
“Mom, I’m shitting!” was the only reply that made sense.
She didn’t slow a tick. She ran straight for me, screaming like a madwoman, “FUCK YOU!!!!!”
My eyes widened in terror.
Contact.
She slammed into me and wrestled me off the toilet, pulling me down onto the bathroom floor, a tail of feces still hanging from me.
With my pants around my ankles and shit everywhere, I threw her off me and her hands scratched and slapped at my face. I grabbed her hand and bit down, hard. Her skin popping under my teeth, her blood shooting into my mouth. I slapped her. I shook her.
She crawled out of there, crying.
Here I am on the bathroom floor with shit and blood and tears and anger covering me. I was just like that baby shooting down the birth canal. Once again, my mother was asking, “What is he?” I didn’t even know. I’m not human anymore, am I?
I’m a fucking animal. I’m a monster.
The police came. My mother called them. Aw, fuck. I’m too drunk for it. I fell asleep and hoped everything would go away.
I woke up early the next day, my head buzzing. That flush of the memory of what I did came flooding back to me.
“Hey, Mom,” I whimpered.
My mother turned and looked at me. Cold and pissed. Emotions gone. No disappointment left.
The police report that my mother had filled out was sitting beside her.
“They are sending us a date for you to go to trial. They said it would be a few months,” my mom signed to me, matter-of-factly.
“A court date? Ma, what’d you do?” I couldn’t believe this.
“I didn’t do anything. The police did. They are sending us a date for you to go to trial,” she repeated, turning her back on me and flipping the TV on.
I could tell that the discussion was closed.
My mother had entered me in some kind of juvenile first-offense court program, which was the limit of the trouble she could get me into that night. Fed up and convinced that I needed to be taught a lesson, she pressed charges, and months later, I went to trial.
It was a kind of kangaroo court, where every single defendant was declared guilty and sent to anger management classes and community service weekends, humiliated and wearing a bright neon safety vest.
Head down, I entered the workspace with my vest hanging on me like a dunce cap, declaring me unfit for human consumption.
A thousand-yard walk to the work furlough check-in. My fellow juvenile delinquents sized me up.
“Ay, man,” one kid said to another. “Whachu in here for?”
A pimply black kid replied, “Grand theft auto. What about you?”
“I robbed a liquor store.”
Pimples looked at me up and down. “What about you, white boy?”
“I bit my mama,” I growled. “Better watch out before I bite you, too.”
The kids pretty much left me alone after that.
I did my work, minding my own business. The last thing I wanted to do was make friends. One more time I’d landed myself in some dumb shit quite without my own consent.
Before that trial, though, I had to go back to Kaiser and in front of all my peers there face the music of what I’d done.
Tim was waiting for me, armed with the information he wanted. He knew just what I’d been up to. He looked delighted at the prospect of calling me out in front of everyone.
“You wanna tell us about what happened last weekend?” he asked me, pretending to sound concerned.
“Not really, Tim. No, not really.” What was this dickhead trying to buddy up with me for? Trying to connect with me? Fuckin’ yeah, right.
“Well, after an incident like the one your mother told me about, we can’t continue here without you discussing it. It’s a pretty big deal.” Tim crossed his arms.
“I thought we weren’t supposed to cross our arms, Tim. Don’t you know that’s a sign of defensiveness?”
“Making smart-ass comments isn’t going to get you out of this,” Tim said flatly.
“Look, just please leave me alone. Just stop fucking pushing me.”
I was getting desperate, close to tears. I was so fucking ashamed and confused. But I wasn’t telling this guy that. He’s trying to get me to admit this shit in front of a group of kids? No way.
“Well, then, we might need to ask you to leave the group.” Tim sighed and crossed his legs.
“Yeah, you’d like that. Here I am finally trying to quit and nobody gives a fuck. Nobody wants me to get better, they just want to talk about how fucked up I am. Kick me out then. I don’t care anymore.”
We sat in silence for thirty seconds. A standoff.
“Let’s take a break, guys.” Tim looked at the group like they were all in on something I wasn’t. Only Donny was on my side but he was high as fuck. I knew that for a fact. “Take five and we’ll regroup for family session.”
Family session. Ugh. My mother would be there, bandaged. Everyone’s parents would be there, staring at me, disgusted. I couldn’t fucking deal with it.
Donny and I climbed into the elevator ready to go have a smoke and calm down. I was shaking.
Right as the elevator doors inched to a close, a hand darted in. Nails flashed the sensor and the door opened back up.
Pantera Neck. We called this chick Pantera Neck because of the shaved high back, rocker hairstyle she sported. She jumped into my elevator giving me the stink eye.
“The fuck are you staring at me like that for?” I snarled at her.
“I don’t like you. You give Tim too much attitude,” she said, frowning. Hadn’t she just been flirting with me last week?
“Lucky me, I don’t give a fuck about your opinion of me.” I turned to Donny to ignore this bitch.
“Fuck you, don’t turn your back on me.” She grabbed my shoulder and spun me toward her.
I shoved her away from me, yelling, “Hands to yourself, ho!”
She leapt at me, her hands spinning furiously at me like a feral cat’s. Her manicured nails slid down my face, raking a red streak down my cheek.
Did she just cut me?
I felt a trickle of blood dripping down my face like a tear, calling back to mind the memory of the blood I let from my mother’s hand. I snapped. You see, somehow, the impotence I felt at the hands of all the women in my life, my mother, my grandmother, Dr. Susan, played itself out in overcompensation in the rest of the world. I would lash out at the few girls in my life at any slight disrespect. I’d yell and mock them mercilessly, hoping for tears, hoping for a breakdown. I had no idea at the time that I was just wresting from them the power I never had over the real women in my life, my mother and my grandmother. I didn’t think about the deeper implications of all this of course—I just snapped.
I pounced on Pantera Neck, snapping, throwing her up against the elevator wall screaming, “Don’t ever fuckin’ put your hands on me, you tweaker bitch!” I shook her, grabbed a handful of hair, and yanked her head back. She spat at me.
Donny lunged over to stop me, and just then, the elevator hit the ground floor and the doors opened to all of my peers staring at me with this chick in my hands, their mouths agog.
They rushed in and pulled me off her.
Time for family session!
Ten minutes later, Tim shuffled into group having just debriefed with Dr. Dallas in the hallway. The elephant in the living room was me. I could feel the tension in the room. I’d felt it before. I’d lived my life as the “identified patient.” I was used to being the subject of conversation wherever I was. Used to being the problem. Every eye in that place was on me, silently accusing me of being the worst of the worst. Shit, maybe I was.
“What? I’m the one who’s cut!” Blood was dripping down my face. I dabbed it away with my sleeve.
Pantera Neck and her entire family glared at me from across t
he room with death in their eyes.
I shrugged, like, “Sorry?”
I was embarrassed.
I’m sitting here looking like a brute. How did I get here?
Worst of all, my mom’s interpreter that night was this guy I’d always looked up to. Mike Hicks. A cool interpreter. Might not mean much to you, but interpreters were a ubiquitous feature in my life by then. I was the subject of so many meetings, there were so many reasons to need an interpreter. They sat in the back like the silent third party. A passive conduit of the information that bore my sins. They knew all my secrets. Bound by a code of ethics that swore them to secrecy and nonjudgment like the Federation of Planets from Star Trek, but I knew better. I knew I was a hell gig for them. I was nasty and unforgiving to interpreters. Nobody liked me. Except Mike. I knew he liked interpreting for me. Mostly because he didn’t quit like all the other interpreters who’d come to family session. Mike was like me, the child of two deaf parents. He wore leather ties and signed like he knew what he was doing. He had long hair and a chimney sweep, E-Street mustache. A cool guy. An ex-drinker himself, he didn’t seem to be judging me like every other adult in my clinical malaise. He was almost like me.
Everyone else’s eyes accused me. Even Donny looked at me like, “I can’t help you.”
Ahh, nobody could.
Tim spoke up.
“After today’s group, and especially after the incident in the elevator, I’m afraid we are going to have to ask you to leave the program. I’m sorry.” I almost believed Tim just then. He looked disappointed. Was that possible? I sighed.