Halfway

by Tom Macher

  I kicked open the door and made straight for him, but Nob jumped between us. Hymen involved himself. Hymen was a big man, and though I’m tall, I’m not big like him. Thick as an oak and every bit firm, he picked me up and set me on the couch, sat down beside me, one arm half loving and half restraining around my shoulder, the other arm holding me by the chest.

  Easy, T-Mac, Nob said. Why you sweating?

  The Lebanesian’s eyes moved left-right, right-left, telling me shut up, do not speak, just sign the Negative Contract.

  Tell them, I said.

  No.

  * * *

  IT SOUNDS LIKE RHETORIC, bullshit, a con, but I owe those guys my life. I owe the Lebanesian my life. I owe the stripper my life. I owe Captain Ron my life. I owe those brothers in Room Four my life. I am lucky.

  Nob, who’d never wanted anything more than to be liked, called group. I don’t know why. Perhaps it was just a knee-jerk thing, a reaction outside himself that led to the brave and extraordinary, or maybe he’d finally seen enough and knew where he didn’t want to end up. In group, it all came out. Brothers were pissed. They called me a Jack Rehab bitch. Wait, Chicago Pete said, you didn’t drink or fuck and you’re waking me up to talk about it. Fuck you, pussy! Dude walked out. Vic said Miss A would come in the morning and boot my ass. For now, I should sleep, but I didn’t sleep and instead sat out behind the group room with Nob, Hymen, Hair-pie, and the Lebanesian. Around five a.m., some House alumni passed by on their way to a meeting, did I want to go? Sure, I said. At the meeting, they pointed me toward a man who’d become my sponsor, and from the first time we spoke, I knew that no matter what happened at the House, if Miss A kicked me out or not, I’d be safe, I didn’t have to drink again. It is a weird thing, feeling spiritual about something. Tell me all you want about randomness, the lack of explanation, there is no God. I get it. God doesn’t care if I bang the stripper or drink, and yet I survived through no will of my own.

  Miss A moved Captain Ron out of my room and moved Nob in. Then she put me on Scribes. My only contact in the House was Nob, but I didn’t want to talk to Nob, and he didn’t want to talk to me. The term of my Scribes was indefinite. I would sit in the corner and write about how pussy was just an extension of my alcoholism until I either ran away again or learned something. I sat in that corner nine days. Nine. Two decades later, I am still writing about that extension.

  The Lebanesian drank again. So did Chicago Pete, but I hear both are alive now. Captain Ron killed himself. Pope on a Rope disappeared. After a few weeks, Nob and I began speaking, and once we started speaking, we couldn’t stop. Him, me, Hymen, Morning Wood, and Hair-pie stayed up many nights on the back slab, telling each other the shit of ourselves. Later, I was released to the three-quarter house, where the Lebanesian and Uncle Bill had lived. Nob moved, too. So did Hair-pie. Then Hymen and Morning Wood. For a while, we circulated back to group every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday, and though our Tasks still applied and our actions were still monitored, such as I remained on No Female Contact, none of the other drudgery concerned us now. We weren’t subject to Hours or Areas, didn’t have to wake up at any specific time. We could watch TV at noon, if we wanted, or stay out all night.

  These men had become my family, but our work had just begun.

  The Trailer Crew, as Explained at a Dinner Party

  AFTER being released, the five of us rented a pair of trailers in a small trailer court among a stand of pines on a dead-end road off Highway 934 off Highway 431, not far from Diversion Canal and Bayou Terrace in the floodplains of the Amite and Lake Maurepas between French Settlement and Acy in a Louisiana backwater thirty miles from Baton Rouge. This was a no-place town. Its post office was inside a DIY home-improvement store. A small strip mall with a nail salon, a grocery, and a few gas pumps completed its lonely business loop. On the 934 were beef cattle and horse farms, modular homes and prefabs, eroding ranches, cypress barns peeled back by weather, soy and strawberry and oil fields. The House was a twenty-minute drive through swampy softwood forests. It was, in other words, a place we could’ve disappeared in, though we aimed to live here same as we lived in the House, with accountability and an earnest desire to better ourselves. We practiced showing up, being present, trusting in God’s will. We were doing it. And aimed to keep doing it, no matter what.

  Me, Hair-pie, and Nob lived in one trailer; Morning Wood and Hymen rented the ten-wide next door. The four of them worked in the call center for a medical company, and I had graduated from janitor to cleaning crew to swinging a hammer at a local construction company. The job took me all over the surrounding parishes—I framed condos at Pelican Point, hung drywall along the river, or formed slabs in Geismar—and paid six and a half dollars an hour, cash, which was a quarter more than the call center, ten extra bones a week, forty a month, and though I needed the money, more so I was proud of the job. I liked working outdoors and dealing with the weather, took pride in my tan and thickening forearms. Most days I wore only shorts and a pair of sneakers to work—no drawers or shirt, no socks. And I was learning a trade, something I’d always be able to hold on to. This was what I’d do, who I’d be.

  We were all twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, all sober a year and intent on staying that way. Except Hair-pie, who was Hair-pie, we were all highly male—masturbatory, loud, loose with advice, cynicism, and hope. We admired those with “good sobriety”: what meetings you attended was important, who sponsored you, what parts of the Big Book you read and quoted, who you ran with, what you said, and did you stay late at those meetings or leave early. We made five to seven meetings a week, were sponsored by respected members of the community, actively participated in alumni group at the House, sponsoring young brothers, driving dudes to the doctor and airport, had the keys to our home group and made coffee, set up literature, cleaned coffee urns, stacked chairs, swept, and mopped. We attended A.A. conventions, sober dances, and crawfish boils. We worked the steps. And yet we were young. We practiced laughter; sac-tapping and wrestling were common. We perpetrated prank phone calls, petty vandalism, bought pellet guns, would shoot out the windows of each other’s trailer, always straddling that cusp of going too far, the line between youth and responsibility. We watched a shit-ton of porn, ate shit food—TV dinners and Van Camp’s—drank coffee, DC, Sunny Delight. And we drove around a lot. To the supermarket, Sonic, or Mickey D’s, where girls needed ogling. We had our rounds.

  Still, we had limits, set boundaries, and agreed: no sex until we made eighteen months.

  As for Hair-pie, well, he was an enigma—I’ll say different. He was good-looking, rich, yet almost too much so; his looks came off as dishonest, somehow, untrustworthy. When he was embarrassed, his cheeks flushed a mellow rose. He had soft, easily irritated skin, hairless arms, a smooth forehead—I think he plucked his eyebrows. He wore chinos, pressed collared shirts, conservative leather belts, boat shoes or wing tips, argyle socks, nothing cool. He didn’t smoke or drink coffee, not drip, anyway, but lattes, cappuccinos, herbal tea. He liked food, but not what we ate, and instead nibbled on crisps, pancetta, funky-smelling cheese, sugar cookies, raw fish, well-marbled beef. He read Wordsworth and Yeats, listened to Bach and Beethoven, wore a silk robe, cleaned his glasses with a specific silk cloth, made his bed every morning, practiced oral hygiene, general cleanliness, never smelling of BO, swamp-ass, fromunda cheese, or any of these other things. He never had a hangnail and never just made up his hair but combed it first and then brushed it, rolling his part over and over until it stuck true, firm and lasting, whereupon he patted it with proteins, amino acids, egg whites, cholesterol, and sea salt.

  Rumors regarding his sexuality swirled.

  Of course, I’d seen that thing once, that NC back in the House, but had filed this information away in that complacent part of my mind, where I leave things be.

  Other stories emerged. Beating off was a popular activity in the trailers. Our stockpile of porn was apocalypse-ready. We had boxes and boxes of it, but only one couch and
one TV. Next to the couch, our front door offered a head-high diamond-shaped window where we could look out at a visitor and a visitor could look in at us. I say all this because standard practice called for us to return home and, one by one, take our seat on this couch and unwind. Late one afternoon Nob was watching a film from the series The Best of Caught from Behind, Kleenex next to him, stiffy out, when he felt a gentle wind, as if a ghost were in the room, what you might call a sort of “third hand.” It was almost sundown, dark outside under the pines, and Nob told himself, Fuck it, no one’s home. He fast-forwarded through some fellatio to the hard-core banging, but his face flushed, his dick grew limp: he couldn’t shake the feeling of someone else. He got up. The front door’s window was fogged over, and he yanked it open. Here was Hair-pie, glassy-eyed, breathing heavy, his britches tented.

  Word spread. It got so we couldn’t even tell a story from the trailers without offering Hair-pie downstroking in the corner as a show of veracity. No one would believe us.

  * * *

  I SAY ALL THIS because I am forty now, and clean. I have long-term sobriety. I’ve been clean way, way longer than I ever used. This is mostly a chemical absence. I’m prone to the same shortcomings, as always. But it’s misleading to say we stay fully submerged under the rock of addiction, a leper can’t change their spots, etc. I’m not who I once was. If you want proof of psychic change, I’d point to my cash-register honesty and lack of thievery, etc., yet as much as I claim this, further inventory proves otherwise: just last week, in a pinch, I pocketed a roll of toilet paper from a local institution. I didn’t want to use their crapper, is how I justified it. But I’m not replacing that roll. I’m not mailing them a check for a dollar sixty-nine, whatever. I don’t lie awake regretting it. I say this because I’m not always aware of my own intentions. I have a mistrust of me. At core, I’m selfish, single-minded, obsessed, and while I no longer steal with a capital S or deal or hustle or search for hideaway keys under doormats or flowerpots, the thinking remains: I will springboard off you. I don’t think twice about the toilet paper or what I got to do to nut. I’m clean, but a user still. Sugar makes me feel good, TV takes my mind off shit, strange pussy cures depression. I can get so anxious and unremitting that I don’t clean my house, don’t eat, don’t pay bills, and shut myself off from friends, family, loved ones. If you say there’s copper in that vacant, I start thinking about who I know with a truck and where to find a pry bar. I exhibit behavior, in other words, am prone to usury, and all the blanket statements about who I am based on where I’ve been still have some basis of truth.

  But I’m also educated now; I possess what’s called a terminal degree; I’ve taught at a Big Ten university. People trust me. I housesit from time to time, even babysit. And I get invited places—galas, art openings, lunch with boards of trustees, artists’ residencies, dinner parties. And it was at one of these events, with everyone dressed appropriately, the napkins folded correctly, and the wine poured exact, after four courses of local greens and grass-fed meat, when I got bored. My boredom is rarely a good thing. I started telling some of the trailer crew stories.

  * * *

  THE FIRST ONE IS ALWAYS THIS: Hair-pie came back from a visit to his mom’s offering only a left-handed shake. We were big on handshakes in those days, big on hugs, big on confrontation. No one trusted a left-handed shake. What the fuck is wrong with you? Nob asked, but Hair-pie shoved his right hand into his pocket and began whistling as if nothing had been said. Hey, Nob said, show me your hand.

  Hair-pie held up his left hand.

  No, Nob said. The other one.

  Hair-pie began looking about our living room for somewhere to hide. I’m busy, he explained, and marched into the kitchen and scrubbed his hand under the faucet. Wood got involved. Then Hymen. They wanted to know what the hell he was doing.

  Hair-pie slipped free and had almost made it to his car when Hymen reached out and horse-collared him to the ground, ripping his hand from his pocket.

  It was orange. Bright orange. His palms, fingers. All of it orange. He held his wrist now, looking at his orange hand as if trying to find the right words.

  I couldn’t find any lube, he said. Had to use some dumb cream called All-Over-Me-Gold.

  No one was mad now. Does this mean your cock is orange, too?

  I was at my mom’s, he sobbed. It’s all she had.

  * * *

  WE BULLIED HIM, I told the people at this party. And then, feeling that deep burning shame that reddens my ears and swells my throat, my voice muted: We were young.

  I didn’t go into details. Didn’t mention his hairy chest, how we used to hold him down, pull his shirt up, and rub a tennis racket over him until his chest hairs tangled in the webbing. I did not mention the time I punched him so hard in the throat that for a little while we thought he might die. Somehow, despite my naïveté, I knew better.

  We used duct tape to bind his wrists. We’d hold him, one of us grabbing his bound wrists, one on each of his ankles, the fourth beating him about his torso and back. We poked our index fingers into his sternum or forehead until his eyeballs turned red and watered, thick with blood.

  Nope. Couldn’t say any of that. We bullied him. I could feel my throat thicken, my voice failing me.

  After I slugged him in the throat, his rosy cheeks paled. He dropped to one knee and then his belly, kicking his legs spastically as if a bucking donkey. He made noises, gurgles and gasps—it sounded like he was choking, maybe on his own tongue.

  I provided little backstory, bare exposition—the pertinent details of knowing each other from a halfway house seemed good enough. I merely said, After the House, five of us lived in the backwater, in the floodplains, talked about how high the water got in our yards in the spring, when walking between our trailers felt like sloshing through a creek.

  * * *

  THAT CHRISTMAS WE BOUGHT Nob a Pocket Pal, which is a plastic sleeve fashioned to look like a vagina. It had a small tuft of faux pubic hair, garish faux labia, a slot to add lube. One online review describes it as “very close to the real thing, except it wears out after a while.” It was funny, a gag, but also useful. Nob liked it. And it liked Nob. But Nob was going away—home, I think, for the holidays—and left it behind. While he was gone, I decided to steal it, hide it in Hair-pie’s room, make him out as a sicko. I admit I’m dumb. I went into Nob’s room and looked under his bed and in his dresser and closet. Then I thought about things. I wasn’t framing a careful man. Hair-pie behaved desperately; I needed to act desperately, too. I ripped Nob’s mattress off the bed, flipped it against the wall, broke whatever dishware had collected on the nightstand, emptied his drawers, got after his shoe boxes full of CDs and old pictures, smashed a lamp, rifled his papers. Afterward, I rocked on my haunches and collected my breath. The Pocket Pal was already gone.

  Nob wasn’t happy when he returned. He screamed and screamed. What happened to my damn room? What happened to my stuff?

  I couldn’t be bothered to get off the couch. I knew what had happened to his stuff.

  He went to Hymen and Wood’s trailer and screamed at them and came home and screamed at me. Hymen and Wood appeared. Then G-Dub. Even Three Dog stopped by.

  Macher, Nob demanded. What the hell. Tell me: what happened to my stuff?

  I can’t even begin to guess, I said.

  Come look at my room, he pleaded. You got to see it.

  I don’t want to, I said. It’ll just make me angry.

  But others were poking about now, so, not to seem suspicious, I did, too. Torn, shredded, broken: nothing surprised me about any of it. I felt small, red in the ears.

  Nob continued to stomp about, thinking about things. Finally, he banged on and then pulled at Hair-pie’s door, but it was locked. The rest of us got involved. We were forceful.

  Hair-pie opened the door with the kind of desperation on his face that a man will get just before he knowingly beats off with tanning cream.

  We shoved past him and into h
is small room and began tossing it same as I’d tossed Nob’s, ripping his blankets and sheets off, pulling pillows from his pillowcases, shoving his bookcase over, picking up his books and slamming them on the ground. He had potted plants, hanging plants, vased plants, all of which we turned upside down and shook, emptying flora and soil on the carpet. We whacked his shoes against each other as if ridding them of sand. We wound his towels and silk robes into whips, unfurled them on one another. Guys got hold of his chonies, lifted him from the ground. We pinched at his nipples, flicked his nuts one ball at a time, tore at receipts and ledgers, manuals and instruction books, ripped pages from volumes of poetry, and took up his many geodes and banged them until their crystals smoothed. He had horded packages of snack foods—Ding Dongs, Nutter Butters, and Cool Ranch Doritos; we devoured them all. At some point, Morning Wood emerged from the bathroom, his face covered in toothpaste and shaving cream, the Pocket Pal in his hand.

  Look what I found, he said. Fresh used!

  * * *

  THE TRUTH IS, we had fun together, but often words. Hymen used to beat the shit out of me every afternoon. We’d get to swinging on each other and he’d end up on top, pin my arms down with his knees. He’d take my face and rub it into the shag until I bled. Eventually, he set me on fire one afternoon and I almost burned alive, but that’s not this story.

  Their trailer was a ten-wide, ours a twelve. Both were seventy feet long. When we weren’t wrestling or shooting at one another, we’d gather rocks, build a fire pit, grill brats and marshmallows. We worked the steps. After I punched Hair-pie, I made amends, and after Hymen set me on fire, he made amends. Both amends were public affairs, with witness, feeling, and love. We were truly sorry. And truly loved each other. We were going to stay sober forever, together. That was our plan.

  People laughed at us. And mocked us. But also, they admired us. What we had out there was coveted. While other brothers from the House marched out to the crack houses and bars of southeastern Louisiana to disappear and die, we stayed sober. Soon enough, a clump of young girls from a local woman’s treatment center started appearing at the meetings we attended. They’d wait for us in the darkened hallways of churches and health clinics. There wasn’t much to say. It was only a matter of time. They started calling our trailers, their number sadly lighting our caller ID. They never actually spoke, just breathed a lot. Then there’d come hoarse, quickened laughter and a dial tone.