By the time I made the right turn onto Fifty-fourth Avenue, I realized that I was powerless over alcohol and that I’d better get my ass to AA quickly. In a moment I arrived at the Beaches of Paradise, as a wave of relief passed over me. I may not really have been in paradise, but at least I was in a safe haven away from law enforcement and potential vehicular disaster. The traffic incident, plus the ensuing reflections and emotions, had rendered me exhausted. Tomorrow would be a busy day with six clients scheduled, all with varying problems. I needed to be rested and alert to be able to give them my best.
I wanted to go right to bed, but I was jittery and more lonely and nervous about what had happened on the way home than I was tired. I went to the kitchen, opened a cabinet door, and took out my bottle of rum. Then I went to the fridge and pulled out the half-empty bottle of Coke. I selected an eight ounce glass, poured about three ounces of rum into it then poured Coke into the rest of the glass.
That oughta do it, I thought. I turned off the lights, made sure the front door was locked, and walked into my bedroom. I felt so lonely I would have taken a teddy bear with me to bed, had I owned one, and held it all night. But I didn’t own one and pulling the covers up to my chin would have to suffice. I sipped on my drink and thought of Christine and Mary Bauer. I had so much to do to contribute to the betterment of both of those women’s lives. Christine’s, I had unwittingly ripped apart. Mary’s, I wanted to help put back together. Christine’s rebuilding might take longer, but I was determined to do it. It would require insights into myself that I either didn’t know or hadn’t admitted to myself. I swore that my journey of self-exploration and evaluation would begin tomorrow, but right now I wanted to knock myself out. I was tired of thinking and I wanted to escape consciousness and hide out in sleep.
That night the devil invaded my peace once again. This time there was no pummeling. There was no throwing me around the room. He merely appeared in the dream bending over my sleeping body. He was straddling me with one leg on either side of my stomach.
“Wake up, Turf. Wake up, sleepyhead. I have something I want to tell and show you.” Slowly, I awoke from my dream sleep and immediately looked into his red, evil face that was only inches from mine. Each hand was forcefully pinning down one of my shoulders.
“I’ve got you now, Turf. I’ve got you now.” He said nothing more. The sneer on his face slowly morphing into a show of his huge frightening teeth.
Then he snapped his head and upper body down and began eating my face. I couldn’t move as I screamed beneath him in excruciating pain. Bite after bite he de-chunked my face. Finally he arched back upward, my blood and body parts falling from his mouth. He thrust his tongue out and licked his chops, all the while sneering victoriously. A moment later he bent down again with the intention of going for my eyes. It was at the very instant he was about to eat out my left eye that I heard it. Knock, knock on my front door, and Satan heard it too. Instead of continuing with his cannibalistic meal, his body snapped upright and he turned quickly to look from where the sounds had emanated. He appeared surprised, not as if he expected more of his minions to join him in devouring me from face to toe.
Thank God he had been distracted. He ceased his attack but bent over me a final time, pinning my shoulders once more to the bed.
“I’ve got you now, Turf. I’ve got you now.”
Then he flew off me backward right through the ceiling without chipping a piece of plaster.
For an instant I felt relief that Lucifer had exited my bedroom. Though what was left of my face was in horrific pain, his assault ended. For one split second, I experienced a break. Then I heard it again, knock, knock. Utter terror grasped me again as I anticipated some monstrous demon blasting through the front door, sprinting through my living room, ripping off my bedroom door, and continuing the onslaught. The Two-Knock Ghost had never knocked two times twice before but again it didn’t reveal itself. I, for some reason not understood by myself, was now more frightened by the Two-Knock Ghost than of the devil. I lay in my dream bed, on blood-soaked sheets, in unrelenting agony, trying to figure out why the occasional two knocks from the Two-Knock Ghost was more frightening than the devil and his myriad prior assaults upon me. I concluded that I was more afraid of the unknown than of the known. I actually feared that there could be something more devastating than Beelzebub. Maybe behind those knocks were dozens of demons, hundreds, endless thousands, waiting to ravage. My final dream horror that fateful night was the realization that each night I could dream many dreams; that each different night could be a new set of dreams. How many times could Satan and the Two-Knock Ghost—whatever it turned out to be—intrude upon my sacred sleep time?
At the moment, I conceived that halacious question, I woke with a start. I was lying on sweat-soaked sheets, and I popped up with such force that I almost passed out. I turned the light on and sat upright in my bed shivering with fear and worry. None of this was right—not waking in terror at 2:42 a.m., not waking without Christine beside me, not waking with an empty 8 ounce glass that only two and one half hours earlier had held what I thought was my greatest ally, but what could have been my worst enemy. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t merely the external things around me that were wrong, it was the flaws within myself that had caused the things around me to be far off kilter and ugly.
I had never felt worse in my life, not when my family was killed, not when I carried my suitcase out of the home that Christine and I shared, not when I worried that Lena might die. Never. I was sitting in my bed alone at the absolute direness of my life, when merely a few hours earlier I thought I had so much good stuff going on. Maybe I still did have so much going on inside of myself and around me to live for. But I didn’t feel it at this moment. I had lost myself. It had been replaced by shame. My god, I had almost killed someone earlier that night—a young woman. I had almost taken her life. And for what? So my senses of emotional pain and worry could be dulled by the magic elixir of rum and Coke?
I was out of control. Maybe that’s what the devil stood for. Alcohol. Maybe that was what’s eating me alive piece by piece. Maybe the devil was me. I had already become the one thing I swore when I was younger that I would never become—a drunk driver. A surge of desperation sprung within me, beginning at the base of my stomach and erupting like a volcano. I gasped twice for air as the surge passed my throat then gigantic hot tears began cascading down my cheeks. I was no longer a man. I was a polluted shell. I needed physical and emotional detox, and I needed to refill myself with character, strength, and absolute honesty.
Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t think I was a bad guy. I knew I wasn’t, although I had almost become a killer of a human being a few hours earlier. What I did know was that I was a weaker man than I had ever been before. I knew that I had hurt people that I had loved especially my wife in ways that only she was aware of. And what about my kids? I had three beautiful children and I never until this night thought that I had been anything other than a good dad. Had I hurt them too and not had a clue about it? Had I hurt them and they never told me, then drifted away from home one by one, clutching their secrets close to their fragile psyches?
Until this moment I thought I knew so much about psychology. I had been a product of a good home. I was well educated from books and learned scholars. I had helped thousands of struggling souls over a thirty-year career when they were passing through trials and tribulations. But suddenly I understood that I had only scratched the surface of what psychology was. I needed to go on an expedition to the center of my being. And I needed to begin immediately before I lost everything that was near and dear to me, including myself, forever.
CHAPTER 9
THE NEXT MORNING I woke feeling I had a horse collar draped around my neck. I had a busy day scheduled, but I knew that today would be busier than a normal day because today was the beginning of my delving into my plan of self-correction. The foremost question in my mind was, where do I start? F
or the first thirty minutes of my waking day while I shaved, showered, and combed and brushed my red and gray hair, I couldn’t come up with an answer. It wasn’t until I reached into the refrigerator that my starting point became clear. I had a taste for a glass of strawberry milk for breakfast. As I reached for the quart of one of my other favorite drinks, I noticed three cans of Coke on the same shelf. It immediately made me think of my rum, not to have a drink—I never drank in the morning—but because I thought that the first thing that I should probably do was to pour the liquid out of the cans then pour out the remaining ounces in the bottle of rum. I did those things. It was easy. I felt good about it. I felt better about myself. I was on the right path already.
But the next question popped into my head almost as quickly as the first one had been answered. What next? No answer appeared as I popped two pieces of wheat bread into the toaster, waited for them to pop up, buttered them, added some strawberry jam, and then slapped on two pieces of American cheese. That was one of my favorite quick breakfasts.
No answer arrived while I washed my dish, knife, and glass then brushed my teeth. In fact, I felt my mind wander off myself and onto my clients for the day and their myriad challenges. I concluded quickly that the rest of my journey of self-exploration might not be as simple as pouring three ounces of rum and three cans of Coke down the drain.
It was when I grabbed my briefcase before walking out the door that the answer to my next question arrived. I thought of my clients and what I was going to say to each of them. For years, almost since the beginning of my career as a psychologist, I’d kept a notebook about each person I’d counseled. When I thought about the notebooks, the second answer came almost simultaneously. I should begin a notebook for myself. I should first make a list of things I needed to do, things like pouring out those three ounces of liquor.
I thought for a moment how associative the brain was. Twice in the last half hour, I had seen one thing and it had made me think of something else that was related to it, such a wonderful aspect of the human mind, its associative nature. It was a gift of nature that kept getting better over time. How deeply it helped with investigations of everything from science to criminology, to human understanding of others and oneself. I would need this aspect of my brain during the exploration of my own being. I would write something down and that thing would make me think of another task that needed to be done. One thing would lead to another and that process would replicate itself innumerable times. Then I would sort the tasks ahead in order of importance. It would not be unlike organizing the plan of attack for a short story or novel. This would be how I would proceed with the outline of my journey of self-repair. I would work on this every day. Part of me wanted to call Christine and tell her my thoughts and new insights. But the bigger part of me concluded it was too soon to tell her anything. After all, what had I accomplished—not much of anything. As I drove down Tyrone Boulevard toward Fifth Avenue, I likened what I had accomplished thus far to a young kid who had just played his first game of baseball in the lowest league possible and had gone one for four, a single. One hit was all I had. I was merely starting out. I had a long way to go to reach the major leagues of personal growth. If I called Christine now, as I so desperately wanted, I would tell her what had occurred and she would gently praise me for what I had discovered about myself, but that would be all that there was; a tiny sliver of a positive single baby step in a trek of a thousand miles. If I told her anything, I would feel more shame than satisfaction.
I would wait to talk with the love of my life because I had not discovered anything about myself other than my own vulnerability. I did not know why I felt such vulnerability, why I walked around with an enigmatic hole in my heart, why I worried so much about losing my loved ones. I hadn’t yet figured out a single way that I had hurt Christine and the kids. Worst of all, I was baffled by my devil dreams and a pesky ghost who always knocked but would never come in or reveal itself.
My day at the office was busy. I saw six clients, each with emotional pains and sorrows that needed addressing. There were differences about this day, however. First, every chance I had I wrote notes to myself in my own personal notebook as to what I needed to do to repair myself. Secondly, prior to today I had always considered that there was more than just a professional wall between me and my clients. I had always thought that I was healthy and my clients were messed up. Even when I was grieving the most about the deaths of my family, I felt that the grief, although overwhelming, was a natural consequence of the crash. I had long ago concluded that I would go through the grieving on my own. After all, I had a tremendous wife, another set of loving grandparents, good friends. I didn’t need to see a psychologist. In fact I never once even thought about it. But today was different. Not only did I need to pick a place to attend AA meetings, I needed to see a psychologist to help me deal with the devil dreams and the Two-Knock Ghost.
After beginning to jot down ideas for my personal plan of attack, I rearranged them before I left the office. At the top of the list I put, “find a place to attend AA meetings.” Number two was, “find a good psychologist.” Number one would be easy. I had quickly learned where many of the AA meetings were held when I first started my practice in St. Petersburg. As you can imagine, many of my clients were dealing with alcohol issues, and if they weren’t already attending AA meetings, I would not only recommend that they would attend AA, but I told them of a place that was conveniently located near their home or place of employment. I wanted to make it easier for them in case they threw out the objection, “I don’t know where to go for AA meetings.” I knew where I would go for my AA meetings immediately. There was a building off Ft. Harrison in Clearwater near the Scientology headquarters. It was on Turner Street, a few feet from the railroad tracks. Not only did I have the place listed on my sheet of AA meeting places, but I had been there several times in the last couple of months. I had referred one of my clients there. His name was Toby Magnessun. He was a handsome man, barrel-chested, six feet tall with playful, beautiful, youthful blue eyes and soft blond hair that was beginning to show signs of white creeping in. Toby was a St. Petersburg police officer—a good one. Only forty-nine, he had been on the job for twenty-three years. His jacket was filled with awards and commendations, excellent performance evaluations, and a history of promotions and salary increases. He was a good-hearted soul with a wife and three children, two older boys and their little sister. The boys’ ages were eleven and nine. His daughter was six. For the first thirteen years, Toby and his wife, Alicea, had a wonderful marriage. Alicea was a critical care nurse at Morton Plant Hospital. She was a hardworking and kind woman and a great mother. Of course, in my mind I thought she was a Christine type—a rare, marvelous soul who brightened a man’s day by merely being in his presence.
Unfortunately, two and one half years ago Alicea was diagnosed with breast cancer. That news hit Toby hard. All the scrapes he had been in as a cop had cumulatively not impacted him the way the news of his wife’s breast cancer had. His pain did not come from the shallow belief that his wife might lose one or both of her breasts, but from the moment to moment nagging thoughts that he might lose her. Toby had never been a big drinker; but he’d had his share of outrageous college drinking nights, wedding binges, celebratory sports nights with buddies, and wild cookouts where he was the host. But after Alicea was diagnosed, he began drinking little by little the first few months then more and more beyond that. The amount of alcohol he was drinking began impacting his job performance. First the changes were almost imperceptible—a few minutes late here and there, a single step slower in chases. Nobody could tell initially, that he was drinking every day. A few months into Alicea’s illness, Toby started chugging it down. He would drink about anything, a complete opposite from me. His favorite was beer. He liked Heineken the best. He also favored sangria. Often he would have a Heineken and chase it with a fruit filled glass of sangria. He loved fruity drinks—strawberry margaritas, banana
daiquiris, Red’s Apple ale and tequila sunrises. His way of drinking was to go to any one of a number of his favorite bars, hang out for an hour or two, buy drinks for his friends, even strangers, talk up a storm, drive home tipsy or loaded, send the babysitter back to her house then tuck the kids into bed, often telling them a story either about his day or a fairytale.
Many nights Alicea would already be in their bed either resting or asleep. At that point her cancer-fighting efforts were drastically draining her normal energy. Toby would brush his teeth, gargle extensively with mouthwash, and crawl into bed with his wife. Most of the time she was too weak to notice he was high. He was skillful at turning off his bar room braggadocio and turning on his charm and tenderness for his favorite human being. Toby’s problems with alcohol were not yet impacting his family. They were affecting his work. His partner, Patrick Kelly, a hard-nosed, straightlaced officer of thirty-five was acutely aware of Toby’s continual physical decline. Initially, a few months before he was convinced alcohol was the culprit, he had asked Toby if he had a pulled muscle after noticing during a two cop chase that Toby was more than a couple of steps slower. Even though Toby was fourteen years older than Patrick, Toby had always maintained a high standard of physical excellence. He had not always been able to keep up with Patrick on chases but sometimes he had been able to pass him even when he started a few feet behind Patrick. The reason he sometimes started behind Patrick was because Toby drove the squad car the far greater majority of the time. It often took him two or three seconds longer to get out of the car for foot pursuits.
The slightly slower foot speed of Toby was not what pushed Patrick over the edge of his concern into action. It was Toby’s increasingly slurred speech, his worsening tardiness, and the troublesome look of increased fatigue and worry on Toby’s face that motivated Patrick to ask Toby more pointed questions. They started out sort of like this: “Toby, I know I’ve talked with you a little about this before, but I’m concerned about your running lately. Are you sure you don’t have some nagging injury you want to talk about?” Toby would always answer something like: “No, it’s okay, Patrick. I’ve been eating too much pasta lately. It’s just a phase I’m going through. I’ll cut it out soon. I’ll be fine.” He was never curt, always smooth, slickly covering up the real truth.
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