I wish to think that we’re not just slaves to dopamine and serotonin levels. The cynic in me recognizes chemicals and their resulting imbalances. The part of me still capable of tricking the rest cries, “Love!” I listen to songs or I read poems and the words shuck and jive, as they should, but sometimes one or three land a punch to the celiac plexus and still manage to draw my breath. Just like the literal and metaphoric heart, the diaphragm is a muscle that might work forever without your notice. Until something goes wrong.
Full color at high speed with no filter
I’ve asked myself what it is, and I guess it’s more a kind of darkness. There was enough distraction when I was younger and preoccupied in the establishment of a life, that I was able to ignore it, with situational exceptions. Other proclivities like sex and alcohol sometimes made it feel like there wasn’t even anything to worry about. What I’ve come to learn is that unhealthy sexual shenanigans (if they even exist), or alcohol, or sometimes drugs, were not in and of themselves the disease, but were, in fact, the telling symptoms of something far more dangerous that was just waiting for me with its gangrenous soul, and sad, sad heart. But, oh so pretty to look at.
I guess my misguided attempts to always live in full color at high speed with no filter, and in possession of a ferocious, single-minded intensity I sometimes used as a means to those ends, my life became double-edged, semi-charmed, yet, more and more, self-destructive. I can also say that I’ve been to more cities than I can count on Trip Advisor know more about the subtle nuances of the human condition than I had previously thought was possible, felt deeper feelings (good and bad) than anyone I know not suffering with a serious mental illness, and been in situations that I know most people will never see, want to visit, or even believe exist. (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve found myself in a random house or hotel room at three in the morning with some random Mary Magdalene, contemplating what to do next and thinking to myself, “How in the fuck did I end up at this moment, in this place, watching what I’m watching? What’s my play here?”) But everything bad that happened was happening too often to be a coincidence. Is still happening in some respects. When the darkness finally rose above, it came swifter and stayed longer than I thought was possible, and consequently damaged and collaterally damaged much more than I could pretend not to care about; everything in its reach got and gets caught in its velvet web
The argument can be made that my experiences have helped make me the person that I am. And for the most part that’s a good thing. I love madly, forgive quickly, feel empathy deeply, laugh hard when I’m happy or sad, make others laugh and smile, and easily make real connections with people. But there’s an opposite side to that same coin that doesn’t sound like charisma, though it has as its source the same dark energy. I catch myself crying spontaneously at almost nothing, hurt intensely with an emotional paralysis, wander the streets lost and lonely, and strike back hard with words when I feel that I’ve been damaged intentionally. Yet I know that I don’t do evil things because I’m not inherently evil. I take action that looks evil not with premeditation, but by following the paths of least resistance and instant gratification, without regard for any consequences, good or bad, until they happen.
Someone I love dearly spoke of me once to another person I loved dearly (when I wasn’t there) saying to her, “He’s super smart, kind, and engaging when he’s in the mood, and seductive as he wants to be. But there is a dark side.” At the time I was mad at that spilled, heretical revelation. But it’s difficult, disingenuous, and ultimately pointless to speak anger to truth.
Evil Dead 2 again gives life lessons
So many things in pop culture, and so many things that surround me currently, have exacerbated my normal obsession with mortality. Which, counterintuitively, has made me thankful for the life I have left. There are so many things I’ve been mad about for so long now, and so much damage I’ve done to my life by honoring that anger. Until relatively recently I believed it to be righteous, when, in fact, it was self-righteous. It’s like that scene in Evil Dead 2 when Ash thinks he’s choking an evil, undead antagonist, but when he looks over his shoulder into a mirror he’s actually choking himself.
I’m grateful though for the things I have and have had, even if some of them, at least for now, are lost. I’m grateful for the times that life could have punished me, but instead, let me off with a warning. I’m even grateful for the times I wasn’t guilty but was treated as if I was. I’ve learned the hard way how to deal with these situations should they arise in the future, and they will.
My son-shared birthday is next Tuesday so as a present to myself I’ve been watching videos of him and his sister from the impossibly cute and precious ages between three and five when I was lucky enough to be a daily part of their lives.
I am melancholic, but I am grateful.
Dead leaves and the dirty ground
Love, or any of these other huge emotional factors that matter so much in our lives often involve a chosen, shared cognitive dissonance that manifests in dysfunction, sadness, and pain. Why do we do this? Why do we spend so much energy looking in one direction when we’re running in the other?
The dead leaves. The clutter. The things that seem to matter so much at the moment. Why do we have self-awareness, but are unable to step out of ourselves? Why the impatience? Why the impotence?
The way I was
You don’t know me like I was. The me when I was corporate. It’s why I was always welcome and always rehired through my myriad proclivities. You never understood my value and it’s why you wrongfully think I have no ambition. I am loyal. I am political to a fault. In that world I only know resilience and survival. I eat people I don’t like or who I think are unhelpful. I will sabotage your bungee cord and return your smile when you jump. I’m much much softer now. There are still teeth in my mouth and bile in my gut.
Guttural
This system is broken but not because we can’t see the symptoms; those are remarkably obvious. We ask the wrong questions. We’re so busy asking what words to use that we forget to ask why write? Words are what makes us different from the other apes. Chimpanzees can drink ants through makeshift draws. They masturbate and cheat on their chimpanzee girlfriends and wives. The similarities. Modern humans are more eloquent, not quite refined; we have commandeered the larynx. Guttural groans eventually became poetry. But Shakespeare is not possible without the first caterwauls. The noises that sprang forth from that almost human. Cautiously translated to, “That one is mine.” Or, “I fuck her, not you.”
And now we go to the moon and fear death.
Two stupid apes
You asked me what I was afraid of and I couldn’t articulate it at the time. This is that. That moment when you wake up to pee and she’s warm and asleep and beautiful. Not concidentally her mouth is closed. And you look at her and think, “Fuck, if this doesn’t work then maybe nothing will.” How do two stupid apes rub against each other and still not tell you about the time, “I did this and no one else can know?” How can we call each other the worst words we can think of for years? How can we be happy when those words actually work? How do I look at you in all your warm beauty knowing you don’t see I’m warm and beautiful too? That you’re here because we have this unspoken agreement. That if either one of us were strong enough we’d say maybe this hurts too much. Then I cry and think about my life without you. Wonderful terrible you. And that pang makes me dial. And pick up when you call. I don’t know why cows say moo. They just do.
Vinyl
It’s weird, all these things I curated to a greatness in my mid-teens have come ‘round to be the defining characteristics in haute couture. You might know the story of how I went to undergraduate Tacoma with nothing but a box of ill-fitting sweaters, two pairs of size-44 Levis 501’s (that I squeezed into so I wouldn’t have to buy a bigger pair) and 500 LPs ranging from Kiss to Depeche Mode to Iron Maiden to Nina Simone to Queen to Rocky Horror to Miles Davis to the Escape From New York Soundtrack. I didn’t even pack a turntable and wouldn’t have one for my first three months in school. I carried all of those albums into a future I had no idea what would bring; they were how I defined a pretty big part of myself. And in just 12 months I would trade all of those albums, at the Jelly’s on Pensacola for the promise of about 40 “permanent” compact discs.
The lament I have for that moment is not financial. There are far greater “what-ifs” that would have resulted in far higher values lost or found. At best, those albums might fetch five figures if the collection remained intact, and mostly undamaged (highly unlikely). I lost more selling Apple stock too early (I still made a lot, not life-changing a lot). But that makes for a good story. This one always feels like a blow; a long lost could-have-been. Those albums were me. And I traded them all in for the illusion of a new permanence. I rebuilt that CD collection even larger, and the mp3 collection larger still. But I’ve never had something in my personal space like those discs.
Connecting the dots
I was nine years old when I took my first shot of hard liquor (at an older neighbor’s house). I was almost 12 the first time I got drunk (playing quarters in a hotel room in Hilo). A few days after turning 12 was the first time I puked because of too much alcohol (at the Sheraton Waikiki after roaming amongst the tourists at Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center). I was also 12 (it was a big year) the first time I saw cocaine being used at a high-school toga party I somehow got invited to (I skipped a few grades so all my friends were older). I didn’t try coke until much later when I was 22.
It was an in-service Monday at Kamehameha, which meant students at my school were off but teachers weren’t. I was home alone (my brother was in Catholic pre-school at OLPH, Our Lady of Perpetual Help). All of my neighborhood friends went to public school so they didn’t have the day off, and all of my school friends lived hours away by bus. I decided to play pinball at the bowling alley near my house. Some of the older kids on my block were cutting school and noticed me straggling. It was about 10 a.m. but they were already drunk and stoned.
“Kalan, come here.” It was Kawika, my friend Kamakiʻs older brother. He was 14 and already the coolest kid on the block. Long-haired surfer with a paper route, so he always had money. Everyone wanted to be his friend. All the girls were in love with him. At nine I knew the mechanics of sex, but not much else. Everyone knew Kawika was already doing it. Kawika had singled me out so, of course I went.
“How come you’re not in school?”.
“We’re off today. Some teacher thing. How come you’re not?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Want to party?” He and I didnʻt speak pidgin by default like the others.
I wasn’t really sure what that meant, but it was Kawika. “Sure.”
Inside the living room there were four older boys, two of whom lived on my block, I didn’t recognize the other two. There was a wet, pungent smell that I didn’t recognize as marijuana at the time. On the coffee table was a bottle of vodka, an empty shot glass, and several Michelob beers in dark brown bottles with gold foil and a red logo. I recognized them because it was what my grandfather, my Papa, drank during the day (he drank salty dogs at night). The empty bottles had their foil peeled off and lay in piles on the table. Kawika handed me one of the brown bottles. I had taken sips from Papa’s as long as I could remember (usually to strong encouragement and laughter from the adults), but I had never had one of my own.
He poured the vodka into the shot glass and handed it to me. It looked like water. I recognized the smell from Tūtūʻs red-lettered, The Crow’s Nest glass at her house. It was liquid but instantly burned. I choked, but didnʻt spit it out. There were imagined flames wherever the liquid touched, all the way down and into my chest. My eyes watered. The boys were laughing, but Kawika nodded and smiled. I was in.
My point is certainly not to brag or glamorize, or even to categorize. The point is this, sitting in a psych ward 230 miles from where I was born, can in many ways be traced to that moment. Almost predictable in hindsight. Maybe inevitable. At the very least, there was a traceable connection of dots that might have been broken at countless points, through different, uncountable small decisions, good and bad, over more than half a typical lifetime of a mostly selfish and self-centered path of least resistance. A completely lucid memory of a horrible origin story.
The greenbelt
I’m writing this from a psych ward 230 miles from where I was born. It’s not as dramatic as it sounds; I asked to be here. I even asked to stay when they said I was ready for discharge. The sympathetic psychiatrist agreed to leave me in treatment as long as my insurance didn’t object. They did not. Unfortunately, the last five days I’ve been here have been spent in isolation. I managed to somehow contract COVID in a closed ward after a few days here, but remain asymptomatic. I’m a strong believer in the efficacy of vaccines. The other two patients who tested positive apparently are not. I am bored, but they are miserable. For five days straight I’ve been reading National Geographic from the mid-1980’s (the space stuff—even the Earth stuff —is grossly outdated) and Time magazine from the late 2010’s just before novel corona virus meant anything to anyone. Unbelievably bored, but I am grateful. I don’t mean that sarcastically. It can’t be the Wellbutrin, it hasn’t been long enough. Maybe it’s the Depakote.
Had they discharged me over the weekend, or even Monday, that would have meant living on the streets until Wednesday night when my mother returned from Texas to see my son play Jean Valjean in a school production of Lés Misarables (this will be important later). And we all know how that ends. I’ve done it and survived–I’m writing this aren’t I–but being outside means having everything with you stolen when you finally succumb to sleep, and inevitably, always, ends with a death-defying blood alcohol content.
Three times now Iʻve checked myself into a psychiatric facility out of desperation, mostly while in some stage of alcohol-induced psychosis or breakdown. I’ve learned how to say the right things to get admitted. I don’t think I’ve ever been consciously suicidal, I’m too afraid of dying. But they won’t admit you if you’re just desperate. There was a bullshit, involuntary 72-hour hold in those harried weeks after Linda moved out so many years ago. She called the police from work and said I was threatening to jump off a bridge. I was not. I sent her pictures from the overpass near our apartment on my way walking to the liquor store across Mopac (my intent was to capture a stylized disarray). It was literally the quickest route.
I suppose I had been poking myself all morning with the tip of a blunt steak knife before I decided I needed more vodka, but that was just to feel something. Suicidal ideation? Not even close. I wasnʻt imagining any scenarios.
I was at the pool when the police got there, they had been searching for me in the Greenbelt. I saw the helicopter, but I didn’t make the connection until four officers emerged from the underbrush abutting my complex. When they took me back to the apartment, a cop noticed blood on my sheets. And not just drops. So they took me to Shoal Creek. I wasnʻt under arrest, but I wasn’t free to say no. And as I would come to learn the psych ward, like holding cells and pre-trial detention, like emergency room hallways as you wait for a bed, like rehab and intensive outpatient, like life when it’s not shitty or great, is mostly wasting time.