"Nightmares" unedited

My west-side adventure at Matt and Laura’s hovel was what led me to find Matt and Sara. One day I decided to try to buy a used guitar from anyone I could find one. For some reason I began lurking around the payphone outside of Edzu’s Liquor Store, where I’d inquire to customers who looked like they might be artists or musicians. 

Surely, this was an effort I thought would put a wedge in between my drinking and my occasional crack cocaine use but it was more mysterious feeling than that. I likened the experience to Salmon returning to spawn or a  Monarch on its journey to Mexico, taking three lives to get there, and three more to get back; a true wonder of the world. It was a force that had been trying to guide me to something in my life since I was a child. I have always been, well, stubborn, I guess. I have always done everything the hardest way possible- blazing my own foolish trail in life it seems. 

Destined to get there but taking the long, scenic route. I don’t recommend that for regular everyday people, the psychiatrist would probably just say, “it’s remarkable,” which doesn’t generally interpret to a good thing, by the way.

It’s a coin toss, supernatural or chance. Either way, this was what led me to Matt and Sara, beginning our relationship as friends, and giving me another shot at learning something in life. This would be about the time, at a Dairy Queen on the corner that I would get to see my kids for the first time since she took them away from me. Luckily these children of mine were not at the John Ball Zoo when the manling Laura was with put a rope out for the monkeys, which found their way out of the pit-style containment, only to attack people and children. One was bitten repeatedly about the face and head. Matt was never caught or turned in but he boasted to me about this “feat”, admitting how he did it- tying a length of rope to the picnic tables along a fence lined area that overlooked the pit, directing the loose end into the area within reach of the monkeys. He also bragged about some other crimes involving a sawed off shot-gun but guys like him speak of so much in their efforts to fit into their ego suits that you really can’t believe one word they say. 

Strife, ironically enough, will be a large part of this manlings existence, which will, more than likely, prove to reward him for the rest of his life, just as he deserves. Maybe you’d call it Karma, and the reward would be Strife. 

My hope is for someone wise enough to recognize, in his errors, as well as my own, lessons for themselves. Necessary Evil, as they say.
 

The world is small, so I am sure the future will produce Ms. Larson and her children eventually. Maybe I will be able to see some good I have done for someone else, in them. It would be reassuring, and reinforce my faith in humanity, which I sometimes desperately need.

As for my relationship with Matt Howell and Sara Bordeaux, they were steady consumers of beer and weed but I am certain that the beer was a substitute for her coke habit and it just became an everyday thing for them. Eventually, Matt would discover a love for fishing that would pull him away from alcohol, which was a minute Demon compared to this woman he so naively called his wife.

Sara was a shock-jock. She covered herself in tattoos and wore very suggestive and revealing clothing-like items as an everyday thing to go out in public wearing. These were things you would come to find in a Fredericks of Hollywood catalogue. She did anything and everything for attention.

 The Bistro BellaVita, where she worked as a head chef, is a very high-end pretentious joint. How did she get the job? My guess is that the owner was bored and thought it was a disaster in the making that would earn him some kind of notoriety or social report with his fellow business owners down at the Chamber of Commerce, by way of the conversation piece that she insisted on making of her self.

Sara’s co-workers would come in on their days off just to see what she was wearing. Don’t take this wrong; she was an accomplished culinary artist with some kind of credentials from a place that I cannot recall. She would design the daily specials herself. Once, that I know of, she sent a busboy to pick crabapples for the days dessert special, from a tree she passed on her way to work that particular day. She was very creative, a character of her own- mostly.

Sara was a person whom had some things she kept secret, like her attempts at Witchcraft. She was the first person to try using it on me, that I know of, and was just the beginning of what would resemble a list of people. At one point, Matt went out of town for something, asking me to stay with his wife and animals while he was away for fear of her coke addiction causing some great controversy of sorts. They had regular menagerie in their home- dogs, cats, fish, lizards, snakes, turtles, and birds… I don’t remember what else. 

The next thing I know, Maynard, (according to Sara) from the band Tool, shows up on the first or second day. We drink, smoked and hung out. Sara and I noticed him, at one point, peeling the Blue Pearl/Nag Champak from its bamboo incense stick form, balling it up into little marbles, where he sat on the couch. She asked him what he was doing to her incense, and why. His response was only that he was going to sell it for “gank”, so he could buy some dope of some kind. I assumed he meant crack but I think it was heroine, specifically. I never saw him face to face after that day but the recordings keep coming out.

The next night an old friend that she used to do coke with stopped by, bringing some synthetic coke for her to try. She must have called him, asking him to drop by. Never had I met the guy before, or heard of him in conversation in the many months we had spent together. Myself, having been clean for some time now, gave in to temptation. Synthetic coke sparked my curiosity. After we bought some and I snorted a line. It set me off, causing for me to go on a binge that night. Calling, Hope, with the intention of her bringing me some rocks, I ended up running the streets all night long for the garbage. 

In my search for friends and support, while dealing with my familial losses, this was what got hold of me. Never, was it my desire or intention but it became a product of the Demons that recognized I was in a state for them to feed upon- to prey upon. It would be a whole ‘nother element to my battles and only added to my struggle to stay alive once I did finally realize what I was into.   

It was my job working for, Salih, as a Carpenter, mostly performing a variety of roofing repairs and installations, helping me to carry on at those moments in my, so-called, life. And it would be off and on employment for the better part of this period of time. It was his irate, difficult, ungrateful wife that would insist on interrupting the work situation, causing senseless grief to him and all who worked for him.

About now I got an apartment on McReynolds, with Salih’s help, quickly taking in my oldest daughter’s mother’s ex-husband, (her brothers father)- Bruce Vachon. Little did I realize that he was mental or becoming senile. Whether it was an underlying condition or relative to his alcohol and past drug use, I can only speculate (alcohol) but it would later surface and cause the loss of those items I did maintain from my broken marriage, that were very near and dear to me. This would add a whole ‘nother flavor to my defeat and my heartaches. And no matter how badly I recognized that I needed to quit drinking and using- this only made it that much more impossible.

Anyway, when it was all said and left undone, Matt had an affair. Per their agreement, the one that cheats leaves, forfeiting all but their most personal possessions, leaving the household items behind, which had to be a relief to Matt all the way around. Now that I think about it, I wonder if he hadn’t hoped she would have an affair with me, thinking he’d get everything but then deciding it was best this way? Either way, he left and I stepped right in to help out.

They had just recently moved into the upstairs apartment of the house they were living in before their breakup, where I mistakenly went one night, while drunk off of my rear, mistakenly thinking it was my own apartment. They watched me through the peephole, trying to figure out which key was the one to the door, and then turning around to urinate in a potted plant that sat near the door at the top of the stairs. Finally, I realized I was at the wrong house and left.

Well, she decided to move into the house across the street, on the corner lot, when they broke up. And, with all of my foolishness, being so freaking stupid and starved of affection, I stepped right in to “save the day.” I did all the work possible in her move and was given a room there in the upstairs of the new house. It would quickly accumulate cats and kittens, and feces, and all of the smells that go along with that. Throwing myself at her feet, as I seemed to do whenever a woman within my reach was in need but having always been too ignorant to discern which ones were worthy, I hoped for a relationship with her. Never mind that I was not emotionally healthy enough for one with anyone, for that matter. All I knew was that I desperately needed a relationship of some sort, of any sort.

After having researched this and attributing my condition to not receiving any attention, affection or love from my own mother, is what gave me the wisdom needed to correct my path. I could see her but not touch her, like a carrot on a stick. She finished (Sara) with me and tried to do some magic to rid her of me. This became clear one day when I was drawn to the room used as the library/study, where I snooped to find a book of spells. This book brought itself to my attention more than I searched for it, revealing what I needed to know. It wasn’t possible that she wanted me to learn what I had learned but I am still confused as to why she didn’t just ask me to be gone. At some point in my refusal to read the writing on the wall, she called for a pizza, ending up seducing the poor schmo on the other end, in a last stitch effort to relay to me that she wasn’t interested. 

Eventually I got it through my thick head but by the time I had returned to McReynolds Street, it was too late, Bruce had blown the money that I had left for the rent. On what the money got spent on, I can only wonder. Bruce’s only concerns were cheap beer and rolling tobacco, so how four hundred and fifty dollars ended up gone is still a mystery, and though I am not interested- it’s a mystery just the same.

After escaping, I realized what would later be recognized as a new beginning, with the end of her in my life entirely. At a time later she would resurface in a junk store on the West side of Grand Rapids, tempting my reality with her re-entry into it. 
After offering Sara one of the CD’s that I was promoting at the time, from my residual band, The Bandana Brothers, I never really thought of her again until now.

At this point in my life I had gotten through a lot of bad situations. These situations tempted my patience and willpower, and my very life, reshaping my existence and potential future into the needs of the people I was around. 

The coke and degradation was an everyday thing, a re-run. It was like the movie “Groundhog Day,” with Bill Murray. Only on one of those mornings I had hoped to awaken in my death, I awoke to find life and fought back in a whole-souled effort, and what I thought was, finally meeting a female companion to help me to save me from my self. Little did I know, I was about to order a beer and meet someone who would prove to be the only good thing I had found in Grand Rapids since my selfish, arrogant, ignorant wife took my children, destroying my family empire, my identity and my heart, refocusing the sights of my reality to the bottom of a pit.

The only things that I felt prevented me from wanting to see her hurt were my children and my love and grace. It’s been a bit of an unsettling thing to deal with- the nightmares of being robbed of my life, trapped in the evil world full of demons. It is frightening even, when you come to learn how easy and instinctually familiar it is to you- to the point where you no longer are anything but numb and speechlessly watching the horrific scenes. Seeing the images of the act. Seeing yourself handling the body, feeling the various sensations from the emotions, from the exertion, the sting of the sweat in your eye, the smells of bodily discharges and a smell like wet rusty steel. And there is the splattering and taste of the blood, the stickiness of it on your hands and between your fingers. And then the sensation of it as it cools and the water moisture evaporates, causing it to thicken in a short time. And then there are all of the ways of disposing of it or of them, cutting it up on a band saw after having had it in a freezer for some period of time. And then the burning of it, dumping the ashes in the river or even a blow to the head that would indicate a slip and fall that resulted in drowning while they may have been hanging out on the river alone while extremely intoxicated. Then there is always the old way of feeding the pieces to some pigs or the dogs. And then my favorite sensation: the feeling of my hands around her throat, the sounds of her last struggle, the feeling of her body twitching and finally going limp as her head changes in form, from round to flattened on the backside, and turns softened as I repeatedly pound it on the pavement like it’s a coconut and it’s all I have to use to stop the earth from spinning.

These are all very dark images, I am well aware. 

The funny thing is that I even imagined my imprisonment for the crime/s. No part of the nightmares bothered me any more than my usual nightmares that I have. Stress and insecurity bring these symptoms of Frontal Lobe Syndrome to the surface. These thoughts had become to be just another thought playing on another of the multiple theater screens playing in my head. It was just another day that I had to live through. And out of all that I have lived through, and been through, and was forced to endure, it would be learned that this would have all been expected. These images really paled in comparison to my typical nightmares. But who was I to interrupt her fate in my hands by resisting? But I loved her. I was just so enraged over her throwing me away like an old newspaper- the father of her children. I drank to poison these things from my mind. All the while in a state of trauma that crippled me completely.  

Well, I have always felt that I had a purpose, a gift, a calling in life on Earth, and no matter if I have found it or not I do not want my donations to man to be ignored or rejected by something as petty and as self serving as satisfying an itch for wrath on such a tragic reality. Everything I dreamed of was now irreversibly destroyed. It was only because of the children that I struggled to rebuild my life and destroy what was left. Had I done such a terrible thing, they would have hated me but had she never given birth this would never have been a torture that I had to feel. I only wish I had been strong enough to tell her no when she seduced me that first night- the bed I made. I accept that I’ll never be given credit for my restraint and will to persevere but a large part of me would like to hear an apology for all that her selfishness had caused. An apology I do not expect in any foreseeable future. Not even after I am dead.