"Vehicle for Change" unedited

It doesn’t take a very smart person to be able to tell how healthy a person is. A caring, well-tuned person can easily see it in another’s eyes- the hurt, the pain, the damage done by a loved one. I can’t help but wonder if my damages were revealed to Danny that day at Konkle’s Bar in the winter of ’99.

The barkeep handed me a draft beer, one of the booths on the wall invited me to sit, where I did, lighting a smoke. The person with me was a guy I was letting stay at my apartment on McReynolds Street, him and a buddy of his. They were a couple of guys I had met when I was out smoking crack on a recent night of stupidity. He was quiet, probably wondering when we were going to get some dope. Still plenty disgusted with myself from the last crack-about, it would soon be a moment or two in life before I realized the error of my ways, as they say.

My immediate attention was on a young girl in her early twenties. She wore a Beret and had a way about her that sucked me in. Later, I would realize that it was her plan, to suck someone in, trapping a man’s affections in order to use him for whatever she could get. We would speak, and even dance together but not sit together. She remained with a seat at the bar. At one point, my ears perked up on the words “Billie Holiday”. That really stopped my twisted mind in its tracks because Konkle’s bar full of uncultured persons. It was a place where a guy could feel like a star. If you sang Karaoke, you were great. Compared to the other people that frequented this place, my teeth were fine, and I was very looking. There would be the occasional reminder of how smart you were, a psychological booster shot, so you can see why I’d be surprised to hear about Billie Holiday in the conversations at another table.

“What do you know about Billie Holiday? I asked them. A man who sat with the two women and another man said, “We’re members of WYCE.” This man was Robert McVoy, and I would learn of his craziness soon enough. Just then the other man interjects, “Yeah, and I’m an artist and a musician.” I responded with my being a musician to which he then stated, “I’ve got a studio, let’s go record.”

As best as I can recall, that’s how it went but either way, the statement was, “Let’s go record.” Of course, we left promptly but it was tough, only hesitating since I had just received another beer. It took a second to slam it down, and then we all piled into Danny’s Jeep.

Well, when I got to Danny’s studio, my senses were in a bit of shock- more positively than they were accustomed to at that time in my life. In time, ironically enough, this place would prove itself to be haunted too.

There were creations everywhere. Watercolor paintings, sketches, sculptures, musical instruments and equipment were everywhere you looked, like a battle of the arts had taken place, and continued perpetually. There was a fireplace like I had seen only in movies and in books showing Victorian style Castles. You could fit a large tree stump or two within it.

Later, I would learn that this Heritage Hill district home, at forty Prospect NE, was once a Mansion, complete with a Ball Room floor. This property overlooked much of the city of Grand Rapids. There were five apartments carved out of this place, of which Dan’s was on the actual Ball Room floor, the second floor of the building. The kitchen was small, a simple galley style, where a rear-service staircase entered- once used by the servants. I doubt that the kitchen had existed before, and if it had, it was probably just for Hors d'oeuvre and as a drink preparation-type wet bar. We would soon use this area for another aspect of the arts- our own culinary efforts. There was a screened in porch-type nook that was just a kind of a box that hung out off of the south side of the house. It was a nice place to sit and listen to the elements of nature while reading, smoking, drinking, listening to or playing music, writing or just passing out. This overlooked the parking area and the wooded portion of the property to the rear of the house, where he had an outdoor art gallery set up in the past summers. We would transform it once again and entertain the community and ourselves until Mother Nature protested. The yard sales were always a treat, placing a slew of items out for sale, only to embellish upon them as if they suddenly meant more than we realized. Dan called it the “anti-sale”, saying, “Oh, well, I shouldn’t sell that…” He would then add how it had some sentimental aspect, being handed down to him by someone in his family or past, making it all the more interesting or curious to the potential buyer to the point where they would offer him much more for the item than he originally priced it. We would laugh and giggle about it after they had long left, tickled to get so much money for something we either dug from the trash, found at a thrift store or came across while cleaning out after evictions.

All of those classes at Kendal School for Art and Design paid off at these sales in small dividends that would yield us more gin, cigarettes and even more entertainment. In addition to the music, photography and art classes, Danny had studied psychology just enough to become a bit of a hustler. It was a new world to me, one that I had been searching for since long ago, and finally found, fully loaded including it’s own Demons.

A baker’s rack held many electronic stereo components that added up to be a sound system for doing anything you could want with sounds. There was a four track Tascam Port-a-studio, a Yamaha keyboard, a Fender Stratocaster, mics, amps, pre amps, lights etc…  There was everything but an audio slave for lights, and a CD burner. It was not a big elaborate system, nothing at all like what I thought that I would find in a “studio”. It opened up my eyes to a new reality, one where a guy didn’t need anything much more than the “want to” to create recordings that were pretty powerful. It’s always amazing to me, when I see something in its raw form that I had thought was something different, something more difficult or more intricate. Danny made it look too easy. And along with all that he would show me while we became to be close friends, I would learn of what kept him so deeply immersed in art and alcohol as well … his health.

If ever I am stricken with Alzheimer’s, I don’t think I will ever forget that first day I met Danimal or when he popped a tape into the Tascam, adjusting a knob or two and handing me the Shure SM58 saying, “Here, put lyrics to this.” And having no clue what I was listening to, and no idea in my head, much past, “Microphone, lyrics?” I listened and let a few bars play and just started in where I felt the spot was to start. It was almost as if someone else was driving. It may have been spiritual even, now that I think about it. As if I was a medium for a spirit just then, having no idea where it was coming from. It was like my conscious mind had been out to lunch from my body forever, and I had just gotten home to myself, like I didn’t even know me. Well, maybe I didn’t. Whatever I was doing got Danimal excited. He picked up the Fender Strat and started playing leads. Little did I know, the tape was rolling, which meant that he was recording the music we were making. Nine minutes later he’d play the tape back and it would become one of my most prized possessions, proving to be a gift. And it was a gift. It was a gift of my rebirth of mind.

Music was my oldest, closest friend and we had been, finally, reunited with her. I had been kept distanced from her, by Mindy, tormented with the view of her and the unobtainability that was hard to bear thought of. Once a month, I was allowed to go play in a basement for an hour or so, with friends. At home it was a different story. I could get no personal time to play at all. Her fingers would silence the strings during my attempts, in order to remove my guitar from my moment of attention. Only to replace it with some menial task that had little to no importance, merely her demand. Red meat was not allowed, nor was I allowed to watch any action films that featured men such as Clint Eastwood or Sylvester Stallone. It was so ironical to me, how I had married a Jewish girl who was so… Hitler-like. She would later satisfy some of my unrest with the knowledge of her unhappiness that I learned of in the near future to this moment- this moment in life when I had become reunited with music, and in a growing friendship with Danny.

That same satisfaction was a detriment to my children, especially my only son, Cody. She continued to punish me for no reason at all through him, and now he is living with the damage for me to have to, painfully, observe. When he was five he wanted to learn how to become the President of our country. He will be released from prison on August 24^th, 2014, according to Michigan’s Offender Tracking System, on the Internet at this moment in January of 2013.

This particular weekend I had spent at Dan’s was four days long. I am sure we drank at least six fifths of gin and rum. The bottles were there to prove it, and had enough residual booze droplets in them to make us both a drink, which, in fact, they did.

There was also Amy and Jen- the lesbians. Later I would learn that Dan had met one of them or both, while in Rehab. They were both Heroin addicts. [Here’s where I have to put it out there that it is not a very good idea to make any new best friends at Rehab. This is, simply put, a future stumbling block. Take note.] I awoke on one of these first few days at Danny’s house, and couldn’t find my weed. I was certain that it had been taken. My frontal lobe syndrome caused suspicion to point to the girl with the Beret that I had brought with us from the bar. It wasn’t like I openly accused her but, boy, was I sure it was her that took it. After a while of searching like a madman, I found it tucked in between a chair cushion and the wall of the armrest that I had been sitting in the night before… Whoopsie. It wasn’t that I actually pointed fingers. It was my body language that screamed out the statement for me.

Not until this little time out, at Jackson Prison in 2011, would I realize that my “bamaged” self can only endure a few hours of the normal stress of everyday life before symptoms, like confusion, inability to concentrate and “people stealing my stuff” become disabling. Now, after focusing on recalling my past for a couple of hours, I lose things, always wondering if they were stolen but before I find myself wrongly accusing someone and creating discomfort in our close quarters, I dig around and always find what I it was that I could not. Fourteen years later, I am finally identifying some of my handicaps and learning to cope but still fighting for my compensation and proper medical attention to suit my needs.

Somehow I had found out that this girl wearing the Beret was squatting in an abandoned house. Why I got it in my head to “help” by taking her in at my house when I could barely help myself was typical of me. So many things went on that I have a hard time remembering it all. Maybe part of the problem was because I had spent so much of the time as drunk as I could possibly afford. Things like, how soon after that, that I let the lesbians Danny was caring for talk me into giving them money for heroine.

As I said before, and it is like this for all of my recollections- I can recall few things the way they were, some things with accuracy and no sense of time, and other things in a generality but eventually, if I think hard enough, for long enough, I can remember the details I am looking for. Sometimes it will pop into my head a few days later, and sometimes the answers come to me a few years later. Like the last name if Jen, it’s Rasmussen. Anyway, one of the problems I deal with is that these memories are sometimes on a loop, always playing, as if my mind was a multi-screen theater- open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, with shows on that I don’t want to pay money to see. It’s a lot like the tell-lie-vision. My sleep is continuously disturbed by nightmares from the past, mottled with morbid graphic images and horrific situations. These things were issues before the substance and alcohol use, issues that I maintained at bedtime with marijuana for several years and all during my marriage but no matter how hard I tried, with or without drinking, sleep could only be avoided for so long. My habit would be to drink until I was unconscious. I began to call on Danny as my free time permitted, usually on the weekend since I was working for Bob at this time. My trips to Dan’s house were a fast paced hike on the heel-toe express. The girls, as Danny called them, were home and seemed upset. Dan was not there yet or he was at the store, I think, soon to arrive but not until after I gave them the fifty dollar bill.

Anyway, Jen was crying about the court and child support, and about the threat of going to jail because of the money that she claimed she owed. Knowing first hand about the scenario, and having some money, my malleable heart gave in to them. They thanked me profusely and skee-daddled with Mr. Grant. When Dan got back he asked me where they were, only to add that I better not have given them any money. The room instantly gloomed over. He was so upset with my having given them money- and the fact that he now was forced to tell me their secrets. My heart sank, for I had just contributed to a possibly fatal disaster in the making. I went from Hero to Zero in a split second. When they arrived back at the house, Amy was dragging her girlfriend up the stairs and into Dan’s house, where they were living. He scrambled for the bathroom to fill the tub with cold water. Now there was a mess, and the mess really hit the fan. Dan would throw them out in another day or so. And Danny, having just now completed his hoop jumping for a DUI- it was a possible fatality that would be sure to bring cops and investigators, a whole can of worms about to be spilled. NOW, what did I do? 

It would come out later how, Tim Steele, a local Radio Celebrity for WLAV FM, had lived upstairs in the recent past. He had a girl over who had overdosed on heroine and forced him to solve that little problem without drawing attention to his own activities that would surely become strewn about by the Media. The Grand Rapids Press would have had a hay-day with it. It is possible that WLAV would have had their attorneys step in the clean up and quiet down the mess without any attention but who knows what would have been done until it happened. If it were my self in his shoes, I’d be praying that I had a larger than life reputation to pull the real strings on the situation. That would definitely be when a person like him would find out just how important he is.

Well, you guessed it, being such a big sucker and a glutton for punishment; I brought the girls in to my apartment too. I have no real clue how long it took before everything that could go wrong went wrong at my place. It didn’t help that these girls recruited an ex-girlfriend of Dan’s to “help.” This woman just so happened to drop in to Dan’s a day or two after this all went down. She was an elementary school teacher with a huge drinking problem and no fear or shame with taking it to the streets when she needed money. I can only assume that they bought dope with the money because for some reason we got a hotel on the edge of town very close to Marne. It is easily remembered because this woman and I went there and ended up being thrown out of the Pit Stop Bar by the barkeeper, who was a friend of mine, for dancing without my shoes on. In a few short days she would be gone and I would finally lose my cool with the rest of my strays.

It was a day when I had just gotten home from work. As I settled into my favorite sitting place in the living room I discovered that the girl in the Beret was in the front bedroom with one of the strays, which not only made me angry, it confused me because if he fell into a barrel of tits he’d come out sucking his thumb. They were just using me for my apartment, my money, my property- everyone in the place was. They were there by my undeserving grace and had taken me for a huge sucker. This happened just as I had realized how obvious it was that nobody would be contributing to the household. It would become clear when I found my weed and booze gone regularly. These were items that I shared with them when I was home. They must have figured that it belonged to the house as a part of my unusual hospitality. The world’s biggest fool was my self for the moment but that was about to become an impression that I was going to demonstrate a correction of.

Right about now, I discover that the girl in the Beret was trying to practice witchcraft on me. As I am reading them the riot act and telling him that he was leaving, she came out of the kitchen with a small saucepan that had some strange looking mixture of ingredients in it. There were small vials containing some types of extracts in her pocket of her smock, as well as strewn about and on the counter in the kitchen. It was clear that it was done franticly. She was urging me with a sudden suspicious affection, to ingest the mixture. It wouldn’t be anything but a waste of time and energy for anyone to try to convince me that I may be wrong, for you should always trust your instincts and the messages that you are in tune enough to receive, however late they may come to your attention.

At the very moment, putting words like these in ink, I am curious if a deity of an evil kind wasn’t something that had become a part of my reality years ago, and continues to follow me until I become destroyed, I wonder…?

Where was I, Oh, the girl was a big mistake to bring home. For some reason I decided, in all fairness, to give them a certain amount of time to vacate my apartment then next morning. They must have thought that I didn’t really mean it when I had told them to leave the night before. I was right in the middle of giving them the count of ten to gather their things and leave when Bob pulled up to pick me up for work that morning. Maybe I had already gotten to ten because I recall him mentioning something about the stuff that was strewn about in the front yard, like clothes and hangers, along with a couple of old sea chests and a foot locker… When I had gotten to the count of five, I went to the front picture window and opened it as wide as it would go to let them know it was real. The guy she was in bed with- the stray, I call him, was crying saying, “Why Zach, why?” It didn’t begin to soften my fury and only enraged me that he had the nerve to insinuate that I was in the wrong. When I got to ten I grabbed the biggest package I could find and launched it out the window and into the yard below. Some of the things bounced out into the street among the cars that were parked along the road. Right after launching the second chest out the window, the Beret attacked. She came at me like I would imagine a full-grown lioness, in a wild rage. Wow! She put up a real fight- one hundred times more than anyone had ever came at me with before. All I could allow myself to do was to minimize what harm could come to me by blocking her and wrestling her to the floor in an attempt to restrain her, overpowering her into a nicely rolled up ball. She was like holding onto a huge spring that I had compressed, waiting for the slightest easing up on the pressure so she could fly apart. We were both breathing extremely heavy with exhaustion, hormones and adrenaline flooding through our veins. It was exhilarating, sexual, as if we had been through a series of rigorous sexual acts sought out by those who hungered with lust to make their wildest fantasies come true.

Now, I gave the other guy two weeks to find somewhere else to go but he gets up, as up as his stump of a frame could raise him, squaring off in an attempt to fight me. I really didn’t want to fight with him at all. When he made motion to grab at me I placed my hands at the shoulders along his biceps just above his elbows and twisted him down to the floor like I was laying down a one hundred sixty pound cabinet, saying, “Don’t make me hurt you. I gave you two weeks.” With that, I took a cigarette out, lit it and went down to the van to speak to Bob briefly about leaving for work.

Bob had a nervous air about him, not knowing what to expect, and having witnessed the eruption from the upstairs window out into the yard as he pulled up in front of the house. “I need a couple more minutes,” I said to him, “I’m almost finished.” He just chortled a bit in complete surprise, and with a bit of disbelief over what he had witnessed. As I think about it now, I am wondering if she wasn’t part of the group from the beginning but maybe that’s giving them all too much credit.

Anyhow, on the way out to the van to finally leave, I stopped at their car, finishing my protest at being duped by puncturing all four tires on their Plymouth Horizon sitting behind the house. Maybe I did it at some earlier point in my fit of rage, either way; it sure put a stick in the spokes because now they had no vehicle to leave with.

Lesson learned? Respect the vehicle and learn to recognize what a vehicle for change is. They take many forms. I had immobilized a vehicle for change in my life and now that much-needed change was going to be more unlikely to satisfy my desires.