"A birthday song" unedited

It wouldn’t be long before a guy would move into the room next door to my own, bringing the cocaine I was struggling to get away from into my reality again. It was my inebriation with alcohol that undermined my own defenses. Compounding the circumstances was my need for camaraderie, being in a state of psychological and emotional weakness and unable to focus in on the big picture. Once again, I would fail to resist temptation, and I ended up cavorting with addicts again, namely, Ronald Jackson.

Ronald grew up in Allendale. He went to school there and also rode dirt bikes as a teen. He had a chance to be a pro rider but somehow got separated from that dream. His mother and sisters raised Ronald. His father was an addict who still roams the streets today. As for how Ronald’s father became an addict, I cannot say nor do I know but in regards to Ronald, I feel it was his father that introduced that poison into his life. As a whole, my guess is that it’s mostly environmental- conditioned by forces that will never show them selves to be prosecuted. Drugs, particularly cocaine, destroyed Ronald’s marriage. Ronald’s son is now a young adult who’s playing the same games like being a small time dope peddler, and wannabe gangster, slowly evolving into a full-blown addict, and slowly poisoning all those around him. Being a dope peddler is a convenient way to have the drug at your disposal, which is the premise behind those who “share” the drug with anyone around them. Ronald, much like his father did in my speculation, probably turned his son on to the drug by-way of mixing it with marijuana, the first step to turning one on to it. Nostradamus said that the cities would poison all who inhabit them.

Ron would spend what money he could pool together to use the drug. He would then call around the city, to every relative, friend and acquaintance, trying to accumulate a couple dollars from each one. The story was always the same: that he needed money for bus tickets to get to work. He did this so often that the phrase, “bus ticket money,” had to be understood by everyone he contacted. If I could have only gotten a handle on my drinking I would have never allowed him or anyone else, to know of my safe haven at the Wayside Motel. Ronald would drive out to get me in a stolen car, knowing that I had been working and had a few dollars, only to re-awakening the demon that I was trying to make sleep forever… bad associations.

My biggest failure was the alcohol- a door that I had left wide open, while trying to close out all of the bad people and bad things that I stumbled on while lost in life’s game. The final straw at the Wayside Motel was after the motorcycle crash that took place at Bob’s. I had been examining the mushrooms in the yard behind the motel- looking for psychedelics but the manager saw me and mowed the yard down tight.

Thrown out of the Wayside Motel soon after, I ended up at Ronald’s house, having nowhere else that I could see to go. It was soon the end of summer again because I recall it being Cody’s birthday. His birthday had motivated me to write him a special Birthday song. Ronald had a phone, so I called his mom’s house in Spartanburg South Carolina, only to sing it to an answering machine that would quickly end up erased after Cody had gotten to listen to it:

“I-     ’m singing Ha-ppy Birthday,                                                                                                  t-o   my favorite little du-de.                                                                                                        I’m ho-ping you don’t gro-w at all,                                                                                               as I look at pictures scattered ‘round of you.                                                                           Just look around your room,    you’ll see me smiling at you                                                 in that oak sun carving I sent home with you.                                                                         Ha-ppy Birthday, Happy Birth-day.                                                                                           Happy Birthday Cody, I Love You.”

His mother told me that he smiled big as the world when he heard it, which only makes sense to me why she destroyed it now that I look back. And as angry and hurt as I have been since she took them, I am happy because it only gives that much more value to the power and significance of the love that I have to share. And it makes me happy that I survived the tests and strains. I won. You can’t kill me. You can’t destroy me. I have been strengthened by the hardships, hardened, tempered but my heart is intact. Thank God. I still can’t believe I am alive sometimes.

It was while staying at Ronald’s, on Alpine Avenue, that I would cross paths with Salih again, and regain my job performing roof repair and carpentry. It wouldn’t be very long before my substance abuse would interrupt that again. The question I now wondered the answer to was: “Why would Salih continue to offer, yet another chance at employment?” The answer is fairly predictable or maybe not. You see, Salih was one of a number of three or four brothers, him being the youngest. Their parents were deceased- killed in an automobile accident, if I remember right. I envisioned the movie, “Westside Story”. Alcohol quickly became a routine in their lives, which led to some serious drug use. Dependency soon took over and destroyed what was left of the family. But that’s a bit vague. To put it more clearly, cocaine almost killed them all.

Salih told me of how he and one of his brothers had been fishing in the Grand River, when they found some small vials among the rocks in the water. Assuming them to be cocaine or morphine, they took it home and injected it into their veins. They discovered that it was not medicinal. It was chemical- better known as stink bomb. It is curious to think of now, and it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that his brother placed them there to find, and that it was a trick to get Salih to shoot the stuff into his veins. His brothers were deviant and malicious like that.

Salih spoke of this as a reborn Christian, having been devout since the early nineties when he dried out in jail. He explained how amazing the human body is, and that it is a miracle that the body can endure that kind of abuse. It's just an example of immortality, in a sense, or the will to live, if you want to call it living. But he was genuine and sincere, and a person with heart. Though he still had many of the traits of an addict, he did the best he could to maintain his business and his tassel of kids- not to mention his black hole of a wife. If he ever was found dead or just fell back into addiction, she would be the reason.

My efforts to get clean were continuously undermined by Ronald and the fact that I had nowhere to seek refuge. Thumbing through a telephone book, I frantically searched for somewhere that I could get help from. It ended up looking likely that the place to call was The Independent Living Association.  Tina Tilney answered that call. She came to the house, where we discussed what made me eligible for their help.  The idea of being able to get assistance was elevating. This restored my hope instantly. We discussed my having serious issues with managing affairs, no matter how great or small. I had so little awareness of anything that it’s amazing I had the ability to continue trying to stop myself from feeling. It was rarely my idea to bathe or eat, and I rarely knew the date or time. And the truth was that I had become so despondent that my self was lost.

There was no knowledge of the extent of my injuries because the doctor I was referred to by Blodgett Hospital, (Dr. Mervin Smith), provided so little assistance that I stopped going to see him to avoid it triggering my depression. My back and neck hurt constantly. My ears rang almost continuously. I couldn’t sleep because my mind and heart raced. My wrists were sprained and my jaw snapped and locked up sometimes. When I did sleep, I suffered extremely sever nightmares. And making it worse was that just before Mindy had abandoned me, she gathered up all of my meds and threw them away, immediately calling the doctor to complain about them, which made my life hell all the more. Now, with one phone call my problems were compounded.

Calling the ILS was my attempt to help myself.  This was after meeting with me and explaining that she was going to help. She informed me of all of the things they could do, and that I could do, right down to me working part-time as an assistant DJ at a public radio station. Ms. Tilney certainly renewed me with hope.

 Amid the disaster I was left in when Mindy ran off, there was a friend or two left to confide in. One was Ron Vokes, who lived in a house that he owned on the corner of Knapp and Coit. This is where I sometimes had played music during my marriage. It was here that I was last at when I was in the accident that helped to destroy my reality.

One night, Ron’s wife died in their bed. He never seemed to fully recover from that. Come to find out, she had rheumatic fever as a child. This illness left a hole in her heart, which was the cause of her death. He had been maintaining but became in a weekend alcoholic routine, always the same thing every weekend. It seemed normal but the truth was not pretty. No one would recognize it for fear that they would find fault in themselves. While visiting him, an old friend of his, Ron Groenlier, was back from Texas, having recently been released from jail there after a divorce and drunk driving charge. Groenlier was moving into a house owned by his Aunt. This house was a block away from Ronald Jackson’s place. Groenlier said he needed some help with the rent so I jumped at the chance. Talk about being in the right place at the right time… or was I?  

I slipped out of Ronald Jackson’s while he was at work one day. The last time I caroused with him was the weirdest one for me. It became very clear to see how badly the city was polluted with crack cocaine. There was a plasma clinic near the Sixth street dam- the fish ladder, where Ronald gave Plasma in exchange for about thirty dollars. This day he was giving plasma for money to buy crack with. Since I had no identification or documents to become enrolled myself, I waited outside.

 When Ronald came out he already had two cocaine rocks in his hand, having bought them right there, while lying on the table with the I.V. in his arm.  A guy laying on the table next to him had the dope. I kept tossing this around in my head, along with the disgust with myself for associating with any of it. How I got into this situation in life and how to correct it were questions I was too poisoned, and distracted, to answer- disabled by lost love… and love lost for myself. It would be a cold day in hell before I would ever let Ronald know where I moved.