Suicide Pollution

One of the assets I acquired was from a painter that worked on Johnny VanSoest’s houses. He was a motor head with a racecar that he ran on the weekends. While working together the conversation turned to motorcycles, and he mentioned a couple old bikes that were for sale. Bob was only interested in old Honda mini-trails, which left me wide open for the Suzuki Stinger. The price was about two hundred dollars. This bike was in very nice condition but it would only fire up on one of the two cylinders. On a Saturday morning, on the front porch of the Lake drive house, I made the repairs that made her run- smoking the front porch out with two-stroke exhaust. Happy, I put the bike in the garage with Joes road bike.

My mind finally snapped, crumbling the walls I had built of patience, understanding and forgiveness- releasing an enormous amount of negative energy and fury towards Bob. I wanted him dead. He had beat me up with his attitude and hatred and nasty statements about me and my ex-wife, my kids, and my friend Danny, to the point where I wanted to see him dead. “Be careful what you wish for”, echoed in my mind, so I didn’t wish it but when Lisa’s neighbor said that he was flying to California to take a job and to live- needing to sell his car and his handgun; the answer to my riddle was revealed. For just one hundred dollars I could wipe him and his negative force clean from the face of the earth, and end my own pain as well. It would be a murder/extermination and a suicide. How could I stand to live with the pain and guilt of killing even a so-called man, on top of all of the grief he had forced back to the surface? The decision was made while Bob was preparing for his annual NASCAR event that he went to in Florida every year. When he got back he would pay me. The money would go to buying the gun, and it would be over.

The clock was ticking, the guy had a departure time that he couldn’t miss, and Bob had to be back so I could get the gun. But God had other plans or had better plans. Bob wouldn’t make it back in time to pay me, and the job offer in California wouldn’t wait. That was because the Hero in Bob’s world, “the Intimidator”, would die on the racetrack in a, not so nasty, crash. That, to me, was a fair consolation prize since lots of people would now be less impacted with the over-emasculating effects of impressionable men trying on his ego. The man was no Hero and he was no role model. Secretly, I was satisfied with that small amount of pain that Bob was given, and thankful for the psychological and emotional relief that spared both of our lives. Hopefully he learns what’s important in life and discovers how to free himself from his own prison before it’s too late. Knowing and sharing real love, in all its truth and beauty, is priceless. So, myself, I am very thankful to think that I finally have that in my life.

So, instead of inflicting my own brand of pain onto Bob, I wrote him a letter of several pages, which I handed him to read when I met him at our rendezvous for work one morning. It started with, “From the mind of Zachery Polk.”  He voiced his opposition from the start but read it, asking if he could keep it to study. I wish I had made a copy of it. Anyway, he stated that maybe we should part ways for a while- mumbling something about just wanting to help. Him and I knew he just wanted someone to fight with. What made him the most irate of it all was that I could not be provoked to give him the response he sought for. With me, I’m more of an all or nothing type, I guess, or at least I was then. Maybe it’s my own personal growth. Who really knows?

My happiness can hardly be measured today, and I am so thankful for all of the experiences I have had. The gratitude I have is unexplainable. The peace I am feeling is precious. My intent that I may share my story with someone to impact positively on their existence is a cornucopia of hopes. I am a Father, a Husband, and a Teacher again, and I am truly happy and content.

Anyhow, now I am looking for work again, which is really nothing unusual for any independent labor provider. It’s a good thing, looking for work. The constant change is why I like being a carpenter instead of working in a factory- always having to deal with the same people, places, poisons and perspectives or lack of them.

Danny and I had a few projects here and there but things seemed to be drying up completely. All over the Grand Rapids area that he had been mining, perspective clients would become more and more aware of his drinking and unreliability, and the fact that he was just too laid back for people to appreciate. So, Danny would go back to the places where he had known people, to try to eke out his daily existence. He was, pretty much, just waiting to die. His secret hope had always been to meet a woman who’d impact his world and essentially “save” him from his despair- his plight. Until then, he would bury himself in a multifarious reality as an artist. In all of this, we were alike, for the most part.

An ad in the classifieds of the Grand Rapids Press, for a Trim carpenter, caught my eye one day. The next day the city bus system would take me out to Meijer’s, on Knapp Street and East Beltline, where I met the builder who placed the ad.

Shawn Dusendang seemed pretty even keeled. And between his ego and his character, he was pretty entertaining. The Three Stooges come to mind when I think about him. That was, at first but after I got to know him better he was no different than any other person I had met and became acquainted with. The house he was building was located east of the East Beltline, north off of Three-mile road.

Shawn was recently divorced and had his daughter in his custody. She was a nine-year-old, and was very articulate. It soon became clear that he was an alcoholic when he revealed his ability to suck down a thirty pack by dinner. He would send me to the Marathon gas station, to get the Coors and Copenhagen, in his Ford King-Cab Power stroke diesel. On one of the first trips in his truck to get beer, I got the crap scared out of me when a young guy came tearing into the parking lot, losing control of his vehicle and running into the light pole on the south side of the station- right by where I parked Shawn’s truck, which I happened to be driving with NO driver’s license! The light pole appeared as though it was going to fall on me but resounded only to lean. The car got a pretty good amount of damage, busting up the grill, wrinkling the hood a bit and deforming the bumper. I wouldn’t doubt the light pole to still lean to this day but maybe not.

Yeah, I broke a sweat over that but it was nothing compared to the sweat Shawn broke… that is if he ever stopped sweating. Wow. It had to be alcohol related, and boy, did it smell bad- just like an old dishtowel that was always left in the sink in a crumpled wad. It would eventually come out that he was going to declare Bankruptcy. Thanks to alcohol and Ego, he ran off at the mouth a lot about himself.  The part he didn’t actually tell me with words was that he was a desperate man. He was as desperate as a man can get, which was why he was building the house. The drinking was so bad that, between the smell of stale beer, alcohol, and profuse sweating- you couldn’t smell anything but that. The smells of fresh oak and paint were completely drowned out.

Shawn’s daughter would be around the jobsite, now and again, since there were issues with the sitter quite often. He claimed his wife cheated on him. My guess is that she cheated on his Ego and that the acquisition of the kid was only due to his own selfishness and legal counsel that he only afforded himself out of spite.

There were women he met on the computer- FTF they called themselves, which he’d bring around after hours for show and tell. The scraps he threw to me, I never helped myself to- out of respect for myself. My interest in women wasn’t a casual one. My hope was to find a person worth sharing with- someone to build a home, a life, and a family with. Chasing after a mate had caused me plenty of grief already, and I knew that looking is the best way not to find one.

One day Shawn came to work bragging about a woman he met online- a widow. She was driving up from Tennessee in a Corvette- a red one, no less. Why? It was probably because her husband was dead. Anyone I know who is loaded would fly up and rent a sweet ride but whatever. They jumped right into bed, of course. The next day was filled with stories of their escapades and how she insisted on sleeping with his ‘one thing’ in her mouth- like a pacifier. I wondered how she could stand the smell of him but he must have painted a sweet enough image of his affluence, a circumstance sure enough that would seem to drown out the smell. In reality, she was just another desperate soul, grabbing at the straws in life.

Building an image, being cast of having money, was exactly what the house he was building was supposed to do. He went out of his way to find things that would exact him as my superior- or exact me as inferior, always calling me nigger. Between his condescension and the constant drinking, he was becoming a problem to me but I needed the income and thoroughly enjoyed performing my trade. The act of my performance intended to speak the things to him that I needed to be understood. Whether he understood or not didn’t matter so much. What did matter was that I recognized the possibility that maybe I needed the elements exposed to me as an open lesson for something greater.

It was getting time for the hardware and paint finishes. This was when I got a chance to hook up Joe with some work- painting and helping to build the deck on the backside of the house. It was refreshing for me, having Joe on the job. That took the most part of the aggravation out of my day at work with Shawn. My job, historically, has often been to do the impossible- the stuff no one can figure out, which I can almost always do. The intent of the people I worked for was often to put me on a task that they were sure I would be unable to complete on my own. It did not gain me their respect in most cases. Out of their own insecurity, it ending up that they would despise me even more.

One day, while Shawn was entertaining more of his Internet conquests and other outsiders, he took the belt sander from my hands as I was carefully shaping in a complicated transition in some stairwell capping where there was a step and compound miter detail- only to grind a big gouge in the center of something that I had taken a ton of care to fabricate. It was quite beautiful until he had to “show me” how to do it. This particular spot was right in a high traffic area, where your eye is drawn to the intricacy of the woodwork. It’s a wonder if he looks at that spot today, and remembers how foolish it was to emphasize that he was the King? It’s doubtful since he was a hack when it came down to it. Like, maybe he was really a prop builder for television, not a homebuilder.

He cobbled a bar and entertainment center together as if it was a stage prop, ruining my tools and cords in the process by dragging the sheets of plywood across the floor, cutting the casings and wires of my cords badly. The copper was hanging out on several of them. It was the fine I had been imposed with for having experience enough to see his mistakes- typical male Ego.

A few days later, the winds would pay him back for me, when he instructed me to pick up the yard and burn the trash. The wind kicked up the flames, turning a small fire into a scorcher, which blasted his tool trailer, melting the rubber molding that covered the seams on the side. It was funny watching him try to move the trailer in a hurry.

Maybe it was partly Mother Nature- paying him back for swerving to hit the Mother Goose as she stuck her neck out from the weeds, at the edge of the road, to look before taking her babies back across to their home at the farm. They had been enjoying the pond, learning what to eat, while playing in the water. It was pretty sad to see her lying there, dead, on the side of the road. When I mentioned it, he admitted to killing her with his truck- saying how she shouldn’t have stuck her neck out there to be hit.

He tried playing the religion card, mentioning how his Rabbi had told him about me. Whether or not it was true isn’t the point. The point is being careful with people who want you to believe they are religious, believing in God, implying that they have good, sound, principles and ethics. These are the people that are manipulating you for their own agendas.

Anyway, in a while, things would shift and we would be working on an apartment complex consisting of four-plexes, located across the street from the River Town Crossings Mall. Myself, and one other carpenter, would work on that project for less than two months before Shawn would lose the contract for various reasons. One reason was that he, personally, never showed up. The other reason was due to being caught over-billing for the work done- submitting the bill in twice. It was a blessing in disguise, I’m sure.

My recent stretch of sobriety began at Thanksgiving and lasted up until Valentines Day. It wasn’t very long after this that I had begun working for Shawn. I have to fill in some of that gap before I get too far.

One day I decided to get some hands-on experience in the studio, making recordings. At the moment I can’t recall how many hours I had spent working on recordings but I’m sure it was that day, on Valentines Day. Danny’s Alvarez Guitar called out to me, or it was the ghost in the house. Picking it up, I was moved to begin playing, stopping after a few minutes because something in my head said to record. After about ten minutes, I found the end and stopped the tape. Next, I ran upstairs and got my notebooks from the desk in my bedroom. Replaying the tape, I got an idea of which poems might sound nice as an added track to the instrumentation. So, with the headphones on and the equipment running, I recited my poems over the guitar track- adding some harmonica fillers here and there, as I felt my way through it. Flipping frantically through the pages, as can be heard on the recording, I’d find another one, recite it, and then another. Four or five poems later I had a finished piece that I called, “Zactly ‘sperimental.” It was a very impressive piece of work- to me.

That was the day Danny and Jimmy came in with a twelve pack of beer- leaving it with me as a “welcome back” present after we all had a beer from it. Danny chuckled silently as they explained how Jimmy’s puppy died from Parvo, contracted because of eating cat poop. As they stood around me, I turned on my new recording, thinking Danny would be proud of my effort. It wasn’t very long into the recording when I realized Danny wasn’t really listening to it- only to become disappointed with his reaction. It really offended me that he rejected my solo flight in the studio after his having expectations of me learning how to use the equipment. He over critiqued my guitar accompaniment and failed to recognize my earnestness. Feeling hurt, I found myself drinking more of the beer they had brought.

When they left I drank some more of the beer, and returned to my efforts with an added bit of energy or anger. That was when I sat down with the harmonica and the microphone, and belted out the Valentines Day Song. Now, regardless of whether or not I had the pans out of whack or whether my vocals were too raw or the vulgarity in the improvisation from the alcohol- it made me proud just the same. You can actually hear the alcohol affect in the recordings, from one track to the next.

It wasn’t Danny and Jimmy’s fault that I drank alcohol that day. What started it was centered on the ghost in the house. Some very strange and unusual things went on in this house. The first thing to happen was that a stick in the shape of the letter “Y” showed up in my room, along with a hard cover book with a paper jacket titled, “How to Survive the Loss of a Love.” There was also a letter from years ago, that I had found in the closet of my room. It was addressed to whoever found it. This was eerie because it felt like a farewell letter, like an echo from long ago. It was a voice from the past- a voice from the dead.

My television would turn off or on- all by itself. My sleep was disturbed as well, waking up at about two in the morning, unable to move- like I was being restrained or held down by force, while a cloud-like thing swirled above me, I think I passed out because I do not recall recovering from that sensation.

On another occasion I was on my way back home from the Radio Tavern, where I had played at the open mike. My walk home took me across the footbridge between the Gerald R. Ford Museum and the Amway Grand Hotel. It was a clear night, and very peaceful so, I stopped to rest, listening to the sound of the river flowing. After rolling and lighting a cigarette, I tried to remember the name of a song by Ben Harper that was in my head.

When I had left the Radio Tavern, it seemed likely that I could predict how long it would take me to get back home. It didn’t occur to me to factor in a break period. Just before I got to the yard I decided to try talking to the house. This was the suggestion made to me when I had Ryan and a female co-worker of his over one evening a few nights before this- the night I had explained the ghost story to them, while having a toast with my new set of wine glasses- one of the holiday gifts I had purchased for someone but never gave them. Memory of whom I had chosen them for is blank but when I served them to my guests, my not sharing in the toast left one out of the act. Ryan’s female friend said it was not good and, in fact, was bad luck to not break them all in at once. That was the week I resumed drinking but it was my being forced to tell the story of the ghost in the house- my nervousness, more than the threat of bad luck. Like maybe it would make them take me more seriously, I don’t know. Either way, there was pressure. Her suggestion to me was that the entity/ghost/spirit was sure of my receptiveness and that it wanted to communicate. So, I was supposed to try talking to it. That’s what I did that night, coming home from the Radio Tavern.

As the house came into view on my right, I swallowed hard and took a deep breath- hoping nobody was home that would think I was crazier than they already did. As I turned toward the house, I began to talk to it when my feet hit the property. I talked about my roommates, and their piggishness, the condition of the house, my hopes to care for the property, the raccoons in the attic- generally apologizing that the place wasn’t in better condition.

When I got to where the front door was at, the phone began ringing. My key was for the back door, so I went to the rear of the house, continuing to talk while the phone rang. It must have rung four or five times before I got in to get to it. In the dark, I answered it and waited for a reply but there was none. There was a connection but no talky-talky, so I just decided someone should talk- continuing the chat that I was having before the phone rang.

After about fifteen minutes I told “it” that I, really, had to use the bathroom bad, explaining my evening, also mentioning the incident from a week earlier when my steak mysteriously disappeared from the grill, while I wrote on my computer in my bedroom, only to find the steak in the center of the staircase, halfway up the steps. WTF?? I thought. Anyhow, I explained that I’d be happy to talk some more, and for “it” to call back later. The phone didn’t ring again, and I never had another weird episode or smell or sensation again either.

Yeah, the night of explaining my ghost situation, breaking in the wine glasses, kicked it off- my drinking that is. It was the perfect excuse for drinking, drinking that slowly progressed due to those persons that made up the environment that I was in, and by my birthday it was steady again but not really excessive. It may have been April when I started working for Dusendang. And it was sometime in June, by the time Joe became involved in the project.

The night I had spoken to the house was the night I chanced to make a prediction of how long it would take me to get home. Had it not been for dawdling, listening to the sounds of the river, and the song in my head, I would have been exact in that prediction. That’s proof, to me, to never second-guess your instincts.

Survival of the fittest isn’t about who’s the strongest when it comes to men. It is about being in tune with the planet. That tuning becomes compromised when we pollute ourselves with excessive stimuli and psychological imbalances, such as low self-esteem and doubt, as well as, the ill mentalities that make up society. Is that assumption part of my own conspiratorial reflexes?

So, when the Dusendang projects turned sour, I began doing work for the Kettlewell’s. Speaking of sour, I’ll never forget the time the guy on Shawn’s crew took me to the strip joint- Parkway Tropics. They were talking about it when I mentioned that I had never been to a strip joint. It was their cue, of course, to drag me there that evening. What a filthy hole that place is. The beers were four-fifty each, and the patrons had a real creepy vibe perfuming in the air. There was a weird energy in that establishment that let me know I may be in the wrong place. Failing to put the change in my pocket must have been an invitation for an encounter because, after a few minutes, a brush cut bleach blonde with a mono-fox tramp stamp came over, made some kind of seductive move, that felt more like, “Oh, if I have to”, while sticking her boobs in my face as she scooped the money up off of the table. I got the feeling that she didn’t like men and was left, not only penniless but with the rotting smell of a dirty towel that she must save special for wiping off with when she comes to “work.” Going to another, so-called, “Gentlemen’s Club”, never crossed my mind again. The smell of a sour towel triggers that recollection every time. It’s imprinted in my memory forever, along with burning chicken feathers and cat-piss stewing on a wood stove.

Yeah, speaking of tramps, back to the Kettlewell’s. A lot went on while working for Michelle and Jim Kettlewell. Jimmy Huckleberry was living in one of their dumps, working off the rent, while stretching out his budget for cheap booze and crack cocaine. The way I happened to become involved was that the girl he lived with got aggressive and decided to fend off his abuse one night, resulting in a bunch of broken windows and the neighbors calling the cops. Being delinquent in child support, and a town nuisance, they were more than happy to book him for domestic assault and creating a disturbance, on top of the FOC warrant. Danny had got word from Michelle Kettlewell that the place got busted up and needed to be dealt with, so he recruited me to stay there and take over until Jimmy got out.

This building was in an alley right behind the Devos Children’s Hospital, on the east side of it, facing west. There were three apartments in the building. One of the tenants was a young mother of a four-year-old little girl who was a darling child. She used to walk the grassy areas with me to look for snakes. I fantasized about being the much-needed father and tried to get to know the mother. While at a home remodel on Coit Avenue I made a cedar flower box for them, in hopes to win a foothold in their lives but that quickly eroded with my drinking. The other tenant was also a single mother but no matter how hard she worked to get close to me, I shoved her away by becoming obnoxious and displaying typical drunkenness with purpose. In all of my perfection she was no gift to me. Strangely enough, her mailbox displayed a card that read: “The Goode Family.” She would later get even with me for being so rude.

People ruin many opportunities based on appearance. Had I been so shallow still, in 2008, I would have overlooked the most wonderful friend I ever had in my life- missing out on the one thing I had been so desperately trying to find- LOVE.

People today have grown fickle and should be ashamed, especially men. Before life is all over we will all know certain truths- making for the greatest sadness we will ever feel, the sadness to know it’s too late to make even the slightest correction or even have our apologies heard as we slip into our deaths. That is why they say: “Ignorance is Bliss.” And not one of us, who has a functioning mind, will be awarded that gift. I am so grateful to have these revelations at the age of 42, while I still have a chance to make a difference, and to be a role model, a father to a child, and to share love with someone special. That is why I write- to heal myself, to forgive, to grow in all the ways I can, AND to share that journey with others with the hope that others will join in on this very special revolution- The Individual Revolution- the pursuit of truth and wholeness, and to break free from the illnesses of society and the slavery of economics. Money is not what’s important.