Sandy part 13 unedited- of course

As for my relationship with Matt and Sara Howell, 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 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, 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 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 blown the money 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.