Part 29 "Recharging For More Fiascos" unedited.. or read

Glenda Palmer had been waiting for him for years, ever since he went to prison. Now, she had five children with Jimmy, who was poisoning himself over it all. She didn’t know anything about what we had been up to. All she knew was that I was there, and that she didn’t want me in HER house.

After hitting the streets on foot, and heading for home, I decided to do something that I knew better than to do. It was too early for a bus, and I had to walk through the area, fully exposed to the filth and demons that made up that part of town. There were addicts all over, looking for other people who were trying to buy more dope so they could keep going. My big idea was to try to sell what cocaine I had left to get back some of the money I had wasted, which was basically all of what I had earned. In the end, I only got twenty bucks back for the one hundred and fifty that I had gone through between the dope and the booze. It was sickening.

When I finally made it back to Sandy’s house, she said her son had seen me, and that he could tell by my appearance, what it was that I had been doing. She kicked me out, which lasted a few weeks. My only choice that made sense was to go back to Bill’s for that period of time, having no other place to go. That was the last time I ever knowingly used cocaine of any kind. It isn’t clear if it would have helped any, knowing where or how to get a hold of Danny but I am sure it would have been better than going to Bill's– or staying in a relationship, with Sandy, for that matter. It seems, as though, as I think of these things that happened- these people and the situations I had exposed myself to, were part of my preparatory courses for what I was inevitably supposed to do- my mission, my purpose, my contributions, while in pursuit of my rewards. Maybe I’ll know for sure, when I get further into this story of events.

A few days later Jimmy Zemiatis came by Bill’s apartment to do some drinking and fish around for some coke, knowing Bill had coke around a lot in the past- no thanks to me telling him that.

Anyway, Jimmy’s father was an alcoholic and had served in the military, doing a tour in the Korean War. Jimmy tried to keep from becoming a hard drunk but ended up a coke addict, and it had a lot to do with the area he had taken up residence in, as well as the messed up logic behind urine screens, since they did random drug testing at his place of employment.

Soon after we got a bottle, Bill became way beyond messed up. Being in prison, only to return to his old drinking habits, had taken a toll on him. He was curiously drunk after two drinks, disappearing to his room to lie down. A moment later we heard a big commotion and a very loud thud. Somehow the room spun, throwing Bill into a piece of furniture, severing the outer rim of his right ear. I still can’t understand how he was so drunk off of so little.

The next day, I put the stitch in his ear that I had suggested when he was too obstinate to think that it was a good idea. It was a really big task trying to get the needle to pierce through the cartilage. Now that I think about it, I should have done a topical flesh stitch on the back and front but oh well. How many bad ideas did the world endure because of alcohol? What’s one more? Geesh! This was another one of those situations that told me alcohol was a serious problem. I just wasn’t ready to take that path or maybe I still had some things on my list to do before that ascension. It was one more thing to put in my pipe, I suppose.

The possibility of love had me so blinded that I never considered any need for growth other than an off and on willingness to see that alcohol wasn’t good for my “roomatism” anymore. Sandy’s consistent imbibing only made it seem acceptable to not worry about it, as wining and dining almost always made up the most part of our courtship. I’d quit when she quit but she’d quit when I quit, so it became clear that we’d never quit as long as we were together.

As great of company as Sandy was to me, I’m not sure she would have been a long-term toleration without alcohol. By long term, when you’re in between drinks, I mean like a few weeks to two months. That’s forever when you’re aggravated. [Sandy era>>>>end of era]

Since I was still working on my mom’s house in Conklin when Sandy finally lost it entirely with me, I had a place to stay. Like I said a while back, she left me because of my association with Danimal. Reluctance over losing my female companion was paled by relief and gratitude. It meant that I could make myself happy by being myself again- by following my forever desire to play music. Music made me happy when I played. It didn’t matter what I played at all. Even if it was just a Playskool xylophone with a plastic drumstick, with the rainbow colored strike plates, sitting on the floor with a child, and with a mess all around- just banging away, I was happy. That happiness, that spirit, was almost entirely stripped away. Thank God I found what was left to rebuild.

Danimal was a guy that I really got along well with. He didn’t hide from himself in sports and television or by judging others. The drinking was probably the only wrong thing that we did. And him, being influenced by the Jazz Age- it was just a tool and part of the environment. Maybe it was Danny’s lot in life, to be an example to people, since almost everyone liked him. Then people would easily see the destructive forces of denying love to a child, and what alcohol does to a life on top of that hurt. The drink may not be as bad as combining it with a damaged person who has a hunger for something that can only come from another human being. Like the damage done to a young mind caused by an improper balance in nurturing and development. It’s the pain of what’s missing when a young boy needs a father. The pain of the unanswered questions that only a dad or mom could give you. It’s the sting felt by a child because dad was too selfish to be dad, not caring enough to give anything of himself to anyone.

Why do we let the heartless live? Only because we hope they will find what they are looking for. We hope they will change for the good. We hope they will learn the importance and value of love and how it affects the whole world, virally. But who’s to say who is heartless and who won’t change? Who’s to say who is what but themselves of themselves? Wouldn’t that require honesty? I begged myself to find out of myself. I begged myself to see. I fought against man’s diseases to live. I have learned to struggle to become freed but my struggle is not over nor is my work done.

My lessons in life would continue with, yet, another seriously dysfunctional relationship. My efforts with my mother were contributing but so was the struggle with trying to work with her. It seemed like the project would go from difficult to highly improbable as it progressed, almost like a dance or a war. It was like, “Oh yeah. Well then see if you can do…this,” as if she wanted me to struggle, to fail. But I kept on at it, trying to prove my worth to her; trying to give of myself so that she would accept me. All I was looking for was a thank you, a hug- something but nothing came. My heart was crying out and I was getting nothing. The truck that she was going to pay me with was merely a tool I needed but without the rebuilding of the foundation in our relationship, it was useless to me. What I wanted? I wanted to stop drinking but my broken heart was burning, and I couldn’t function with that constant burning.

After scrounging up what change I could find laying around, I would ride my bicycle six miles, in the dark, to Ravenna on Sundays just to get a jumbo. Six miles to a place that I had never been to, in the daytime before, was a challenge. Luckily the stars were visible, remembering their placement helped guide me home.

An old train trestle was converted to a bridge that crossed a deep ravine. At the bottom was a creek with rock crashing waters. Here is where I would stop to drink my beer and smoke with the sounds of rushing waters, and those beautiful stars- basking in the only love the world had to share with me that I could take and have for my own.

The Muskottawa Trail was an old train route that was part of a bike trail program. One night, when I was riding back from my evening Sunday trip to get beer, that I bought with beer cans that were left laying about by my mother’s boyfriend, and change from a coffee can in the kitchen, I hit a big bump in the path. Having bought two beers, I was now going back to the house with the one that I had left. The bump in the path sent me flying over the handlebars and onto the asphalt with my backpack and forty ounce bottle of Magnum- one dollar and nine cents plus tax and deposit; my bike came after me, making for a pretty ugly heap in the roadway.

When I regained my composure, to inspect my bike, and saw that the contents of my pack were, surprisingly, unharmed, my attention turned to the bump in the pathway. Then I recalled a very small bump in the trail but what I found was a long tree trunk laying across the path. The small bump was the thin end. Someone must have thought it would be real funny to catch a person in the dark with that, ruining the trip to the beer store! It was easy to imagine the giggling as they did it, seeing the Busch beer cans in the area that had been discarded by the perpetrator. Strange as it was, and as scary as it was to almost lose my beer, I am not positive that it wasn’t my own practical joke laid out from my last trip back. Or maybe it was my grandpa, working in my subconscious. I never actually recalled it, exactly, but I could see me doing something like that. Once home, I climbed into Uncle Bill’s old Chevy Camper van with Dusty and my jumbo and listened to the radio I had strung out there on an extension cord, and went to sleep- happy we both had those moments together.

It was easy to find other things to do than be trapped in Conklin, so I started spending a little time at Danny’s and got him to come out and help me at my mom’s house with some painting. He kept landing these apartment jobs and eventually came into a bathroom renovation for an excessively large breasted troll. She seemed nice enough but the bathroom was in a trailer for the twenty-first century- they call them modular homes now, and it was a culmination of corrupt cobbling. The heat flew right out of the place, and it was a pure mess but we could drink and smoke weed while we worked so, we didn’t really care. We were getting paid for it.

Yet, another teenage girl threw herself at my attention, the woman’s daughter, Casey. She went on and on about her friends and their band, the carnival and her dad, and music. Her father and I, strangely enough, had become acquainted when I worked for the carnival during a seriously low point of my life following the divorce. The child, having been what you call “over-exposed”, was seemingly mature with her manner of speaking, and with her appearance. She was a full figured girl with a D cup. She went out of her way to stay in my attention. At some point the girl’s mother, Julie, placed herself in my scope of vision, mentioning her own breasts.

 Myself, very unaware of ego and the nature of the family relationship that I was in the middle of, I fed right into the madness and took the bait. I am not sure if I was genuinely interested or if I became interested by capitalizing on the possibilities that this simple matter of convenience created for me- although nothing about it was simple except for the mistake of allowing myself to become prey- “haste makes waste”. Oh but the words of Proverbs, “beware of the harlot, were clouded over by alcohol and selfishness, and the very foolish partaking of instant gratification. None of this would be realized until illuminated by the light of reflection, motivated by an untimely series of life changing events and catastrophes.

At some point I think I said to myself, “any woman with that pimply of a face has to be capable of loving a person.” Her Rosacea was so bad I figured she’d have to be loyal… This, I would think, but sometimes people are just truly ugly no matter their appearances. Despite her having to actually rehab the working bathroom for me to use, and that the place looked like a third world country or that the doors were ripped off of their hinges, which should have indicated a lurking violence, I overlooked it all and drifted into their reality with my foolish heart. At some point she set the hook in my ego with statements about past failed relationships and how men with no purpose and very little use had only wanted her for her money. A sensible, self respecting man with the least amount of dignity could see that bit of manipulation while in a coma but not me. My mother said I never did listen.

Your life, I have learned, is a business. Chose your business partner wisely- from some failures there is no recovery.

My decision resulted in a serious scolding from Danny, becoming involved with a customer, but he dealt with it while there was not much that he could do at the time to offer change to the situation. Few days would pass before she would come out to Conklin for a pint of Guinness at the Irish Pub by the house I worked on and stayed in. She soon wanted to go back to her house in the rental side of Rockford, and rather than ride with her and return with Danny, I insist on following her in my truck. Why did I do that? I probably did it because I could, and because my ego was imprisoning myself. After all, it was bad enough that I was living at moms, and really had no Monet at all- just an uninsured truck and the urgency for anything that instantly gratified me. So, seems how I really only had enough of Degass to get there, I was stuck for a few days only to need to make the VanGogh to the CMH in Grand Haven. I wish the appointment was to have had my head examined but it was not, just a routine medication check-up.

Afterward, Dan and I stopped in to visit RB at the music store, where we bought a strap for my guitar, and where I noticed the break in the transmission line that went to or from the cooling unit. The shops in the area held a hardware store that happened to sell JB Weld and after remembering everyone (even Paul Harvey) rant and rave about it, so I decided to try it. Cleaning the oil residue from the tubing surface was my main concern but I managed to locate some electrical cleaner for soldering. The repair was a success but also a failure because I did not locate an orifice to refill the fluid in the transmission.

The Conklin house was still on my routine agenda but was not as important as trying to escape the constant reminder of having an extremely uncomfortable relationship with my mother. Danny’s loft, in the Gezon building warehouse, was serving as a place to crash but not really for living. There was no running water, no sink- only windows and a freight elevator, and one lone toilet that was almost always trashed or plugged; repercussions of a biological hazard of life threatening proportions. So, we just pissed out of the window, which happened to face the office building of the City Housing Inspectors and building maintenance department- the cops in affect…

We’d, (I said weed), collect our dishes in a plastic tote to take to the places we were working on that had running water. In such cases where we had no place available to use for washing dishes or hygiene purposes, we would go to a friend’s house- like Julie Wickman.

Julie Wickman owned property and had two dogs that Danny walked for her, mostly as a consolation for using her dishwasher. She came by the loft one day to score some Delight from Danimal, and was already there when I arrived. During my animation she had whispered something that made Danny shout out his forbidding, “No! You can’t sleep with Zach! Everyone wants to sleep with Zach!”

It didn’t matter because I was already pursuing other interests, however poor. Her and I became friends, and she soon shared with me how she had wanted a baby for years but failed to discover a man worthy of sharing a life with, let alone being a father. So she adopted, finally, at the age of forty-five. And, that I know of, she never married. She served as a person of interest in Danny’s life, and had he gotten a handle on his drinking, could have been far more.

As for the woman with the bathroom repairs, sooner or later I decided to move in with her even after Danny’s protest. I am quite positive it was out of my anguish over my immediate familial dysfunctions- mostly the difficulty relating with my mother, that influenced my decision but I can’t deny that the constant availability of beer, weed and female affection, was high ranking on my priority list. Besides, bringing the issue up of curbing my drinking, I felt, would only impede on using the opportunity to, virtually, create an instant family, which would help in getting an edge on prying my way back into my children’s lives despite Minderella’s conniving and scheming.

This woman was clearly in need of a man in the home. The living standards were very low- no order, no structure. The kitchen was always a disaster, and “mom” was at work when she wasn’t at the bar looking for a sucker, I mean a mate. She had just filed for a divorce, not long ago, and the daughter’s father had just died of liver cancer from drinking and shooting junk into his veins. Story was that he was in the Hells’ Angels, did time in San Quentin, and was a heroine user who hid out in the carnival circuit where he met this woman after her failed attempt to get in the porn industry landed her there. A lot of it prodded my heart like there was some great task for me to do there. Yeah, she was probably the most unattractive female I had ever seen, which only made me feel that much more sorry for her. And I was willing to try anything to get away from my own torment.   

What seemed like miles later, I had stopped for a rest at a crossroads. When I went to proceed I became confused about which way I had been coming from. This confusion caused me to spin around, finding no sign to indicate where the trail was. Finally, I decided that the trail was the one that was a bit smaller in width. It then occurred to me that I may have gotten turned around in my confusion. A panic set in. A few deep breaths later, I recalled how the various explorers circumnavigated the globe using the stars. Feeling I could use the stars, I located the Big Dipper. It was the position of the Big Dipper that helped me to decide which way to go, and it’s a good thing I looked because I was going the wrong way- of course. 

One Sunday night, on my way back home from getting my two jumbos of beer, I hit a bump in the path as I neared the house. Having already drank one, the other one in my backpack to have when I got back. This bump sent me flying over the handlebars, face first onto the asphalt. Somehow, I managed to land without busting myself up anymore than scraping a palm from trying to push the Earth out of my way. The bike came down after me, making a pretty ugly heap in the pathway. When I regained my composure to inspect the bike and the unharmed contents of my pack, my attention then turned to the bump in the road. It was then that I recalled a very small bump from when I had earlier traveled through. What I found was a long fallen tree that measured two inches at one end, and four or five at the other end, stretched across the path. The small bump was the thin end. Someone had placed the tree across the path to impede with trail-riders in the evening. There were a couple Busch beer cans laid by it, the same kind my mother’s boyfriend kept around the house. Someone must have thought it was real funny when they had taken a moment to think of it, probably laughing about the prank, while they imagined a person tripping over it in the dark- ruining their trip to the beer store. I imagined the giggling as they did it. Strange as it was, and scary as it was to almost lose my beer, I couldn’t be sure if it wasn’t my own practical joke. Or maybe it was one of my grandpa’s jokes, in my subconscious. I never exactly recalled but I could see me doing something like that. Confused about the situation, I proceeded back to the house, and climbed into my Uncle Bill’s old camper van with Dusty and my jumbo. We listened to the radio I had strung out there on an electrical extension cord. It made me happy that we had these moments to be together.

Chapter

When some money started to come together for me, I’d drive to Danny’s. He agreed to come and see what I had been doing, and to help me with some painting, providing a bit of a buffer between my family and I. He kept landing these apartment jobs, where people had been evicted, eventually coming into a bathroom renovation for an excessively large breasted troll. She seemed nice enough but the bathroom was in a trailer for the Twenty-first Century- they were calling them “Modular Homes” by this period and it was a complete culmination of cobbling and corruption.

The heat flew right out of the place and it was a Pig Sty but we could drink and work, and smoke weed, so we didn’t care- it was a paying gig. Her daughter threw herself into my attention. She went on and on about her friends and their band, and the carnival, and her dad. The child, having been what is known as being, “over-exposed”, was misleading with her seeming maturity between her being very well spoken and having what looked like a fully developed body complete with a D cup.

At some point her mother, Julie, placed herself in my scope of vision, guiding my attention to her and her breasts, saying that Casey was thirteen and that she had a habit of attaching herself to men. Myself, very unaware of ego and the dynamics of the family relationship that I was in the middle of, I fed right into the madness and took the bait. She was not a woman that I would have given any attention to if I had ran into her in public but she asked me to give her a chance. I’m not sure if I was genuinely interested or if I decided to become interested because it was there, capitalizing on the possibilities that this simple matter of convenience created for me- although nothing about it was simple except for the mistake of allowing myself to be prey- “haste makes waste”. Oh, but the words of advice in Proverbs, “beware of the harlot” were clouded over by alcohol and selfishness, and the very foolish partaking of instant gratification. None of this would be realized until illuminated in the light of reflection, motivated by an untimely series of life changing catastrophes.

At some point I think I said to myself, “Any woman with that pimply of a face has to be capable of loving a person. With Rosacea that bad, she’d have to be loyal”. Despite her having to actually “rehab” the working bathroom for me to use it but I never thought twice about it.

The place looked like a third world country. Doors were ripped off of their hinges, and the stops were ripped loose and hanging, which should have clearly indicated a lurking violence but I allowed myself to drift into their reality with my foolish heart. At some point she set the hook in my ego with statements about past failures at relationships, and how men with no purpose and very little use, only wanted her for her money. A sensible, self respecting man with the least amount of dignity could see that bit of manipulation while in a coma but not me…mom say’s, I never did listen.

Few days would pass before she would come out to Conklin for a pint of Guinness at the Irish Pub near the house I worked on and where I stayed. For some reason, I insisted on following her home in my own vehicle, hitting a deer on the way, which ruined the front end of my truck. The plan was that I needed my truck for a buffer but not to provide a cushion for deer, it was so I could leave her house on my own, hoping I wouldn’t have to gnaw off one of my arms to do it. Part of me was also imprisoned by my ego, after all, it was bad enough that I was “living at moms” and really had no money at all- just an uninsured truck and the urgency for anything that instantly gratified me. So, seems how I really only had enough gas to get there I was stuck for a few days, until I needed to make it to a doctors appointment in Grand Haven.

A day or two later, Danny and I would go to Grand Haven for that doctor’s appointment that I had made at the Community Mental Health (CMH) department. We paid RB a visit at the music store, where he worked. We purchased a guitar strap and some strings for my guitar. We decided to look at the truck while we were there because the transmission was chattering and jerking a bit on our way out. What I found was that the transmission cooler had received a bit of damage from the impact with the deer, tearing a hole in the cooling fins. The auto parts store across the street had some J.B. Weld, so I purchased it to try for the first time in my life. Luckily, I had done enough repairs in the past to take care to clean the surface with some electrical cleaner that they had at the music store. The repair had worked like magic, and I was now sold on J.B. Weld- Paul Harvey was right.

Sooner than later, even after Danny’s protest about our plans of going south to find a new home in a musician community somewhere, I moved in with her. This, I am quite positive, was a decision made out of my anguish over the inability to relate with my own family. There was nowhere else to live, and I couldn’t provide to myself alone. Staying with Danny was always cool but I wasn’t really living there. There wasn’t any running water, and this woman clearly needed a man. The daughter’s father had just died of Liver Cancer from drinking and drugs. Everything prodded my heart.

Yeah, she was one of the ugliest women I’d ever seen but I was willing to try anything; anything to get away from the torment of subjecting myself to scenarios that left me without affection that I so desperately needed. The added appeal was that it was close to the music scene and doctors that I needed to get to, and it was right in the locale of the trout stream we were always trying to get taken to as kids- my friend Jimmy and I, the Rogue River.

It seems the kid learned to abuse my availability or maybe it was a combination of her and her mother preying on my ego, and my need to be useful, and my drive to prove my worth to them.  Casey had just turned fourteen in December. The ride was necessary because they were not fortunate enough to live within the Rockford school district to be included on the bus route. Her mother, Julie, had taken her out of the Comstock Park School after the child’s tantrums caused her to become suspended repeatedly. This was coupled with pity over the father recently dying in the home while in hospice with them.

Casey had a friend at Rockford, and a chance for a fresh start. At Comstock, she had been the subject for much discipline and scrutiny that had to be the product of a lack of discipline in the home, making the child’s lot a miserably distorted perception of reality. Part of her grief was due to the repercussions of her unsupervised choices in clothing. Casey insisted on wearing totally inappropriate things to school, and had no sense or guidance at dressing or caring for her self. This was an extreme problem for the school, having a persistent and blatant disregard for the dress code.

She wore these boots religiously, that her grandmother purchased for her after a long pattern of begging, whining and badgering. They were in the fashion worn by Paul Stanley or Gene Simmons of KISS, the original Punk band. These were worn day in and day out, as if they were the only pair of footwear the child had. They were black knee-high with platform soles, and had a series of Velcro strap fastenings all the way up. They were cheap to begin with and were rank and cheesed out from lack of proper hygiene and the use of socks. I felt so bad for so many reasons, having no choice but to clean them up, putting polish on them to hide the scuffed off finish coating, picking the matted lint and hair from the Velcro because they wouldn’t stick, and replacing the insoles. It took a weekend for that. And, me, having no authority- it was one of the only things I could do to feel like I was helping.

Aside from the boots, she wore radical clothing like stuff that was very risqué for a thirteen year old girl- a skirt that was nothing more than a waistband with a six inch ruffle attached to it, possibly designed for an eight or nine year old child if it wasn’t actually for a toddler. It did not cover her full figured rump, leaving a whole lot of butt-cheek out in the wind. It was the same thing with the shirts she wore, so small they looked like sports bras. She was dressing to show these over-developments off which made her a target, a 36D, topping it all off with her mothers leather coat. It was now obvious that she was an early teen by the copious amounts of baby fat popping out everywhere that stays on youths who never leave the house for anything outdoors. I could see her being targeted. Just imagine being me, and being seen letting her out of my truck in the front of the High school in Rockford, an affluent community. It was a bad way to start the day for anyone.

As for getting the girl to school, the major difference between me doing it, and her mother taking her was that she always showed up to class perfumed with the smell of pot. I am almost certain that the school knew about it. Julie smoked it like the end of the world was upon her, leaving the kid to reek of it. Her slovenly and lackadaisical lifestyle was a constant mismanagement of time, along with every other resource that is crucial to running a household. Ten minutes from the time she had to be twenty minutes away, no matter what it was for or how important, she would stop to roll a joint for the road. We were always late for every appointment. For me, pot wasn’t about getting high. It was medicinal and disciplined for relief of anxiety and to focus, as well as taking the edge off of my arthritis pain. That was it. I smoked in the early evening during the week, and in the morning, taking a puff or two on the toilet.

So, between the mom, and acorns not falling far from the tree, I was a squirrel among nuts. My feelings that I was providing a great service by filling a familial void made me overlook the reality, which only fueled the façade. How desperate I was to replace my family, to feel normal again, to be the man I was. I wanted to be the father, the husband, the leader, the earner and provider again. In my mind, the keys to the equation were there, and the product was possible. I could see my own children back in my life.

The distractions and distortions of reality caused by the excessive amounts of alcohol and estrogen, combined with my enormous deficiency of…. something, I don’t know what, maybe just plain BRAINS or maybe my inner drive to do everything in life the hardest way possible was chiefly planting seeds for my grief. It was all too much for my senses, I guess. I suppose it was like Gremlins or an Iceberg- there was cuteness and a sense of wonder that attracted you, all the while a hidden force of destruction that, once discovered, is too late to combat with a favorable outcome. Had I not been so distracted, I would have paid closer attention to their claims of being “White Witches”, which I shrugged of as nonsense.

Oblivious, I walked right into the trap and started dancing to their songs. The magic went right to work, and the next thing I knew, I was cleaning up the disasters as soon as I got back from taking Casey to school that first day. My understanding of the adults operating in a household is that they set the living standards and see that everyone under the roof helps to maintain them- things like policing the cat box, as it demands in order to be tolerated in a living space. The kitchen has to be free of dirty dishes, and the counters need to be kept clean. The stovetop has to be cleaned after cooking meals while the foodstuffs can be wiped off easily. Oh, what a fiasco!     

There was always a lack of dishes at mealtime. It seemed that the leftovers held some priority or sentimental value, being set in the refrigerator using the dishware for a length of time that could earn them rights of the unsalvageable, then to be tossed into the trash- programming or an accustomed practice in this particular households evolutionary pattern- either way, disturbing.

My secret inspections of so-called personal space led to the discovery of lots of missing dishes and flatware, mountains of soiled clothing, and items to prove a lurking deviance and lack of parental authority that could prove disastrous for myself. Some things I left alone, to be subtly coaxed from their locations by my seemingly innocent guidance through questioning the possible locations: …”get a chair and look really good in your closet, like up on the shelf, maybe it’s in there”. A future move would reveal more, maybe too much but I still didn’t get it.

Yeah, it was a nightmare but next to the unobtainable affections within my own family, and my outright fright of what I’d seen in the streets, it was a welcome challenge with rewards that were, to me, of immeasurable value and wealth of religious proportions- my Holy Grail. At least I was now closer to Danny, Bruce, and the guys. And even though having their own dysfunctions, they all loved me and believed in me, supporting who I was. That was important to me, to feel like people valued me as an individual. My life maintained a balance by having their company to surround myself with when I needed a break from the absolute chaos- to recharge.