Busted Head: ch.3

The paranoid sun of early spring was out for a nervous look and I skipped and whistled
as I made my way. Well, I’m sure I didn’t skip, that was probably someone on TV, it was likely more of a stumble, but I might have whisteled at a girl or a rat or something, and I was feeling pretty good. The spring was the time for all those beautiful new beginnings, and shit, wasn’t it?

The sun was okay, I guess. It served as a welcome acknowledgement of survival waking up in a ditch or an alley or whatever. It warmed the bones and scared some of the bugs and was good for a change, but other than that I wasn’t too fond of it. After awhile it got all nosey and in-your-face like a homeless bum you got drunk once out of pity and can’t seem to shake.

The sun was annoying but it was a rare break from the rain, which I guess I was even less fond of. The rain down here fell and fell and fell in oily globs and washed away everything that wasn’t grey or brown or sharp or potentially infected with HIV or one of the Heps.

I was getting close and I still had a half a bottle of warm, flat beer, and wasn’t about to waste it, so I sat down on the corner before the corner the bar is on, Freddy’s corner. Freddy was one of the religious fanatics down here standing on something and spewing their truths. Freddy was different, though. Sure he wore the obligatory six layers of wool and when he stopped ranting you could hear the cooties scratching and clacking against one another, trying to get at all that good stuff. But people listened to Freddy. Freddy had had this corner for as long as I could remember and the fight for religious fanatic territory was easily as fierce as any whore dispute.

You see Freddy had carved out a niche because he was spouting a message people down there could believe. Freddy was a mouthpiece and a missionary for the Dark Lord. He spoke of the coming of the lord and preparing and salvation, and all that but his saviour was almighty Satan. He survived down here and held his corner because what he was spouting was a lot more believable. If there are any hocus pocus spirits down here, surely the Dark Lord reigns supreme.

If God was down here, the other one, he was either playing a tremendously unfunny joke (where’s the punchline, God?) or he just didn’t care. Either way he could go to hell. (See that, God? Now that’s humour. Maybe you should try it sometime.)

More than likely he just moved out when he could afford it, like anyone else with any influence.

For people down here to believe what Freddy was describing took no imagination. The words and promise of the others was rock salt in the open sores. If you are going to talk to people down here of God’s love and generosity and shit you better be a good runner. Or have soup.

I finished off the last half of the beer with one long draft and threw the empty at some mangy pigeons in the alley.

I was feeling pretty good when I waltzed in to the bar, giving a nod to the crew there. There was no one working the door yet and no one working much of anything, but a few staffers were milling about, none too happy about being there at this time, still shaking out the cobwebs from the night before, no doubt.

Poor suckers. I thought as I sat down at a corner in the darkest part of the bar. There were only a couple of the really down and out in there at that time and I didn’t feel like talking to them just yet, although I liked them fine and had no problems sharing a drink and a smoke with them. I liked them and I liked their crazy rambling stories, but I’m sure I liked the bitter comfort in watching someone downer and outer even more. I’m sure that was part of it, seeing someone worse off than me. Were they, though? Worse off than me? Who knows. They were probably looking at me and taking comfort that they weren’t as messed up as me. Could’ve been right.

But I didn’t want to sit by the derelicts, not yet. I wanted to be in the back. I wanted to drink alone for a bit. And when I was drinking alone I liked to be by myself. Away from the shameful stares of those not sitting in a dark corner drinking alone, which I guess was most people just about then. But I didn’t care. I ordered a pint of the premium draft, which I’m sure came from the same keg but through a different, shinier looking tap. What the hell, I figured, the shiny tap fooled me and it was free money anyway.

I had a couple of these with a side of some clamato to ensure my temple was being treated accordingly and getting all the nutrients it so richly deserved. I watched the derelicts and nodded as they passed and gave a couple of smokes to a couple of them that I actually knew pretty well. It didn’t bother me that I knew a bunch of derelicts pretty well and spent more time with them than my family.

My family. Now there was something to drink to. Or about at least. I guess I didn’t really have any family but I had had a lot of families, depending on how you look at it. The people who drunkenly made me were mostly blocked out. I remember my mom a little and I remember getting the shit kicked out of me by my dad. They had had it pretty rough too I guess. Whatever. My mom was half Indian and half white trash I guess, and she’d had it pretty rough all her life, to hear her tell it. The dad was one hundred percent piece of shit. Who knows what he’d been through, who cares? I’m sure it wasn’t good. I wondered if he felt better having me to beat. So I’m a quarter Indian, like a lot of guys down here, and half piece of shit. Not bad. You could find some people to argue that that was an understatement, I’m sure.

Overall I wasn’t with them too long, I guess, but way too long for me to have a chance at being normal it seems like. At six or seven they pulled me out, my saviors, and stuck me with a family that only beat me half as much but wore me down even more, till their was nothing left. They moved me out of that one when some other kids who used to live there complained about the beatings. They didn’t ask me anything, just moved me to another foster home, then to another, then another.

The foster homes weren’t too bad, relatively speaking, I was to find out, but they couldn’t handle a kid like me who had the audacity to be angry and show it. They didn’t want to deal with an unpleasant prick like me. They shuffled me around to a few and then it was time for the group homes.

The beer was working its magic and I was beginning to feel human again. The alcohol coursing through my veins was a welcome shiver, enveloping me with bliss. Its hard to describe the transition, the transformation. You’re feeling like a wretched piece of shit one minute and the next things aren’t so bad. You feel like you can accomplish just about anything. Later. You can get up talk to a girl. You don’t but you could. You can walk from your bar stool to the shitter without shaking, shaking from the withdrawals, sure, but also from the crippling anxiety that tags along. When you’re hung over, really hung over, you get anxious and jumpy. Scared of your own shadow. You jump at the sight of things that aren’t there that seem like they’re right there. Or are going to be right there when you turn around and are going to do something to you, something bad, who knows what. I never said it made any sense. There’s no logic. You’re scared of shit that isn’t there and even when you look around and prove to yourself it’s not there you’re still scared of it. I hate that shit. There’s always something out of the corner of your eye that’s not there waiting to pounce on you.

Once you start to shake it gets worse. It feels like you’re having spasms and everyone’s staring at you and wondering why you’re shaking and shivering like a dirty shirt tail sticking out some bums zipper. If you think about it, and you do, the shaking gets worse until it feels like you’re going to shake shit clean off. Like hair’s going to come flying out or a fucking arm or something. It ain’t pretty. Give me falling down drunk and throwing punches that don’t land and slobbering on girls any day. I hate that shaking and hiding in the corner and being scared of shit that ain’t there.

That’s where the booze comes in of course. The booze slows the shakes and clears the cobwebs and actually sharpens your vision so you see what’s really there. No bogeymen waiting to pounce on you. No catching shaky glimpses of that guy you owe too much money to under every stool and in every reflection. With the booze what you see is what you get, sort of. Maybe you still see all that shit, but you just don’t care, because nothing is going to hurt you.

The booze was sheer pleasure. It was a goal to work towards every day; it was a great friend and a pleasure to be around. Life seemed good with it, or at least livable, simple as that. Without it was terror and pain and loathing and the desire to end it all. I certainly thought about that a few times, laying on someone’s couch wrapped in dirty blankets, shaking and sweating and stinking like the alley behind the bar where the winos piss and puke. I swore a few times that once I had a couple of drinks, meaning some guts, I would finally put an end to the misery. A couple drinks so I could plan it properly and follow through. I never had the guts to do it sober. Trouble was, once I had those couple of drinks and my knife hand was steady and could actually follow through with something like that, things seemed to be shaping up. The self loathing coarsed out of me with every dehydrating beer piss and then I was getting along just fine, thank you very much. Then I’d laugh at the knife in my hand, take a look around, maybe clean myself up a little, maybe not, figure out where I was and go about getting some more booze and maybe some company to help justify the next binge.

That’s about where I was at. I had my stool pulled out of the darkest corner a little and I was occasionally making eye contact, instead of pissing myself every time someone looked my way. I nodded to a couple of derelicts and finally went and joined a couple of my favourites. We sat and drank and smoked and talked about weird shit. Actually, they talked.

Talked about shit that was totally crazy and unreal, somewhere between conspiracy theories and the gibberish you spout sitting in a padded corner and spitting all over yourself. The funny thing is these two guys were talking completely separate and unrelated gibberish, but they would nod along politely and wait their turn and then go on a rant concerning some unrelated and totally unintelligible bullshit. But they exchanged their ideas with such passion and pretended to listen with such intensity that it was inspiring but also puzzling and troubling to watch. One guy would start off talking about a girl he knew when he was a kid as though she was right there in the room with us and then move smoothly into the state of affairs with mineral rights in Uzbekistan. The other old bastard would watch intently and, when there was a pause, wipe some of the spittle from his nicotine streaked beard and counter with a brilliant point on the invasion of Grenada, and wind up triumphantly by shouting crazy shit in what he thought Chinese should sound like. Or, who knows, maybe he knew Chinese. Point-counter point. Brilliant. I’m not complaining. I was a half drunk slob sitting with these guys and hanging on every word. It actually made some sense after a while. Not really sense, but it had a certain majestic flow to it. Like watching a couple of has been ballet dancers, who knew each other’s every move perfectly, perform for one last show. Except for at least one of these ballerinas had recently soiled themselves.

I think it was afternoon by then, because some normal people were starting to wander into the bar. I figured it was time to make a couple of calls and plan out the best way to keep this binge rolling. There wasn’t a ton of options. I only had a few friends that I could call drunk, in the middle of a Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon or whenever the hell it was, to come out drinking with me. There were only a few that were hardcore and unemployed enough that I could count on joining me for a good piss up.