Beginnings Can Be Fatal

2002-09-24T17:43:00.000-05:00

In the fall of 1964, at the age of 14, soon to be 15, and after a good scrubbing in red lipstick by senior classmen, the acceptable rite of initiation, I had arrived in the 10th grade a "scrub", a bona fide member of the one student body of Englewood High School. The school grounds covered an area comprising more than four city blocks, and the school building proper was huge, or so it seemed to me then. The Englewood High Pirates, our champions. When I think about how the transition to high school affected me, the word that comes most to mind is "dazed"; but, according to those who know me well, I was in this condition most of the time anyway.

A withdrawal had begun to take place then, in my own mind, one that I tended to project onto my teachers and classmates and that ultimately served only to isolate me further from them. I was a daydreamer, distracted in class, constantly preoccupied with my own thoughts. I had a distorted notion of personal responsiblity and questioned the point of my education. I wandered wherever I went, rarely any ambition or purpose to my step. I had begun testing the limits of authority as I never had before, my rogue nature and all of its wayward proclivities being my first and preferred tool. I was growing increasingly restless, impatient for release - to what, I don't know, as I was directionless in life, without skills or training of any sort, and had only the vaguest consciousness of what being responsible for myself entailed. A very awkward prelude to young adulthood, retreating all the while.

We had a dress code then: a boy's hair couldn’t touch the back of his shirt collar and no collarless shirts were allowed, shirt tails had to be tucked in and belts were required if the pants had loops for them, no shorts, no tattered or torn clothing, socks and shoes were required (tennis shoes were okay), and no pocket knives with blades that exceeded two inches in length - no switch blades - and no brass knuckles or other fist fighting paraphernalia. Girls had to wear dresses or skirts - no pants, no shorts - and the hemline couldn’t be more than two inches above the knee, jewelry and make-up had to be kept to a minimum. The rules were broken constantly, of course, just like in adult society, and especially when the mini-skirts came out - what a wonder to behold!

I loved math, learned to type 45 wpm sans errors, could dissect a frog in Biology class and a compound sentence in English class, but in Phys. Ed. I was defeated. I wasn’t always the last one picked when choosing teams, but that‘s how it felt to me; it was that close. I have never liked physically competitive situations, and I hated Phys. Ed. more than any other class. I never measured up. I couldn’t catch the ball no matter what shape or size it was. Today, someone tosses me a cigarette lighter, inevitably I miss the catch and it hits the wall or goes sliding across the floor, and amid my disgrace and embarrassment in recovering it, I will likely drop it. I can’t flip a coin and catch it. I feel some measure of competence given a mental exercise; if not, at least I know what to do about it, but a test of my physical prowess leaves me wanting every time.

It was during or around this time that I first experimented with alternate lifestyles. In so doing, I was never persuaded of anything but my original preferences. I think of these brief but forbidden liaisons as having more to do with my own inferiority complex and its attendant need for praise than with any latent tendencies I may have had, but I don’t really know this, as I have no training in the psychology of human behavior, other than having watched and lived it for as long as I have. Today, my sexuality is not an issue with me. To my shame, I’m sure, I take delight in those with whom it is, probably because it is what little freedom I have attained from and enjoy for myself, and I like having a little fun with it.

About the middle of my junior year, I just quit going to school. A lot of us would gather at the “little store” before school started, for coffee and donuts and enough candy and chips to last us until lunch. I had met a couple of guys named Mike and Richard, both coming from unhappy home lives (Richard I don’t think even had one, and mine, if I remember correctly, was on the decline as well). Mike’s parents worked all day, and the three of us got into the habit of leaving the store, and rather than turning in the direction of the school, we would head towards Mike’s house for a day of playing cards and watching television. It started out just once or twice a week and from there went to three or four times a week until I wasn’t going to school at all anymore. After several truancy warnings, I was expelled.

I was sent off to live with my Uncle "Jeep" in Lubbock, Texas, who was then working on his Doctorate in Math at Texas Tech, and I finished my junior year at Lubbock High School. I did well and I liked it there. We lived in a rural area, and I was lonely and bored a good deal of the time, but the circumstances were otherwise ideal. I was granted every reasonable privilege and freedom, my obligations were minimal, and it was peaceful there. Good natured people, easily humored and attentive to one another's wishes. I virtually idolized my Uncle, and I loved my Aunt Lanita.

Nevertheless, I was often moody and discontent, and somewhere inside me was an unhappiness that followed me everywhere I went. I took it for granted after awhile, as it wasn't something I was consciously aware of in the moment, but a nagging sadness was always there, close by. Then, in my senior year, I fell into old habits. There was a little cafe across the street from the school, and they served the best coffee, and it seems I never could make my first hour Chemistry class. When it came time to graduate, it was no surprise to me that I had straight F’s in Chemistry.

I begged my Chemistry teacher to pass me, that my mother was pregnant (she wasn't) and would lose her baby if I didn’t graduate, and on and on. Finally, he gave me a crossword puzzle to work and said if I got 97% of it correct, he would pass me. I had spent three days on it and had only found 1/3 of the answers, if that many, using the Texas Tech. library, when I met this guy in class who had worked it once for extra credit. His dad was a doctor and had helped him with it, and he helped me finish it. I got exactly 97% of it correct. Now it's 1967, I'm 17 almost 18 years old, and having reached the very pinnacle of mental and emotional maturity, as ably demonstrated by having cunningly outwitted my Chemistry teacher, I graduate high school.

2002-09-15T21:48:00.000-05:00

I have always thought of my junior high school days as among my most forgettable, but now that I recall them I see that I had some pretty good times then. Schoolwork was never a burden for me and I was easily in the upper 1/3 of my class scholastically, even as lazy as I was. I didn‘t attend many school functions or join clubs. I didn’t like or participate in sports. I wasn’t in the popular crowd and never held an office. I had a couple of friends, no serious enemies. I felt a marked increase in peer pressure, as so many more kids were there.

I had so much energy then. I had a Denver Post newspaper route and would ride my bike everywhere for as long as I could. I was sailing down the sidewalk once (which was a no-no, but we all did it anyway), having just bought myself pockets full of M-80’s and Black Cats and Cherry Bombs (also no-no‘s), and all sorts and kinds of fireworks, when a lady turned into her driveway and ran me over. She was hysterical, and all I could think of was my bike. When I finally snapped to, I realized that I might be able to squeeze something out of this lady, considering her condition seemed to be much worse than mine. And I was right. She took me to Pete’s Bike Shop, where I had all kinds of modifications done to my bike, at her expense, and then she bought me a chocolate ice cream cone and took me home. Nice lady.

In the three years I attended Sinclair Junior High School, only two of the teachers I had there made enough of an impression on me that I remember them now, and they were my Biology teacher, Mr. Milsom and my Science teacher, Mr. Winger. I remember them not because of any personal attention they showed me, but because they cared about their subject and their students, and whether or not their students were comprehending the subject matter, and they weren‘t taken in by the lame excuses so good-naturedly proffered by the slackers, as even these characters knew, like everyone else did, that these teachers cared; there were no excuses.

Sheryl Yonkers was the most beguiling creature I had ever seen. She wore one of those dainty gold ankle bracelets that make me so hot, and she had a bobbed haircut and the darkest brown eyes, and she possessed me, mind, soul and body. After school one day, Sheryl asked me if I wanted to have a Coke with her at Freddy’s, the after-school hang out. I was so paralyzed that she had spoken to me, so utterly terrified of her standing there, in the flesh, that close to me, actually talking to me, that the very best I could do in spite of all of my fantasies about her, was to stutter out the words “IIII‘m bbbbusy“.

She stood there looking at me for a moment, waiting, I imagine, for me to come to my senses, and when it was painfully obvious that nothing was forthcoming but the dumbstruck look on my face, she quietly said, “What?”. What indeed. What I wanted to say, I couldn't, and what I didn't want to say was said before I could get it back. She turned and walked off with her giggling friends. But Sheryl, to her credit, understood and wasn't offended. We were friends, but I was never able to overcome how lovely she was and how inadequate I felt in her presence to take it any further. Her unassailable confidence was beyond me, and so was she.

Junior high is where I first encountered bullies. Most of them either liked me or left me alone. Whether this was because of Sheryl or because I helped them with their homework, I don't know, but one of them, Jim Kinghorn (who was too ugly to care what Sheryl thought and too stupid to care if he flunked), would slug me in the arm every time we were within striking distance of one another. His locker was right next to mine, naturally. Coward that I was, I would never slug him back. I've always been inordinately afraid of getting hit in the face, so much so that I’ve never been in a genuine fist fight in my life, which is amazing to most people, even me. I should have had a few, at least.

Junior high is also where I started smoking cigarettes and got drunk for the first time (on blackberry wine...it was disgusting). After making a scene at an all night cafe, we were arrested and thrown in jail. My parents were called and my mother showed up crying her eyes out. Bill slung me over his shoulder (I couldn’t stand up) and threw me in the car and when we got home took me by one arm and one leg and tossed me downstairs, where my bedroom was. Then he told my mom to stop with her blabbering, I was just drunk. I was exhilarated.

2002-09-12T11:39:00.000-05:00

I will speak of this only once, as it is my Achilles heal.

My doctor has informed me that one of the medications I am taking for my epilepsy is damaging my liver and eating away the marrow in my bones; that taken over any protracted period of time, this is what it does to the human body. Many years ago, when it registered with me as nothing more than another meaningless pronouncement of doom from yet another doctor, I was advised that I would eventually lose all of my teeth, which at the time sounded absurd to me as my teeth were in perfect shape, but I lost them, just as I was told would be the case. This because of the other med that I am taking. Then there is the unavoidable mental confusion referred to in the teeny-tiny print of the three-page disclaimer that comes with it. I'm having a hard time deciding who has benefited the most in all this.

The seizures themselves are roughly akin to shock treatment, a short-circuit in the wiring of the brain that may or may not leave you with some awareness of your situation, but never any control over it; they are not always the same and not always of the same intensity, some are mildly uncomfortable, others strong and sometimes violent; all of them are demoralizing. And taking the meds regularly is no guarantee against seizure activity, as they often seem sensitive to an inner stress or turmoil that I cannot reach.

I have about 10 to 15 seconds warning. My perception takes on a surreal-like quality and becomes imprecise; everything is vaguely off somehow, out of balance, not right. I feel an almost silent humming. I become increasingly anxious because I am about to lose total control and there is nothing I can do about it. I am powerless and feel angry. Then its like touching the exposed ends of live wires to each side of my head. If the current is mild, the involuntary movements are hardly noticeable; if stronger, they become convulsive. There is no pain. I feel drained afterwards.

It is tiring to an individual. And it’s not just the mental and emotional toll that it takes on my dwindling resources; it’s having to constantly expend the energy to hide something that is so much a part of me, and yet so much not a part of others, something that is ugly to watch and humiliating to experience, even when alone. To be open about it is to be singled out, separated from the crowd, treated differently than everyone else. And I hate it. Those closest to me prefer to think that it does not exist, that I am like them and not different. But maybe that’s not fair to them. Maybe I simply see in them what I don't want to see in myself. I hate it more than I can say.

In my case, it is not a genetic condition. No one on either side of my family has ever had epilepsy. None of my children have it. When it was discovered in me, I had taken no hard blows to the head or anything else that is known to sometimes bring about convulsions and cause epilepsy; all of which leaves me little to explain it. For some time now, I’ve thought of my epilepsy as the result of an early conspiracy of mind and body, one having unforeseen and irreversible consequences; confronting a threat to survival and circumstances that had become no longer tenable, a solution to the problem was formed. I can think of no other explanation, nor can I prove this one.

Some might say this theory is born more out of self-centeredness than any reality, and I would give them that, blaming myself for things beyond my control. But I would also note that I certainly wasn’t lacking for attention anymore. In school, I had to sit with the teacher at recess instead of playing with my classmates. I was excused from class early to take a nap everyday. I could get away with things that the others couldn’t. Unfortunately, I did too good of a job on myself, and what I may have then needed as temporary relief, now is a lifetime disability.

End of rant.

2002-09-10T09:46:00.000-05:00

It is not my intention to depress anyone with a maudlin or meandering account of my life, nor am I trying to please anyone with it. My goal, as it took shape in my mind, was to present my life story in as objective and dispassionate a manner as I could, recognizing the need at the same time to be as honest and undramatic about it as possible. I haven’t been able to do this perfectly, as I found that to omit all drama and forbid even the smallest measure of license makes for a very boring read; I wouldn't even read it myself. Be that as it may, the truth of me is here, and if my story should be a cause for hope in someone, or if someone should see themselves in me and just not feel as alone as they once did, then I will have accomplished what I set out to do. This is not to say that my motives are altruistic, by any means. I derive far more benefit from this exercise than I expect any one else ever will. It is strictly selfish on my part; some may say indulgent, but that‘s of no consequence to me.

2002-09-08T13:50:00.000-05:00

Denver was a new place, a new start. I was happy when we moved there. I was enrolled into Mr. Riggs sixth grade class at Charles Hay Elementary School in Englewood, Colorado, a suburb of Denver.

Mr. Riggs was always smiling. He wore a starched white shirt and a tie everyday, spit-shined shoes and crisply creased slacks, and always Old Spice cologne. He had a round, rosy colored face, as if he had tied his tie too tightly around his neck that morning, but it never seemed to bother him. I remember him very clearly. Mr. Riggs told us war stories from his days in the military during WWII. Quite a few war stories. I don't remember many of his lessons, but he could tell a war story that would spellbind the entire class. He had a paddle he kept in one of his desk drawers and he wasn't shy about using it, either. He would never make anyone cry with it - that would've been too humiliating and he never would have done that to us. The whole class feared the paddle, and we all loved Mr. Riggs.

In Mr. Riggs's class: I first heard Edvard Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from Peer Gynt, beginning my love of music; I got my first and last burr haircut (the sadistic man I had for a barber talked me into this) and was so embarrassed by it, grimacing every time I looked at myself in the mirror, that I wouldn't go to school without wearing a cap on my head; and, for the first time in my life, I was smitten by the opposite sex, the fair and lovely Erlene Bolton, and the stunning Roxanne Shipley. They were so beautiful. Goddesses. In my mind, they still are.

On my way home from school once, I waved at a little girl who was standing behind the screen door of her house with her pet collie, and the dog burst through the door and bit me on the ass. Then the little girl's mother drags me inside their house and yanks down my pants to inspect the wound. I was mortified. And the underwear I was wearing that day was an old pair in which the entire rear end was worn away. All I could do was mumble something like, "that's okay, lady, I'm fine, I'll just go home now if you don't mind". Attacked by the dog, accosted by the mother, injured, hurting, humiliated and degraded - right there in front of the little girl, no less - then turned out the door and sent along my way. Not even a cookie. Thank God Erlene and Roxanne lived in the other direction. Needless to say, I didn't walk on that side of the street anymore, and I didn't wave to the stupid little girl anymore, either. Thus began my phobia of dogs.

I experienced the beginnings of peer pressure in the sixth grade. Some of my friends lived in real nice homes and had all kinds of toys and gadgets that my parents couldn't afford, and after visiting them I would feel ashamed for them to see the small house in which I lived. I once asked the parents of one friend to drop me off on the corner, so they wouldn't see my house so I wouldn't feel ashamed by it. Before, my grandfather had bought us a nice home in Odessa (in fact he had bought us several nice homes, and cars as well), as George didn't work much, but Bill fixed up our house and painted it and put a nice redwood fence around the front yard and the back yard, and he planted trees and new grass and he took good care of it, so this sensitive phase didn't last too long.

I believe it was also at this time that I got into the Boy Scouts. I met Dale there, who was to be my best friend for the next 30 years. He died of a heroin overdose in his bathtub about ten years ago. Our troop (the Bobwhites) would go camping up in the mountains and I thought I was going to freeze to death sometimes, and we did the deviant things boys that age tend to do sometimes, and we got to wear uniforms and feel like we were something special, and I liked it. I was going places, doing things, making friends, having fantasies about girls and dreams of what I was going to be in life, and a lot of other things. It felt good to be a part of life, not some victim of misfortune, some unwilling witness.

2002-09-05T16:55:00.000-05:00

For the next seven years, I was to experience something approaching normalcy in my life. I was far too warped by then to appreciate it, but it was a welcome respite all the same. The year was 1960 and I had just finished the fifth grade (in five different schools), and my mother had met and married her third husband. After their honeymoon, we moved to Denver, Colorado, which is where I was to live for the most part of the next 20 years.

Bill was born and raised in Oklahoma. He was a big man, heavyset but not fat, and never wore a shirt unless he was in a public place or at work. He had blonde hair all over his chest and stomach and wore his pants (always Levi's) a little too low (before it was popular), and he had the meanest expression on his face all the time, and a scar above his right eyebrow. He worked hard for a living, even when he was ill. I don't remember him ever calling into work sick. He took care of us as best he could, which was good enough, and I liked him.

Bill was younger than my mother and had never been married while my mother had been married twice and already had five children. By the time he and my mother were divorced he was supporting seven children in all, and he was barely 30 years old. He named his oldest son Sam - not Samuel, just Sam - and the younger one Joel (my mother's doing, or it would have been just Joe). I have to admire that kind of simplicity. Oddly enough, a Sam that's just a Sam or a Joe that's just a Joe is fairly uncommon.

The one and only time he spanked us kids (and Lord knows we deserved it more than that), he sat out on the front porch afterwards and cried. When I later heard about this, it shocked me - not that he had cried, but that he cared. From then on we started calling him "dad", as that he was. I later learned from my mother that his own father used to beat him with barbed wire, and that he had left home at the age of 13 and been on his own ever since. I can see why.

Bill died of a heart attack when he was 45. I can count on one hand the number of times in my adult life that I've cried, and one of them was when Bill died. As irrational as it is, I was mad at him for dying. Ordinarily my reasoning process would have circumvented the pain I was feeling, channeled it into a different energy, but this time the numb spot I've always maintained firmly in place when it comes to personal loss was breached enough to hurt.

Tom was my mother's fourth husband. Tom was a young man, tall and powerfully built, and his face would turn as red as an apple when he got angry. He was probably a good ten years younger than my mother when they married. I didn't know much about Tom, but I knew that he was physically abusive to my mother. My younger brother, who was still living at home then, hated him intensely.

I met him only once, and that was during a time in my life when I had started thinking, a little more than usual, that something was wrong with me. People who have nothing wrong them don't ask themselves "what's wrong with me" all day long. So I went to see my mother and to get her advice. I may have been crazy but I was at least going to be pragmatic about it. I told her I was thinking of committing myself to Fort Logan Mental Health Center; let the doctors figure it out.

The objectivity I was hoping for was all but lost when I mentioned Fort Logan, as this upset her a great deal and she started crying. She told Tom what I had said, and from the look on his face and the color that had suddenly flashed into it, I knew at once that it was time for me to leave. I apologized to them for causing any trouble and then left before things degenerated into what I then suspected would have been an unpleasant scene involving the local police. It occurred to me that I wasn't the only nut in that house.

Three months later, Tom put the barrel of a .22 caliber pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger. After severing one of his optic nerves and boring a hole in his brain that extended to the rear of his cranial cavity, the bullet stopped. Incredulously, it didn't kill him. It would have been better for him if it had. One side of his head is caved in (or scooped out) and he is completely blind and confined to a wheel chair, a vegetable, cared for by his aging parents. My brother, for reasons of his own, and which I understood, kept the bullet.

George, my mother's fifth husband, is an educated, well-traveled man, duty-bound, level-headed and stable in every sense, to whom I owe a great debt of gratitude, for many things, and to whom my mother remains married to this day. According to them, this is simply because they are both too old now to go out partying and raising hell like they did when they were younger. They are both in their 70's.

2002-09-02T05:45:00.000-05:00

I have no memory of my father, no personal knowledge of the events surrounding his death. I’ve always had to rely on the memory of these events as they exist in the minds of those who know something about them. And finding that my own memory tends to enhance or altogether re-invent history, conforming it to my own image of what it should have been, often times re-casting myself in a more favorable light, I remind myself, that indeed this could be as much a fairy tale as ever there was one. So, bearing these things in mind, I now set down the following details regarding my father's death, which is euphemistically referred to in my family as a hunting accident.

The story goes that my father, Sanford, and two of his brothers, Bill and George, packed their gear and their guns and drove up into the mountains near Flagstaff, Arizona to find a hunting camp, and having accomplished this, went into town for a few beers. After drinking awhile, an argument erupted between Bill and George over a woman, whose name is Lillian. Evidently they were still engaged in this argument when they left the bar and headed back to their campsite. Nothing was resolved on the drive back, and the fighting over Lillian continued and just got worse.

Sometime after arriving back at their camp, George, provoked by his own unchecked passion and the debilitating effect of alcohol on his self-control, picked up his hunting rifle and aimed it at his brother Bill and threatened to kill him. My father, whose obligatory role in the situation up to this point had been that of peacekeeper, now allegedly tries to wrest the loaded rifle from his angry younger brother's hands, and in the ensuing struggle, the gun discharges into his stomach.

A very stupid thing to do. Too stupid, I have always thought. My father had had no part in the argument, had been in the military, was trained in armed combat, had grown up around guns and had used them all of his life; he knew all of the dos and don'ts of handling firearms. And yet, suddenly, when confronted with a man who is pointing a hunting rifle at one of his own brothers, about to commit familial murder, he is so bereft of all knowledge, training, experience and expertise, that he grabs the barrel of the gun and jerks it toward his own gut in an attempt to disarm the man.

And perhaps it is true. Perhaps my father went temporarily insane, much like George had. Or maybe he acted on a whim and decided to commit suicide that day. While I've never been happy with this explanation of events, no one has ever felt comfortable talking about it with me, and whenever people get uncomfortable I never feel comfortable pressing them. So I don't press them and I don't have any answers. What's the difference, I ask myself? I suppose I could look up Uncle Bill before one of us dies, or order transcripts of the trial; I dont know if I'm prepared for that, though. Perhaps, in the end, the fiction is easier to live with. Perhaps my relatives have acted rightly in being so evasive.

The death certificate shows the cause of death was loss of blood due to a gunshot wound in the abdomen; in other words, he bled to death. One of my relatives felt compelled to tell me that my father might have lived had the ambulance not lost its way trying to find the hunting camp, delaying the medical attention he needed if he was to survive. I had to ask. He was buried in Casa Grande, Arizona, my birthplace. He was 25 years old.

I visited my father's grave once, when I was in my late teens. In the ground was a small, rectangular plaque with his name inscribed on it, along with the date of his birth and that of his death. I felt nothing stir inside me. I thought I should at least feel something, but I didn’t. And then I thought I should at least feel something about not feeling something, but I didn’t, really. I've never been back.

George never fully recovered from the incident. The trial was an especially brutal one. I think, too, that his marriage to my mother only aggravated things for him, given the continual presence of my younger sister and I. One night, in Odessa, Texas, which is where we were living then, he suffered from a mental collapse. He had suddenly started accusing my mother of paying people to drive up and down the street just to keep him awake. A few days after that, I asked my mother what had happened to him, as I still hadn't been told anything. She started crying and told me that he was gone and wouldn't be coming home anymore. I was 10 years old. Mostly one institution or another took care of George for the rest of his life. He died several years ago.

Bill married Lillian. They are still married and live in California. They have two grown sons. Bill is probably the only person alive who knows what really happened the day my father was killed. He may have told his older brother Willard, but Willard was on Corrigidor in WWII, where he was in hand-to-hand combat for over 30 days armed only with a bayonet. He might tell me anything. Lillian came home from work one day and found him perched, stark naked, over the kitchen sink, wherein he had defecated. He was smiling at her. Lillian has never allowed him back in their house. On Willard's better days, Bill visits him in his sparsely furnished apartment and they drink beer together. I could swear, when I visited them, that Uncle Bill was never happier than when he was drinking beer with Uncle Willard.

2002-08-29T12:14:00.000-05:00

I’m no saint, nor do I want to be. Discipline, study, reflection, purity of life and loving service aren’t my strong points. I don‘t perceive myself as being inherently in possession of any virtue at all. As for this spiritual awakening or heightened awareness (I am comfortable with either term, as I tend to believe that both refer to a singular event, which itself is predicated on little more than self-honesty), I have found, and was told from the beginning, that such experience only promises relief from the insanity of alcoholism; as for any other aberrations of mind and body, while I may find temporary or partial relief, I’m not to expect an answer in A. A. They’re not in that business. I am responsible, if nothing else, to accept (not just tolerate) and live with any such conditions as best I can. This I try, not always successfully, to do. To some, I would be considered a complete failure. But that is their business.

2002-08-28T17:14:00.000-05:00

For someone who doesn't have much to say, I can be a rather long-winded bastard.

2002-08-27T10:27:00.000-05:00

My thinking concerning God is probably better understood in the light of my experience in Alcoholics Anonymous, where my single most astonishing experience wasn't the fact of my own spiritual awakening, but rather the fact of a spiritual awakening in others. A spiritual awakening is the whole point of the Twelve Steps. These aren’t always of the “burning bush” variety. Mine certainly wasn’t. For me, it was coming to an awareness that I had been lying to myself all of my life, especially about my relationships with other people and my ability to sustain them.

But I had a problem with this spiritual awakening business: I was fettered with a conception of God that was in direct conflict with what I was seeing with my own eyes. I had associated the Power behind this much-needed spiritual awakening with the Almighty God that I had been brought up with, the God in which I had believed for as long as I could remember. But no matter how steadfastly I clung to it, I simply didn't have the honesty or the humility to make the "old time religion" work for me.

In A. A., I saw a colorful cross-section of humanity, people of dissimilar backgrounds, different ages, shapes, sizes, races, genders; the rich and the famous were there too, as well as the poor (I was in this category), the smokers and the non-smokers, all assembled together in one room without wanting to maim, torture and kill one another. The social distinctions and barriers that existed on the other side of the door, did not apply on this side of it. More importantly to me, they were all sober. (Secretly, though, in the beginning, I thought they were all liars. How could anyone sit around for an hour talking about alcohol and not get thirsty? I couldn't wait to get drunk after those first few meetings; I simply could not envision a life without alcohol.).

But what so radically altered my conception of God was more than just the hope of recovery. I saw quite a number of people there with sexual and religious orientations very different from mine. The gays and the bisexuals alongside the celibates and the straights, laughing, talking, drinking coffee, all of them still practicing their familiar lifestyles. I didn't understand. As if that wasn't enough, there was also a mottled assortment of Baptists, Catholics, Pentecostals, Hindus, Muslims - you name it - among them, still practicing their religion. Yet none of them were in disagreement on the matter of a spiritual awakening - religious practices, yes, but a spiritual awakening, no, and all of them claimed to be sober as a result of it. Yes, it may seem weird, but it is true.

My disillusionment at this point was literally hurting me: it wasn’t supposed to be this way. I had been told it wasn't supposed to be this way since I was a child, and all my church-going life, that's what I had heard from the pulpit. Derisively, I asked myself: is this potpourri of insanity, this unlikely gathering of hopelessly lost and misguided, helplessly deluded drunks actually sober by the Devil’s power?! My mother told me so, as did the pastor of the church she attended. Only they could save me! But they knew, as well as I, that they couldn’t.

The only reason I hadn’t been institutionalized (I had had a few short-term visits), was because my mother was willing to take care of me in her own home. I had tried the psychiatrists, the churches, the drugs, the geographical cure and everything else I could think of, to get sober and to stay that way, and none of it worked. Everyone knew that it was only a matter of time before I would be committed or thrown in jail. I knew it too. My physical and mental health had deteriorated, I thought, beyond any hope of repair. (One night a friend of mine, stunned at my recovery, told me that he never expected to see me again, outside the walls of an institution.). I was 36 years old, and had somehow managed to lose my family, my career, and everything else that was important to me.

I had to scrap the “God of my fathers” and start over. So, I thanked Him for seeing me through life thus far, told Him I was in a bit of a pickle, and then fired Him, with the proviso that I could get Him back in case things didn't work out. I modified my conception of God to fit the circumstances. There was no other way. And I will forever be grateful that I did, as it freed me from the influence of my own deceit, and made a spiritual awakening - a new awareness - possible for me, just like it had for everyone else, irrespective of religion or lifestyle.

Gradually, I came to believe that it isn't a person's language, or their lifestyle, or their intelligence, or anything else we ordinarily judge them by that is important; it was something in the heart, something only God can see. Of all the times I had been "saved" in church - answering the altar call, responding to the beautiful music, the preacher's soft, beckoning voice, feelings of guilt and shame overcoming me - none of them were as lasting or meaningful to me as the salvation from alcoholic madness and death that I was to find in A. A.

And it was this undeniable change that I saw taking place in so many different lives, this spiritual awakening I was witnessing in others who were very much like me, and yet not like me at all, that eventually led me to give God some breathing room, and in so doing, myself and others as well.

2002-08-24T12:45:00.000-05:00

I am at pains to commit myself on the subject of God. I’ve read in various articles that scientists say the biggest mystery of all is that of existence. “God” is a term that I associate with all things known, unknown, and unknowable. I therefore find the terms “Mystery of Existence” and “Fact of God“ loosely synonymous with one another. I reject any limited understanding or conception, as I do not believe there is an end to knowledge. My freedom to choose my own beliefs, to altar them, or to discard them completely in the light of new information, and as I see fit, shall remain with me.

Some prefer to describe their beliefs in words that stubbornly resist spiritual interpretation, words that dismiss application of supernatural phenomena as irrelevant, or even absurd, words having no framework of reference outside of their own narrow context - words that box God out. Then there are those who would have us believe that science is a fraud, or at the very least not to be taken seriously when considering spiritual or religious matters, as well as those who, astoundingly, see a universal correctness in their beliefs, and who would punish with eternal torment, anyone who did not agree with them. I try to avoid both of these extremes.

The more contentious ground, it seems to me, is the suggestion of a Being whose existence is personal to man, One who is interested in human affairs and willing and able to intervene in them, who can be sought through meditation and petitioned with prayer; a Being with whom there is communion in the exercise of such basic principles as honesty, humility, and trust.

It seems we would altogether disallow the existence of any Intelligence greater than ourselves. I don’t understand this, though, because it certainly isn’t borne out by the world around me. There are those who are certainly smarter than I am, and some who are downright stupid. I should view this fact of life with gratitude. At times, however, arising from within me is the seeming threat that if I’m not as smart as the next guy, then I’m not as good as he is either. As a result, I soon find myself in over my head, in a position from which I cannot extricate myself, needing to make an apology, and deciding I would rather die first.

The undisguised contempt for Jesus that is so prevalent today is totally unwarranted; it’s childish and shoddy behavior, especially for adults. Frivolous or insupportable remarks made about another’s religion, or religion in general, are also irksome to me, as this is an evasive maneuver with which I am well familiar. Sure, we can detail the atrocities performed in the name of religion (as in the name of politics, or in the name of “manifest destiny” - just about any peg is suitable for hanging a hat). There is also much (and quite possibly more) good done in and by these organizations, as well. To take notice of one and not the other is blatantly self-serving.

I was raised as a Southern Baptist and later attended a Methodist, then an Episcopal church, in Englewood, Colorado, which is a suburb of Denver (I broke into one of them once, with some friends of mine, and stole the petty cash box so we could buy a matchbox of marijuana). My first wife, shortly after we were married, discovered the Pentecostal movement, and I joined along with her. (She mistakenly thought that I would want to give up all my dope immediately, so she flushed a 1/4 lb. of the best weed I had ever had down the toilet. I told her I was thinking more along the lines of tapering off. I remember that now, as clearly as if it had happened yesterday.). After several years involvement with the Charismatics, I concluded my dealings with churches altogether, and never went back.

The only holy book I’ve ever known is the Holy Bible, and I still find it sufficient for my purposes. That I understand it differently than a lot of Christians I know, doesn‘t render it useless to me. I know there are many other philosophies of religion besides that of Christianity, and to what extent or particular that there is any wide variation in these myriad philosophies, I don't know. The backdrop of my religious upbringing is a Christian one, and not only do I perceive it as being very difficult to change at this point - if not impossible - even if I wanted to, I feel no need to abandon it.

2002-08-22T13:25:00.000-05:00

From the outset, I decided to use blogging as a tool for my own peculiar purposes, particular to something that’s still rather vague in my mind, but that's slowly taking a shape that I like. It is painstakingly tedious at times, as writing has never come easily to me. I was hoping to capture something of myself, some of my thoughts and experiences, combine them into some loosely jointed yet coherent narrative, then present it to the world, and say, "This is who I am!" Of course, it always helps to know, first.

Then, in reading some of the blogs of my on-line friends, I began feeling inadequate to the task: everyone seems to have a life - doing things, going places, renewing old friendships, realizing their potential - and the routine of my life is the same everyday: I get up, get coffee, log onto the internet, read my email, read the latest blogs, then go to the Religion 1 chat room until I get tired. Then I read until I fall asleep and do it all again when I get up. Somewhere in the middle of this flurry of activity, I find the time to fight with my wife and neglect my children. Today is the first day I've been anywhere in weeks, and that's because I had to see my doctor; I couldn't get out of it. If I broke another appointment, he told me, then he wouldn't renew my prescription. (I hate doctors, passionately. I couldn't survive without them, but that's probably the reason I hate them so much.).

If I was going to write about myself, it had to be about something other than my daily routine, because it is the same every day. And the regular flow of my thoughts and emotions is so formless and elusive, so susceptible to disruption at any given moment, to changing shape and direction at the behest of anything from a hungry stomach to a psychological quirk, that the focus and feeling are soon lost, easily replaced. Something a little more definitive would be agreeable - but what?

Once, I was a member in good standing of Alcoholics Anonymous (I've been sober for 16 years now, but quit attending A.A. meetings roughly 10 years ago, which is not something I would recommend to the seriously afflicted, and I am one of the seriously afflicted), and there I learned that helping myself is a matter of helping others (something to do with self-centeredness), and to do that, I had to be honest with myself about my past, and then share it, warts and all, with others - not carelessly or indiscriminately, where it would be unwelcome, but exercising my best judgment. How else redeem a wasted past? I owe this much to myself, if no one else, as it always works when cynicism and self-pity begin getting the better of me, which is quite often. So I decided to start at the beginning of my life, being as honest as possible with everyone, and trying not to be overly melodramatic.

Now, it occurs to me that a blog is very similar to a very public sort of diary, and I found myself feeling embarrassed after reading some of them, as if I had just been prying into someone's private life, peeping at them through their bedroom or bathroom window without their knowledge or consent, an uninvited witness intruding upon their privacy. My initial reaction was one of regret, as I was reading of real life experiences, real life injustice, and the pain and damage it can cause in human lives. It occurred to me that I preferred the less detailed version of my friends, as this kept them at a safer distance from me than the mirrored version of myself that I was now reading about. It occurred to me that anyone reading my blog may have felt the same way. It occurred to me that I’m deathly afraid of getting close to anyone.

Anchored somewhere in the murky waters of my past is the substance of my issues. Sometimes my past can grip me so firmly, that I can’t let go of it. I panic, knowing something is wrong somewhere, with me, and I don’t know what it is, or what to do. I've never been convinced that an unrequited past is my problem - an excuse maybe, but not a problem. And then there are times when I think there is more to it than that; for the most part, though, my attitude of mind seems related more to the current events in my life than to any mental or emotional condition that may have formed its beginnings. I would have much the same feelings and outlook on life today, based solely upon my present circumstances, solely upon the choices I make today, as I would were I to have the additional burden of an unresolved past.

So I think to myself, the past isn’t getting me into trouble today - it's not alive anymore (is it?), it's dead (right?); it’s today’s choices - today’s choices - that keep getting me into trouble tomorrow. And then I think, but it’s yesterday’s choices that got me into trouble today! And I think about it to the point that it doesn't make sense anymore. I think, and get confused, and it hurts my head, and it frustrates me...and I forgot to take my pills today. Damn.

2002-08-18T14:44:00.000-05:00

On a lighter note.... Next to sleeping, and chatting on-line with the friends I've made there, my favorite pastime is reading. I've also taken an interest in blogging recently. Oddly enough, it has had something of a liberating effect on me. Not that I've turned into Jonathan Livingston Seagull, or anything, but I’ve been finding it profitable and worthwhile to commit some of my thoughts to writing, as scattered and uninformed as they may be.

As for my reading habits of late, the serial killer has become my favorite, all-time hero, especially when he gets away with it. The weary and taunted homicide detective, collecting the smallest evidence, studying the obscurest detail, daily confronting the gruesome handiwork of a demented killer; the forensic pathologist, detached and unfeeling, dutifully recording every motion of his ghastly routine, every observation, every thoughtful conclusion rotely dictated, looking for the remotest clue as to the identity of his subject, and its cause of death - all of it fascinates me (in my imagination, of course; in reality, I would be as appalled and revolted as any sane person - not that I make any such claim).

I wonder, though: why do the broken and battered bodies of men, women and children - people who, when alive, had to fight for notice - all of a sudden, in death, become the subject of such scrutiny? If the same meticulous care had been given them while they were still living, as they are certainly getting now, then perhaps they wouldn't be laying in the morgue now, naked and toe-tagged, the last moment of life still frozen on their faces, their most private moment now a spectacle, and waiting (with infinite patience) for the clinicians to pick up their scalpels and saws, and remorselessly tear into what remains of them.

Do they believe in the existence of a loving God? I don’t know if I could, doing what they do all day, every day. Our hopes for family and loved ones, the desires locked in our hearts, the passions that drive us, the fear of failure, the pain of loneliness, the misery of regret, in the end, all reduced to a biological mass of weight and volume, alone and violated on a cold, stainless-steel table. And the rest vanishes, bowing to insignificance, humiliation, indignity, and defeat. For me, this is intolerable, if not impossible; yet, for them, man's inhumanity to man relentlessly shoved at them day after day, a ceaseless parade of death pervading their every waking moment, what else is there?

So why is my attention riveted by these unbelievably horrific events in human lives, by the staggering enormity of the grief caused by them (for surely that's part of it)? I've searched the web for uncensored photographs depicting, in the most graphic detail, scenes from murders and autopsies, auto wrecks, grotesque human deformities and savage self-abuse, challenging my senses to revolt. It was only a matter of time. One day I came across the picture of an infant, lying motionless and stiff on an autopsy table, an incision having been made from its sternum and running the length of its torso, the skin peeled back to reveal its insides: that was enough.

Still, why the fascination? The other night while I was reading "Imagining Robert", a biography written by Jay Neugeboren, wherein he chronicles his brother Robert's descent into madness, I found myself identifying so completely with this man's mental illness and frustrating circumstances (Robert never killed anyone), looking over at the books piled on my bed (about five at the time, all of them about some psychotic, genius-demon serial killer), then back at the book I was reading, back and forth between the books on my bed and the one in my lap, and it clicked: it's the insanity, the madness underlying the gore, that draws me back again and again.

My own insanity, of course. The last thing I wanted to find, and I've been pursuing it, unwittingly, inescapably, relentlessly. This kind of knowledge I would rather live without, because it doesn't solve the problem, and because it presents the very real prospect of losing myself completely (should I fail to act), and indeed, going insane.

"Jay, let me switch the phone to my good ear. There, now can you hear me better?" - Robert Neugeboren

2002-08-16T14:28:00.000-05:00

I've often wondered why I'm so attracted to the viler side of life; why I feel as much at home in an alley as I do in my own apartment; why I find a certain peace and comfort in the solitude of destitute places, abandoned, forgotten places; why, in some perverse way, I find the company of felons, drunks and the mentally ill more reassuring and validating than that of my own peer group.

I suppose the psychology behind it is no big secret: my father was shot and killed by his youngest brother in the mountains near Flagstaff, Arizona when I was a child, and altlhough the charges were subsequently dropped to accidental manslaughter, I've always felt robbed; that something critically important to my upbringing had been violently ripped away from me, irretrievably lost. Which of course it had been, and was. I wasn't allowed to attend the funeral, as my mother felt I was too young for such things (I was four years old at the time).

They were married soon after the trial and his release from jail. On the one occasion that I asked my mother about my father's death and her subsequent marriage to his brother, she told me that his mental anguish was so great (at the trial, the D. A. actually took the blood-soaked clothes my father had been wearing the day he died and stood them up in the courtroom); that every time she visited him in jail he couldn't stop crying; that she married him out of pity. Shortly after they were married, my mother became pregnant (I have one brother and two sisters who are also my cousins).

It was at this time, or around this time, and for no apparent reason, that I suddenly began losing consciousness every five minutes, and had to be rushed to the hosptital. My head was pumped full of dye, x-rays taken, and a lesion discovered above my right ear. There was a 50/50 probability that I would lose my eyesight or my ability to hear as a result of any cutting in the area near the lesion, but it was my only option; anti-convulsants weren't working, so I was prepped for surgery.

Inexplicably, the seizures stopped before I went into the operating room. The neuro-surgeon diagnosed me as epileptic, prescribed a barbituate known as phenobarbital (which I very much liked and was soon asking for more than I was supposed to have) and then released me from the hospital. The lesion and why it had developed was never medically explained. As one neurologist put it, dictating into his dictaphone, "subject will have epilepsy for the rest of his life", a statement I deeply resented, and I told him so (I was in my early 20's at the time) but which has, so far, proven to be true. I will be 53 in October.

These were the profoundly life-altering experiences of my childhood, my defining moments.