How Terrible We've Become

We'll sweat it out then, in cold, on the interstate. Have a hundred miniature heart attacks while trying to sleep in the passenger seat, passing by the green, blue, and brown empty space that makes up the slow climb from the plains to the Rockies. There might be birds flying from roadside trees. There might be a dead deer, or a dead dog, on the shoulder. There might be some cows milling about, though the wind blowing over the prairie sweeps away the smell before it makes it through the vents and into the car. Who knows. The kid is sleeping too, in the backseat--no nightmares for him though.

A long ten days in my hometown and I am hearing folks talking--though they're not talking--from my paralyzed half-sleep and I think that I am going to die. Ten days of heavy drinking after what feels like ten years(though it is closer to six) of heavy drinking--heavier than usual in these past few months--and that's what happens when you try to come off it: you try to sleep and your body shakes, your heart speeds up, your breathing is uneven, and folks who aren't really there are talking to you. The conversations come back. Things you've all said before at one time or another--they're repeated. They're saying things about poor kids in such and such country, about books you need to read("I really think you'd love it"), about the girl they fucked last Tuesday, the girl they fucked last Wednesday, and the girl they fucked last night; they're saying things about the places they've been, about the places you need to go("I really think you'd love it"), about the things they're going to do, and by all probability won't. And as they're saying these things, they are standing over you, sitting next to you, crouching behind you; they are touching your arms and your legs and your face--the pressure is unbearable, what with the booze coming out of your system, through your pores, and your body trying desperately to regain its equilibrium(only a sober one now). There's absolutely no chance. I am going to die.

Another thing comes up while in that condition. It is that unearthly heaviness so familiar from your youth, from those times when you stared into the mirror and felt that you might not exist, or nothing existed, or what have you(you were young), from those times when you jerked off and felt so lonely it hurt, from those times when you decided it was a mistake as you were making it; that unearthly heaviness so familiar to you because you've felt it for years, on and off, when in the unholy night you are visited by what you think is a demon that's come to rape you for the wrongs it's glad you've done, or you are visited by what you think is an angel that's come to cry over you for all the wrongs it's disappointed you've done. There's no difference in these things anyway. They're all horrible, and they're all real. You no longer have any friends in all of this, and no family. There is no one left to love you.

After you switch from the passenger seat to the wheel--miraculously making it through those first startling hours of sobriety--and you've sweated out what you hope to be everything(it never is), a good meal is necessary even if it must be choked down. With food in your belly the distraction of driving is good then, and you feel silly for ever having had the thought that no one loves you, or you don't have any friends, or family. You watch the foothills begin to take shape just a little ways into Colorado from Nebraska, and the big clouds in the sky form what will soon be a thunderstorm, and you are fine for a moment--you can breathe, you can smile. Everything will be fine.

We get back to the house(an hour west of Denver) at dusk, and as I pull the car into the garage a fearful notion, or memory really, is struck in me: This is not over; This will take a few days at least, I know, and please lord--whatever that means, as in my habit I always say--help me. The house is dark and there are still some dishes in the sink from when we left. The kid's toys are scattered all around the kitchen and living room. The garage door will not close--it is coming down on top of the trunk of the car because I did not pull in far enough. I am real quiet about that...

Mother and child are quick up the stairs. Father is home from work soon after and follows them up. They have their own little family to fall back on. I am alone though, in the living room(don't want to go to the bedroom where, in my first nights here, I had already had several unsettling dreams), attempting to stay awake long enough so that exhaustion will overtake me and put me out like a light. Can't handle the prospect of struggling through hours of silence, attempting to overcome the hypersensitivity of my detoxing body and of my healing conscience. I need the aid of the witless drone from the TV and the flashing blue light in the dark to provide imagery that is separate from my own memory and therefore will not cause nightmares. But that is never the case. It is impossible to escape the things that are already in your brain. Nonetheless, I tried. I see four o'clock in the morning before I finally slip back into the delirium I experienced earlier in the car.

There was more sweat then, in cold, on the couch in the living room of someone else's home. There were a hundred miniature deaths caused by heart failure, caused by an aneurism, caused by the unearthly heaviness created by the beings in my dreams:

A young group of folks with painted faces(not COTE), they wanted to kill me. I was being accused of theft--some trivial item, a lighter maybe--and they were closing in on me, around me, snarling in a different language. But there was one girl who had taken a liking to me, with a foreign name and a pretty face--even behind the paint. She took me away from everyone, into her arms, and she spoke kindly to me, smiling, telling me not to worry about anything. Oh, this beautiful girl, she wanted me to fuck her but I couldn't--not in good conscience; when she learned that I wouldn't, she changed. I was ridiculed for not allowing myself to be "barbaric," among other things, and she laughed at me. They all laughed at me. The whole thing had been a scheme amongst them for me to be frightened into fucking this "kind" woman with unspeakable diseases.

I ran. I took the first bus--to Rhode Island? A Rhode Island that would never be reached. I found all of my old friends on the bus. And the bus was going through Africa, in some unbelievable countryside where it was said we were not welcome. Spears with poison tips were being thrown by the natives running alongside our bus, our old wooden ship on wheels, and as they came at us we would trip on the shackles attached to our seats, and fall, and the spears just kept on coming...

I am awake now. It is the morning and the kid is running about. He wants to go outside. So Father--who has the day off from work--and I take him to the park. He plays mainly by himself, but occasionally asks us to go down the slide with him--we concede, and go down the slide. Afterwards, we go to the grocery store. We pack the cart and then stock the cabinets and the fridge in the house. And I've said nothing of the dreams I've been having, of the physical ailments I've been experiencing. What can I say--that I've been drinking too much and am now suffering because of it? that I've wrecked my body and done irreparable things concerning my conscience and am now horrified of myself and existence in general? You can't say those things to a father on a Sunday afternoon while his kid needs a diaper change and is asking fort strawberry milk. You just have to endure them silently, and remember that it, like everything, will pass; and you have to shake your head to acknowledge just how terrible we've become, that this continuous cycle of self-destruction is not just idiotic, but normal.

//

In the words of Rumi: "But listen to me; for one moment, quit being sad. Hear blessings dropping their blossoms all around you. God." Alright, old boy--whatever you say.

Enjoy yourselves, and your summers.

With love,

and Thanks to everyone in Lincoln,

K. Benjamin Font