THREE

THREE

#

05.01.12 (Tuesday)

     A man in the program left late Monday night or early this morning –- I can't be certain which.  He was making methamphetamine in his room down the hall from mine using a portable stove-top, apparently.  It blew up in his face, apparently.  He lost his eyebrows.  He did not suppose that it would happen this way, apparently.  I was attending to some things in North Carolina all weekend and missed the whole episode, as well as the visit from the fire department and the investigator.  It took a little while for word to get around concerning what had actually taken place and, by the time it reached my ears, the meth cook, Joseph, had made like a banana and split.  His little experiment could've been detrimental to what we're trying to do here.  It was not supposed to happen this way.

     Joseph was found dead just two hours ago -– his throat butterflied like a fillet.  He did not split wide enough on his own, apparently; someone had to help him out.

     The phrase, “make like a banana and split,” is something my grandfather liked to say.  I received a phone call earlier informing me that he died today.  It was supposed to happen this way, apparently, and it did.

#

05.12.12 (Saturday)

     We went to a NASCAR race yesterday as a part of the program designed to reinforce that one does not need drugs to have fun.  The real reason for the trip, of course, was that I had business to attend to: a partner in Atlanta needed some sensitive information.  I, however, am never to travel to a partner's city, and they are never to travel to Greenville.  So, we met at the track, in the Pearson stands, Section I, Row 13, Seats 15 and 16, near Turn 4, in Darlington, South Carolina.  I won a purple, Chevy T-shirt for doing fifty push-ups; ate a mess of charred-red, barbecue ribs; flirted heavily with the yellow-smocked, beer-and-pretzel girl; handed a blue thumb-drive to a fat, shirtless, white man with a green “7” painted on his chest; and drank a pint of clear, dry vodka with a thin, black girl wearing a pink, rebel-flag bikini-top.  Interestingly, it was the only rebel flag I saw the entire day.

#

05.13.12 (Sunday)

     Played three games of basketball this afternoon, after church services.  Blocked seven shots and scored forty-two of my team's three-game total, forty-five points.  LSD and basketball -– who knew?

#

05.14.12 (Monday)

     The program director has moved me from the donation center to the main office now.  I have not been told why, but I assume that I've been placed there to relay messages without questioning their meaning or purpose -– something that another member of the program might be naturally inclined to ponder or even pursue.

#

05.16.12 (Wednesday)

     It's freezing-fucking-cold in here, in Room 5, and everyone but me is sleeping.  Nothing to be done about it, either.  Jonah sleeps like a hot-dog in a croissant; Bull like a mummy in an uncorked tomb; David like a drunken donkey; Jimmie like a homeless prince.  Culture-morphers.  Revitalized relics.  Unnatural manifestations.  Street royalty.  Good people.

     And I'm trapped here with an unscratchable itch in my head.  I can't put it away from me; I can't pull it out of me.  A silver thread spun from my navel, tied to a fishing hook that won't hold a worm, anchored to a thinning atmosphere, strung through my esophagus and gritted teeth.  Practicality colliding with abstraction, directionless but for dreaming, futile: I did get off that train, right?  There was A, then B, and surely I must be at F or G by now, right? 

     Right?

     Sylvester, is that you?

     This double-edged razor I walk without the benefit of gravity or compass; it's cutting me in all the wrong places sometimes.  Something is changing inside me, alright –- should it feel good because it's right, or should it feel bad because I'm wrong and it is contrary to my instincts?  Am I hearing the dry earth groan with pleasure at the introduction of moisture, or am I hearing the dryness itself cry out because its spirit, its lack of moisture, is being murdered?  Whose side of myself am I on here, anyway?

     At the bottom of it all, I think, I just hate people.  No, that's not true.  I don't hate people; I hate interacting with them.  I hate the tediousness of it all.  The people, I think, I actually love tremendously.  I do care deeply for them, I think.  I love them as I love myself, as God instructs me to do, which is to say I can't stand them most of the time and hope they find ways to improve their overall, respective natures as much as possible, as quickly as possible.  I think.

     Jonah, (the hot-dog,) is fun.  He's twenty-two and court-ordered to be here, but is doing a nice job making the best of an involuntary situation.  The program is his get-out-of-jail-free card, really, and I know that he appreciates the opportunity.  If he completes it, he'll never do a day for his crack-dealing charge.  The hardest thing for him, it seems to me, is preventing himself from running balls-first down the street every time a pretty girl walks by.  Honestly, I don't know if I'd be able to make it through a six-month, all-male program at his age.  He must beat-off constantly.

     He and I have a running joke going wherein I pretend to be a racist, black man, and he pretends to be a racist, white man.  It's confusing for the other members of the program, especially in the shower room, getting ready for church, when he calls out: “Too many fucking niggers in here!”  And I respond: “Why don't you just get a rope, you sorry-ass cracker-motherfucker!”  And he says: “Boy, don't test me.  I got my hood and fiery cross right there in the other room!”  And I comply: “Okay, boss, if it'll make you feel better, go on and hang my black ass.”  The faces in the mirrors, black and white, frozen mid-shave, mid-brush, mid-gargle.  Echoes of, “What the–- ?”  It passes the time.

     We play basketball sometimes.  He's younger, quicker, has more energy.  I like the competition -– he's the only one that can give me any here.  The South isn't ready for a Midwesterner's game, no matter how out-of-shape I might be, no matter how fiercely my lungs scream and cry.  I never lose a contest.

     Bull -– a nickname, obviously -– is deadly serious, though kind, and really does remind me of a mummy when he's sleeping.  I think it's the way he sleeps with his mouth slightly open, yet pursed, his lips wrinkled, his eye sockets and cheeks sunken in.  I don't mean to imply that he's an ugly fellow; he just sleeps weird.

     He's inspirational, really.  He has never been completely specific with his drug issues, but I gather from what vague references he does make that he was pretty much a garbage can for whatever substance was closest.  He tells me about walking the streets of Greenville like a zombie, (which is basically just a fresher, moister mummy,) ducking behind buildings whenever he saw a relative or close friend, giving up on himself and life and dignity and hope.  He had become his own bottom.  Now, though, he is what Pastor Day calls, “a live one.”  (He calls me, “a live one,” too, though I suspect for different reasons.)

     Pastor Gavin Day, while heavily involved with the program, is, nevertheless, unaffiliated in any official sense.  He is small in stature -– barely five-feet tall and thin as a rail -– yet possesses an influence and reach over the Southeast paralleled only by the bigness of the omnipotent being he prescribes to it.  Originally from Liverpool, he may actually have a tougher time than I do understanding the wide array of Carolinian drawls and dialects.  If one were to record at random any of the daily conversations here between a white southerner, a black southerner, Pastor Day, and myself, one would swear we were recreating a scene from the Tower of Babel story.