Horse Pills

"...much of life presents itself as the same dilemma: how to seem lusty and purposeful when less than nothing is going on." --Vonnegut


And so (he wrote)

the next monday:
Can we walk in the shade, I asked.

Honey ...That wasn't the end Friday night.

When I thought the next morning would be like a waking nightmare, it turned out to be the best part of the high.

The danger seemed to have passed, I felt safe. I thought of my promise to you---to myself---and it was like "rats".

Because now I wanted more. So I took more.

She let go of my hand. Said she was sorry, she had to go back inside, we couldn't do this today, she's sorry, she's sorry she says and looks back once more from the front porch, shaking her head.

A letter followed. Goodbye maybe forever.

the friday before
I hadn't counted on these being time-released. This feels good after an hour, have another and the other one too. I'm lying down, the bright ceiling light is safe basement sunshine to me. Now a crew of JC Penny models were pulling themselves up at the foot of my bed and walking up and around my legs, posturing. Each about a nine inches tall, adults to scale, wearing bright, new colorful, summer clothes. Men in polo shirts and khakis would stop and stand grinning for a moment, their arms akimbo, then turn away. Women in chinos, modest knit tops, some wearing kerchiefs, walked up arm in arm in twos and threes, silently laughing.

A twenty second reel, just a pleasant narco-hallucination, part of a feature-length vivid twilight sleep. I hardly noticed when it was over. What if I thought this was real?

What in life prepared me for the little people walking on my bed and climbing over my legs? Living pictures, a little more interesting than the advertising inserts themselves, I see everyday at work. Hopefully this fever, the shallow breathing and slight nausea won't overcome me with death should I fall asleep...

The phone rang! It was Baxter, my friend from Chicago with the messiah complex.

"Hello John! What a surprise to --- for you to pick up! Hey listen, you were asking about getting to see this Substance Abuse Counselor, Lisa Frombosis?"

"Is that her name? Baxter, I've got news. Got to tell you. I've relapsed in the biggest possible way. Hugely. Relapsed."

"Don't worry John, just don't do it again. All you have to do is stop. Now, I talked to Lisa and she's not taking appointments actually, she works for an organization over in Moverly called---"

"Do you think she's our age, Baxter? I'm thinking she might be in her 40's but somedays she looks like a 1950's photo of my young grandmother looking just like my old 1980's grandmother. Do you know what I mean?"

"Well it was the style of the day and I think with those granny glasses and the way she keeps her hair up nice..."

"Right. Well would you say she's in her 40's. Would you say she's married??"

"No, I know she was once ---and she's had a bad history with men. I don't know how old she is John, she can't be , oh, she can't be---"

"Do you think she has a boyfriend, Baxter?"

"A boyfriend? No, I don't think so. I'm taking her to see Harry Potter tomorrow night."

"Oh. Well, it's a good idea we all see a substance abuse counselor. I think I'm about to lose mine. Well, thanks for checking. Good-bye Baxter."

"Yeah, great to hear from you John!"

*
I've lived here at the Hands-Up Sober House for 19 months now, and in all this time I've had these same four house-mates: Greg "The Pedant"; K.B., "The Tramp Steamer"; Murphy "Murf The Surf"; and Stanley "So Long Stan".

Hillbilly Ed for the last nine months....

Now we are losing the Hillbilly, Murphy and the school teacher all in the same month. They are taking off as sober as Judges and Deuteronomy.

Hands-Up is the most stable and successful Oxford house in all of University Town. People don't know this. The others can become like flop-houses, raw mob-democracies with a template for the rule of law which becomes a comic organizational principle for thieves, drug dealers and pimps.

DeepShit ... The Pink Slip (a female house, of course)... Damage Done... Lavender Hill...The Final Notice...Some might as well be 21 day treatment centers without staff.

Once at Lavender Hill , the whole house relapsed at once and the men were voting which escort service to employ. The Pink Slip was for a time lesbian and totalitarian. Anarchy allowed two or three women to enslave the rest, levying fines for fidelities and infidelities. It's funny I can't remember how the Chapter Housing Services Representative dealt with that one.

We lost President Booze, (pronounced 'boo-ZAY'). And Hans relapsed. This was the worst thing to happen at Hands-Up and it was a long time ago. Eventually their memories are mocked. Finally their memories are meaningless, like names written inside garage sale books.

"Max Bodenheim, 1949 Mery xmas Max".

_____

saturday midnight
________________________
Then I awoke at 12 a.m., refreshed from sleep or coma, mentally displaced and now surprisingly euphoric. Now this was a terrific delirium considering the weekend and all.

The ceiling light was turned off, I didn't recall how. The corner lamp was on, giving a brownish, antique photo effect to this mystery hour.

I almost never felt so good.

Halt now at some voices in the kitchen. K.B. the Tramp Steamer and Murf The Web Surfer are in there talking fast forward and top heavy, stepping on each other's words agreeing with one another.

Something had interested them. Something just now, at this late hour.

I didn't need to leave my cell and go into the kitchen but I wanted coffee and I believed they'd heard me waking so I had to be like normal. The inside of my door has a mirror.

Peer into this near-sighted and run my fingers through my hair. My eyes look crazy but I'm so dig that crazy-jazz I only imagine they do. So probably they don't.

Ah well. Deep breath. Did I just wake up at midnight, imagining it's already morning? Should I ask them if this is A.M. or P.M.?

The Tramp Steamer stood in the entrance with his back to me, blocking my way. Speechifying about Recovery, of all things. Murf sat at the kitchen table and looked up at me so Steamer turned around and got out of my way, his conversational piping uninterrupted.

"I don't know why you have to see a doctor to get permission to take less fucking valium. And who the fuck prescribes valium anymore? Jesus Christ, man, did you see that bottle?"

"Yeah , it was huge. And he told me they were fives but I had a look at 'em and they were tens."

I had to microwave the coffee. Turn around and face them for at least a minute and a half.

Steamer thumbs-up to the ceiling three times for me, "Stans up there fucked up on his pills all fuckin' day, man."

I was so surprised I shouted. "What!"

The kitchen floor sagged. It hadn't occurred to me Stan was stoned when I got home from the hospital. So Long Stanley is like a child, though he's the old man of the house.

Suddenly all my trust is in a stoned six year old. I'm sharing a dreadful secret with a child who has taken too many Valium pills.

"He's stuck in an infinite loop, without any self-awareness. He goes to sleep for ten minutes and then he's up again, full of Stan The Man personality, all friendly, hearts full of love, man, that fucker. Heh, heh...

"We confronted him, made him sit down and tell us what's up, he's got this , like, family/economy size bottle of Valium. We're not thinking of kicking him out of course, I mean it's Stan..."

I said, "His son is back."

"Yeah, so?"

"He's been upset because his son is causing him trouble. The one who got out of prison and moved out of state, which made Stan so depressed last Spring;... but now he's back and I think he's being a prick to the old man. Trying to steal his methadone and Oxycontin."

"Well so what, man? If he has to get bombed he should find himself a hiding place, not be up there freaking the shit out of my girl-friend."

"Nothing. Just, I'm surprised. He hasn't done this for months."

Murf says no, it's only been two months since we warned him, John. He did straighten up then but it wasn't that long ago.

"But we're not talking about kicking him out. Least not yet. It's after midnight but the night is young for him apparently. Every fifteen minutes it's a brand new day!"

They laughed then. I 'm going Jeeezus I was going to make a fresh pot.

_____
He wrote,

Blast. It rankles to live so modestly when I am going to turn old any moment.

To no longer navigate and trawl this world for unalloyed forbidden pleasure, why, it's the acme of philosophy here, the philosophy of surrender.

To have the cats come running at the sound of your electric can opener, while you look forward to Walter Cronkite and The Waltons almost as much as you look forward to sleep...

To be so lethargic and enfeebled anymore... I don't bother about the corner-stone of A.A., Bill Wilson, the 12-Steps.

I see the contradictions (1. you were sick, it wasn't your fault; 4. now get to work admitting at last you were wrong) and the logical tautologies pawned off as spiritual wisdom (if you are thorough and do this correctly, it will work every time. If this does not work you didn't work it correctly, we promise.)

It all doubles back and makes me all the more humiliated, then rebellious and forlorn at times.

To live this quietly. Wanting one woman, one particular woman! instead of seven. Already shy and retiring. Maybe shy as in witless. Shy as in "shy a few".

Philip Roth's character 'Mickey Sabbath' just about has enough of it, in the novel Sabbath's Theater.

When his recovering wife says "You're only as sick as your secrets", Sabbath, the bearded, 70 year old satyr shouts back in beautiful defiance about "this pointless, shallow, idiotic maxim"

"Wrong! You're as adventurous as your secrets, as abhorrant as your secrets, as lonely as your secrets, as alluring as your secrets, as courageous as your secrets, as vacuous as your secrets, as lost as your secrets; you are as human as ---"

(and then she interrupts him, shouting INHUMAN! and they part to different parts of the house he will have to leave now).

Was I responsible or not? Yes, how could I deny it. No one is powerless to NOT do something.

Would I go to my older brothers who hate me for what the way I lived off our parents and tell them I was "powerless" against alcohol?

Was my life unmanageable? Yes, almost as unmanageable as it is now.

Almost as unmanageable as when I had to deal with social workers who held the rope that would save or hang me.

I should have written here more often that I accept Christ as my savior.

I go back and forth, up and down and seem to get energy this way like a spinning top.

_____
I remembered now his voice was a little loud. That morning after I'd left work early. We were looking over the abandoned double-room because he wanted to see what our last 'AWOL' had left behind.

I told him about my cut foot and how at the E.R. they'd given me a prescription for ibuprofen.

OH, he said, that's no good. I expected then for a thought to occur to him. But it didn't, or I spoke too soon.

"Stan, do you have some Tylenol -3s, maybe? You got a good supply?" I asked.

"OH NO, those are too weak for me. Let's see , well I've got Oxycotins but no, those would be way too strong for you , I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what, John. I've got some Methadone, how would that be? I don't think those could hurt you."

All the while I'm waving my finger rapidly in front of my gritting teeth and waving my hand over my head signaling him to quiet down. Then I put both my hands over my ears and stamped my good foot.

"Shh!Shhh! SHHHH!" His words had gone up the register and through-out the house.

Yeah, I said, this is going to be hurting like heck when the linocaine wears off.

"Shoo bet it is!" he said.

Murf was in his room, hopefully asleep, hopefully not making out any of this. Stanley finally got it through his head to go into sneak mode, which wasn't much better. Sudden hissing whispering sounds. But we made it down the hall past Murf's door without anymore of that.

Up to his truck. All the bottles were kept in his glove compartment because he didn't trust any newbies to stay out of his room. But they couldn't be safe here either. He said his son , just out of prison, knew they were here.

"I think he tried to jimmy this open. You see the scratches?"

If I say lock them in your room it will sound suspicious to him. Mustn't let him know I've got this weakness for the opiates. Why is he so foolish to leave them here if his son has already tried to steal them?

Murf's basement window right there. Right from the start I figured there was a half chance this would lead to calamity. But it probably wouldn't stop me if I thought there was a 90% chance. I'm like that, with opiates. Damn the torpedoes, and if it's to be a whole 12 or 24 hours before my world falls apart, well that's a LONG time.
_______
Deecee's awake, making her living. ___
Call her, get out of their presence and call her. She's awake.

It was that time the night shift starts breaking rank and she's usually arrived at whatever secret place she has there at Candelabra Assisted Living.

I always imagine we are speaking in the dark. She knew something was wrong before I was finished saying hello hello hello?

"Darling, oh sweetie, what's happened, tell me."

With me it could be anything almost. Like another wart on my foot, or the electricity had gone off and I'd lost my old time radio stream.

I couldn't make any sense without first blurting out my confession.

Stan gave you those??

This was different. This was the real confession, I suddenly realized. I'd told her I'd got some painkillers when I called her at her home earlier but didn't finish the story.

Then I kept talking so long I had to stop and apologize a second ---before continuing. Was it fear of discovery or was it my conscience? I wondered aloud.

You mean he wasn't obviously stoned. You didn't take advantage of him like that...

"Yeah"

Should I have called you now or waited? I wouldn't keep this secret, I wasn't going to keep this secret..." Then, oh say, I'm sorry to disappoint you.

Finally a crunch of silence. I could hear her voice coming.

"'Disappointment' ...that isn't the word. I'm angry. I'm thinking of all the crap I already have to deal with..."

She described.

To my great relief she called me sweetheart again and said she'd talk to me tomorrow.

I hung up and did a non A.A. inventory: it was "Deecee, job, home, car, family, friends..." Checking off all I couldn't afford to lose.

saturday, noon
I set my alarm for 7 a.m. so I could call into work and pretend like I was confirming what was already understood.

My left foot. Ding-dang that's a flimsy excuse from work. Two band-aids they put on. So I was ready to say that prescribed pain medications prevented me from operating heavy machinery. And that I'd left town to recuperate at the family domus 500 miles away.

The supervisor heard "yeah i told the Boxx to expect this, I had a bunch of bumps cut off the bottom of my foot yesterday, see..."

I feel better now than than ever in my life!! How can I get more, when--good lord, So Long Stan last night--and I promised her, I promised her sincerely when I was sick and forlorn, wondering did they suspect me, did Stan have a slip of the lip. Stan on downers, oblivious. I hate downers. Doesn't everybody hate a downer...

Fuck me running. They were back in the kitchen now...again! What is this? What now? You never know what to expect when you're vulnerable and the higher you are the more translucent, along with everything, a soap-bubble. Maybe they had the drug testing kit. Maybe Stan had talked in his 15 minute delirium-sleepums. I can account for those, I gave John I don't know how many, his foot was bothering him.

They would laugh. "John? You gave narcotics to John, the drug store bandit?!"

Again, The Tramp Steamer in the doorway and Murf the Surf sitting at the kitchen table. But now I had sort of an attitude of defiance. Made my way in there and started grinding the coffee loudly, shaking it, having a look and grinding and shaking it some more. Good stuff.

"Stan ever wake up? Is he dead?" I asked.

"All night long he was up and down. Now the back window of his truck is smashed in."

This was strange. I was certain I had not decided to smash Stan's window and steal his opiates, but in the world of the aging, hunted crazy-man, one can feel the forces of nature gathering against him with no regard for the gods truth. He knows that his years of good luck are behind him, and that he is guilty of many many things never discovered; and you so often hear of guilty people finally being busted on false charges and this "irony" seems fateful all of a sudden, as if you'd spent your life with some foreknowledge of the ultimate punch-line. Guilty or not you're guilty as hell.

The Tramp Steamer was continuing,

"...picks up my girlfriends baby bottle and has it in his room"

"...leaves a cup of pepporoni slices on the edge of the bathtub"

"Then he's askin' Byorn for a lug wrench, and whether all lug wrenches fit the same lug nuts. Byorn says he's got two kinds in his trunk and Stan walks away saying 'no never mind it's for something in my room'. Like, what, he's got a lug bolt in his old VCR? Is it the lug nut in his electric shaver?"

I finally said what I thought I'd been repeating over and over. "The fuck you say, Stan's truck was broken into?"

"No, no. He says that but he was fucking driving around all fucking night and must have backed into something..."

So last night the bastards were still letting him get up and leave with his truck?

"His son must have come back." I said.

No, no, they said, phht, shit.

"Was his glove box broken?" I asked, out on the limb now, careless. But they didn't seem to heed any mysteriousness in my question.

Shrugs all around.
... didn't know.

This news seemed to have some sharp, look around that corner angles. Was So Long Stan fearful we'd inventory his prescription drugs, did he set this up to look like a car burglary and account for what he'd taken and what he'd given me?

Had the son really come back last night?

Would Stan think I had done this?

This string from the center button on my shirt is loose, coming undone; without Deecee to sew it for me I won't have the heart to sew it myself, so no more shirt.

As soon as I could I went upstairs to find him. Heart thumping whether what, what what. If he suspected me. I found him in the kitchen at the top of the stairs. Came barreling through that door, I did, expecting a trip across the house to his room, but there he was pouring a bowl of cheerios.

He looked okay. Steady on his feet as he turned around to see me. "Well good morning , John! How's the foot?" I said what happened to the car and he became upset telling me about The Tramp and Murf suspecting him of over-using his medication. It was a doctor's mistake and he'd take care of it Monday!

"Your truck had its window smashed?" He said yeah, come out and see, and I followed him out the front door. He carried his cheerios bowl and spoon with him. I noticed that he was barefoot and told him to be careful.

"Oh I got all the glass swept up." "So it happened here in the driveway? Was it your son?" "No, he's in Jefferson City." "They didn't break into your glove compartment?" "No, no. And there was nothing else to steal. I'm not missing anything." "Well, hm!" "It's going to cost me a couple hundred dollars to replace I suppose. It's not the end of the world, John."

Funny he should say that. It was very close to what I was thinking.

I looked over to my car. Not expecting to see smashed glass, and there wasn't any, but I looked.

"That's terrible, Stanley. Hey, while we're out here, can I ---"

"Well I'm running short on the Methadone. And by the way, we should be careful these guys don't know I'm giving you any of my drugs, I mean they could come down on us both pretty hard...I can give you some Oxycotins, but do you know if you're allergic to them?"

"No. I had those when my lung collapsed twenty years ago."
"Oh my goodness, you had a lung collapse?"
"Yeah, it was just spontaneous, back in 1983 I think it was". He was into the glove compartment. "They sent me down south to stay with my grandmama that winter..." He spilled out six pills, and I started to shake. Wondering why I called Grandma "Grandmama". "Because I couldn't breath the winter air." He handed them to me. "It was a good time to get to know her and my uncle Ted from Greece."

He started again about "those guys" downstairs in the kitchen talking about him. I hoped they were in the godam kitchen still. Then I made some quick excuse to leave without finishing my story about Ted the Greek.
______
Just take one of these and wait three hours, see what it does first. Not going to make the same mistake twice

I impulsively took two. Since he'd given six I was rich now.

Have to take another day off work probably. Have to tell my beloved about this too, can't have any secrets from her or we'd have a sick relationship...
____
Sitting in my room later that afternoon, common Sunday busy-ness in the hall outside my door, it felt like I was running a temperature of 104.

I stumbled to turn on the air conditioner, which seemed to give me relief until suddenly every pore on my skin tingled, and what was it, beri-beri, a vitamin deficiency this, scurvy with my stomach churning me green. I must be white as a sheet over the newly processed dead.

When I closed my eyes, I could swear my eyes were still wide open. I stared at my hands, my hand-prints, to gauge how vivid the hallucination. Then I looked down and the blanket covering me was from long ago. I opened my eyes and saw my real blanket for a second, to make sure. I saw the intricate threads of this bed covering...yes, from twenty years ago.

Next I was crawling down the hall way to the bath, where I planned to die. I rested my face on the lineleum now and then, must have slept. I kept waking up there, I was going like a snail.

In the bath I'd lie on my back and die if I couldn't turn the faucets. I'd die if I could turn the faucets. If only I had a quill, a writing board, and a kerchief over my head I'd look like David's Marat and maybe the police photographer would think "who was this ancient soul?"

Writing "love, family, home, job, car" FOOD! FRUIT JUICE. SALTINES. FEED ME.

I'm All Gone. Because someone shot a BB gun at Stan's car last night just when I was a prime suspect to get in there to steal opiates. Everything lost in 24 or 48 hours. Everything, just incredible. All gone because while I was not guilty I was not innocent.

Suddenly a sandbag at work swung from the ceiling and hit me square in the nose, right in my face, and Joe was yelling at me to hit the reset button. Not the red light, the button under the red light. No NO ... No. Charging over, like Joe does, the fat angry rube, in a hurry. "Look here! Light! Button! Reset! "

I was poisoned. I would have to puke to live. Crawling down this hall though, I might pass out and vomit and you know what happens then.... You get kicked out of your Sober House, that's what. Or choke to death. The cool of the floor turned again into a morgue cold.

Now two people were picking me up under my arms. They dragged me back in my room, dropped me so I was half way on the bed and opened a window I'd never seen before, how could I have missed that window in this tiny room? And then they said "We're not thinking of kicking him out of course, I mean it's John..." They closed the door gently and I thought how perfectly doors fit into door frames. What masterful carpentry work...

sunday early evening
I slept without disturbing the bed clothes for 18 hours. I was refreshed and I never felt so good in all my life, unless it was yesterday, or was this still yesterday. I remembered the window, which didn't exist, and knew that no one had discovered me and no one had forgiven me either.

monday noon
I was still heavy with narco-euphoria but all my senses were focused, I had my balance, I was able to eat and it was time to go to work to be fired for excessive absenteeism and, of course, for having no doctor's excuse and lying about it (I only a slip of paper saying I'd been at the ER from 9 to 10 a.m. Friday.)

The Boxx asked for my paper and I dug into my back pocket and handed him my time sheet instead. "Oh wait, no that's not it. Ha, ha. Try again...Here you go."

"Thanks, John."

We started off in opposite directions, me toward my Returns files, him toward his office. I looked back to see if he was examining it. He'd disappeared already. I got my files and fully expected to meet him in the middle of the factory floor again, to have him point out that this was not a doctor's excuse for two days off. But he was not there. And I didn't lose my job. But I was still so high I wanted to lose my job.
+++++++++
I'd been to Hell and it felt so good. Prayer after prayer after prayer. I know with as much certainty as I know there is only one window in this room, I will never swallow poison again. Prayer after prayer after prayer.

I imagine myself here as a tropical fish swimming in an aquarium and frequently kissing the clear bright glass that keeps me alive.