Self-Esteem (11 page)

That’s so fucking typical
, Crawford thought.

“Yes.” Crawford’s head drops like a wounded animal. “I thought I might take my own life. That’s how bad things were.”

I didn’t really think that. Why did I say that?

“You bought a gun. Didn’t you?’ Jan asks, shaking her head before the audience gasps.

“Yes.”

“That’s terrible, Doctor.”

“I kept the gun in my desk. Which, oddly enough, motivated me to write. I was so scared after that. It was either write or die.”

Dorothy turned to her husband. “You never had a gun. Did you?”

“No,” Crawford said.

God. It was so popular to be pathetic back then. Shit, still is.

“So you saw how bad off you were, and then you pulled yourself out of that rut.”

Crawford is smiling. His optimism (or relative optimism) now breaks free of his memories of self-destruction. “For some reason I realized it was a lack of self-confidence, and I just documented the whole experience for others.”

“You don’t talk like
that
any more, dear,” Dorothy laughed. She put a reassuring hand on Crawford’s shoulder, and Crawford almost flinched.

“I shaped it into a program. It was a natural thing for me to write because I was going through it at the time.”

Without realizing it, Dorothy’s love pat was angering Crawford even more.

You’re my wife, not my mother.

“Your life was in disarray, you say… a total mess.” Hershey’s enthusiasm is growing with Crawford’s, their song and dance in harmony. “And in that state of mind you produced a best-selling book?” She looks at the camera and tilts her head. “Maybe
my
life should be a little more in disarray.”

“I’m turning it off,” Crawford said, grabbing the remote.

“No, wait.”

“You know, Jan, people are strange animals. I think the public’s awareness of those circumstances has actually helped the book become the success it has. I think it communicates to people that they shouldn’t give up.”

No wonder I never watched this
.

Crawford became more aware of Dorothy rubbing his shoulder and it bothered him. He felt like a boob already, and her comforting hand was insulting. Berry got me again, he thought,
and she doesn’t even care
.

“Why would you let this bother you?” she asked sweetly.

I hope it was Berry, he thought. Crawford reached up and brushed Dorothy’s hand off his shoulder and jumped from the bed, clicking off the TV.

Yes, it’s long past time that I get Berry for all that humiliation he dished out to me over the years. This is a good thing. Paying him back will be a triumph for me.

“Honey?” Dorothy asked, “Are you thinking too much again?”

“If you’ll excuse me, I have some notes to look over.” Crawford hit the eject button and yanked the tape from the VCR.

“It’s really late, Jim” Dorothy said, a skeptical look on her face.

“I won’t be long,” he said, storming out of the room and slamming the door.

Dorothy knew it was a lie but she was too fed up to do anything about it.
Let him drink himself to death
, she thought as she got up to put on her pajamas.

Crawford threw the notebook on his desk. It didn’t contain a single word. Crawford’s inclination toward pen and paper was a product of his brief Alcoholics Anonymous days. He didn’t take notes during the many meetings he attended. It would have been ridiculous to write down anything said by members during their tearful “sharing.” He just scratched little pictures of things, which relieved his nervousness slightly while he was fighting his thirst for drink. Tonight it wasn’t helping. His mind was too distracted.

Regret. Accomplishment. Disappointment. Arrogance. Guilt. Embarrassment.

Dorothy. Phil. Lee. Cal. Jenny.

Fucking Happy Pappy.

Booze.
It always came back to booze, especially with those sets of stressors.

Crawford put the mysterious videotape in a small VCR that rested under an even smaller TV. He hit the rewind button then stop.

“You’ve also stated you had a problem with alcohol.”

“That’s right.”

“And it was worse than that, wasn’t it?”

Look at that patronizing nod. Bitch. And I even wanted to bang her after that
.

Crawford stopped the tape.

He wanted a drink. He always wanted a drink, but it was approaching the hour when it really got tough. The craving time was as reliable as the nightly news, and so was the struggle that followed.

Every night, when he was “on one” (and some nights when he wasn’t), a heated debate occurred inside his head, one that needed to be resolved prior to the liquor stores closing at 2am.

It took him back to Texas, to his teens, to the lakes and country roads where he used to spend Saturday afternoons drinking two-dollar twelve packs with the Cherokee boys who were always up for it. It took him to California, to his undergrad years, when he could drink a fifth of rancid bourbon and not be paralyzed by a hangover the next day. It took him to his early twenties, to his first European trip, downing wine with a bunch of Algerians in southern France, or drinking ouzo with a bunch of old fisherman in northern Greece. But the best years to remember — and therefore the worst for his condition — were the ones just before he got married, his graduate school days. Oh, yes, when his closest buddy Cecil occupied a small lake house that could have been in the middle of nowhere but was just an hour’s drive from his alma mater. When a variety of alcohol — beer, wine, spirits — was always in great abundance. When young women came out in droves and he could ignore them until he chose not to. When John Coltrane and Shostakovich and Miles Davis and Bartok and Frank Zappa and Stravinsky and the Rolling Stones and (of course)
Dark Side of the Moon
accompanied conversations of philosophy and politics and theater and literature and sex and life and death and (of course) mental illness. And when he could take walks by the lake and enjoy a peace and quiet that, like a good night of lovemaking, was best appreciated in contemplation.

All those wonderful memories made a good argument for surrender.

Then…

The rebuttal. Ugly words like
responsibility
,
duty
and
cirrhosis
popped into his mind — vain, ineloquent attempts to keep him sober.

Yes, it’s difficult to make ugly words romantic.

Then a more frank attempt. Sentences like
Don’t do it
,
This can’t go on
, and
You’ll pay for it later
, all of which made Crawford thirstier. Those arguments turned desire into rebellion, thirst into defiance, and sobriety into an abrasive Victorian governess who needed to lighten up.

All this internal quarrelling made Crawford realize there was nothing glamorous about being a drunk. It merely
was
— like standing straight or wearing shoes. Sobriety required a kind of religious faith that he couldn’t accept. Crawford was an atheist before the God of Sobriety, an unholy deity who demanded unrelenting devotion. But the God of Inebriation, well, he only required the keys to the car.
You shall have no other gods before me.

I’ll save my soul tomorrow, he thought as he put on his shoes.

As he backed out of the driveway, Crawford’s eyes were trained on the bedroom window, as they often were when he was going “on a run.” If the light came on, it would be like a siren going off during a prison break.

Backing slowly… slowly… there… is… no… light… no light…

He made it. He got away undetected.
This time
.

There was something disheartening about escaping so easily. It triggered more paranoia.

She’s going to find out. She’s going to be pissed. She’s just waiting until I get back so she can smash the bottle and cry a little.

Until the cash hit the counter at the liquor store, he might as well keep arguing with himself. It made the drive less painful.

Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Turn around. Go home. Go to bed.

Happy Time Liquor was pretty run down, the store that marked the end of Easy Street (relatively speaking) and the beginning of Hard Luck Boulevard. Crawford couldn’t go to the “exclusive” deli and wine dealer that served his community. It closed at nine. He wouldn’t have gone there anyway. The owner, and often times the patrons, knew who he was and what he supposedly hadn’t done in years. The little Indian man at Happy Time was not so well-informed and Crawford wouldn’t care if he was.

The place was empty and would have been quiet if not for the TV playing behind the counter.

“Is that all for you?” the Indian man asked with a heavy Hindi accent, putting the requested fifth of Lowlander Pure Malt on the counter.

“Yes.”

While the Indian was ringing up the purchase, the sound of the TV behind him grated on Crawford’s overburdened nerves.

There were three young black men, all wearing knit caps and dark clothing, pounding their fists into the low-angled camera. The beat was hard and deep.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The setting was an urban wasteland with burning oil drums barely illuminating surreal, grim structures. The lyrics, from what Crawford could tell, were fuming with violence and hatred of the white power structure and anything else they could think of.
Damn, what the kids listen to these days
.

Here and there we are in the ghet-to
That’s me and JB, your worst [bleep]in’ foe
I’ve got a [bleep]in’ nine, I got [bleep]in’ [bleep]
And I’m ‘bout to let go on your [bleep]in’ [bleep], [bleeeeeep]

Crawford thought about the sense of power these slum fantasies tried to convey. He thought about the discontentment it contrived to relieve. But why was this Indian listening to it? It was really getting annoying.

“You like that stuff?” Crawford asked.

The Indian, wrapping the sack around the neck of the bottle, was caught off guard. “I don’t drink.”

Crawford gestured toward the TV. “No. I mean do you like that kind of music? You have it playing pretty loud.”

“Sir, it’s for the customers.”

“Some clientele,” he said to himself.

The Indian handed Crawford the sack with his change. “Excuse me. Can I ask you a question?”

“Yes?”

“Why is it that these musicians try to look like criminals or something?”

Crawford looked at the TV again. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s the criminals who are trying to look like
them
. These guys are artists, you know,” he said holding up four fingers as quotation marks.

“Uh huh,” the man said. Then he added, “Low self-esteem, perhaps?”

Crawford laughed and the man looked puzzled.

“No. I don’t think so,” Crawford said.

“I’m glad to hear that. Good night,” the man said.

Crawford scanned the street. His mission was to be undercover and unrecognized from home back to home, from study back to study. Sometimes he was afraid that a tabloid photographer might get a picture of him leaving such a place, but then he remembered that he could always say he had a relapse. But he always double-parked his car in the alley next to the store, just in case.

He walked around the corner, and without a sound, a car passed in front of him abruptly, causing him to stumble back to the sidewalk.

“Shit!” he yelled.

He had slipped and fallen into a small puddle of something, cushioned only by the base of his right hand.

“Goddammit!”

He got up and inspected the bottle to make sure it wasn’t broken. He looked down the street only to see taillights that didn’t identify the car.

“What the fuck,” he moaned, picking himself up off the pavement.
Fucking kids
, he thought.

He brushed the dirt from his hands onto the sack then reached in his pocket for his keys.

After tonight, this is it, he thought as he walked to his car.
This is the last time.

Then there were headlights behind him again. He turned to look. It was the same dark car — a sedan of some kind — traveling fast. Crawford staggered out of the way, back onto the sidewalk, almost falling again. He looked over his shoulder to the driver’s side of the car. He meant to give the finger, but the car went by too fast this time, taking the next turn before Crawford even saw the taillights. He couldn’t even see the make.

“Goddam asshole,” he yelled. “Goddam!”

Goddam Happy Pappy.

Goddam. Happy Pappy. Happy Pappy? The driver was wearing a Happy Pappy mask. That piece of shit was wearing a Happy Pappy mask!

He stopped and took a deep breath. His heart was racing. He looked down the alley, then back again.

That’s the only thing I saw, he thought. Just the face, smiling.

No
. He stopped himself. Surely his eyes were playing tricks on him.

It was him. I mean, it was a guy wearing… I saw it. No. You didn’t see anything. You’re imagining things. Do they sell those damn things? They don’t sell those things, do they? No. Wait. Surely I’m seeing things. Light plays tricks on you sometimes, especially when you need a drink. It was probably just some other ugly bastard.

Crawford tried to forget about it, putting the bottle safely under his arm.

“I must be losing my mind,” he said as he got in the car.

Crawford looked over at his purchase, sitting in the passenger’s seat. He started to wonder if maybe his mind wasn’t going. Just following his liver’s lead.
Would I go crazy and not know it? Shit. Isn’t that what madness is? And is this kind of madness caused by alcohol?

Better just get home.

The bedroom light was still off, and everything looked the same. It was calming. The guilt wasn’t going to be too bad.

Crawford went through the side entrance where he grabbed a towel from the laundry room to clean his faintly soiled pants. While rubbing the small wet spot on the back of his leg, he noticed one of Cal’s “uniforms” lying in a hamper next to the dryer. Black. All of it. The same color as those rappers on TV, but stylistically worlds apart. Was this his way of trying to get attention? Or trying to wield power? Maybe it was low self-esteem.