Almost Lost (5 page)

Third visit
SAMUEL (SAMMY) GORDON, 15 years old

 

“Hi. Nice to see you back. I guess our relationship is secure as long as I don't let you go to the bathroom, right?”

“Wrong. My mom and I talked about my coming here long into the night. She's glad and so am I that
this
time I'm coming with the
right
attitude, that I need help and I
want
IT!”

“That's great! Because in the final analysis no one could
make
you change if you didn't want to. I gather things went well with your family.”

Sammy looked embarrassed. “They welcomed me back with such love and warmth that it was like to them all the rudeness and crudeness and actual meanness that I had spread around and over them had been a bad dream or something.”

“Soon it will seem that way to you, too.”

“You mean we don't have to go on with all the shit…I mean stuff that came after what I told you?”

“Well, no, we don't. That is, if you feel you want to live the rest of your life with the rotting roadkill of your past stashed away in the deepest, darkest corner of your mind.”

He held his nose and shook his head no. “Okay. I guess I want to dump it once and for all if that's possible.”

“It's not easy, but it is possible. And like I've told you before, as time passes the memories will become dimmer and less obsessing, until they'll be almost like the nightmares you probably had as a little boy after you'd eaten too much candy on Halloween or Christmas or something.”

“Where were we?”

“On the evil demon planet of the black worlds.”

“Oh yeah. During that stage I lost all feeling for everything. I was like an unfeeling, unthinking, unbelonging, unlovable, lonely—very, very lonely—and totally isolated zombie, one of the unreal, unimportant undead.

“Then one day Thing, a member of the Harpoon Gang, knocked me against my locker and tried to stuff me inside and lock me there. As he smashed my head against the shelf and my arm in the door, it hurt, hurt, hurt, and the pain
felt good!
It meant I was alive!

“With a type of anger and strength I didn't know I had, I fought back, bloodying his nose and leaving a big gash in his cheek from the pen I'd grabbed off the shelf. Thing began making cruel, deep, guttural sounds like an animal. That made me even madder. I didn't care if he killed me; I
wouldn't
let him beat me. The pain was actually invigorating. All the hate for myself, for the world, and for everybody and everything in it came like a mad, wild whirlwind of billions of years of unleashed energy that invaded my body. I was part of it, and it was part of me.

“Thing's gang surrounded us and all motion stopped outside our little orbit. Occasionally great gasps of terror or revulsion escaped from the uninvolved kids in the hall as blood ran and knees and fists smashed, with loud thuds, on flesh and bones.

“At last, when I was thoroughly intoxicated by the action and the attention, and I felt I had almost won the fracas, I let my arms drop to my sides and told Thing I wanted to join his gang. Immediately Slice pushed Thing back and took his place. ‘Ninety-second Street Storm drain 10:00
P.M.
,' he said. Excitement swelled up in me like an air pocket.

“I reported to the principal's office that I had fallen down the stairs, refused to go to the nurse's office, and started on my long walk home. People on the bus would not have been able to stand the sight of me. In fact the driver probably wouldn't have even let me on. Besides, I needed to walk and think. I'd heard about the brotherhood and belonging within the gangs, and I wanted
in!
I was beginning to hurt in every bone, muscle, and cell of my body, but I, who had always felt like a kind of immature wuss, now felt like the King of the Mountain, as I had as a six-year-old when we'd played that game!

“Later as I took the bus to Ninety-second, my feet and hands shook in spite of myself. Something inside me really didn't want to go, but something else stronger felt I had to. I'd heard how you had to ‘jump into' a gang by fighting five guys at one time, and that none of them would let you fall down no matter how bad you were hurt. It sounded exciting, wild, and dangerous, crazy to the max. When I got off the bus, a cold night breeze had come up, and it made my pain feel interesting and somehow almost…creative…like a new part or extension of me. By the time I got to the dark storm drain surrounded by trees and bushes, my heart was jackhammering through my eardrums and for a moment I hoped my fight at school would be considered my initiation, but I knew it wouldn't be.

“The fight was even more brutal than I had supposed it would be. At times I'd almost pass out, or maybe would for a nanosecond or two, but the wrecking-ball fists of the guys kept battering away and the sounds in the background became more and more primeval, like the beginning of time in one of our literature books. It went on forever and ever and ever, and I felt I deserved every blow. I had to be a pretty rotten hunk of humanity to have had people treat me like they had.

“I actually don't remember a lot of the fight, only the hugging and the warm, belonging feeling I had after it was all over. It was almost worth the excruciating pain in my chest and my kidneys and my every other place. Some shit and beer and stuff appeared from nowhere, and pretty soon everything faded into one warm, stoned blur. I belonged! I was something! Somebody! Accepted and from then on protected, maybe among the lowest on the food chain, but still on it.

“I don't know how I got home except I vaguely recall guys laughingly dragging me into the backseat of a car and dumping me out at my place. Somehow I stumbled to my room and collapsed on the floor. My last thoughts were that I now belonged to the primitive brotherhood of man. I was a bro.

“When Mom came in to wake me up the next morning, she freaked out. She started yelling at the girls to call 911 and get an ambulance and stuff. I told her I'd kill myself if she did, that I had only been mugged. I said I didn't remember where or when. She checked my eyes and stuff, and crying and blubbering like she wasn't a nurse and used to stuff a lot worse than mine, she sponged off the dried blood and put ice packs on my eyes, which were so
swollen I could barely see out of either one of them. By that time, both Dorie and Dana were standing over me and groaning and moaning like I was dead or worse.”

“Did your mom finally get you to the hospital?”

“No, I wouldn't allow it. I let her help me get off my clothes, everything but my shorts. I know she's a nurse and everything and has probably seen more male privates than most anybody, but I felt my privates were especially private, especially from my mom. For some stupid reason that seemed really, important to me at the time, like that would be in some way infringing on the secret parts of my newfound brotherhood. I know that sounds dumb. But dumb at the time seemed, to me, smart. Does that make sense?”

“It makes complete sense, but we'll talk about that later.”

“Well, Mom finally got me into the shower with me clinging to my shorts like they were my lifeline, and she got almost as wet as I did as she gently sponged away the gore.

“She was trying to hold back her worries, but I stood firm. No way was I going to the hospital like a wimp after all I'd gone through to get into the gang. She helped me dry off and brought me some clean shorts and left for a minute while I put them on. I had to sit on the toilet, and it was quite a struggle to get into them because Mom was probably right when she said I had two or three fractured ribs and maybe a bruised spleen or kidney and who knew what else. Through the door her voice sounded wet as she pleaded for me to let her call an ambulance because she was much more concerned about internal
wounds than external ones, but I wouldn't change my mind. At the time and place I felt I couldn't.

“Mom wrapped my rib cage with heavy tape, which about killed me off, and again checked my eyes to see if one pupil was more dilated than the other, and nine hundred million other things. Then she gave me a pain pill and warned me to very carefully watch my bowel movements, because if they ever looked black and tarry, that would be a sign of internal bleeding. I felt nauseated. No way was I going to check my you-know-what for you-know-what, internal bleeding or not. As I started to drift off into dim, delicious, delirious drug dreams, I heard Mom on the phone telling someone at the hospital that she'd have to take a few days off because her son had been in an accident. An accident? Me? Two worthiness experiences in one day. At least that's how I saw it at the time.

“For three days Mom
made
me stay home to recuperate. I was so mad and hurt that I thought I would explode. There was no way my namby-pamby mom and little sister could possibly conceive what I was going through. Nothing I did or said seemed sane to them. Grandma Gordon came to stay over the weekend, and she bugged me even worse. She talked and lectured and preached incessantly about changing my attitude, giving optimism and courtesy and prayer a chance, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

“She made me so nervous that I literally had to fight myself to keep from smashing her. For a moment that made me feel lonely because I wondered what had become of the sweet, innocent, loving, little boy who had once almost worshiped her. How could she and Mom and Dorie and Dana all have changed so much, become such plastic, gutless wonders, so
unaware of what was really going on out there in the black, bloody, cannibalistic world that was just outside their door waiting to get them too?”

“At that time did
your
thinking seem right and sound and theirs seem completely off center and ridiculous?”

“Totally.”

“That just proves again that people can be absolutely and completely wrong and still be sincere, doesn't it?”

“That was me exactly. I had allowed, probably even encouraged, hate and hostility to grow inside me like some mutated evil zucchini until it had not only taken over my mind and my heart, but my body and my soul and was now branching out to try to take over everyone that came close to me. I got so paranoid about that happening that I wouldn't let any one of my family get too close to me.

“On the fourth day I was still looking pretty scary and feeling pretty awful, but I put on my dark glasses and forced myself to go back to school. I couldn't let Slice and Thing and the others in the gang think I was a white, wisp wasp. Besides, my family was driving me crazy, pushing me closer and closer to doing something really demented. I knew Mom had called Grandma to come and just baby-sit me, and I couldn't handle that. I simply could not!

“It was great getting back to school. The gang accepted me as though I had always been a member. We joked and pushed and threatened each other in the halls, when no one was watching. Sometimes even when people were watching.
They
knew we knew who the watchers were, and they'd get theirs if they dared to tell. I related to my bros' feelings as hostile, unacceptable misfits, kids who had been cast,
through no fault of their own, into outer darkness, where they were simply trying desperately to find their own turf, to be respected, to belong. I don't think adults have any idea how important it is to a kid to feel they
belong
to something. Sometimes
anything!…
It's like…a…
when you're dying from thirst, you'll drink from a mud hole
.

“Almost immediately the gang became my security, my family, my life. We were one. One for all and all for one just like in the old Three Musketeers book I had read as a naive kid. But with us it really worked. They weren't just words. They were actions! If any of the other kids dared give us lip or even a demeaning look, they were well aware of the price they would pay. The whole school was in our hands, and they paid us respect with a capital R, like we demanded. We were lucky we were the only gang in the school. Other schools had more, and they were constantly warring with each other. With us it was just keeping everyone else paying homage.

“One weekend Slice suggested that on Monday every student at school genuflect to us. We got the message out to a few on-the-top-of-the-heap kids, and by the next hall time all the kids that passed us bowed their heads and bent their knees noticeably—even Chicken Little, the big bruiser football star, who had had it whispered to him that his legs wouldn't be usable for the big game on Friday if he didn't follow the policy. His head barely bowed, and his knees barely bent, but he still showed that he recognized our power. It was a rush. His dad was the mayor, and still even he knew where his nuts were stored. Wow! What action! What adrenaline! What power! What respect!” Sammy's hand flew to his
forehead. “I can't believe this, but for a moment I was reliving the experience.”

“How did that make you feel?”

“Like I'm two people, the then person and the now person.” He looked scared. “Is it possible that I have multipersonalities?”

“No, but it should show you how powerfully
concepts
can control actions and thinking. It's like kids who are working their way through drug therapy programs having flashback highs just from allowing past
abnormal
destructive thought to control their
normal
presents.”

“Will this go on forever? Anytime I'm feeling down a little about something, or I'm hurt or beaten at something, like tennis or soccer, or Mom rags at me or the kids bug me, am I going to revert back to my old gang mentality?”

“Not if you dump it completely after you've gotten it all out of your head and system, and you don't forever, or
ever
, go back to that toxic place to wallow.”

“How am I going to do that?”

“We'll work on it after every last drop of rage, indulgence, negativity, pessimism, and venomous self-justification are purged out of your system.”