Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (16 page)

The usual I say. Blood of Christ I say. Essence. Spirit. Medicine. A hint. A taste. A bump. A snort. I say top shelf. Straight up. Two fingers. A shot. A sip. A nip. I say another round. I say brace yourself. Lift a few. Hoist a few. Work the elbow. Bottoms up. Belly up. Leg up. Set ’em up. Freshen up. What’ll it be. Name your poison. Mud in your eye. A jar. A jug. A pony. I say a glass. I say same again. I say all around. I say my good man. I say my drinking buddy. I say git that in ya. Then an ice-breaker. Then a quick one. Then a couple pops. Then a nightcap. Then throw one back. Then knock one down. Working on a scotch and soda I say. Fast & furious I say. Could savage a drink I say. Guzzle I say. Chug. Chug-a-lug. Gulp. Sauce. Mother’s milk. Home brew. Everclear. Moonshine. White lightning. Firewater. Antifreeze. Wallbanger. Zombie. Rotgut. Hooch. Relief. Now you’re talking I say. Live a little I say. Drain it I say. Kill it I say. Feeling it I say. Slightly crocked. Wobbly. Another dead sailor I say. Breakfast of champions I say. I say candy is dandy but liquor is quicker. I say the beer that made Milwaukee famous. I say Houston, we have a drinking problem. I say the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems. I say ain’t no devil only god when he’s drunk. I say god only knows what I’d be without you. I say thirsty. I say parched. I say wet my whistle. I say awful thirst. Dying of thirst. Lap it up. Hook me up. Beam me up. Watering hole. Hole. Knock a few back. Pound a few down. Corner stool. My office. Out with the boys I say. Unwind I say. Nurse one I say. Apply myself I say. Tie one on I say. Make a night of it I say. Dive. Toasted. Glow. A cold one a tall one a frosty I say. One for the road I say. A drinker I say. Two-fisted I say. Never trust a man who doesn’t drink I say. Drink any man under the table I say. A good man’s failing I say. Then a binge then a spree then a jag then a bout. Coming home on all fours. Rousted. Roustabout. Could use a drink I say. A shot of confidence I say. Steady my nerves I say. Drown my sorrows. I say kill for a drink. I say keep ’em comin’. I say a stiff one. I say fast as possible. I say the long haul. Drink deep drink hard hit the bottle. Two sheets to the wind then. Half-cocked then. Knackered then. Showing it then. Holding up the wall then. Under the influence then. Half in the bag then. A toot. A tear. A blowout. Out of my skull I say. Liquored up. Riproaring. Slammed. Fucking jacked. The booze talking. The room spinning. Primed. Feeling no pain. Buzzed. Giddy. Silly. Glazed. Impaired. Intoxicated. Lubricated. Stewed. Tight. Tiddly. Juiced. Plotzed. Potted. Pixilated. Pie-eyed. Cock-eyed. Inebriated. Laminated. Stoned. High. Swimming. Elated. Exalted. Debauched. Rock on. Drunk on. Shine on. Bring it on. Pissed. Then bleary. Then bloodshot. Glassy-eyed. Mud-eyed. Red-nosed. Thick-tongued. Addled. Dizzy then. Groggy. On a bender I say. On a spree. On a drunk. I say off the wagon. I say gone out. I say on a slip. I say in my cups. I say riding the night train. I say the drink. I say the bottle. I say the blood bank. I say drinkie-poo. I say a drink drink. A drink a drunk a drunkard. Swill. Swig. Faced. Shitfaced. Fucked up. Stupefied. Incapacitated. Raging. Seeing double. Shitty. Take the edge off I say. That’s better I say. Loaded I say. Wasted. Looped. Lit. Off my ass. Befuddled. Reeling. Tanked. Punch-drunk. Mean drunk. Maintenance drunk. Sloppy drunk happy drunk weepy drunk blind drunk dead drunk. Serious drinker. Hard drinker. Lush. Drink like a fish. Boozer. Booze hound. Absorb. Rummy. Alkie. Sponge. Sip. Sot. Sop. Then muddled. Then maudlin. Then woozy. Then clouded. What day is it? Do you
know
me? Have you
seen
me? When did I
start
? Did I ever
stop
? Slurring. Reeling. Staggering. Overserved they say. Drunk as a skunk they say. Falling down drunk. Crawling down drunk. Drunk & disorderly. I say high tolerance. I say high capacity. I say social lubricant. They say protective custody. Sozzled soused sloshed. Polluted. Blitzed. Shattered. Zonked. Ossified. Annihilated. Fossilized. Stinko. Blotto. Legless. Smashed. Soaked. Screwed. Pickled. Bombed. Stiff. Fried. Oiled. Boiled. Frazzled. Blasted. Plastered. Hammered. Tore up. Ripped up. Ripped. Destroyed. Whittled. Plowed. Overcome. Overtaken. Comatose. Dead to the world. Beyond the beyond. The old K.O. The horrors I say. The heebie-jeebies I say. The beast I say. The dt’s. B’jesus & pink elephants. A hummer. A run. A mind-bender. Hittin’ it kinda hard they say. Go easy they say. Last call they say. Quitting time they say. They say shut off. They say ruckus. They say dry out. Pass out. Lights out. Blackout. Headlong. The bottom. The walking wounded. Saturday night paralysis. Cross-eyed & painless. Petroleum dark. Gone to the world. Gone. Gonzo. Wrecked. Out. Sleep it off. Wake up on the floor. End up in the gutter. Off the stuff. Dry. Dry heaves. Gag. White knuckle. Lightweight I say. Hair of the dog I say. Eye-opener I say. A drop I say. A slug. A taste. A swallow. A pull. Sadder Budweiser I say. Down the hatch I say. I wouldn’t say no I say. I say whatever he’s having. I say next one’s on me. I say match you. I say bottoms up. Put it on my tab. I say one more. I say same again.

(1988)
My father’s been homeless for almost two years now. I’ve spent the past summer in Provincetown again, living on the boat, working at the marina, commuting to Boston every couple weeks to work a few shifts at Pine Street. Emily’s begun working in the Pine Street clinic—handing out meds, changing dressings, washing feet. My father still has a work bed held for him, our paths cross once in a while, sometimes we’ll exchange a few words. He tells me he’s in touch with Little, Brown, he tells me Kennedy is working on his case, he tells me he’s been robbed. In September I move back to Boston, work a few shifts, realize I can’t do it anymore. I can’t bear to be in the shelter (
The dirty, repulsive, slimy universe of pain!
), not with him likely to pop up at any moment, my drunken jack-in-the-box. I begin filling in on the Outreach Van more and more. The Van was started the year before as a way to make contact with and offer services to those who, for one reason or another, won’t come in to Pine Street, either because they’re barred or because the shelter seems its own little hell. Working the Van, I start to believe there’s more hope out on the streets than inside the walls. Those who choose to sleep out haven’t been as institutionalized—outside there are no lines to wait in, you have to make your own way. The people we see lived in abandoned buildings and train stations, in cardboard boxes and in doorways. The hours are from nine at night until five in the morning, the graveyard shift. After a few weeks I apply for a full-time job on the Van. In this way I will no longer have to see my father at all—he will be in bed when I come on, just waking when I punch out.

My new job requires me to take on clients as a caseworker, to develop relationships with them in order to determine what services might be appropriate—detox, psych, elder housing, a pint of Thunderbird, whatever. Some mornings when I punch out Joe Morgan is lurking around the cars, and one day I ask if he wants to get some breakfast. No one knows how long he’s been skulking around Pine Street. Ten years? Twenty? He passes through the doors like another man’s shadow, his face pressed to the wall, almost part of the wall, like he’s using it to pull himself along. Mumbling and squirrelly, small with large hands, a hooked nose, his graying hair slicked back, Joe Morgan never sleeps in a bed, never lines up with the rest, almost no one has spoken to him in all these years. We walk to a diner in Southie, where he nearly gets us killed by muttering about the “hippies” in the adjacent booth, whom I would describe as “bikers.” We begin having breakfast once a week. As I get to know him I ask the basics—family, Social Security number, last residence, work history. All spotty. The psych people have nothing on him, though he says he took “nerve pills” at one point, and that they helped.

One morning he asks me why I call him Joe, that his name’s Martin. Martin Adams. I have no idea where the name Joe Morgan came from, and turns out neither does he. He tells me that when he walks along the streets he can hear his father’s voice calling him,
Martin, Martin, Martin
, that he’s always moving either away or toward that voice. Now that I know his real name I take him to the Social Security Administration offices to see if they have him in their computers. It turns out he’s been getting a disability check for the past twenty years, and that this check’s been going to his brother, a middle-class guy living in a nice suburb, who’s Martin’s payee. In the beginning the brother would drive into Boston, find Martin, buy him a meal, some new clothes, leave him with fifty out of the three-hundred-dollar check. Sometimes even take him home for a few days, wash him up. But after a while the brother came into the city less and less. The checks kept coming, the brother ended up putting an addition on his house, a sunroom off the kitchen. When they sat across from each other in the Brown Lobby, after twelve years without a word, Martin deadpanned,
I haven’t seen you around lately, where’ve you been
?

As fall sets in I begin letting Martin sleep in my studio. After seeing him lurking outside my building one too many damp mornings as I come in from a night on the Van, I invite him in. Put a blanket on the floor as if he were a dog, make him coffee when he wakes up, let him out in the afternoon. Work is seeping into every pore. I take a photograph of him and he asks,
Why do I look so old?
, convinced I have doctored it. Inside, outside, home, homeless, the lines blur. He’s as old as my father but he’s not my father. At night I drive the Van to abandoned buildings, to stairwells in alleyways, to bridge overhangs. I know the names of the guys who stay in each spot—that Kevin will be at the Horseshoe, that Skid will be on the B.U. blower, that Gabe will be on the Mall, and he will have nailed another sole to one of his shoes, every night he tries to make them even, now teetering on five-inch platforms. Near North Station I squat in a doorway beside Black George, who’s been talking detox lately. A friend from New York, just off the train, passes by us on the sidewalk, five steps away. Without thinking I call out his name,
Chris
, and he turns, tentatively, takes a step closer, stops. I’m sitting in the shadows with Black George, wearing a coat I lifted from the clothing room, a bottle between us. The coat won’t last me through the night, I’ll pass it on to someone who needs it more.
How’s it going?
Chris asks, confused.

I’ve been with Emily for nine years, working at Pine Street the last four. Halloween I spend the night with a friend in the East Village, a woman I’ve been seeing off and on for years. Emily finds out, confronts me, and I see that I really don’t know what I’m doing, that I’m adrift, as the Buddhists say, on a river of forgetfulness. A hungry ghost. Emily tells me I have to either get into therapy or we’re done. I call Lou, a therapist who comes recommended by another friend. An appointment is set for the next week, coincidentally on the anniversary of my mother’s death, six years before.

That weekend a friend takes me to a party in the South End, to the loft of the brother of one of the Beastie Boys, or so she claims. Wearing a sweater pulled from Pine Street’s clothing room, I feel shabby beside the beautiful people. After an uncomfortable hour I end up in a back room with my friend, smoking crack until daybreak. I’ve never done it before, and I’ll never do it again, but it makes me feel like Superman for fifteen minutes at a time, full of self-confidence and charm, until the hit wears off and each nerve screams for more. Before I take the first lungful the guy with the lighter asks if I know what I’m doing, if I’ve done it before. He even tells me not to, tells me he hasn’t left that pipe for three days. I nod my head like I understand, like there’s nothing I don’t understand, as I fall back on the couch, my lungs now big with smoke.

This letter comes a few days after another in which he tells me, “I did apply for a job at Pine Street in a letter to Mr. Ring several weeks ago—a job as a counselor—No answer. I have since found out through the grapevine that one must be out of Pine Street one full year before he or she can get a job there.—So it goes. I must struggle on.”

One night in late January the counselor working Housing will be unable to rouse my father. Slumped and naked, he will stare at himself in the funhouse mirror, repeating,
But I’m only twenty-eight years old, why do I look like this? What happened to my body?
The counselor, new to the shelter, half believes this man is twenty-eight, half believes the telescoping of thirty years. This counselor will work with me later that night on the Van, and apologize for being late, explain he was with a drunk who kept saying he was twenty-eight, but his body looked forty years older, his body ruined. I knew he was talking about my father even before he said his name. I was the one who was twenty-eight. Within a week this note will appear in the log:

I come in to work at nine that night, stopping first to read the log. I see the note about my father, see the way the woman at the desk watches me as I read. Then I pass through the lobby to pick up the Van, to drive it to the back door, to load it with food, coffee, blankets, the nightly stopover before heading out. Passing through the lobby I see my father, upright and ranting, his head lolling from side to side, his naked body wrapped in a sheet. I walk past him, past my co-workers, who had spent the last hour wrestling him down from the showers, who had finally given up trying to get the motherfucker dressed again, grabbed a sheet, wrapped him in it, dragged him down. I’d never seen this before, never seen a man dressed only in a sheet in the Brown Lobby. Roman, almost Imperial.