The Drunk Logs (5 page)

“Sure. The condition to shit his pants,” Jack Jack said as he searched for a laugh. “How is he as a roomy?”

“I don’t even want to tell you what he did in the bathroom. It was all over the…”

“Again, can we please talk about something else?” Sam said, irritated. “Jack, finish the story you were telling,” he said as he fidgeted in his chair.

“All right, well me and my cousins parked the trailer over by the pond in the campground, because we figured we’ll do some fishing later in the day. Well, as usual, we’re eating and drinking most of the day when Billy passes out in the trailer. So Frank, my other cousin, took out an Oscar Mayer and started rubbing it between Billy’s lips and in his mouth and, before he opened his eyes, I whipped my pecker in front of him, thinking…”

Everyone started to laugh at the table, even Sam, who gave the loudest, longest laugh.

“How in hell is that any better than Barry Eugene?” Sam said, coughing as he tried to spit out the words.

Concerned, the counselors at the corner table gazed over, but accepted the group for what it was, harmless. The laughter eventually started to die down and the clang of dishes and conversation soon took over the cafeteria.

“That story was funny,” Father Tom quietly said, as he stroked his beard. “I almost pooped my pants.”

Another eruption of laughter ensued. Sam started his coughing laugh again, stood with his tray and headed out the door; he pulled up the back of his pants and threw whatever food he had left into the trash. Bobby, Father Tom, Jack Jack, and I soon followed, as we wiped away the tears from our eyes.

“That sure was a good way to start off the day,” I said as we walked down the hall.

“If you think so,” Jack Jack said.

Sam pushed the elevator button frantically, before the door was even open. He dashed in and began to push for the second floor, like a little child who didn’t want his friends to ride with him.

“You better hold that elevator for us, Sam!” Bobby screamed as he ran, the fat around his body undulating hypnotically.

“No! You guys are sick,” Sam said as he frantically pushed the button.

Bobby bolted into the elevator and scraped his belly on the door. His body slammed into the wall at the back of the elevator, and the entire car shook.

“Hey, you better be careful, this thing could break and fall, ya know,” Sam said, concerned.

“We’re on the first floor you idiot,” Bobby said as he laughed.

Bobby grabbed the door before it closed, stuck his head out, looked down the hall, and waited for Father Tom.

“Move that cane a little faster, preacher man!” Bobby screamed.

“So are we going to see you in class?” Jack Jack asked.

“I don’t know. I have to go now and see the nurse.”

Father Tom entered the elevator as Jack Jack followed him. He took over and held the door, turned around, and smiled at me. The eyes of the group behind him stared in.

“Well, hopefully you’ll be out of detox soon and up to the second floor. See ya around,” Jack Jack said, as the elevator door slid closed and took away their faces, one by one.

I stared at the closed crème elevator door and felt full, like I had been accepted into a family of brothers, when a faint commotion sounded in the distance. The dust and dirt from the nurses’ station around the corner swirled in the air as patients and nurses took cover, and dove into any room available. The image was surreal; it tumbled forward in all shapes and sizes like a tsunami wiping out an entire village. Fear struck through my entire body as I started to run to my room in hopes of escaping the destruction. But my feet wouldn’t move as fast as the oncoming devastation, and I leapt to the wall and stuck, hoping for dear life that I would be spared. My hands slipped as the wall and floor shook uncontrollably.

Barry Eugene awoke from his slumber to investigate the commotion and was swept away. I closed my eyes and waited out the storm. Still clutching the wall, I heard the rattle subside to a mere rumble as the entire women’s dorm passed, and I headed for my room. Slightly shocked and disoriented, I wandered into my room and slammed the door behind me; I hoped never to witness such a spectacle again in my lifetime.

“Quite a sight to see when you’re detoxing, eh, Matt?” Carl smiled as he poked his head into the room like a deranged mental patient.

I sat motionless on my bed, but did not answer Carl, afraid that I might have experienced a hallucination. I watched and waited, concerned about what might happen next.

“The nurse told me you can go see her now.”

Carl opened the door completely and vanished. Something compelled me to stand and walk. I felt as if I was floating without moving; faces began to appear like inflated balloons the farther I traveled. Consumed, I landed near the nurses’ station, where the scene changed and I was standing at the bottom of the ocean. A constant hum grew louder and louder in my ears, followed by an invisible weight that formed on my head; it increased and pushed me down until my neck muscles strained. I felt helpless and my entire body started to tremble, and then…nothing happened. Everything was normal again. Scared and confused, I wondered what had happened to me.

I approached the half-door, and the same elderly nurse stood in the distance, counting the medication in the plastic medical cabinet.

“Matt H. You told me to come back in a couple of hours,” I said.

The large nurse appeared from the side, opened the half-door, and stood behind it, eclipsing the old nurse. I walked in and, without taking my eyes off the large nurse, backed into the chair by the wall shelf. Slowly, the door started to creak as the large nurse gently closed it.

“Arms straight out in front,” the elderly nurse said as she orbited around the large nurse.

In the distance, the intercom echoed, “To all patients, the 9 o’clock class will begin in 10 minutes, the 9 o’clock class will begin in 10 minutes.”

I took a deep breath and started to feel relaxed and slightly confident. Believing that I would beat the shaking, I raised my hands.

“Damn it.”

“Okay, you can put your arms down. I’ll give you another Valium to see how that works, and I’ll see you in two more hours. We won’t hold it against you if you don’t go to class, because we need to take care of you medically first,” the nurse said as she handed me a cup with one pill.

I raised the cup with both hands, and still refused the cup of water.

As I left, I noticed even more new patients sat in the nook, and were called in one by one to the vitals room. A line had just started to form around the corner for the elderly nurse as I headed back down the hall to my room. Frustrated, I saw men laughing and talking as they exited the elevator and headed down the hall to the auditorium. Angered, I decided to go to my room. I lay in bed and rested my eyes until I had to walk back to the nurses’ station.

Chapter 3

It felt to have been only about ten minutes since I lay down, when I heard the sound of someone entering the room. I kept my eyes closed and hoped and prayed it wasn’t who I thought it was, when I felt a small draft on my arm, like something had stopped abruptly next to me.

“Matt…Matt?” Barry Eugene said, as he shook my shoulder. “Are you awake?”

“If I was awake, would I have my fucking eyes closed?”

But he kept talking. “Did you see what happened out there in the hall earlier? There was this big commotion and it woke me up, so I went outside to see what it was and before I knew it, I was at the entrance where I came in.”

I tightened my eyes and refused to acknowledge him.

“So I talked to the person up front and they told me I was going home today. That me being here was just a big misunderstanding. She told me to go back to my room and one of the nurses will take care of me. I hope it won’t be too long. I don’t like all the drugs they keep giving me, it makes me drowsy. I wonder where all the women were going? No one wanted to tell me. Touched a couple of boobies though.”

I opened my eyes and lifted my head. “Why don’t you go outside and have a cigarette?” I said, aggravated.

“Where can you smoke here?”

“If you start off at the elevator and go around the corner down the hallway, to your right are two doors. Go through them and outside is a pavilion where you can smoke,” I said, as I lay on my side and pointed in the distance.

“But I don’t have any cigarettes.”

I reached inside my shirt pocket, pulled out my pack, and threw it at Barry Eugene. It dropped to the floor as he almost followed suit, but he caught himself on the edge of my bed.

He walked to the door and turned around; I had already thrown my lighter on his bed.

“Thanks,” he said as he grabbed the lighter. He turned and headed in the wrong direction.

I lay back in bed and closed my eyes,
Hopefully
, I thought,
I would be able to rest for a little while before I had to visit the nurse.

“Matt H., report to the nurses’ station, Matt H.,” screamed the intercom.

My eyes sprung open wide in disbelief. “Could it really have been two hours?”

Sluggish, I lifted myself out of bed and walked down the hall. Slightly numb, but alert, I stood in front of the nurse’s half-door; I never glanced at the people I passed, only the green carpet.

“Matt H.,” I said as I held out my wristband.

The nurse grabbed my wrist and checked the number on her clipboard. She let go as she opened the door and I walked directly over to the chair.

I began to raise my arm when the nurse grabbed the blood pressure belt and slid it onto my arm. The routine became easier over time, where the only hope was a change in blood pressure.

“Still the same,” the nurse said as the Velcro ripped. “Hold out your arms…still shaking.”

She walked over to the medical cabinet again and retrieved a Valium packaged in a little cup. I lifted it with both hands and refused the water.

“See you in two hours,” she said as she wrote in her notebook, while the door closed behind me.

As I lay back in bed, I struggled to erase the voices that echoed in my mind from the afternoon. “Matt H., report to the nurses’ station, still the same, hold out your arms, still shaking, see you in two hours.” In hindsight, I wished that it had been a song or a beautiful image that had released me from my nightmare. But the fact was that it had been nothing of the sort; instead, it was a foul, nearly vomit-inducing smell coming from the hallway that released my agony and brought me to another.

Two nurses entered the room, one with wheeled hospital trays; the other carried dinner in plastic trays. I struggled to settle my stomach as the food was placed on the tray and the cover lifted; meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and green beans, orange juice on the side.

“Well, Matt, it’s good to see you. It seems like you’re looking a little better,” Molly said. She wore a fire truck pattern on her shirt. “We brought you and your roommate dinner, because neither of you had lunch. I know it’s hard, but try to eat something. If you can’t, at least drink the orange juice.”

I looked long and hard at the dimpled meat with lumpy potatoes that slid down on a stream of gravy; at the steam that rose from the green beans that looked like dead caterpillars, and I was overcome with a cold sweat. “Molly, you can take that away. I can’t eat that,” I said, as I rested my hand on my stomach.

“All right, but make sure you drink the orange juice. Okay?”

Both nurses smiled and exited the room as I stared at the food dish by Barry Eugene’s bed; the steam and smell escaped from the holes in the plastic cover.

I stared back and forth between the bathroom and Barry Eugene. “Oh good, dinner,” he said as he plopped down on the bed and uncovered the plastic top.

He lowered his head an inch above the food, flared his nostrils, and vacuumed in the steam.

“Boy, there’s nothing better than eating in bed,” he said as he fluffed up his pillow, crossed his legs, and slid the tray closer to himself. “All I need is a six pack to wash it down.”

My mouth dropped and I stared, frozen by the image of this old sloth, Barry Eugene.

“You know, I’m going home today. Nurse said I was. Said she would see what’s going on. Everybody sure is going to be surprised when I walk into my bar,” he mumbled, as a small amount of mashed potatoes slid down his chin.

“I’m going outside to have a cigarette,” I said, and lifted myself out of bed. “Can I have my cigarettes?”

Barry Eugene seemed nervously surprised and pretended to search his pockets. “Oh, they should be around here…”

“Never mind, keep ’em,” I said as I held my breath and passed the bathroom.

In the hallway I bumped into a petite, young woman in pink socks, with tight blue jeans, a black sweater, and multi-colored hair. We both smiled and looked each other over. I became fixated on her small, perky breasts.

“I’m Victoria,” she said as she extended her limp hand.

“Matt. Nice to meet you,” I said and shook her hand.

Nothing was said for a short time as I enjoyed the first intimate contact I had had in a very long time.

“I haven’t seen you before. Did you just get in?” she playfully asked.

“Yeah, I just got in yesterday,” I said as I stumbled for my words. “Uh, I’m going outside for a cigarette, you wanna come?”

“I can’t, I have to go for my meds, but maybe later we can go for a walk around the pond?”

She played with the end of my shirt and began to pull it down past my belt.

“Victoria!” Carl musically called from the distance.

“I know, Carl!” she shouted as she snapped her head.

She raised herself on her toes, softly caressed my shoulders, and pushed down on them.

“Victoria!” Carl called again.

“I’ll see you later,” she whispered and was gone.

I struggled to not show emotion and walked down the hall, but my peacock appearance and smell of hormones gave me away. I turned the corner as Carl gave an unforgiving smirk, probably thinking all the while, now he has another one to keep an eye on.

Outside, the corn-filled canvas bags thumped on the plywood cornhole platforms, as the conversations and smoke swirled upward toward the shingles of the pavilion. I gained confidence, held my head up slightly, and walked down the path, not ashamed to show my badge of dishonor anymore. The fence rattled as a tennis ball stuck into one of the woven steel holes, and a muscular blond man pulled it out of its nest and smacked it back over the net with a wooden racket.