JJ in the 21st Century

JJ in the 21st Century: Lila Eats the Whole Pint

/ David Ferland / 3 Comments

Why was she always trying to fix him?  It was a compulsion, like knowing there was a pint of ice cream in the fridge.  Not healthy, but it’s there, so it must be eaten.  It ALL must be eaten.  The itch must be scratched.  The drunk must be saved.  Or not, apparently.

Lila walked her first friend from Al-Anon to the door.  Maria was strong, grounded, but moved like a soldier with an old wound, careful that it shouldn’t reopen, crouching against a wind that might whip up at any time.  Lila watched Maria get in the car with awe and pity.  Maria had borne a lot, actual beatings at the hands of some drunken ingrate.  Yet she loved this shithead and was herself addicted to trying to make him happy.  “Codependent” was the word she used.  Lila had heard the term, of course, but never quite got it.  But, now she did.  Basically, she had a stake in JJ’s drinking, too.  She cast herself in the savior role.  And, God help him if he managed to get well without her help.

Lila had shared at an Al-anon meeting called “Change”.  As in, “The Change Group of Al-Anon.  You are welcome to stay and change”.  She shared, “And he just sabotages everything.  He starts something beautiful and just fucks it all up.”

“Language, please,” the Chairwoman said.

“Sorry.  But, he just messes everything up and doesn’t give a sh…doesn’t give a crap about what I put into it.  He wins all this money and starts this farm project and I…”

“Is it the guy who won the lottery,” someone asked from the back.

“Please,” said the Chairwoman. “No cross-talk.”

Lila continued, “And then we’re almost together again.  Happy.  It was love again.  He came to mom’s funeral, mostly sober.  He was trying, in his way.  Then he just retreats to that stupid farm.”

“JJ,” someone whispers clearly.  “Lottery,” someone whispers.  Then, “I can fix him.  Give me a chance.”  Tentative giggling all around.

“Please,” the Chairwoman said.

Before Lila could dart away after the meeting, Maria put an arm around her shoulders and drew her back in.  “Not so fast,” she said.  “We don’t bite.”

The next day, Maria came over and told her story to Lila.  It was harrowing and violent, the guy now in jail for eighteen months.  “But, when I think of him, I start planning how I’ll clean the house and what I’ll cook when he gets home.”

After Maria left, Lila’s phone rang.  Caller Id: JJ.  “Detach with love,” she said to herself.  Loving detachment was the Al-anon way, the boiled down method to deal with a drunk who will take everything and leave your soul baffled, bankrupt, and battered.  “Detach with love,” she repeated out loud, but answered anyway.

“Only you can save me from me,” he said.  “I walked to the bank and back.  My feet are so cold.”

“Where are you?”

“The farm.”

“I’ll be there in 15 minutes.”

I Will Not Be Caged

/ David Ferland / 1 Comment

The bank guy said, “Sir, we may not have all those bills, and even if we do, you’ll have to fill out a form for the federal…”

“That doesn’t concern me, Mr. Bummel.”

“It’s Hummels, sir.  And I would advise…”

“I’m not looking for advice Mr. Bummel.  I’m looking for my cash.”  JJ corrected his posture, pushing himself up from slouch for emphasis.  He felt this leather bank chair was pulling him under, sucking him in.  “My cash,” he said.

“Sir, I’ll need to talk to the manager.  But, I need to ask.  It’s uncomfortable but, are you intoxicated, sir?”  Hummels looked at him, steady and professional, which JJ kind of respected through the fog of his binge.

“Mr. Hummels, sir, that’s neither here or there.  I just need my cash.”  Hummels considered, looking at the specimen across his desk.  A clock was ticking in the office, a small glassed-in space right off the main lobby.  JJ thought of a reptile cage in a zoo, though no one was looking in.  The reptiles usually just sit there anyway, dignified and bored, until feeding time.  “Komodo dragon,” he thought and snickered a little.

“How much did you say, sir?”

“Well that’s where I need your help a little.  How much cash will fill a bath tub?”  A pause.  “It can be a mixture of demona…demomma…denominations.”

“You’re putting this cash in a bath tub?”

He drew himself up again, fighting the slouch, dignified.  “I intend to bathe in my money, yes.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but may I ask why?”

“You may ask,” JJ said and paused.  “I want to feel it all around me.  Beyond that, we’ll see.”

“Are you going to put water in the tub?”

“You must think I’m an idiot!  I don’t want to ruin my money!”

“Sir, keep your voice down, please.  I’ll see what we can do.”

JJ watched Hummels walk to the bank guard near the entrance.  They shared a word and a glanced back at the glass office, then Hummels headed to the larger office in the corner.  Something told him it was time to leave.  The air was going out of the balloon, the idea bulb above his head dimming.  This bank, this sucking leather chair, was killing momentum.  He stood and listed toward the lobby, but the exit seemed far away.  Komodo dragon, trapped in the reptile house, its enclosure door suddenly left open by a careless zookeeper.  You read about escaped zoo animals sometimes, on the internet.  It was now or never.

The bank guard watched him walk out, took a step, but then let him pass through the lobby.  “Tell Bummels to forget it,” JJ said as he passed the guard.  “I will not be caged.”

“Yes, sir,” the guard said.  JJ went out into the cold and headed across the parking lot.  He was on foot, which was a good thing, considering.  Glancing back, he saw the guard watching him from inside the door.  The stifling bank behind, JJ headed toward home without his cash, transformed from caged reptile to some poor antlered beast, still captive in the zoo, but with room to roam within its habitat.  Liquor store first, then back home.

Vs. the 21st Century Guy

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JJ tried to go to AA but the thought of those determined desperate happy people turned him away before he could get out of the car.  He sat in the lot watching the smokers talking and laughing.  “Fuck that,” he said and went to get a cup of coffee.  “Better than the liquor store,” he said.  “I gotta stop talking to myself,” he said.

White-knuckling it in a coffee shop turned out to be a bad idea.

There was this guy in the cafe, a typical 21st century guy, not really a man, but not physically a child.  But, he did have toys like a child.  iphone5s on display (for communicating), MacBook Pro with Retina display (for stylish and smug computing), and Bose headphones (QuietComfort™, $300).  This guy stared at the screen of his MacBook Pro with Retina Display with great intensity, talking to someone about Haiti.

“The weather?  Not what you’d think.  Not as hot.  The whole place…what’s that?”  He listened.  “It’s not like you’d think.  The earthquake was…what’s that, I can’t hear you…”

The guy-child got louder and louder, headphones on, talking to the screen, and nobody seemed to mind.  This was typical 21st century behavior and everyone nearby was also self-consumed and oblivious, bored eager faces stuffed in their laptops or phones.  Except for righteous JJ, with his twitchy booze-withdrawal too-tight skin. He was ready to stab this shithead on first impressions alone, before he even started speaking.

“They’re poor but it’s not like the shanties you see…What?  Yes, shanties.  Like plywood huts.  Sometimes cardboard.  Yes, it’s terrible, but not…”

JJ pulled one padded Bose disc away from the guy’s ear.  “Excuse me, but you gotta shut the fuck up,” he said.  A shift in the room.  Maybe they were listening after all.

“Excuse me?  It’s a free country.”  Guy-child turned back to the screen.  “No, Sage, not you.  There’s a person here, being rude.”

“Actually, it’s not a free country.  It’s an expensive country.”  JJ grabbed the MacBook Pro with Retina Display, ignored the guy’s squeal and feeble wrist grab as the Bose plug popped out, and took the computer to the door where he frisbeed it across the sidewalk, right into the gutter.  There it lay, Apple logo still glowing, in a puddle of gray slush.

The 21st century guy-child, all red in the face, pushed past and ran to the curb, kneeled in the slush, and, moaning, took the laptop into his arms.  The Apple light went dark.

JJ felt the swamp of dread rising inside.  But physically, on the outside, he felt much better.  Might as well finish this.  He took out a wad of $100s, more of his dreadful lottery winnings, and tossed it into the slush.  “Buy yourself something nice,” he yelled and stalked away to the liquor store.

It is Hereby Resolved…

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Four weeks in and the pledges, oaths, and now the Resolutions are pouring forth almost as quick as the whiskey flows down JJ’s gullet.  Four weeks and stuck already in a self-loathing, glimmer-of-hope, “fuck-this!” vortex of drinking, passing out, thinking about drinking, then drinking again.  “What a life,” he mutters, much put-upon by this descent into compulsion and debauchery.  The days slip away and repeat with occasional brief walks on the farm or shameful missions into town for MORE.

He ventured out yesterday from his farm that isn’t a farm to restock, the shopping list like a pre-apocalyptic wishlist:  3 bottles whiskey (Wild Turkey, 101 proof), carton of cigarettes (Marlboros, yes, back on those too), cans of soup (tomato and chicken noodle, Campbells only), popcorn kernels (microwave popcorn is for pussies.  Plus, he has no microwave), peanut butter (Jif), saltines (Premium), and vanilla ice cream (Friendly’s).  Oh yeah, Alka-Seltzer too (bicarbonate of soda).

Good to go for New Year’s Eve. Happy twothousandfourteen!  “Two fuckin thousand,” he says.  “Still haven’t got used to that.  Tonight I’m gonna party like it’s nineteenninetynine.”  He tries to stop talking to himself in the empty house.  It’s horrifying in some croaky way but he needs to try it now and again to make sure this is all real.

It’s real and he’s fucked and he knows it.

Happy New Year!

Lump Sum Payment

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“Lump sum payment.”

“Limp sum payment.”

Giggle and groan.  The realization of alcoholic relapse, a terrible medical term insufficient for the deep soul pain JJ feels as he comes to, then becomes aware.  Failure on an epic scale.  Yet…  (And here’s the rabbit hole of doom).  Yet, what’s the big deal?  He’s here, alive, in a house he owns.  He’s got a shitload of lottery money in the bank.  And the sun is up.  And people are doing whatever people do.  He just happens to be lying here with what feels like a railroad spike lodged in his skull, driven in at the base with point protruding from forehead.  Cold hard throbbing iron.  But predominantly, most painful of all, is the amorphous creature of shame emerged from some gaping unreachable wound behind heart and abdomen.  No organ, this creature, just a pulsating squid of pain, tentacles twisting and twining into heart and limb.  A real fuckin soul ache.

“I’m only hurting myself,” he mutters and tries to get up but sinks back as the squid plops down and splats onto the deck of its cavern and the nausea comes.  Oh man, the nausea.  JJ’s down again, hugging self and giggle-groaning, amazed by this cosmic punishment, this run-of-the-mill hangover.  Gallows humor still intact, that’s good.  Or bad.  He should be devoid of humor, just a fuckin beast, like we all are.  Then the phone is ringing and the old-fashioned answering machine picks up and transmits a beautiful voice through the cold hollow house.

“It’s me,” Lila says.  “I need your help.  It’s…it’s kind of important.  Please call.”

Now the squid of shame, heavy, bloated and gelatinous, shifts position and radiates paralyzing waves of self-disgust.  Because he knows he won’t return the call.  He can’t answer the bell. “You’re up, JJ.”  Can’t do it, coach.  I got this creature inside, this squid.

But, he gets up somehow.  Later he casts this moment in heroic light, like the final push up Everest.  Or the unlikely victory of a doomed army.  The French at the Marne, finally turning to fight the Hun.  “It’s always about you,” Lila would say.  But what she says when he calls back is, “I need you.  My mom died.”

And JJ, fighting back the squid, gets dressed. Or rather, changes clothes.  He then smells himself, takes clothes off again, and gets in the shower.  Much groaning and blasting of hot water to melt the railroad spike, then the brushing and gargling.  Now dressed and stumble-walking out the door, the warrior emerges to save his beloved, raising his arm to fend off the merciless Sun.  He only slips once, landing on his side in a pile of snow along the walkway.  But he rights himself, dusts off the clinging snow, and forges on, unstoppable.