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Fred Royall |
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Sinning He was a Nobel Prize winner and he was proposing a large center project to the National Science Foundation. I was asked at the eleventh hour to clean up legal documentation with the subcontracting organizations, which included three other universities, a national laboratory, and a conservative think tank. I had to make first contact with folks and get them to act fast, clearing budgets and certifications through their central administrative offices. Otherwise our authorized representative wouldn't sign off on the proposal. It was a Friday, often a slow day, but this all made the day quite hectic. I was trying to quit smoking but I ended up wandering the campus a few times looking to bum one. My job was usually quite slow, so I didn't feel the extra work was unfair. In fact it was quite invigorating. But I told myself through most of the afternoon that I was going to go out and enjoy a drink afterward. There was a little hole-in-the-wall local place that I liked called The Circle Inn in Forest park. That's just a few klicks west of Chicago. It was February and the weather was cold and sloppy. I parked in my garage and then walked the several blocks to the Circle. I got there at around seven and TC was just coming on. TC was a fairly tall woman of 30 who had been adopted as an infant. Her ethnicity was uncertain and she had an unusual look. The best guess was that her parents had been Saudi Arabian. She was very pretty despite a pair of homely, large black frame glasses that she wore. She also tended to wear baseball caps and came off as something of a tom boy. She was friendly, quick witted, and funny with the customers and she knew me by name. The Circle served a nice glass of Sam Adams for three dollars and tended to comp a lot of drinks through the course of the night. I drank very quickly and once laughed at a funny commercial on television. The guy to my right laughed as well and asked me how I was doing. He introduced himself as Bill. I told him that I had been working all day for a Nobel Prize winner and that started us talking. We got onto politics and he was on the left. I was more on the right. We talked a lot about violence in the Middle East. I wondered if TC was bothered by our talk. Bill was sincere and reasonably well informed in his opinions. He thought I was articulate and had a good vocabulary. He asked me about my education and seemed impressed with the details of my background. The night wore on and we talked with great enthusiasm. I started to insist that America was an inspired experiment of great genius and a model for the world. But Bill said that we were just rich, that we were all about money, and that that wasn't so impressive. We got up a few times to piss and we smoked a lot and drank on. TC gave me so many comps that I lost count. I didn't like to exceed eight, but I knew I had blown past that limit a while earlier. At one point a very tall man appeared incongruously behind the bar. He was a prominent, towering and authoritative presence. Bill and I asked TC who he was and she said his name was Dan. We asked him what he was doing behind the bar and she said she didn't know. I said that he was the tallest mother fucker I had ever seen. TC went over to him and told him that we were giving him a hard time. He came from behind the bar and walked over to talk to us. We summarized our long discussions and he chimed in with his take. A bright light came on suddenly from behind the bar and I looked up in amazement at the clock. It was 3:00 AM! I was stunned and shook my head in disbelief. I had sat and drunk and talked for eight hours. The equivalent of a full workday spent drinking beer and passionately debating American politics with a total stranger. e stood up and I invited Bill and Dan to come over to my place for more beers. Bill said no, that he had kids at home, but Dan walked out with me holding a half-drunk bottle of Bud Lite. We crossed Harlem Avenue and then walked three blocks through the snow to my place. I was basically blacked out but somehow functioning. My place was a newly refurbished condo on the top floor and it was warm and welcoming. Dan complemented me on the place. We took two beers from the fridge and went out on the back porch to smoke. I was so terribly drunk that I have very little memory of what we talked about. Dan must have been quite drunk also. I do recall learning that he was married and he a pregnant wife who was 44 years old. I told him congratulations. We tossed our butts off the back porch and then made to go back inside. I realized with a shock that Dan had closed the back door all the way when he had come out. That meant that it was locked. I reached for my keys but I had left them in my jacket in the living room. We both said, "Oh shit," and stood there. Dan tried to raise the screen to the back window but couldn't get it to move. I had long fingernails on my right hand because I played the guitar, so I inserted my nails under the bottom of the screen and got it to loosen up. I pulled the screen as high as it would go and then Dan pressed the window up and reached all the way through to unlock the door. Only his extraordinarily long arm could have reached all that way. We gasped in relief and walked back in. We took two more beers and walked to the living room. He moved a notebook and pen from a chair and sat down. He asked if I had any pot but I didn't do weed. I said that I wished we had some crack and he laughed, probably not thinking I was serious. He asked for music so I put on Mississippi John Hurt's 1928 Sessions. I went off about the history of the blues, characterizing the differences between the delta style and the Piedmont style. I explained the unlikely Texas dead-thumb style. I spoke at length and realized that throughout my speech I was gradually urinating on myself but I was too absorbed in what I was saying to excuse myself and take a piss. Instead I continued to dribble urine into my underpants, long johns and jeans. Within twenty minutes I had soaked two large dark spots on my inner thighs extending from my crotch to my knees. I wondered if Dan noticed or could smell it. Beer piss doesn't have much of an odor. He didn't look down or say anything about it. He asked me abruptly if I was a homosexual and I told him no. He asked me if I was an alcoholic and I said that some might think so and that I had been to AA in the past. He asked about the prescription bottles that were on my end table and I told him that I took psych drugs: anti-anxiety, anti-psychotic, and anti-depressant. He remarked that I had it pretty well covered. I told him I had been half crazy my whole life and that I had always been alone. On my coffee table were two issues of my self published 'zine. I showed these to him and he said that I was an unusual person. I said that I had heard that my whole life. Then we went outside again and smoked the last two cigarettes. I couldn't believe how much I had smoked that night. This time I took my keys with me. When we got back inside I grabbed a legal pad on which I had a couple of hand-written stories and I tore out a blank page. I tore it in half and then we both wrote down our names and numbers and handed them to each other. He said that he intended to invite me over for dinner. He called a cab on his cel phone and it showed up very quickly. By the time he left I noticed there was sunlight breaking through my windows. I looked at my watch. It was 6:00 in the morning. I wondered what on earth his pregnant, 44-year old wife would think about her husband stumbling in after 6:00 in the morning. When he left I immediately took off my urine soaked pants and underclothes. I left them in a pile on the floor of the living room and went to the bathroom to piss. I then crawled into the bed and slept until 4:00 in the afternoon. I woke with a catastrophic, overwhelming pain in my head. I had missed doses of my evening and morning medications. I lay in a state of disbelieving delirium. I managed to rise and brush my crusty teeth. I put some clean clothes on. I picked up my pants and underclothes from the floor and found them still damp. I threw them in the hamper. I put my coat on and went outside. I told myself it was good to breathe the cold air and to walk. I went to Chipotle and bought a burrito. I hunched over my meal and ate it like an animal or a man rescued from the desert. I managed to keep it down and to drink some Coke over top of it. I wondered how long it would be before I felt like a human being again. I realized when I left the restaurant that I was in the grips of a despairing depression that was making me want to cut myself. This was something that I used to do in the past before I began psychiatric treatment. It was a kind of improvised home therapy. I would cut myself with razor blades and bleed into the tub. The combination of pain and blood loss would somehow reduce the pain of my despair. As I walked Lake Street I felt as though it was appropriate to do that again. I came home and stripped down. I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. All at once I shuddered and began to weep with sorrow. I turned away from the mirror and knelt on the cold floor. I bent over the tub and heaved and cried bitterly. I began to plead with God for forgiveness and for some kind of help. I was in the throes of emotional illness. I felt hopelessly abandoned and alone. I shook with lachrymose catharsis at the sadness of the world and my plight within it. In Virginia I had friends who had just had a baby girl. Her name was Grace and I had pictures of her in the living room. I knew that I must look at them. I found them on the end table and looked at each one slowly. The sight of her innocent, adorable form bundled up with a stuffed animal meliorated some of the pain and bitterness. I blew my nose and wiped my eyes then I shuffled through my desk to find their number in Virginia. I called and the mother answered. I asked her how her daughter was and she said that she loved her new mobile,which had bears holding brightly colored stars. She said that she kicked and reached and opened her mouth very wide at the sight of the dangling mobile. I thought this was wonderful news. We talked a bit about our shared interests in music. She complemented me on my 'zine and I thanked her for reading it. Then we said goodbye and hung up. I ran a hot bath and lay in it for a while. I continued to ask God for forgiveness. I swore that I didn't mean any harm. I insisted as I always did at such times that I was a good person who meant well. I'd just been too alone for too long and this led me into occasional vice. And now I was suffering the consequences. I took my evening meds and nursed a cold bottle of white wine. The depression was a black fungus that had grown over the surface of my brain like a shade. I endured it, looking repeatedly at the baby pictures and brushing tears from my cheeks. I went to bed and allowed my mind to recuperate. I woke early and went out to breakfast. I bummed a smoke off a guy who said he used to be homeless but was now a painter. He had bad teeth. After I ate I went to a coffee shop and sat down to write this. I used the same pad that Dan and I had used to exchange information. I was 40, single, alone, poorly motivated and confused. And sometimes I fucked up and went through emotional ordeals. God forgive me. ~~~ Six Minutes Yesterday evening I played a quick set of country blues and then took my shirt off and opened a beer. I stepped out onto the back porch to smoke a cigarette and relax. Another day of quiet torment ended. Across the courtyard there was a young woman out on her back porch talking. I looked over at her as I lit up and I saw that she was cute in a pair of little shorts and a belly shirt with flip flops and her hair pulled back. She was talking into a cell phone and the person on the other end was obviously a good friend. They were gossiping and swapping stories with ease and enthusiasm. There was great, enviable catharsis in the conversation. After work, personal time. Princesses. The woman had a very pleasant, feminine voice. Not overly loud or nasal or grating. Just girlish and lively. She couldn't have been over 25. As she talked she was busily spraying colorful flowers with a water bottle. She handled the bottle just so, as though displaying some special talent or expertise. Claudia used to keep flowers out on her back porch and she would fuss over them. This is something that women do. They fuss over flowers. And they chatter with their girlfriends. And they wear next to nothing when the weather is warm. Standing there smoking that cigarette I had to force myself not to stare across the courtyard at her. I could have swallowed her whole, just like a gulp of cold beer. I was a very dirty old man and I knew where I wanted my face to be. I did enjoy her voice, though, for the duration of the cigarette -- about six minutes. When I took my last drag and turned to walk back inside I felt every ounce of my loneliness come crashing down on my shoulders. I opened the fridge and grabbed a fresh beer. Another night. THE PITCHER (thanks to Jimmy H.) He had grown up in St. Louis, and was a die-hard fan of the Cardinals as a rangy little boy. He had caps, balls, posters and other gear. But his father was transferred quite often in his career as a salesman and so the family had moved many times between his boyhood and college. He learned how to make new friends fast. It became a singular talent. At eighteen he was tall and popular and enrolled at the College of William and Mary. There he fell in love and spent four years that could have been wildly promiscuous with the same, good-hearted girl. After graduation they had a last impassioned encounter and then parted company, never to see one another again. Against his father's wishes he had majored in history. "Fuck are you going to do with that?" was the reaction at home. He felt his true calling was in international relations. That he had a genuine gift for gab and an easy way with people. He loved his country and wanted to be in foreign service. That meant graduate school, but his father's staunch pragmatism won the day he ended up in sales straight out of college. Turned out it wasn't a bad gig. He made a fair buck and moved up fast. He also found time for golf, lowering his handicap to a respectable ten strokes. He made up for the lost time in college and got a lot of trim on the weekends. He did have to travel quite a bit, but this got him out among the folks where his natural charms came to the fore. His territory was the western tip of Virginia on the border with Kentucky. And on one fine, smoldering summer evening he arrived in the town of Bristol and made his base camp at the Holiday Inn. His day would start early, so he planned to pack it in before ten. He had stopped off at a 7-11 and bought a six of Rolling Rock and a two-dollar cigar. He took the chair from the desk in his room and he set it outside on the veranda overlooking the pool. He propped his legs on the railing and popped the cap on a beer. He lit up and then took a small transistor radio out of his pocket. During the course of his travels he had discovered a little gratifying secret. That in towns like Bristol as the sun was setting you could just barely pick up AM 1120 out of St. Louis, home to Jack Buck, the voice of the Cardinals. And the farther the sun set, the louder the signal became. He thought idly about how he would pitch himself to his clients over the next couple of days, and he sipped cold Rolling Rocks and blew out large plumes of blue-gray smoke. Jack Buck tickled his ears with thrilling color commentary and his beloved Cards were making a fine show of it this evening against the Cubs. He was no ambassador, and the Holiday Inn in Bristol was certainly no foreign embassy. But he had a job that made use of his talents, something that a lot of folks could never get. And as his mind got fuzzier with the beer and the signal got clearer with the glorious orange ball at the horizon he figured his old man probably knew what he was talking about. He thought fondly of his boyhood and was glad he'd grown up in St. Louis. He was an American man who had lived all over the country and sitting on that veranda with his feet propped on the railing, the empty pool laying still and cool below, he was up to his waist in the American dream and would only sink deeper. |