Until I read the letter below, number 16, I had forgotten the extent to which, for a brief time (well, maybe not so brief -- from the summer 1989 until the beginning of winter 1990), my wife, who was enrolled at Columbia Medical School, was a household pot farmer. We were living on campus in a married-student apartment on the twenty-second floor of a residential tower. She had taken the seeds from dime bags that we or friends had purchased in Tompkins Square Park and planted them in potting soil which she had packed in sawed-off 1-gallon plastic milk jugs. On the twenty-second floor we had good light from windows lining the eastern and southern walls of the living room. During the peak, the wife had over a half-dozen large plants. I didn't really approve, but after a while I became a willing accomplice. She kept her medical school class well supplied that semester. I definitely didn't approve of her selling her produce. Giving it away was fine, but selling seemed wrong to me. I thought it represented a greater danger both in terms of the law and getting found out by the university. But at this point my wife had basically stopped paying attention to anything I said. She was a free agent who did what she wanted. She expected certain things of me: I needed to hold down a job; I had to cook dinner and perform other chores as designated. But for the most part she left me to myself. In a couple more months, at the beginning of May, we would separate.
Jeff called the other week. It was after midnight and I was asleep. The call came in and the answering machine picked it up. I had the volume on. He said that he had heard that I was thinking of starting a family with our mutual college friend Shale and he had some valuable information that he needed to share with me. These facetious early-morning calls were a staple of Jeff's from the past. I didn't pick up. I was exhausted. I've been running myself ragged at work. Then I found that I couldn't fall back asleep. I need to call him back.
Winter 1990
Well, Jeff, right off the bat I've got to apologize for not sending along any of things I said I was gonna send to you. I feel like a real louse, a real bum -- no excuses either. I told Ashley I'd talked to you on the phone and got the place of birth (Oakland), but I didn't keep reminding her enough to print the thing out. As to the pot, we're just waiting on that bushy skunk-weed plant; it stinks something awful and is budding quite nicely. Now as soon as Ashley decides to chop it down I'm gonna be sure to send some along (our existing store was suddenly obliterated when Ashley made a dramatic two-ounce sale, her first). Every morning I get up and march to the hall closet and pull that skunk out and pick it up and carry it to the living room window in the southeast corner (the one with the most sun); every evening when I get home from work I move it back into the closet (I do the same thing with the one other plant that we have left; Ashley has started up three or four seedlings). I'm taking care of the plants because Ashley is in Oregon for Christmas. This is the first holiday season of solitariness I think I've ever had. So far so good. I am drinker again, but that's okay.
But Ashley's been gone for a full five days now and I'm starting to have diabolical dreams (because the bottom line is that sleeping alone is a much more eerie and anxious affair than sleeping with the one you love): dreams about driving a stolen green early-60s Chevy pickup and running it through stoplights, and dreams about a tiger escaped from the zoo and chasing Ashley down the sidewalk until I come on the scene and yell at it to get away and it "oh, shit" comes running after me but I scurry up a tree in a yard and hop onto a roof and slip in an open window, the tiger lapping at my heels, and just when it's about to slam through the flimsy glass and eat me lip-licking alive a pack of neighborhood dogs comes ballyhooing and charging down the street like a troop of angels and draws the tiger away, risking life and paws. I've always thought dogs were the best, deep down and otherwise, and this tends to corroborate my suspicions; Diogenes the Cynic, the father of Cynicism, was known as kyon: the dog. "Cynic" comes from the Greek word kynikoi which means dog-like. I've had dreams like that, and dreams of friends telling me about fights they've just been in, bruising fights, all while we shop for Sunday breakfast in an empty supermarket, the women waiting outside in an idling station wagon -- eerie shit, the whole of it.
And tonight, fully awake and on my way to the deli to get some quarts of malt liquor (the deli where you bought that liverwurst sandwich that made you ill), I pass a sweet little blond in shorts and cotton sweatshirt fresh from a workout in the building's gym. We pass in the hall that leads to the elevator. Everything is golden and quiet and deserted in the light-bulb light and I, 49er-capped and fully wrapped bound for the nine-degree ice night, pass her by. She's nervous about being alone with me in a deserted hall. I recognize her. She's a classmate of Ashley's -- I've met her before (once, briefly, and I think I cut a fart, silently, accidentally). But from her there's no indication that she knows me; she just keeps on moving, skirting along as fast as her naked legs can carry her.
So like I say she passes me by, but I turn and look after her, and boy does she have a nice backdoor. I could pray to it. And then my brain gets to thinking, "Here we are, all alone, nobody around, everybody -- all the medschoolers -- gone to his or her own special point on the map, and it's just the two of us here alone for some unknown reason. So why don't you invite me up to your home and let me love you? We'll have some beers and I'll give you a good ride, 20 minutes of foreplay and 15 minutes of tha-wacketing. -- Shit, I'll even tuck you in and kiss ya good night." But people are too full of fear, myself included, and she disappeared around the bend. At least I have my Colt 45. What does she have?
Amen.
Remember, you're only as good as your heroes. And I know you know this Jeff because you're the only one who has selflessly said how you take from people; most people ruthlessly rip off others and hope that no one notices. Shit, I'm more guilty of this anyone, more guilty than even Shale, though I hope I'm not. But we're only as good as our heroes. . . . I remember this time when I was drunk at a medschool party, and I started waxing ecstatic, crazy and jubilant, about Colt 45's label art: the red buckin' bronc snappin' his hind legs in the beer can backdrop air. Oh my, everyone looked at me like I was from Mars, looked at me like I was a dead dog drunk; oh boy, even Ashley stared at me, as if to say, "Shut up, you stupid ditty drunk. Don't embarrass me in front of all these normal people." I walked off to the fridge and grabbed two bottles of beer. No more Colt left, just some imported beer. So I grabbed two of those. -- I'll never be able to get drunk enough when it comes to spending time with these people.
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