Maybe It Doesn't Care - A Work In Progress Part 2

Some Memories, Ruminating...

I just miss you.  I just want to talk to you.  Not even for an explanation.  I don’t think you would even have one, if you were here.  God dammed that is frustrating.  I know so much about why you did the things that you did, throughout your life.  But at the end there was a mystery that didn’t have a plot. 

You would have loved it last night.  We huddled around a campfire under the desert sky.  From the hillside, I could see only the electric lights of two other houses, burning low and pale.  There was guitar and banjo, beers and laughter.  It was a night full of song and story.  Just like you always pictured we would have.  I know that was always the way you pictured everyone.  Better than we ever really were.  You bragged about your friends the way that others talked about movie stars or musicians.  The hard part about this was none of us ever lived up to that.  How could someone?  I would always get frustrated with you about that.  You would knock yourself down to make everyone else seem taller.  You would build makeshift pedestals out of undeserved praise.  When all anyone wanted was to have you around.  To have you stay.  But after your words of kindness, you were always halfway out the door. Did you know that we all loved you anyhow? 

A man walked into the hospital one night while you were working.  He said that he had been in a car wreck, and had walked into the hospital from wherever the accident was.  You told me that he was a young guy, roughly your age.  He was in fairly good spirits, and asked if he had a concussion.  You tested him and released him quickly, telling him he was fine.  He was supposed to talk to an officer before he left to report the accident.  But fifteen minutes later, you heard that he had walked out of the hospital, jumped the barricade and ran into oncoming traffic.  You were so haunted by that thought.  We sat outside talking about it for hours.  You couldn’t understand how someone could do that.  Why would they do that? 

I have always been the kind of person that made assumptions about the world around me.   I think that at some young age I was instilled with the idea that there is a certain way that things are supposed to be.  This is naïve, and it has gotten me into trouble more times than I can count.  And it is totally unfair of me to assume things are supposed to be a certain way.  I go through these self-righteous moments in my life where I act as if the answers are all so easy.  But really, those times are only framed around the idea that I am at a stable or successful point in my life.  God, at those times it is so comfortable to point the finger at others, and say what fuck-ups they are, what they need to change or do differently with themselves to be happier, as if I somehow know what would be right for them.  And truthfully, it is only because I need to stand on those shoulders to feel better about myself.  The worst part is, I can feel it when it is happening.  I don’t even need a seconds worth of reflection to realize what a complete prick I am being.  As words fall from my mouth, I can feel my brain telling me to STOP.  But I know it isn’t going to happen.  At best, I will later vindicate myself by saying that it is only that I care so much.  That is why I am concerned with others.  It’s not being nosy.  I care.  Sure. 

I will dig into my head or heart or wherever it is that this is all hiding to try and find the places where you are still hiding.  Those parts where I still need that big brother.  Where I need someone to tell me that everything is going to be all right.  For so long that is what you were to me.  It was so important.  Our friendship was so important to me, because when I was hiding behind you, peaking over your shoulder to whatever it was that was terrifying me so much, it was easy to act strong.  To act like an adult.  Is that it?  Is there anger still there because you made me go through that alone?  Is it embarrassment having been associated with you, as awful as that sounds?  That telling all the people that I know now (who I want to think that I am a sophisticated adult) about my friend who overdosed on prescription drugs somehow implicates me even though I have never had any kind of drug addiction in my life?  Is that how fucking shallow I am?  Maybe I am.

You can’t save anyone.  When did I learn that?  I know that for a long time, I didn’t believe that.  I thought that there was fair, and there was right, and I knew the difference.  As if there is some scoreboard that is kept.  That determines when someone should be changing direction, or do the right thing.  I don’t understand why that never bothered anyone else the way that it did me.

1/30/06

Mike and I had started working for a property management company, driving back and forth across the Wasatch valley, walking into one dilapidated hole after another, trying to find some kind of potential in them.  Most of these were apartment complexes that had been converted from old polygamist houses, and each unit was a testament to creative space management.  Ducking under boxed in heating vents to get to the bedroom, or showers being built into closets, with the water drains tying into the dishwasher, so when you took a shower, your coffee cups ended up smelling like old spice body wash. We would find out how much the investors would be willing to spend, and that would create the final decision of how much work would be put into each place. We would tear out walls, electrical, plumbing.  Huge snakes of wire and copper piping would litter the front lawns of the tenements while we worked.  Most of the clients were just glorified slumlords, and the work ended up being shoddy just by default.  It was honest work, though, and the two of us would drive the thirty miles, through howling snowstorms to Ogden, in Mike’s little red pickup truck, with my Husky dog Buckley sitting in between us, all three of us squinting through the windshield to find the lines of the road.  Mike knew more about construction than I did, and I had to lie and fake my way through a lot of it that first year.  But Mike always covered for me. We actually had a lot of fun, considering how awful the job was most of the time.

There was the 300 pound dreadlocked sex offender who requested that we put in a double sink in his kitchen because he was a professional chef, even though he had a tarp for lawn trimmings and a piece of rock climbers rope nailed into the wall of his bathroom to serve as a shower curtain.  A week later when Mike went back to replace the bathroom sink cabinet, the sex offender stood just inside the tiny bathroom, blocking the door and casually mentioning to Mike that he “swings both ways if the price is right” and said that he occasionally likes a little white meat.  The sex offender was evicted a couple weeks later, after complaining to our company that the two crackers (me and Mike) that had been in his place last month had been coming in his apartment in the middle of the night, stealing his shoes and leaving through a trap door in the floor of his living room.  He told the receptionist that he had gotten on his hands and knees to try and find the break in the carpet where the trap door opens but that we were clever and had hidden it well.  Two days later he was caught trying to accost the pregnant girl who lived next door, saying that she had smoked all of his crack.

The property management company had hired a couple of guys to help out with the less refined work, mainly moving furniture and appliances when tenants were evicted and abandoned their property.  One of the workers, a middle aged man named Tyler, ended up helping us out here and there, and had become known to us as ‘Poopfinger’, after an unfortunate experience from the beginning of his employment.  He had been assigned the job of clearing out the yard of a house that had been recently vacated.  The renters in the house had stopped paying their rent, and were essentially just squatting on the property, intermittently setting up court hearings about their pending eviction, and then rescheduling them, which apparently means that as long as this process is being juggled, the owner cannot serve the eviction.  Pretty smart for a couple of snaggle toothed meth heads.  They knew it was just a matter of time until this process wore itself out.  So they neglected to ever clean up after the two German Shepherds they kept in the backyard.  When the house was finally vacant, Poopfinger dragged a garbage can out back, and with a shovel and rake, proceeded to fill the entire can with dog shit.  Once he was finished, and he had dragged the metal can around to the dumpster, he realized that it was almost impossible to lift up. Dog shit, being impressively dense, can weigh much more that people anticipate.  Undeterred, he slung the can back, pitching it wide, to try and gain enough momentum to reach the lip of the dumpster, and in the process, he managed to horribly twist his back, rip off the fingernail of his ring finger, and dump about half of the can on himself.  By the time he made it back to the office of the property management company, he had created a makeshift bandage of paper towels and duct tape.  But he was still covered in dog shit.  Mike and I asked him if he was planning on washing the wound on his hand.  “No way!”  He said.  “You know how bad that would hurt?” 

One of our investors called us that spring to say that he had evicted a young man who had recently returned from Iraq.  His apartment was in a string of non-descript, sad little beige boxes right outside of the razor-wire fences of the Air Force base.  The owner had the Sheriff serve the notice and escort the young soldier away.  After they had changed the locks, we were to go in, and haul anything that could be sold to the pawnshop, anything that could be used to the goodwill, and everything else to the dump.  We went in and it looked like the guy could have come home at any minute.  There was food in the fridge, furniture in the living room, a bed, clothes in the closet.  It looked like he left without taking anything.  His bedroom was a whirlwind mess, a soiled mattress floating on a sea of empty beer cans, porno magazines, dirty clothes and empty pill bottles.  I picked up one of the pill bottles and realized that it was a prescription for an anti-psychotic medication.  There were also letters from his doctor, and it appeared that our friend had not had his prescription refilled, as per his doctor’s orders.  This revelation occurred in tandem with Mike’s discovery that the dresser drawers were full of 9 Millimeter handgun shells.  But after watching the roaches scatter with every drawer we opened and couch we pushed aside, still we found no gun.  Maybe he didn’t leave here empty handed after all.  Then, with a precision timing of a sidesplitting comedy, or maybe a horror film, the phone rang out and startled us both to the point of a mild heart attack.  It was the owner saying that the renter had called him and sounded threatening, maybe even drunk, and that we shouldn’t be surprised if he showed up.  In the event of that, we should just ask him to leave.  Nope, we are surely in a horror film.  “Fuck that” Mike said.  “I’m not getting paid fifteen bucks an hour to get into hand to hand combat with some asshole.  Lets just get everything we can in the trailer and to the dump.” At that point, getting a few bucks for a couple of items at the pawnshop was the last thing on our minds.  Self preservation kicked in and not getting shot became the name of the game.  I don’t know if there are words to describe the visceral enjoyment of dropping a couch off of a balcony onto the street below.  The thrill of throwing a thirty-six inch television out of a window.  It’s all those ‘Lord of the Flies’ moments from childhood.  You forget actual English, and the monosyllabic sounds of ‘YES!’ and ‘WOOOH!’ are all that is needed to communicate satisfaction.  Not one single stick of furniture survived, and although the job was being completed quickly, our joy dissipated when I discovered a crossbow above the refrigerator, which reminded us that if our soldier buddy returned home now, things were actually worse for us than they had been when we started, because now we were not just the jerks who worked for the guy who kicked him out, but the douchbags who laughed while they broke all his shit.  We cleared out the entire apartment in about two hours.  We never saw the tenant, and although I feel bad that all of his stuff ended up at the dump, I was glad just to not get shot.  I got fifteen bucks for the crossbow.

10/11/01

After a handful of false starts and a failed relationship, I was finally in my own place in Salt Lake City, after moving from Ogden.  I moved onto the end of a dead end street in the industrial section of the city.  The street was called Kilby Court, and the warehouse at the end was mine.  I had a loft for my bed, a clean-out drain for my sink, a refrigerator for beer and frozen burritos, and the bar I worked at was walking distance away.  It was perfect.

I painted the walls and the floor, blood red with yellow and black lines moving in all directions.  I hung up art and wrote my favorite poem by Neruda across the walls in six inch high letters, over the breakfast nook, above the loft, and when I circled the room once, I went back over it again.

I wanted to start a band that was just about good songwriting.  Like something from the 60’s or 70’s.  Mike was the first drummer I thought of.  I wanted a big no-frills backbeat, Max Weinberg style drummer.  Someone who just wanted to play for the good of the song.  I never even thought about someone else.  We both idolized Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, and Mark Lanegan.  I remember that after we had gotten Johnny and Bugsy on board, we started writing, and drinking.  Those were the two things that band did well.  We would show up to my little hole in the wall apartment at the end of Kilby Court.  We practiced in my kitchen.  At times I think about that, and I originally had to show my wife pictures for her to believe it.  We practiced in my kitchen, for Christ’s sake!  Imagine that.  Now THAT is being single and in your early twenties.  The guys would show up with cases of Keystone beer that I am sure are meant for groups of fifteen people or more, but between the four of us, we would write and play and drink and try to remember everything but invariably forget most of it by the end of the night.  There would be piles of aluminum, mountains of beer cans on every available surface.  The microwave, stovetop, coffee table, amplifiers.  In fact, I remember that Mike had a talent for balancing his beer can on his floor tom drum while he played.  If he was in a drum fill and needed to hit the floor tom, he would use that as an opportunity to drink out of the can.  It was a moment of unbridled dexterity that has never been matched in my book.  There were instruments everywhere, and random friends would show up to drink our beers and join in, sometimes people coming into my apartment, joining in for a song on accordion or tambourine, drinking a beer, and often times leaving before the song had finished, not a single word passing between any of us.  For a year or two there, it was like we had our own miniature version of the sixties. Often times, I would try out new songs that I was writing, and we would huddle together in the opposite corner of my loft, where the couches and my many bookcases sat, also covered with beer cans and full ashtrays.  In those moments, the band sitting and listening, concentrating upon the chord changes and the lyrics, I felt more appreciated than I ever have playing in front of a crowd.  In a lot of ways, I wish that we had never recorded, never played a show, never left that room.  In there, we were better than we ever would be again.  We listened and created in a way that never needed an audience.  I don’t think that we knew then how special it was, what we had.  I remember playing something new, “The Art Of Catching Trains” an acoustic song I had recently written, about a girl I had met in West Virginia years ago.  It was sappy, and lonely.  It ended with the protagonist driving off on a dirt road to nowhere.  I remember Mike listened to the whole thing with his eyes shut tight, and when it was over, he broke into a big grin, looked over at Bugsy and said “I don’t know about you, but I’m buying my mom a Cadillac when our record goes platinum.”

6/15/95

My senior year of high school, I met a group of like minded kids who played music, understood the value of music that was strictly released on vinyl and only available through mail order, and had great senses of humor.  While I still lived at home with my mom and brothers, most of these guys had already graduated high school, or dropped out, and moved out onto their own.  Several of them had rented out an old, run down house in downtown Ogden.  In the 80’s and 90’s, downtown Ogden had become rougher than expected, with even the nicer areas of the grid laid neighborhoods attracting some unsavory sorts.  Years later, after the Thiokol factory and the steel mill shut down and meth addiction ran rampant, I was scared to even walk down the street of a corner I lived on in my twenties.  While this may have been a somewhat adventurous place for a group of young men starting out on their own, my new friends tried to fit in by buying a ragged, flea infested couch from the Salvation Army and staging it on their porch.  They were accepted into the neighborhood immediately. 

The house on 28^th street was a haven for all kinds of kids; all of us coming to act the way that we thought adults did when they were on their own.  Namely, shoot pool on the billiards table that occupied the entire front room, start a band that practiced and played shows in the basement, and throw one party after another after another, while trying to meet girls.  Most of these endeavors were in vain, and having a house to be able to take a girl to try and have sex didn’t change the fact that most of us who were single were also hopelessly nerdy.  When I see pictures of that time now, I marvel at the fact that I couldn’t see that a Native American choker necklace with size 40 jeans wasn’t a winning combination.  I’m sure that my mother tried to tell me it was a bad idea, but who in the hell listens to their mom when they are 18?

One of the strangest additions to our activities was the Krishna temple.  An hour’s drive south of Ogden was Spanish Fork, and in the early 80’s, a retired Olympic gold winning marathon runner and Hare Krishna convert had settled in Spanish Fork, Utah, and begun recruiting converts.  In the late 1990’s, they finally had enough money to build an actual temple, with Indian style turrets and Moorish awnings.  It’s enough to make you drive your car off the freeway if you don’t know it’s there.  It looks like aliens had abducted an entire building from New Delhi and dropped it onto one of the most white bread, bland towns in North America. 

Back before they had the real flashy temple, and the llamas that roamed the hillside had free reign over most of the temple grounds, we would travel down there every couple of months or so, always wanting to get the small beaded necklaces that the devotees would sell at the gift shop, along with bumper stickers emblazoned with quotes from the Dali Llama, and t-shirts with the phrase “love animals, don’t eat them” plastered across the front.