The Largesse of the Sea Maiden Page 5

  Hey. About this Antabuse. I think I’m Christ. I hear the Devil. And so it’s, “Get back in your room.” Stupidest thing I ever heard.

  That is so Eddie.

  That is so Eddie, man.

  They are the Eddiest most ridiculous people that if you pull this letter up to your ear you can hear me laughing at them like a ciyoot.

  They are a bunch of Eddies and so ridiculous

  flat faces and flat minds.

  These last four years. Sometimes I wonder if I didn’t die. And I’m really dead, and this is Purgatory, Heaven, or Hell. And it’s up to me which one.

  One thing is you don’t get me to do things. I don’t listen. Might as well shut up. I am not a slave.

  Where I just was…was the Road of Hell. Black boiling dirt and burning diesel smoke. Nothing burns hot as diesel. People by the side runover squashed killed and dead. Devil laughing so close I saw the veins in his teeth. You won’t get ahold of me. My ticket says to Texas. He rolled the stone aside and in the cave the mysteries flitted like bats and insects, here the answers to everything, said the Devil, like UFO’s and life beyond the grave. Like what was elvis thinking, what was elvis thinking and feeling in those last dark days? Like just who masterminded JFK? And the cave was his mouth like a bathroom full of stink and his tongue popped with cheap sweat. Yeah boy he dragged me down to his jamboree. Dragged me down through the toilet formerly known as my life. Down through this nest of talking spiders known as my head. Down through the bottom of my grave with my name spelled wrong on the stone. Standing on his stump shouting jive. Jest get a whiff of sulphur and wet fear! Come breathe these rank aromas for the purposes of course of scientific inquiry alone! The mayor is inside already! Come! It’s all respectable! Satan says The gamblers shake the dice, and shake I the gamblers, Snake eyes in Paradise! Satan shouts I run the jamboree, and Hollywood and Vegas, and start all the wars, vampire breather of the baby’s breath, I the worker of the strings to jerk the fools dancing, Glue-huffers, jelly-rollers, paint-suckers, Bikers, truckers, cowboys, teachers, preachers, About a million hipsters hooked on dope, Shaky alkies with their nerves burned up, Hey God where is you you ain’t nowhere, We search for some faint signal from your power…All that just now, right now, while I’m writing it down.

  Not yer boy,

  Cass

  Dr so and-so

  I forget your name. Listen to me. I can’t get this across to anybody in this ridiculous pathetic excuse for a rehab but I have to tell you I think this Antabuse you gave us is backfiring with some serious side-effects. I lie on that bed over there and my mood goes black and then I can feel my mind, my actual mind, pulling itself in two. I hear the Devil laughing, and I hear him ordering me to kill people. Don’t worry, he’s been running me all my life but he can’t tell me straight out what to do, there’s no way I would ever take a direct order from anybody, that’s why I never went into the military. But if you read the papers you see every day where somebody just jumps up and chops the baby’s head off, and I have to tell you there’s been some of that in my very own family. My mother when I was four years old went psycho herself and has been in prison for twenty-eight years in Gatesville, Texas, and prison has not in any way reformed her. She should’ve gotten out by now, but she won’t behave and they just keep adding on.

  Last week here in Number 8 I had a train-jumper wino roommate with slashed-up shoes and a tattoo on his arm said Eat Fuck Kill. That was his complete statement. Never said hello, never said good-bye. Never took off his shoes. Here two days and then up and gone. He was all hate. I’ve got to get sober or I’ll get that way where every breath you breathe just stinks and it only takes one minute in a new town before you’re mad enough to leave. When the Devil gets that last hook in your heart, then he starts yanking you town to town. My grandma tells the truth about the Devil. Well, all right, when she says “the Devil’s yanking on you” it sounds like somebody’s grandma babbling, but when it’s happening to you it’s snakes crawling into every orifice, and you can’t move to stop them getting in.

  My sponsor Bob Cornfield dropped around finally with a box of my stuff, not much, a small box and the contents inside still rattled. He gets his cigaret going standing here in this room, room 8, looking around like he invented the place. These AA guys are faking about eighty percent of it, but let’s just hang on to the truth, they’re clean and sober and I’m the one woke up with his head in the toilet not two weeks back. I think to see me here made him sad, but he won’t show pity. Not allowed.

  I told him I feel like I might be Jesus Christ and the Devil is sending me messages, and he said “You can’t be the Second Coming, cause I am.” I think it was a joke, but I’ve lost my talent for humor. It scared me.

  Let’s just face the music and the facts. Somebody’s going out of my mind.

  Your patient at the Starlight,

  Mark Cassandra (just call me Cass)

  To dr in charge of antabuse complaints:

  Meanwhile, all these people in group, I hate them. Maybe oh well some of them aren’t so bad, I don’t know which ones though. OK I like so-and-so. First several days I was here she was like a robot in group. Carolina that’s her name. Changed her shirt and pants but never varied her performance. This was Linda’s group, afternoon group, each time Linda says how do you feel Carolina, what’s your story Carolina, and every time she gives back the same speech, you could make it into a song, same thing over and over the first five days, not bad looking, about 40 or 45, kind of chubby but in a sexy way, made herself up just right, like a doll, every morning, like this is the Riviera Rehab, man. And she wore these middle-age type big-enough shorts, but these little-girl white patent leather shoes. Singing, “My husband left me fifteen years ago with a woman from the firm he worked for, just left me flat, and every morning for the last fifteen years I wake up and think about those two and I get sick way down inside my stomach. Most mornings, to tell you the truth, I have to vomit about it.” Woman in charge, Linda, says “You mean you feel angry.” “No, I’m not angry, I’m just a little disgusted at the behavior.” Every day Linda says, “You mean you feel angry.” “But I’m not angry, Linda, and I don’t believe you’ve heard me, for you keep on asking that question.” Finally she says “Linda, I AM NOT ANGRY LINDA YOU FUCKIN CUNT-FACE BITCH WHORE” and so on, and ripping out of the room, down the hall and clear across the courtyard screaming like an F-16. She’s gone. We’re all sitting there in that room shocked deaf and dumb, as shocked as if she’d just blown herself to bits before our eyes. Well, I assumed we all assumed what I assumed, that she’d never be back, she’d keep marching through the gates and stop a taxi or stick her thumb out, one of those, and be gone gone gone. Like my roommate Eat Fuck Kill. But the very next morning here’s Carolina sitting in her usual chair, and I have to say, her eyes were so much light, like somebody’s put two suction cups on the sockets and sucked out all the dark and sadness. “Now to get to the truth” she said, “Hey everybody, I was a whore in Denver before I got married, at Madam Lafayette’s for almost six years, till technology and the Mob ruined the business with credit cards and massage parlors, and then I got married, and now I’m divorced, and I don’t know what else to say. I didn’t want to face how I felt about my husband and that bitch of his. I feel a lot better now that I know I hate those two for running off and sticking me with the tab for the rent and phone and the whole middle class life. I think they live in Mexico. I hope they get a few diseases that make them miserable.” Big smile. Having fun. She spent her whole twenties in this old-fashion place in Denver with a piano and a Madam, strolling around joshing with the clients.

  I mean that’s how it is. Group therapy isn’t some gigantic mystery. We alkies are just a tangle of lies like the insides of a golf ball. You start cutting into one little rubber band in that mess like how do you really feel about your husband shafting you, and the whole ball starts unraveling and whizzing around the room.

  Now look look look. I know we’re here to get hone
st. And I feel I’ve been doing it the last few months, even before I landed here again, but I still don’t see Mr. AA Breakthrough in the mirror. I see something lurking over my shoulder. You know who it is. Devil been talking to me. Telling me to kill everybody in here. Laughing. I hear these things clearly but I still feel sane, sane. Like I know I shouldn’t be hearing these things, so what is the cause? Am I torching out on Antabuse? Why do I think I might be Jesus Christ and I’m supposed to come here and suffer, really suffer, and why do I think everybody’s looking at me because they know this about me? Why does the radio seem to know what I’m thinking and pick up the conversation right in the middle of my thoughts when I pass the window in Jerry’s office and he’s listening to the news? I say “I’m not killing anybody, Satan,” and the radio says “The President’s order has been disobeyed.” If I am Jesus Christ and I’m going to Hell, then I want you to say so. You’re the one I’m asking, Dr. whatsyername. And if I’m not Jesus Christ, then I want you to get me off these pills because they’re obviously running me the wrong way.

  I’d like to get through a whole cigaret without thinking crazy. I don’t remember my previous goals but the goal right now is to get through this cigaret man without starting up Satan’s Jamboree.

  Still me, still in here, still your patient, so what’s the problem,

  Mark Cassandra room 8

  Dear Dr Cusa,

  Thanks for taking me off the Antabuse. Every hour I feel more down to the ground. I don’t know why I didn’t have the balls to just stop taking it without your say so. It’s like I know I don’t know what’s good for me. The last four years. Wow. Thanks for taking me off that stuff. The world has been saved.

  Dear Satan

  You think I didn’t recognize you that time?

  It was outside of Harold’s Tavern downtown about three-four minutes ago. Come out onto the street right after Happy Hour exactly at the moment the sun descended.

  There he is. Guy leaning up against the wall in an alley with his knee bent back, sole of his foot against the wall like we used to do, we kids who thought we were so tough.

  What do you want? I said.

  All of you is mine already, he said. So what difference does it make what I want?

  I said, Are you a messenger of God?

  Worse, he said.

  I said, What could be worse than a messenger of God?

  Dear Satan

  Yeah, they took me off the Antabuse. That Antabuse was your last thing. Well it didn’t work. Everybody thinks you’re just this amazingly cool cat in a striped suit in a ragtop Caddy suckin on a cellphone, licking fire from your fingers, plotting the downfall. Pulling on the strings. But you got no strings. Not one of these strings from my heart-hooks lead off into your evil hands.

  These hooks lead out from my heart to the hearts of people I love. So get outa my Caddy, Daddy. Ain’t neither one of us driving this thing. Who’s driving it is and I feel like a genuine pussy saying it but a Power Greater Than Myself.

  Mark Cassandra, a more or less Christian

  Dear Brother John

  John I’m gonna come and see you—are you in a regular prison yet? Or do they have you drooling on a ward somewhere?

  Dear John the Strangest Of All us Cassandras,

  And oh say there incidentally I do mean it—you’re the strangest of all us Cassandras, more strange than Dad, more strange even than Mom in prison. More strange than me too, don’t matter how many times they shoot me. More strange than Bro, but just by a hair.

  I’m writing letters to everybody I can think of. You and Bro are getting a little ink here. May the cops never catch him, and now that you’re caught, may they treat you gently and release you in the near future. I’m writing letters to each one of you lucky winners who has a hook in my heart. Every time your heart beats I can feel a little jerk, just a little something. Whether you like it or not, that’s love. Love for the idiot Grandma. Love for the medicated Father. Love for the brother on the run and for the brother and the mother in prison in Gatesville. May the visions of your heart be blessed. That’s what I heard a preacher say on TV one time. May the blessings of the sun and the rain find us out.

  Love for the sister who should divorce us all. Love for sister Marigold who should divorce us once and for all.

  John, I believe you and Marigold were the two of us not to get mixed up seriously with substances. She’s turned out so golden. Then you on the other hand, well, no substances are required. A few bad days on Planet E can warp you just fine. And Mom. Whew. She sucked in enough stuff to count for the whole family’s warpage and plenty more. I was tiny, but I remember. She used to sit there in her blue recliner, snorting glue or sucking Sterno through a sponge or whuffing spray-paint through a sock. And failing to understand the television. And praying to hallucinations. And getting results. To me she wasn’t so much of a mother, really, John. More of a fairy tale. Kind of a legend. Mom in Prison in Texas. A myth. Mom. Prison. Texas. Finally I went to see her. Brought my birth certificate and everything, they couldn’t keep me out. Guard takes me through to a room says wait a while son, comes back in twenty minutes and he says, “Your Mom’s inside,” and yeah, That’s what brings me here today, to see the famous unremembered person face-to-face…Nothing happened. I didn’t feel a thing. I got no relief. She’s a flumpy Mexican gal in a white uniform looks like she cleans rooms. Gray hair with a couple black streaks. Medicated to keep her mind off suicide. It worked too well. She was deeply content. A freight train bearing down on her wouldn’t get a response. Being around her relaxed me. Like resting in the shade by a wide, flat pond. She thought Dad was dead. What? No, Dad’s not dead! He’s not? No, Mom, he isn’t dead, he’s just upstairs. Mostly crying and watching television. She says Yeah he never was much good around the house. Which wouldna been so bad, I guess, except he never went anywhere else. Just hung around making up poems and never writing them down. What’s California like?…Mysterious, Mom. All filled with shiny mist. And foggy sunshine…God, that sounds nice, but oh well, I’ll never get there. Listen, she said, what is the problem with you boys?…What is the PROBLEM? Maybe you notice I’m a walking talking Piece of Shit, mother. She leaned close and looked at my face. You could see her mind wiggling right through her eyeballs. Then she had this flash of clear light. Said “Sorry doesn’t get it, I realize that.” I said Lady, that’s what I come for.

  Old Bro wandered back to Ukiah last summer sometime. Brother Luke hisself with his ass showing through the pockets of his jeans and still putting everybody else down. I wouldn’t have recognized him on the street. I’d need a flashlight and a map to find Luke’s eyes in that poor sick mean sad face. Came back to make trouble for his old girlfriend, did you ever know her? Susie? Bro says “poking around in her stool for my broken heart.” Lives in mud and gonna bring the whole world down to taste it. He wants the world to realize how for some this life comes hard, it’s all uphill, they just get tired, they just get so weary, they just want the cops to carry them away to that sweet land called jail and tuck them into their trundle-beds. What I wish is that he could come to a place like this and hear a couple people tell the truth. It’s inspiring, Brother John. It’s fantastic how men and women come out from under these lifelong lies. Roll them off their backs and say phew, whoosh, long time carrying that mother. And the things they tell. The shit they’ve done. The blood they’ve swum through. The fool moves, the lucky chances, the wins and losses, all the burnt down houses, all the children wailing in the storms, the lucky hit at the last minute, or turning their back on the hearts they broke over and over, or getting busted on their birthday, or thinking they’re dead then waking up with the sun all warm on their face, and hitching home cross-country in the rain just in time to say that one important thing before their father takes his dying breath, or getting there too late and saying it to his grave instead. This one speaker Howard had us all frozen up, we listened to him stock-still for forty-five minutes. He started out simple, comes out of high-schoo
l, tries the infantry, finds the service kind of boring without a war. Drinking on leave and weekends. Gets his discharge, goes to Santa Rosa Community College. Going for a business degree. Drinking on weekends. Itchy and discontented. One night, he has this friend who’s a cop in SR, guy says, ride along with us and get a taste. He says two hours into the ride I’m feeling like I never felt. These guys tell a citizen what to do, he better do it. They give orders and they’re obeyed and I never knew how bad I wanted that. Zip into the Santa Rosa police training program, then I’m a cop, got three girlfriends, one black, one Asian, one white, cruising in a squad car all night long, kicking ass, busting heads, top of the world, man. One year into the deal I’ve got a sweet little wife and a six-week baby daughter. Two years in they put me on Narcotics and Vice, undercover. My job is to hang out in bars and party like Nero. Can I do that? Hell, what do they think I’ve been doing every free minute anyhow? And will I buy drugs? Gee, okay, I’ll give it a shot. And Howard, they say, listen, sometimes in the course of your duties you will have a line of coke laid out before you and in the course of your duties you’ll just have to put your head down there and suck it up. It’s part of the ride, okay Howard? Yeah, I say, part of the ride, and inside of six months I’m the biggest coke-head, the biggest dealer, and the crookedest cop in Northern California. I did armed robberies on dealers and drugstores up and down Highway 101. I had seven girlfriends and I was pimping every one. My sweet little wife divorced me and took my daughter and I never even noticed. The force gave me a thousand a month to buy coke in little bags and turn them in, and I had thirty thousand under my bed in a shoebox next to three or four kilos of coke the force would never see. I’d wake up in the afternoon and fare forth and wreak havoc. I murdered three guys I still claim the world is better off without, but I’m not the judge though, am I? But I sure thought I was. I took the lives of other human beings. I thought I was God. I looked in the mirror and said so—looked in the mirror and said, You are God. When God decided to prove me wrong, it all came down like a mountain of dogshit on my head. They rolled me up and socked me with so many charges, including at one point second degree murder, that if they stacked them up and ran me through I’d be doing time a hundred years past my natural death. I’m lying in jail and that cell is sucking the drugs and the fight and the soul right out me and giving it to God and God is squeezing it in his fingers, man, every last fiber of my soul in the almighty grip of the truth. And the truth is that everything I’ve done, every thought I’ve thought, every moment I’ve lived, is shit turned to dust and dust blown away. God, I said, fuck it, I’m not even gonna pray. Squeeze my guts till you get tired, that’s all I want now, because at least it’s real, it’s true, it’s got something to do with you. So then I think I died. I think I died in jail. My life itself just left me, and who you see before you now is someone else. So I wandered like a ghost through the court system and came out with a sentence of ten years. Did seven, one day at a time. Prayed every day and every night, but only one prayer: Squeeze till you get tired, Lord. Kill me, Lord, I don’t care, as long as it’s you who kills me. Just got outa Pelican Bay Prison eight days ago, and rehab is part of my parole. And nothing to show for thirty-six years on this earth. Except that God is closer to me than my next breath. And that’s all I’ll ever need or want. If you think I’m bullshitting, kiss my ass. My story is the amazing truth.