Long Past Stopping (29 page)

Just when I was getting the hang of the job, the company ordered two robotic screen-printing machines, which were able to pump out fifteen shirts a minute each. Once the printers got a handle on how to work the new machines, it was necessary to time my cigarette breaks with the rest of the crew since I could no longer leave my job unattended for more than a minute at a time. Everyone who worked there seemed to be in a band, and I felt left out as they talked about the punk-rock scene.

“What bands are you guys in?” I asked them in an attempt to be included. These guys did not seem like the friendliest lot, and although I was sure I would hate their music, sitting around in awkward silence was bumming me out.

“My band is called Neurosis, and Malcome is in Christ On Parade,” this guy Scott said. I'd never heard of Neurosis, but I saw Christ On Parade flyers everywhere I went. Scott seemed like a nice enough guy, but it bothered me that he had
S-K-I-N
tattooed across his knuckles. I didn't know much about the punk scene, but I knew that skinheads were violent, nationalistic, racist, evil motherfuckers. He looked menacing, but he just didn't seem like the type. Plus, he had hair.

“Neurosis?” I repeated. “Okay. I'll check it out,” I told him. I was making more money than ever, and most of it went toward records.

“You don't have to buy it,” Scott said. “I'll bring you a tape tomorrow, and you can let me know what you think. By the way, are you available to work nights or weekends? John and I have some big orders coming up, and we can pay you cash.”

“Sure,” I answered.

“Cool. We'll use you tomorrow night.”

 

I
HAD ALWAYS
wondered why I was always the only person to leave at five o'clock while everyone else kept working. After five, Scott and John got to use the place for their own business, and the next night I stayed an extra four hours, folding Operation Ivy and Green Day shirts. When I got home, I listened to Scott's tape. It was a lot darker and more musical than what I thought of as punk rock. I actually liked it.

I started staying late with them more often and was psyched when Scott asked me if I wanted to roadie for Neurosis's next show. It was at the Women's Building in San Francisco, and I didn't do much besides carry an amp in. I was supposed to sell merch for them, as well, but only about ten people showed up.

“What's up with that tattoo?” I asked Scott while one of the other bands was playing. We were outside smoking.

“I was a skinhead when I was your age. Proud of America and the Constitution…. I guess I believed in what the flag used to stand for, but now I'm fucking working twelve hours a day and living in a fucking squat. I'm not trying to defend myself. I mean, I was just a teenager…but you should read the Constitution sometime. Those guys were pretty fucking radical at the time and would probably try to start another revolution if they saw the miserable state of this country now.”

To me the Constitution represented oppression, intolerance, slavery, imperialism, and unbelievable stupidity. Scott was the first person who had ever told me otherwise.

 

O
N MONDAY SCOTT
showed up to work with bruises all over his body and two black eyes. His nose and mouth were swollen.

“What the fuck happened to you?” I asked him during our cigarette break.

“I was drunk and started talking shit to a pack of skinheads,” he said.

“Jesus Christ. What did you say to deserve that?”

“I called them a bunch of Nazi shitheads. I may have been a skin, but I was never a fucking racist.”

“Fuck, man. I'm sorry they got you.”

“This is nothing. They were bound to get me at some point. When I get drunk, I can't control myself. And anyway, Malcom and I managed to get a few good punches in before they beat the shit out of me. If they didn't travel in packs, I would be the one beating the shit out of them,”
Scott told me. I considered myself a pacifist, but if there was anyone who I fantasized about beating up, it was those guys.

After that, I looked up to Scott even more and was super excited when he invited me to go see a band called G. G. Allin and the Murder Junkies. That weekend I ended up getting such a bad case of the flu that I couldn't make it to the show. Nobody showed up to work on Monday but Brigitte and I. Brigitte didn't have all the details, but Scott and Malcom, along with the rest of the printers, were in the hospital, or at home recovering after the same pack of skinheads forced their way into the G. G. Allin show and started beating everyone up. Meanwhile, G. G. Allin had decided to light himself and the stage on fire. I couldn't decide whether I had missed out or gotten lucky.

 

T
HE MONOTONY
of folding shirts made the summer pass quickly. Right before going back to school, though, I experienced my second psychedelic experience. It was at a reggae festival in Mendocino when I took mushrooms for the first time. Although they were far less intense than the acid, the mushrooms ended up having a much more profound impact on my life. Maybe I was just having a bad trip, but all these free-thinking, nonconformist, mud-covered hippies looked exactly the same as one another. In all but a few instances, the girls twirled around in circles and the guys hopped around on one foot, doing weird shit with their hands. These hippies suddenly looked about as straitlaced to me as a guy in a suit working at the bank.

When I got home, I threw away my tie-dyed shirts, my Birkenstocks, and my Guatemalan vest and went to the Salvation Army with an overwhelming urge to cover my body in polyester and say good-bye to my hippie roots for good.

J
ACK PICKED ME
up from the hospital.

“Hi, Jack,” I said, opening the door to his Lexus.

“Don't say that in an airplane,” he said with a laugh. “So how are you feeling? All better?”

“I feel okay,” I said, but I was starting to panic since I had just used the last of my dope earlier in the day. I wasn't about to tell him I had been shooting up in the bathroom at the detox ward, though.

“Well, Inga made up a list of twenty-eight-day programs for us to check out when we get home, but I'm glad you're feeling better.”

“I was thinking. What if I just stay in the barn for a little while, maybe go to a therapist, and see what happens? This rehab thing just isn't for me,” I said.

“Okay. You're welcome to stay in the barn, but you've got to come up with something to do with your time. You ever think about getting back into ceramics? I know someone who has a studio you could probably use.”

“Sure, that sounds like a good idea.” I didn't care one way or the other about ceramics, but if it kept me out of rehab…

As far as they knew I was all better, but I started going into withdrawal only a few hours after getting back to his house. That night, after everyone went to sleep, I took my dad's old minivan and drove all the
way to San Francisco to score drugs. Somehow, I made it back before they noticed I was gone, and a few nights later I did it again. My money was coming from the petty-cash box in the office, which always seemed to have a few hundred bucks in it. Although I looked everywhere, I never found where my dad kept the real money. On my third drug run to San Francisco, I got too high to drive back and ended up spending the night at a rest stop. When I got back to Santa Barbara the next afternoon, Inga had already set up an appointment for me to look at a rehab forty-five minutes away, in Oxnard.

 

W
HILE I TOURED
the treatment center, I began to realize that, no matter what it had going for it—success rates, famous clients, volleyball, acupuncture, mud baths—it was still a fucking rehab. At least this place looked like it would be easy to keep to myself and fall through the cracks. I also didn't fail to notice the one cute girl who seemed to be at all these rehabs. She sat by herself on the smoking patio, dressed all in black. I don't know how much she influenced my decision, but ten minutes later I was out in the parking lot hugging Jack and Inga good-bye.

 

S
O TELL ME
again how much you've been using?” the intake doctor asked me.

“Well, I was kicking for about six days, and then I've been using a bag a day for the past seven or eight,” I answered.

“Great. So it shouldn't be too bad. You'll just be a little uncomfortable for a few days and be through with it.”

“What do you mean? I feel terrible…can't sleep—” I cut myself off. My voice was going up in pitch, and I didn't want to sound too needy. This was known as “drug-seeking behavior” in the rehab world.

“Lack of sleep never killed anybody, but don't worry. We'll give you something for that. I just think that if you go cold turkey right now, it will be easier in the long run. We want to get you participating as soon as possible.”

“But if I felt better, I could start participating right away, you know what I mean?” I could hear the whiny tone of my voice.

“We have found that participation is really only useful when the patient is ‘present,' so the goal is to get you there as quickly as possible.

 

I
HID IN MY ROOM
until dinner and then sat outside smoking cigarettes. I watched people come and go, some laughing and telling jokes, some on the brink of tears, some with a blank look of shock on their faces. The cute girl came out and sat on the grass next to a volleyball court, which was being used as a giant litter box by three stray cats. She sat by herself, deep in thought about God knows what, and I sat deep in thought about her.

She was obviously young, obviously fucked up, and, although I didn't really trust my judgment as I was kicking dope, beautiful. I wasn't usually into blondes, but she was an exception. I sat out there and chain-smoked until it was time to get in line for my sleeping pills.

“What's this?” I asked the nurse, curious about what looked like a little container of pancake syrup from McDonald's.

“That's chloral hydrate. Otherwise known as a Mickey.”

“A Mickey?”

“You know in those old movies when they slipped you a Mickey?”

I had always wondered what a Mickey was. If it could knock out Sam Spade, it must be good enough for me. Except that it wasn't, and I went to the nurses' station every hour to prove it. They said they couldn't do anything about it unless the doctor prescribed more. I tossed and turned all night, unless a nurse came by in the morning and took me to the psychiatrist's office.

“Good morning, Mr. Canfield. Have a seat,” the psychiatrist said.

“Yeah, hi. They told me I would be meeting with you later this week.”

“This isn't an official meeting. I just need to check out something on your chart here to figure out if you're in the right place.”

“This is a rehab, right?” I asked.

“Yes, but we run another facility across the street for psychological issues. Anyway, on your chart it says that you hear voices in your head?”

“Um. Yeah?” I said tentatively, unsure where this was heading.

“Is that a yes?”

I nodded.

“Well, that's what's got me a little concerned. Can you tell me what these voices say?”

“Oh, you know, the regular shit,” I said, figuring that a psychiatrist working with addicts would know exactly what I was talking about. But he shook his head and motioned for me to continue. “The normal stuff, like, ‘you're a piece of shit…what the fuck were you thinking…you're
an idiot…you fucked up again…look at you, back in another rehab…when are you going to get your shit together, you fucking moron…' That kind of shit,” I said. His intense stare was unnerving. “I thought everyone talked to themselves like that.”

“Well, yeah, but my question is
who
tells you these things?”

Then I understood.

“You mean like a talking dog or something? No…it's just me…I mean, my own voice.”

“Oh.” He closed the folder. “Your voice? Yeah, we all have that. Sorry to bother you, I just needed to make sure. If it were a talking dog, then, yes, we'd have to send you across the street. Okay, I'll see you when you're feeling a little better.”

 

T
HE ONLY ADVANTAGE
to being sick was that I got to sit outside and smoke for the first four days while everyone else was in group therapy. During breaks, a few people approached me, but I wasn't very talkative and was more interested in listening to other people's conversations than having my own. I noticed, for example, that the women mostly talked about how they were going to avoid getting shitfaced at airport bars, and I listened to a group of three muscle-bound guys telling some of the crudest anal sex jokes I had ever heard in my life. They didn't even sound like jokes as much as threats, and as far as I could tell, they were straight.

The one who did most of the talking was in his late forties and had an unbelievably thick Boston accent. The other two seemed like relatively normal young kids aside from the fact that they were around six-and-half-feet tall and muscle-bound. “So this guy keeps coming into the bar just so's he can heckle me, and finally after like a month I says to him, ‘Oh yeah. You think I can't score, eh? How 'bout you bend over and I take a shot at your ass, you lousy bastad. What do you say to that?' I says, getting my stick off the wall.” The other guys were doubled over laughing. “When I turn around, he's gone…full beer just sitting on the bar. I never seen that fuck again.”

I had no idea what the hell these guys were talking about, but I was scared just listening to them.

All I did was smoke and watch and listen until they told me I had to start going to the groups. The first one met at nine in the morning. All the clients sat in a circle, but none of the staff were present—I figured it
was so they could get an extra hour of sleep. I was somewhat horrified when the guy from Boston, apparently in charge of the meeting, started reading from a laminated printout.

“Herro everbody. I'm brank, an I'm an alcohoric.” He was slurring so bad I figured he must have been drunk or heavily medicated. I could barely understand him.

“Seth, that ‘blank' is where your name is supposed to go,” his friend whispered to him.

“Wha? Oh…thorry ith's my firsth thime. Okay…I'm Theth and I feer good thoday,” he said, turning to his friend. Maybe he was gay after all.

“Doug. I feel good.” Doug turned to the next person.

“Good morning. I'm Sandra, and I feel pretty good.”

And so on down the line. Almost everybody, including me, said they felt good. There were about twenty-five of us, and I didn't really pay any attention till it came around to the cute girl, whose name was Dawn.
Goddamn, she was cute. Clearly fucked up, but shit, weren't we all?
Finally, it got back to Seth, who started reading from the printout again.

“I'm Theth an I'm…wai I arready read thath parth,” he said, studying the sheet very closely. “Parth a the recobery prothess isth to identhify our feeringths…Thethus Christh!” he yelled, throwing the sheet of paper on the floor. He then reached into his mouth and, to my amazement, pulled out a whole set of teeth.

“There. Much better,” he said, smiling at the group. “I'm still not used to having teeth.” Little metal rods were sticking out of his gums. Nobody laughed except for his friend Doug. I think we were all in a bit of shock from the whole thing.

“Okay. So…blah, blah, blah…my name…blah, blah, blah…identify our feelings. Here we go,” he said to himself. “I have asked somebody to read the ‘When You…I Feel' page.” He looked over the group, and I noticed a few groans go up around the room.

“Hi, I'm Paul, and I'm an addict,” another guy said as he stood up. “An important part of the recovery process is to shift our thinking away from blame and victimization. One way of doing this is to use ‘When you' and ‘I feel' statements when we interact with each other. For example, instead of saying ‘Mary, I can't stand it when you interrupt me,' we would say, ‘Mary, when you interrupt me, I feel unimportant, and that causes me to feel angry.' Does anyone have anything they would like to bring up this morning using ‘When you…I feel' statements?”

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. The thought of hearing one of these statements in earnest turned my stomach. I was hoping that we would move on to whatever the next thing was when Doug said, “Yeah, I do. This is for Seth,” he said, turning to face him. “Seth. When I say ‘I love you' and don't get a response, I feel hurt, rejected, and that my feelings don't matter to you.”

I didn't know what was going on, and judging by the uncomfortable silence in the room, neither did anyone else. I was afraid they were going to start fighting or making out. Instead they started laughing and high-fived each other.

“That was a good one, buddy. You had me scared for a minute,” Seth said. “Okay everybody,” he said, standing up. “We'll now close with the serenity prayer.”

After holding hands and reciting the serenity prayer—which we had to do at the end of every group activity—I spotted a scrawny-looking kid who had introduced himself as Josh in the meeting. Nerd wasn't a word I often used to describe people, but this guy was the classic nerd. His shirt was tucked in, his pants were too high, and he wore glasses. He was already losing his hair, and he couldn't have been older than twenty-one. I figured he was a computer programmer. Josh was outside smoking by himself, so I asked him for a light. I felt I had to talk to someone about what just happened.

“Jesus. We have to do that every morning?” I asked him.

“Yeah, but that's the first time I've seen anyone do the ‘When you…I feel…' thing. Usually the whole meeting takes about ten minutes.”

“Where'd those guys come from anyway?”

“You mean the hockey players? This place has a deal with the NHL. That guy Seth, they used to call him Fist. He was one of the most violent players ever. He brought a video of all his fights with him.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, it's like two hours long,” he answered.

“Shit…now it all makes sense.” I thought about the story I had heard the other night, and the thing with the teeth.

“How long you been here?”

“About a week.”

“For?”

“I'm not even sure. I was told I had to disappear for a while. My boss suggested I come here, or—”

“They were going to fire you?” I finished for him.

“Well, not exactly. It's not really that kind of job.”

“Oh. What do you do?” I asked, not so much out of curiosity, but because it seemed like the right thing to do.

“I do various things for the mob. Some money went missing or something, and I had to disappear. But if anyone asks, I'm here for cocaine,” Josh said with a totally straight face.

“Uh-huh. So what happens next?” He seemed harmless enough, but in my opinion he should have been across the street. The guy had seen too many movies.

“Oh. Next is group therapy. Who's your counselor?”

“I don't know yet. I guess I should go find out.” I put out my cigarette. “I'll see you later,” I said, walking away.

 

G
ROUP THERAPY
was mostly a chance for the counselor, Bruce, to talk about himself. Invariably one of us would talk for a minute or so before Bruce would interrupt with some story that vaguely might have had some connection to something someone had said. By the end of three hours, I had learned almost nothing about the other clients but knew that Bruce had been the chief of the fire department until he got busted dealing cocaine, was shamed by the local media, went to jail, and completed treatment right here, next door to his old firehouse, where his old subordinates taunted him every day and yelled shit at him any time he went outside. According to him, even that was a blessing, as it got him to quit smoking cigarettes. Bruce also had an AA tattoo on his right foot, always reminding him to take the next right step, and he had a crack-smoking monkey trapped inside a bottle tattooed on his back. This was to remind him that if he kept the lid on the bottle, he could contain the monkey, but if he opened it, who knows what would happen? Tattoo therapy was a unique approach to sobriety, but it didn't seem worth the seventeen thousand dollars they were getting from my insurance company. If a tattoo could keep us clean, this place would be out of business.