Not the Bohemian

I'm not the fair skinned man with silky hair,

Whose youth goes unattended naturally,

Who sits and writes inside the coffee shop,

Whose ragged walls inside his basement flat

Are lined with shelves of tattered, dog-eared books,

Who wears old thrift shop wool that's slack and spent,

Whose hands are stained with oil-based blues and greens;

 I'm not the quiet, shy, reserved young man

Who does not have the skin of one who's toiled,

Who strums his wooden dreadnought, his eyes closed

As people drop spare change into his cap,

Whose buckskin shoes are torn and cracked and creased,

Their soles walk-worn from miles of tramping life,

Who stares at babies, clouds, old lovers, stars;

I'm not the man whose spry and lanky frame

Slumps sleeping at the park beneath the sun,

 Who haunts the library aisles picking out

More books than any one person can read,

Whose meals are coffee, rice and bread and gum,

Who loves his life and passion, would not trade

Austerity and art for anything.

9/8/08

I just finished reading You Suck by Christopher Moore. Damn it! That dude is awesome. I also am still trying to make my way through Children of Men, but every time I pick it up, something happens in the book that shakes me to the core, and I have to put it down again. Last night I read chapter nine, the Quietus scene, where all of the old women are drugged up and chained to a huge boat and taken out to sea to be thrown overboard. Quietus. And one lady tries to escape her doom. And Theo tries to save her and they both beat by the police. One of the policemen brings down the butt of his rifle so hard that it breaks open the woman's skull. Of course she ends up dying, but not right away. Everytime I read a chapter, I just set it back down, overwhelmed with theckness of verisimilitude.

My wife’s like, “What, are you reading? That no babies left book?”  The she kind of shakes her head, wondering why anyone would want to read something so unnecessarily disturbing, something that "could never really happen". How often have those been horrible last words, both in reality and otherwise?

And then she goes back to watching ABC’s “The Bachelor” or “Let Us Redesign Something In Your Home Even Though You Don’t Deserve It, At All” on basic cable. (By the way, "basic" is such the right word.)

So I roll over and go to sleep with visions of white haired bloody headed women being dropped into the ocean chained together at the ankles with flowers in their hair.

What kind of world do I live in? No, really. I’m trying to figure out where I am supposed to be. America is great, America is good, but kind of the way that God is great a nd God is good. It's enormous, beautiful, deadly, nurturing to a point, then indifferent to another, then deadly, then not there at all for you. Then to give you gifts.

Thomas Merton once wrote that the two most important questions, the two questions by which he lived his entire life, were "Who am I?" and "Who amd I supposed to be?" What can you possibly add to that as a guideline for thinking?

/d

Readers and thinkers, the kind that are passionate about everything but consumed by nothing, who wonder just what the hell is going on around us--we are, as a dear friend once told me, like ships passing in the night along immensity.

When I was 15 I took my first sip of a wine cooler. My friends all loved being drunk, and I was jealous for missing out. I had been a steady churchgoer and had never taken a drink in my life. My dad, being the traveling evangelical minister, was rarely home, and since he and my mother were in the middle of a greusome divorce, it seemed like a fantastic happy place to go. I regreted it, but I didn't, it was a great place to be, out of my mind. It was the best thing to get started on.

Then, a few months later, I was able to keep my first beer down. My boss threw a party with free beer. I was the youngest guy at Po Boy Express, a little sandwich delivery joint in Ocean Spring, Mississippi, working with guys in college with long hair who seemed to get laid every weekend. What 15 year old boy wouldn't want that lifestyle?

Then I finished my first six pack. Then I tasted vodka, then whiskey, then rum, then whatever else put into my hands. I was my own keeper and I was doing a great job, staying out until 3 or 4 on a school night, hassling teachers for fucking with me during class (especially that one hot computer science teacher).

When I was 16, I finally got arrested after stealing around $12,000 of brand named clothing from department stores, and when my dad came home, he told me we were moving and that I woulnd't get to graduate from the high school I had been attending for 3 years. He must have thought that my problem was the environment, not me, so when he moved us to Columbia, Mississippi, I made it my mission to ruin his reputation by becoming a Party God.

I drank ever moment I could, including before school, after school and if I could, during school. I graduated with a 1.35 GPA and a host of party goers surrounding me. I was elected band president at the beginning of the school year because I promised everyone a kick ass party at a local gravel pit, my treat. I beat the girl who should have been president, Melody (no shit, that was her name), who was treasurer her freshman year, secretary her sophomore year, vp her junior year, and now nothing her senior year (because the president vote came last and she thought she had it in the bag). She was in tears. It was a kick ass party.

I ruined my dad's reputation, ruined my own -- like I cared -- and dragged a lot of good people through hell.

--------

My most memorable moment in high school was being depossessed by one of my father's friends in Meridian, Mississippi. One bright baby blue October day, my father took me there for me to "just talk with him." Okay, what's the harm there?

When we got to this man's home, a normal shoebox subdivision house, I met a grey haired kinny man in a short sleeve button up and flat front kakhi slacks. He smelled like a grandfather, as did his house.

After speaking with my father in the other room out of hearing range, he came back and walked me to his study, which was lined with Christian commentary and Christian knick-knackery, and smelled like my grandfather's church. The walls were brown paneling; the floors had office carpet, and an aluminum desk with particle board desktop sat off to one corner of the room. On the other side were two comfortable chairs where he "helped people". We sat down and began.

Jack Giles was an expert on demonology and had seenpeople bite through Bibles and hymnals, had heard so many little old ladies speak with the voice of Legion, had seen children leap over whole rows of pews in an effort to get away from attacking clergy, and had seen mists and shadows approach him with malice. He and several men on more than one occassion had had to hold people down, punch them out, smite them with Bibles, and exorcise them "with force" when they had to.

You know, the usual.

He explained this to me with a low, calming voice. "Dave," he said, "there are forces that live on this planet that hate mankind and will do anything to destory him. You've read about some of them in the Bible, but I don't think many of up have seen or heard of them in our society today." He paused for some kind of response from me.

I stared at him, then shifted slightly in my seat. I suddenly realized that we were not there to talk about my problems; in fact, I had no idea why I was there, but I wasn't expecting talk of demons.

"Sometimes," he continued, "these forces have the strength to prey of even the strongest of us by coercing us into doing things that we don't really want to do." Again he waited for me to respond.

I squinted and shook my head slowly. What the fuck was this guy talking about?

He leaned in toward me, and I leaned back a little. He propped his elbows on his knees and looked at me deliberately: "Dave, when we are faced with one of these spirits, and we don't have the strength or willingness to fight it, or sometimes even if we do, that spirit can take us over and force us to do these horrible things, to hurt people and hurt ourselves. Do you understand?"

"Um, okay?"

That was good enough for him.

Now, what happened next is something almost no one you have ever or will ever talk to has even heard of happening. I was kind of scared. This guy had told me basically that the devil was making me drink and that if he didn't let me get the devil out he was going to have to beat my ass till hell gave up.

He pulled out a small vial of yellow liquid, on the front of which was glued a small wooden cross. "Dave, do you know what this is? This is oil from an olive tree in the grove at the site of where Jesus prayed for the cup of suffering to pass from him, the Garden of Gethsemane. Its ancestors have seen the body of Christ." He shook it lightly in front of me.

Woah. That's messed up, I thought. Why was I here? What was this joker about to do?

"Dave--"

And why does he keep calling my name?

"--I would like your permission to place a small bit of this on your forhead and call forth those spirits of alcoholism from your heart. I have to warn you that it may get a little weird."

We just hit ground zero. Then it dawned on me, finally, what he thought. He and my father had discussed my "problems" and had decided that I was possessed! With Satan! I was possessed! And this guy was about to pull a demon out of my fucking body! I gripped the handles of the chair, tightly, out of fear from what would happen if I moved suddenly--this guy wasn't going to take no for an answer and while he was old, he was bandy and I bet he could fight--and out of fear of what might come leaping out of my through or chest or stomach or wherever demons fly from.

He turned the vial over on his finger, then reached out and started speaking in a very loud and commanding tone:

"IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST WHO HAS GIVEN ME AUTHORITY OVER THE AGENTS OF SATAN, I COMMAND ANY DEMONS, BE THEY SPIRITS OF ALCOHOL, ABUSE, OR DESTRUCTION, TO COME OUT OF THIS YOUNG MAN ---------- NOW!"

And he touched my forhead. We waited for what must have been one minute, which is a long time when you have a wrinkly, oily finger poking you on your forhead. Go ahead, try it. Dip your finger in some Wesson, poke your forhead, and wait for 60 seconds, watch the clock.

A tiny drop of Jesus oil began to make its way down into my left eye, and I started winking at him. He gave me a confused look, like he didn't know if the oil was having an effect and the demon was taunting him, or if I just had something in my eye. I wasn't going to give him the chance to start beating hell out of me, so I kept trying to not

wink, but winked just the same. Was this the sign? Maybe it was a wink demon.

"AND FURTHERMORE" he continued, "FURTHERMORE, I PLACE A HOLY SHIELD OF PROTECTION AROUND DAVID TO ABOLISH ALL OF YOUR POWER OVER HIM FOR NOW AND EVER MORE!" He waited.

"Brother Jack," I said.

"Yes, son?"

"Could you pass me a Kleenex?"

He slumped back in his chair, obviously put out that he didn't get any devil action this morning, flicked a tissue from the box on his desk, and handed it to me shaking his head.

"Dave, do you feel any better?"

"Oh, yes sir."

"You do?"

"Yes sir, that was starting to sting."

"You mean the process, your body was hot and tingling?"

"No, the oil in my eye."

"Dave," he said, suddenly wanting to wrap things up, "I'd like to pray for you now." And he prayed to keep me safe from devils and demons.

When we walked out, he took my dad into his office and when they came back out, they all prayed for me again. It was a long ride back home, but the day was beautiful and the leaves were turning and who knows but what a winking demon was no longer in my body. I also wondered when the next time I would be able to have a drink was.