A little more than a year ago things started to go badly wrong in my world. I mean, they had not been all that good for a while by then. I lived in a nice house with my significant other, my teenage son, her daughter, her brother, a chihuahua, and Benvolio an enormous dog of uncertain origions. We had a big yard, grape vines, oranges, an xbox360, three tvs and such. She was a more than full time high-school teacher, I a graduate student, and our relationship was on the skids.
Relationships, and hence relationship troubles, are always two way streets; so, I don't want anyone to think I am making excuses here, or assigning blame, and I will be more than frank about my part in the collapse of that relationship. It seems to me though, and I have had a lot of time to think about it, that when we met we were both altruistic, and interested in learning and loving and living. We read poetry to each other, collaborated on work for the University writing center, took the kids places like Yosemite, and the ocean, and the corn maze for Thanksgiving.
Then she got her teaching position, we moved into a house in Modesto, and all she had time for was work. She took on the cheerleading coach job in addition to a full teaching load. She didn't have time for her own daughter, much less my son, and even less for me. Sorry, but that was not exactly what I signed up for, and it made me kinda resentful. I tried to keep a good attitude, and told myself it woulod get better as she adjusted to her new position. I became more or less a full time grad-student and housekeeper. It also made me dependent, which is not something I'm comfortable with, and arguments about money started.
After a while I started drinking again, just a little bit of course, and with the increasing stress and dissatisfaction (to paraphrase G'n'R) the little got more and more. In turn, that had negative effects on the relationship—so things were not real cozy come fall of '09.
However, then disasters started to pile up. My parents had been living on their boat in the Caribbean for a decade and had started to fight more than not, and my Mom had been losing weight, reportedly drinking too much, and definitely acting sort of odd. My father and a number of concerned friends put together an intervention which my son took part in. I did not, at least not directly, because that would not have worked out well. My mother and I have a difficult relationship sometimes.
Long story short, the intervention flopped and ricocheted like I figured it would. Then my Dad announced he couldn't take it anymore, and was filing for divorce...Merry fucking Christmas. Over the next several months, the tension around our house got worse, my parents situation got worse, I was maxed out in Grad school, teaching and taking a full load, filing for graduation and so forth. In April my significant other informed me that she did not want to be in a relationship with anyone anymore and I'd have to move out (this seems to be true enough, for as best I can tell she has not started seeing anyone a year later, and I would have probably heard about it through the grapevine).
Oh goody. My feelings were hurt, but by then I was really just trying to hold it together for the sake of the kids, and that is a lousy reason to stay in a relationship. I had filed for graduation, so we came to an agreement that I would move out at the end of school year. This would allow me a stable place to live while I jammed out the last several major papers of my eight-year college odyssey. Or at least as stable as anything could be under the circumstances, between my birth families problems, the problems in our blended family, problems with her brother's crazy wife, problems with my son's reactions to everyone else's problems, her daughter's reaction to said problems, My teaching, her teaching, my school work and so forth I was an emotional wreck and half sloshed most of the time. Chronic insomnia, ulcers, regular nausea, near daily puking, and blinding headaches became the order of the day.
Then, around the end of April, beginning of May it became evident that there would be no work in California, and that it was too late to withdraw my application to graduate. Next in the first week of May my parents house burned down in the Jesusita Fire in the Santa Barbara Foothills. Yep, that house:
The one I grew up building, the one with the great view of the city and the channel, the one that contained what was left of my childhood.
Ok, so sometimes life is hard. Sometimes relationships don't work out—I of all people ought to know that—sometimes the economy is better than others, and everyone knows that they cut education first (though in the current global climate cutting education in the US is pretty much the stupidest fucking thing I have ever heard of anyone doing). But really? Really God? Are you frigging serious? Ok, What now?
Now I'll plow through the end of the semester 'cause I owe it to my students. I'll take an incomplete in one class 'cause I just can't face writing that final paper, and I can graduate with one Inc. Oh yeah, I'll stay as drunk as possible when I am not actively involved in teaching to prevent myself from hurting something or jumping off a fucking bridge.
The last day of school I kind of hooked up with a young woman who was a friend previously, but it did not go far because of circumstances—at least not at that time. The next day I left town for Santa Barbara, planning to stay with friends and help my parents get the rebuilding of house going. My son elected to stay in Modesto for one more week to graduate with his class, then go to his Mom's house in Monterrey for the summer. Just before I left, we had a talk, and he said he understood why I couldn't stand to stay for another week. Well, he might have understood, but he hasn't spoken to me since, and while I miss him, and his ignoring me hurts, I suppose that is the point and I can't really blame him.
So, I spent eight years in school to get a Master's Degree just in time to become unemployed and homeless. Back to staying with friends, and my drinking had got to the point that if I did not have a couple shots for breakfast, I was going to be very shaky and sick. Which of course means that the couch tour runs out pretty fast, all my old friends are grownups now, with kids and careers and me being fucked up all the time did not fit into that picture very well. I was angry at fate, and bitter—drunk, and sick'n'tired of being sick'n'tired. I wrote the following poem sometime in that general time period, I think it was on my Birthday actually, June 7th, 2009, I turned 41. It expresses pretty well my general state of mind, except maybe it is a bit more chipper than I actually felt. I was bloody well depressed, but kept trying to fake some kind of rebellious nonchalance like I was sixteen again. Of course nobody except me bought it, and I only managed to with about thirty shots of vodka a day.
This Is How I Roll.
It is hot and I am tired
but still wired from what
was done to me audibly just now
when doors close, gates open
but I never expected the kind
that present themselves to me this time
I am longing,
longing to be free of this place so
I can go there physically man,
and
go through those gates with
my tongue.
I really don't mind
the chaos and loss so much
anymore, I just want to
kick down doors and break free
of what this lack of life has
done to me
I want to learn to rock
and roll again my friend.
I want
to kick ass and take names
without shame, and write late
into the night without trying
to worry about that alarm clock
I want to get my cock sucked
and drink in bars, with movie-stars
find a place to go that is not
too hot or too cold
Teach others how to reach
for the stars because this ordinary
life is being behind bars and I
I have tried for years to be like them
like you and I don't want to do it
anymore.
I want to fuck on the floor
in the kitchen after a pudding fight
burn bright and fry in the sun
run faster than the light
catch me if you can, I have
become the gingerbread man
I'm quick and cool going
back to the old school these days
so lead. Follow. Or, get the fuck
out of my way 'cause I'll run you down
on my way out of this town even
even though I'll miss the ducks, and
the sound of falling water in the morning
I don't give a fuck anymore...it is time
my friends, to say goodbye to the
family, the house and these guys
so I'm gone to get it on like old
King Kong, and this is how I roll...
Hell, I thought I got over adolescent angst in my early thirties after my second or third mid-life crisis. I guess not, but I kinda dig it as poetry anyhow. I left Modesto just before the end of May, stopping on the way out of town to kiss a girl, then I stopped for a few days in Porterville to visit a friend met on facebook, and hit Santa Barbara about June 5th. The first week or so was cool, getting caught up with old friends and such, but by the end of the month I was out on the street in S.B. Again. Pretty close to ten years after the last time I was losing my mind drunk and homeless on the South-Coast—in my hometown.
Pitiful huh? Sounds like it from here, but it was necessary to go through there to get here, and here is not so bad at all. None of the circumstances have magically corrected themselves, and there were many hard days and hard knocks, but there was also a lot of fun on the way. I made some good friends, met some cool girls, and eventually came back to Modesto. I'll tell the rest of that story over the next little while, interspersed with current happenings, and maybe eventually it will all begin to make sense...for now, vaya con Dios.
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