I never had the gene for most major
addictions (if you exclude caffeine and tobacco, the latter being a
great runner-up for a slow death). You'd think my Irish heritage
would naturally include a gene for alcoholism but I missed out on
that one too. Though I love to drink beer for it's slow, manageable
buzz, I'm no hardy drinker. I can't last and never could. In short,
I am a light weight.
I used to get my nuts busted about
this, though in reality, it's a positive boon. I was in the Celtic
years back, with a friend when she complained that I'd never wanted a
shot, even it was free. I told her what she already knew and that I
didn't need it nor didn't want to be gooned by 9PM. She dismissed me
as a “light weight.” Behind us, leaning on the wall and coming
to my defense was a bouncer named Sean who then said, “Well,
Deckey-Sue, Ron doesn't need half a bottle of Crown Royal to get
'started.'” To this she spun around in her chair to shoot a look
at him that would char cat fur.
It's true. I'm a lightweight and it's
cheaper, safer and I tend to just fall asleep in my own bed instead
of the local jail vs. some others I have known. As I get older, this
only gets worse, alcohol to me is Sominex now.
I've pretty much tried, at least once,
all those fine pharmaceuticals that you can purchase legally or
illegally, the exceptions being LSD and heroin. I wouldn't try LSD
unless it was inside Butler Psychiatric hospital with four large goon
CNA's and a board certified psychiatrist. I know myself too well to
let that subconscious monster loose from my soul. That son-of-a-bitch
will stay in that dank sewer system, with the sewer cover welded in
place. By the way, YOU have one too, the subconscious is the place
where we put all our ugly, reptilian natures to rot. As for heroin,
I don't like needles or blood borne pathogens.
But with everything I did try, I
managed to keep it on the weekends only and that was it. There was no
desire on my part to do it again and again and again. If anything, it
was a novelty. It was a ride on a Six Flags rollercoaster and once
I got that under my belt, “Ok, I tried it.” One kid I knew just
had to get on that ride, again and again and again and again.
**
When you're an older kid, even more so
a young teen, you already know where you land in the pecking order of
your peer group. What you want to do is move up, be “cool” and
gain some notoriety (the good kind) to boost your street cred and
status. To do this, you have to succeed at something that's deemed
worthy by that clique you hang with. For me, my saving grace, was
humor. I could come up with jokes, practical ones, observations and
what not pretty damned quick. I told you about one involving a
history teacher and his two girls a few stories back. I was good at
it. I was a bit of quiet Class Clown that managed to divert all the
blame from me. I'd sit back and enjoy the consternation of adults as
they ran around trying to stem the damage I'd cause or go nuts trying
to find the culprit. One day I'll tell you how I siphoned a
neighbor's pool for fun, and got away with it, of course.
As a kid too, you tend to look up to,
ape the Golden Boy or Girl of your group, try to be more like them,
secretly wish you had some of their skills or personality traits.
It's not until you get into your 30's do you realize that you
generally, always had every skill needed to make it in life, but when
you're 14 you know shit about yourself or the world. One of the kids
I knew, who everyone naturally liked and admired, was Mark F. Mark
was one of those boys who was born fairly good looking, smart enough
but not geek smart and a natural athlete. His dad was completely
proud of his boy as he could play street hockey (and real ice hockey)
with an inborn talent. Add to this, the young teen girls of our
group thought he was “cute enough” as well. He was lucky enough
to own these skills, traits before we others had them.
In all, he was a “good” kid. A boy
any Dad would be proud to have. He had a gift for social interaction
that most of other boys were still trying to learn and we looked up
to. We copied it, abused it, including me. I found him to be genuine,
open and fairly honest about himself which proved to show some
courage in him as well. I liked that. I found a lot of people, to
this day, to be scared shitless to be open. Mark was not afraid at
all.
Before I told anyone, because I knew
enough not too, I was already smoking pot at a very early age due to
my older brother introducing it to me. It was weekend thing when
he'd share a joint with me or, I'd pinch his stash behind his back
and save one for myself on a weekend. The main reason I'd smoke it
was that I found music to be 1,000% better when stoned. So, if I was
high, you'd find me in a darkened room around 2 AM with Steely Dan's
Aja playing through the headphones.
But it slipped out that I did smoke
after being busted by a English teacher who was a few rows higher
than me at a Frank Zappa concert. Also, I admitted, sheepishly, to
Judy T., another classmate, that I did smoke. My secret lasted all
of 24 hours as everyone else found out I did. You see, very few kids
I knew then “did it.” I was a vanguard, though a quiet one.
Hell, I manage to hide that fact for a few years, cultivate the A
student geekazoid personality. Well, as soon as you open your mouth
or another sees it, the cat's outta the bag quick.
Mark F found his way to marijuana due
to the two girls who sat across Goff Jr High on a low stone wall that
supported the dirt, yard around a house next door to Jet Tours
Travel. They'd be there every morning and we all knew why, they sold
loose joints to the jr high school kids there. I never bought from
them...why? I had my own free stuff. The girls maintained their
business unmolested because this was 1978. No one cared.
I saw Mark F smoke his ever, first
joint one morning at the SE corner of Goff. The next four hours had
him acting like a 10 year old boy. He never got in trouble but the
teachers were annoyed at his really immature behavior that morning.
That was the only time I saw him smoke or get high.
When we graduated Goff, everyone else
went to Tolman, I to St. Rays and I never did see many of the old
school crowd, let alone Mark, for years.
If it wasn't the One Way in Slater
Park, the other teen hangout was Pascale's Lot, a open dirt parking
lot across from McCoy stadium. Jimmy, Mike and I drove there one
afternoon and this blond headed kid comes up to my car, opening a
brown paper bag full of “dime bags” asking us if we want to buy
one. I looked right at the kid's face and recognized his teeth first.
It was Mark. Mark had these well spaced, but slightly gapped teeth in
his smile. I didn't recognize the new hairstyle or the fact
adolescence had chiseled his features and erased that boyish face I
knew well years ago.
“Oh God...Mark! Hey! It's been a long
time!” I was glad to see him again.
We talked for a bit and it came to me
that Mark was now a full blown pot-head/dealer. He had given up on
hockey and joined the burn outs instead. His personality was pretty
much the same but I was startled at how much he had grown up. The
fact that he was hanging out with the Pascale's crowd didn't throw me
much...my day to day friends and I were the Slater Park crowd that
was none better either. We stayed at Pascale's for about 30 minutes
before we left. This would be the year 1982.
2001.
I was working for a nursing home in
Warwick whose FSD was a interesting butch/dyke/man-girl named Janice.
She had that typical short haircut and was mistaken, more than once,
by the residents as a man. She was there not too long before she had
moved onto a place closer to her home in Pawtucket. One day while
working, she had complained to us that he had to go to a funeral for
a “friend of a friend” in Pawtucket.
“Dammit...I have to go the funeral
home...I'm still dressed in my uniform...I'll look like a fool” she
said. “Well, it IS for Mark...too bad his girlfriend won't ever
attend his funeral though.”
You know, there are times when you get
two, three pieces of information on a person you haven't heard from
in years but it's the right kind of info and you
KNOW who this is. You just nail it.
“Mark? Mark F” I ask Janice.
“Yeaahhh....how do you know him”
she asks.
“He's DEAD?” I say.
“Yeahh..bullet through the head, self
inflicted.”
“Whaat?” I am really confused now.
I get the later part of his life in a
nutshell from Janice.
He had graduated from pot to cocaine
and developed a real hard core addiction. I am sure this changed his
brain so much that his life turned to liquid shit as that stuff never
comes to a good end. He was working job to job, had an off again, on
again girlfriend, who I inadvertently knew in St Rays but would never
guess in a million years she'd latch onto someone like this. The
relationship was marred with beatings, abuse and what have you. I
found out also Mark had been chucked into the ACI for a time for
petty theft and check fraud charges. I found all this information
pretty startling as this was not the kid I knew at one time.
Well, one day, he had locked himself in
the bathroom of his apartment to snort coke all morning long. His
paranoia must've been on full bore because he came out, got into an
argument with his girl and then successfully locked her, barricaded
her in the bedroom. Why? I don't know. But the girl was resourceful
and managed to escape out the window and call the cops.
When the cops arrive, I can only
surmised Mark freaked out at the prospect of going back to the ACI.
Holding anyone against their will in RI is “kidnapping” and
that's a heavy charge, add to that he already had a record as a
proven domestic violence repeat offender. To escape his miserable
future, he shot himself.
**
Rhode Island is far too small and I
don't have to tell you this, but crossing paths with people again and
again is the norm here. I was talking, without knowing it, to an ex
boyfriend of Mark's sister one night, who I had never met before and
before you know it, I start talking of Mark for some reason.
The kid lit up and his attention zeroed
right in. “That FUCK? He used to beat the shit out of my girlfriend
(Mark's sister).”
I also find out the final hours of
Mark's life too. The guy I'm talking to was on the rescue that
responded to the call that morning. Now HOW small is Rhode Island?
About the size of my fingernail!
He had gone into the apartment and
found Mark on the bed with a huge puddle of arterial blood all over
the pillow. The EMT's had been informed of the nature of the
situation and of the wound. They started to work on him.
“You know he was still
semi-conscious?” I was told.
“He kept saying, 'Oh Fuck! Oh Fuck,
Oh Fuck' over and over again as we tried to stem the blood flow from
the entrance wound.”
“He was still talking?” I found
that amazing.
Well, he could, at first I'm told. He
had used a .25 caliber pistol and that blew a small hole in the right
side of his forehead but since it's such a low powered round, it
traversed the brain and managed to only push through, just under the
skin, on the opposite side of the forehead. The wound channel isn't
that great, but it's enough I was told.
“I could see the round, that lump
under the skin on the other side of his head, where it tried to come
out but was stopped.” the EMT told me.
I wondered to myself about Mark's last
words, “Oh fuck, oh fuck” I have to wonder if he was conscious
and lamenting his worst.decision.ever.
They bring him to Memorial and the Dr's
there realized what would happen next, the brain would swell,
crushing itself to death inside the skull. The had told Mark's
parents this and they opted to pull all life preserving measures. He
was dead fore long.
**
I found myself at Merrick Williams
funeral home on the morning of his burial. I sat in the car, still
trying to decide whether I should go in or not. I was still trying to
parse the information I got about him from Janice and the kid I once
knew. It didn't make any sense. I watched as many older, white
haired people went into the funeral home and I deduced his older,
extended family was visiting. I saw few people my age...perhaps the
people who knew him, his peers, were too busy being drugged up
themselves that morning.
I chickened out. I never went in. One
reason was that no one would know who I was and to explain my
connection would take too much time, I'd be telling stories from 1979
to people who never went to Goff. I also didn't want to further my
shock at seeing the wreck of a kid I knew to be “good,” lying in
a casket with a marvelous make-up job concealing a quarter inch sized
hole in his head.
**
That was about 17 years ago and I sort
of can't get my head around it still. I knew this kid when he was
just perfect, just fine, a great person to be around. There was
promise in his future just based on what he was alone. Nope, all that
went to shit. I don't know addictions all that well since I've never
really experienced them at all and can't tell you first hand how life
changing, personality changing they can be. (Quietly knocking on
wood). Many, I'm told, hold Mark's memory as a # 1 Jerk. For me, I
can't do that. I knew him when he was still a normal person and one
hell of a great kid. To me, he was a fun person who had some bravery,
a sense of chivalry and hope.
It's too bad. We all start off
completely innocent as children, not guilty of ANYTHING really, only
to have some of us wind up twisted and contorted beyond all hope.
Addictions. Some do and some don't. A
long time ago, someone was goofing on my near constant ability of
having a can of Coca Cola wherever I went. To answer this insult, I
said, “Yeah, well some people have to have
whiskey nearby all day long...I don't.”
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