Lights. For a moment I catch two or three moving in and out of the vertical shadows about a hundred feet down. This is going to be risky. My heart was beating so hard it offset the rhythm of my breathing and I had to start taking conscious gasps for oxygen. I glanced behind me and saw the playground with the community center in the background. Yesterday I had been crawling up to the porch on my hands and knees, hiding from the cops. They knew I was there. Why didn't they get me when they had the chance? I hated this game. Cat and mouse--I'm being pawed and toyed with. That must be why my new pants are torn to shreds - I had been hiding from the cops for hours last night. I must have passed out up there. How many hours had it been before I got home? How long have I been out now. They're going to worry if I'm out too late. They know something is up. I can't though, I have to end this now before I lose it like I did yesterday. I need to catch one of these bastards and end it.
I take a few more steps and slip on the light covering of foliage lain on the steep valley, falling on my side and sliding down a few yards. I panic thinking they'll get me while I'm down and unable to fight. For a few seconds nothing happens. It could have been an hour for all I know. I'm wide awake but my muscles are screaming from overuse and strain. I can't move them. Yesterday was too much to handle. Why did I decide to leave the house this evening? Oh right, the snakes. They were relentless. I make another effort to stand up but end up sliding farther down the valley. Another few tries with the same results. Now the underbrush is scraping against my skin through the holes in my jeans and I start to bleed. But I can't feel any pain other than shear dread. They must be right on top of me by now! Where am I? I don't know. I don't know. How can I not know where I am? This must be a dream. No, it's a nightmare. I finally manage to get up on two feet. As long as I lean against a solid tree I'll be fine or at least able to defend myself. I don't dare look up to see the points of light so near. I forget them. With all the effort it took to stand I forget about my motive too and just stare down at the ground that is getting increasingly darker as the sun sets behind the mountains of the San Francisco State refuge.
I loved this place like anyone loves a dream finally come true. It is never what you expect from all your time in expectation but you set aside incorrect notions for the sake of the dream just so you don't have to admit this isn't what you really wanted. For over a month I had routines that made this lifestyle possible. At least once (and often two or three times) a week I would wake up early, make myself breakfast before anyone awoke and walk down to the bay. I like to have solitude with my morning meal so that no one can hear me crunch the cereal that is inevitably too loud for grace. It's an embarrassing trait that always goes unnoticed along with all my other obsessive compulsions. After I'm done I quietly pack my backpack. I don't want to wake anyone before I go. They think I'm absurd taking these extravagantly long, solitary strolls. In goes a book, my iPod and headphones and usually some fruit or other food to eat later on. And of course cigarettes. I light up my cig and look into the pack to see how many I have left. Just a couple and a lucky. I should stop by the gas station on the way out but they don't have my favorite flavor. I should wait till later and find a place that sells them.
Camel Turkish Silvers - It's worth the extra walk and bucks to have something I can melt into when I smoke instead of just pulling the cig to my mouth as a matter of routine. About a year earlier I started smoking Silvers because of Elena, a girl I had met through a friend of mine. I thought she was pretty cool. She worked in the student forum back at college and was usually identified with her dreaded hair, very unlike the Notre Dame style of preppy clothes and the ever so universal UGG boots. Fucking conformists. Her and I ended up bonding over half studied homework and a free pizza from Sbarro in the basement where she worked, a perk of her job. One of my fondest memories of that year was driving to the 7 Eleven on Douglas Road with Elena to buy Silvers (my first time trying them) then sitting on the sidewalk out front smoking in the warmth of the late summer sun. Elena showed me how the cigarette paper magically burned around the letters on the side of the cig so that for a brief moment you could see the words 'Turkish Silver' illuminated in glowing orange until the wind or time would clear the evidence of the magic. I really miss those simple moments but every time I light up I get a warm feeling from the memory.
As I recall Elena and I ended our friendship later that year when I got drunk and texted her for a spare cig after watching the ending to Six Feet Under. She refused to give me a cig even if I offered to pay for it and walk all the way to her dorm. In hindsight we both admitted the stupidity on both our parts but never talked much after that. Rory, my best friend who was with me at the time, never forgave her or spoke to her either. We were idiots. We both had a habit of dispensing with our friends when they weren't like us in every possible way. If he and I weren't so much the same I think we would have been alone through most of college. We were the only people we could stand most days and some days not even that. We ended up calling one of his ex's for a ride to the station. A saving grace. That was another habit of ours; calling ex girlfriends for favors. Neither of us could seem to appreciate what we had presently but we got a lot of free rides and reminders that we were complete assholes.
In California I would set out down the road with my addiction in hand and sun at my back. It was an eight mile walk up and down steep hills through San Mateo and Foster City before I would see water. In my head I would be thinking about morality and existential philosophies and relationships. Thoughts that were constantly doing math inside my skull. It was either a head full of a thousand little thoughts or one driving idea that I absolutely had to figure out and articulate. The previous semester of college I started to see the schools shrink about the mental fatigue I was getting. I felt like such an egocentric asshole when I told him I was having so much trouble because I thought too much. It was a truthful problem though. At times I would be overcome with an ecstasy of thought patterns that kept growing and growing and growing. Even though I knew it was all metaphysical I still became scared that my brain would tear through my head to make room for all I was trying to fit in it. The shrink was a brother of Holy Cross Congregation and very reassuring that nothing was wrong at all. I only half believed him at the time but should have known he wasn't who I should have been talking to when he suggest I smoke more pot.
The exhaustion must have been more in my head than in my legs because the eight miles often would pass with nothing to show for it but lost weight and something about which to write. By the time I came to the rocky edge of the bay I was too tired to turn right around and make the uphill walk back home. So I enjoyed the reward, the immense San Francisco Bay and San Mateo bridge (one of the largest bridges in the world). Out of my pack I took the much needed fruit and cig but the book and music stayed inside. I wanted to hear and feel everything these moments had to offer. Especially since I would be there alone, every time. This was my dream, or at least one I had agreed upon with my best friend. We wanted, and still want, to be at the beach together with wine and music and surfing the Californian waves for as long as possible. The simple things. This isn't Souther California, the Pacific Ocean, no wine or music or surf boards or even each other but it's the closest I've come so far to having the dream I wanted. Despite the beautiful scenery, I have to admit it's lonely and the falling sun means that I'll be walking home in the dark. Another eight miles. I would go through this routine as often as I could.
On the other days I was looking for work, a task I thought would be much easier than it turned out. Recently I was hired at a local Subway and had gone through training and was just about to work my first full day as a sandwich maker. I was nervous. While it might not be that difficult of work I had too many other things on my mind to concentrate on what I was suppose to be doing. I made a lot of mistakes but my manager was really nice and didn't give me a hard time. She reminded me of that girl who has a tattoo show on TV. She had a lot of piercings in all the places that managers weren't suppose to have and tattoos on almost every visible part of showing skin. Only in California was this okay. I loved it. But my first day would turn out to be one of a hundred hellish experiences that I went through that summer. My best friend more than once would referred to me as Job from Hebrew scripture. I suppose in some ways he was right, but the only thing Job did was exist at the wrong time. I, on the other hand, had no such record with God or with morality. This plight was deserved.
Looking up from my suffering and confusion I see no more dots of light and I begin to think about turning around and heading back. I can save this fight for another night if I am graced with another day of life yet. I start to move my legs which still are throbbing from the day of unrest and chasing when I see a familiar sight coming toward me. The lights. They are now gathering and heading my way instead of going the other direction as had been happening. They were no longer fleeing from me but seeing how injured I was were now making their way for the kill. I finally snap and start screaming for help. "They're after me! They're after me!" But nobody is around this time of day to hear the shrills and calls for help. Closer. Closer. Almost on top of me but my legs won't move very quickly and every time I try to get up the steep hill I fall and slide nearer to the enemies. I am done for. There is no hope left. This is the end and look at the state in which I'm going to die! I'm friendless, broke and have no way out. I'm going to die.
Time behaves in peculiar ways when you are dreaming. They act the same when you're high. So the length of time it took to call 911 on my cell, connect with the operator and explain that I was going to die and that I needed help, was long enough that my hallucinated enemies never made it to my body. I don't know how long it took for the cops to find me but by the time they did my body was lifeless, caked in mud, bloody and scarred. The officer who found me had to climb down and drag me up to the park where another cop was waiting. One held me up because I couldn't stand on my own while the other asked me questions that I never thought would be directed my way. I had only heard them on TV where it was the criminals and worthless men who had to answer. No sir, I don't have anything sharp in my pockets. No sir, I don't have any drugs on me. No sir, I haven't been taking any drugs. I don't think the most gullible person on earth would have believed my lies. So I tell him that I have done drugs in the past just so that I could save some face from my worthlessness. Admitting fault, even in the hands of the law, draws temporary relief and at that moment I took anything I could get. To this day I don't know why I wasn't arrested and locked up. The officer who took my license (which I had used earlier to drive on the highway at high speeds just after peaking from my recent fix) just looked at my out-of-state name and gave it back. I don't think they ever checked out to see if I had a record. But this is California. The state where you can smoke weed in front of police in public and feel safe but then be ridiculed for smoking a cigarette because it is 'bad for your health'. Fuck them, but tonight it saved my ass. The cop who found me asks where I live--just a few blocks away--while the other gets back in the car. He walks me back to my place where I was staying with friends talking to me the whole way while his partner drives slowly beside us. The whole painful walk had me terrified. So far I had gotten off okay but I wasn't sure what he would do when we got back to my place. I thought for a minute about walking up to one of the neighbors houses and feigning nobody home. But I walk up to my regular drive and stopped. I tell the cop that this is my place and wait to see what move he makes next. All he says is to get some rest and stay inside till the morning. That's it. I could have kissed him. But the horror had just begun and every break I caught from then on was the one that kept me above death.
They must have thought I was just high on pot and had a bad trip or something. But smoking pot was petting kittens to what really happened. Several weeks earlier Rory, my best friend, had flown in from Maryland to spend a few days with me in the Bay and then drive down to San Luis Obispo to see Karen and then on to Los Angeles to check out some film schools, AFI, USC and UCLA. He had been into film for a long time and I had started to help him with film projects as they came up. I even worked on occasion at this club on campus that had small bands come through. It was my job to either help film or direct the show from an A/V room in the back. We connected with film and music and it turned out that I loved the work, hard as it was at times, and thought about making a career of it myself. I needed to see my friend again even then before things got bad.
The last semester of school was torturous and never-ending. At some point between sophomore and junior year I had grown frustrated with what I was learning in my religion and philosophy classes. My major. Every class was just an argument between me and my professors or no dialogue at all, which was a sign that I had lost so much interest in what I was learning that it wasn't even worth voicing my opinions. It had been a messed up several years of sacrifice that led me to giving up my own ambitions to devote my life to the Catholic Church, which I was assured would answer my questions and give me life if only I put in my entire faith. Another leap. Now I was seriously question the decision I had made both in lifestyle and in academia. There is much on that later but for now it is only important to know that the despair from years of torment were coming to a head that summer. I just needed a friend.
I was staying with Alex, a friend of mine from school, who was tired of the same shit I was at the time and a good friend to talk to for sanity. She invited me to stay with her and her mother for the summer in San Mateo in exchange for company, cooking and the occasional cleaning. She was in a bad place herself at the time and rarely left the house, an experience that I could relate to. The semester before I often had trouble mustering the strength to walk out my dorm room door for class. It wasn't that I didn't want to go (which at times I suppose I didn't) or that I was a slacker; I simply couldn't overcome the sense of impending doom I got from leaving the comfort of my room. Some times I would stay in my room and catch up with the professor later and sometimes I left for class. I always ended up regretting either decision. I suppose that is why I was at Notre Dame, across the street, so much instead of my home campus at Holy Cross. It was a place to get away but still be around people who could keep up with conversation so to speak. I had a love for knowledge and a hatred for ignorance. At college I saw too much of the later and knowledge wasn't what I was looking for in the end. It drove me crazy. Alex had had enough and was staying permanently in California, permanently in her house.
As I recall it was just her mother and I who drove to SFO to pick up Rory from the airport. She may have mustered the courage I often could not at school and come with us but the specific details of those days faded when the shit started to happen. I think Rory was a little nervous in staying in the house. We were all fucked up in one way or another those days and the need to get out of that funk sometimes trumped the need for camaraderie with fellow miserable friends. Rory and I ended up driving Alex's mom's car downtown that night and finding an Irish pub. I think it was to remind us of the closest home we had back on campus. The friendship that bound us so closely was still tight but not intense that summer. We were fed up with misery and couldn't see enough into each other enough to make our time together anything more than just a comfort. We ended up buying some cigarettes at a CVS downtown and walked to a place called O'Neill's a few blocks away. Inside we ordered Guinness because of our special mid-summer reunion (a tradition between us) and sat down at a booth in the back.
Rory only liked to order dark beer when he wasn't planning on getting drunk and tonight we had to stay sober since we had to drive back.
Rather he had to drive back. At the time I was driving on a suspended license because I had a ticket I couldn't pay for and then I didn't receive my new license plate paperwork in the mail so I was caught again for being past due and had to pay an extra fine and got my card taken away. All I had now was a state ID from when I went to Rome on a class trip the March before. The only reason I had cash for the beer was because I sold my Macbook a few weeks before. I couldn't find a job as I said and I was running too low on funds to purchase cigs and, eventually, a flight back to Indiana. I got six hundred for a machine I paid twelve hundred for the year before but I didn't care. Before the summer was up I had spend all that money on... I don't remember but probably alcohol, drugs and cigarettes. I think the only reasonable purchase I had made that summer was a $60 pair of headphones and a bottle of California's finest dessert wines somewhere between Atascadero and Templeton.
The following day we all thought it was best to get out of the house and see the city before driving down south to see Karen. Even Alex said she would go with us to San Francisco and show us around. So the three of us piled into her bright yellow Beetle and drove out to see the sights. Our first stop was the Golden Gate Bridge. Something tells me that whether we spoke of it or not we all thought about what it would be like to jump over the side and forgetting everything. Before walking back to the car I came within moments of jumping over the side myself, but not because I wanted to kill myself, rather, Rory and I found a brand new Blackberry down below on the other side of the railing that was dying to be taken under the law of 'finders keepers'. I tried so hard to reach through the spaces in the railing but it was just enough out. Even the gangling arms and legs on Rory couldn't manage. I could hop on the other side and get it easily but I would be putting my life within inches of death - which I wasn't ready for quite yet - and the guard would surely be on us quickly enough. This bridge is the number one location for suicide in the world. On record more than one person jumps every two weeks. But that's just the record, which is taken off one side of the bridge and only during daylight. There is a film out called The Bridge about this problem. The director placed a 24 hour camera on the bridge for months, capturing many suicides, failed suicides and attempted suicides where the person was caught or talked out of making the leap. This place is still one of a few outlets I keep in the back of my mind. My last effort was to swing my new headphones down over the railing and try to move the phone a bit closer to reach. It never ended up working and we had to leave for lunch but to this stay I still have the orange-red paint of the Golden Gate still scratched into my headphones.
Lunch was at a place called Harvey's near Haight-Ashbury, named after Harvey Milk, a hero in this area and in history. You might have seen the movie about him. On the drive there I was famished and looking forward to sitting down to some greasy fries and a cheeseburger. We passed through a lot of steep, hilly streets on the way there, looking for a parking space, going through areas that look typically like San Francisco. It wasn't until we hit the Haight District that things became bewilderingly different. Rainbow flags, head shops and well dressed gay men and women everywhere! I didn't admit it to anyone at the time but I felt comfortable here in a way I had never been before. I was home. After lunch we all walked down Haight street to a few stores and picked up some booze. The lead singer for Third Eye Blind, Stephen Jenkins, was from around here and wrote a lyric about walking Haight Street to the store. It was this band that broke the indifference of Rory and my relationship and it just so happened to be our favorite, so we followed the lyric in action to deepen a part of our time there and with each other. Just before sunset we brought the alcohol, plenty of cigarettes and ourselves to a beach along the coast to watch the sun touch the ocean and slowly sink into the night. Part of my dream came true for that hour as we inhaled the deep salty air and cigarettes, chasing each moment with a swig from the can. Rory and I would end up reliving these beach scenes several times over the next couple of years in different parts of the country but I think this time stood out as special. I think it was the mountains coming right out to sea. We had both talked about how much that meant to our senses. Or maybe it was the fact that it was our first time on the beach together in California. A taste that there might be hope in the future after all.
The next day we woke up around sunrise and Alex drove Rory and I down to San Jose where Karen was going to pick us up. I had taken the train down here about a month before to see a free Third Eye Blind show in a park. I nearly died that day sneaking in and out of various gang territory I had stumbled into. The more I think about that summer the more I remember times I nearly died while lost. But the show was great fun and added to my repertoire of 3eb shows. Karen was already there when we arrived (late) so we hurriedly transfered our bags and said our goodbyes to Alex. It took about three hours to drive from there to Templeton where she lived. We broke the silence with the new Dane Cook CD which was a disappointment but it let us relax before getting to her place. Karen was my first friend at Holy Cross College beyond my roommates and people I already knew from Notre Dame. She sat one seat behind me and to the right in my Introduction to Philosophy class with Professor Gareau. She was cute. Long, dark hair and brown eyes, a sweet smile. I ended up being in love with her that whole first semester, but nothing more than an awkward date and frustration came from it. The next year she started dating Rory before we met and the three of us began hanging out all the time. Now they were on and off dating (still) and it gave the two of us an excuse to go see her and make use of her pool house. That week spend drinking wine and smoking cigars in her hot tub would be the calm before the storm. We toured many of the local wineries, got as drunk as possible and made sure we wouldn't forget what we had being here. After visiting some of her friends in San Luis and a very odd game of Cranium with a stupid, peeing dog we drove down to LA to check out the scene and look into some grad schools for Rory. We had fun at Santa Monica beach, walked around the Six Feet Under exterior set and were in generally pissy moods the whole time. Even the booze, cigs and alcohol weren't enough to make the hotel any fun. I was happy to get back and pretty soon it was all over. Rory was gone and I was back in San Mateo about to find a job. It was then that things got bad.
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