Andy Warhol made movies of folks doing nothing. George Costanza, in the comedy “Seinfeld”, tried to persuade NBC to make a TV show about nothing. As much as I like “Seinfeld” and Andy Warhol, this journal won’t be about nothing. I won’t try to make something out of nothing. I will try to focus on the turning points, the moments of heartbreak and high drama (at least as they seemed to me). Not that I won’t engage in some navel gazing but I will attempt to cut away the rind, and get to the juice. Many things will be left out. In no way will this journal be an all inclusive representation of the events in my life. It will be more of a series of vignettes, incidents, stories and poems. Memory is a funny thing. It is not an event in itself but the fragmentary replication of an event, made of fleeting impressions, feelings and images. It cannot be weighed or measured. It is dependent on us, on our brains, on human consciousness. In the end, memory is a kind of fiction, an illusion, a magician’s trick, where the past is revived and pulled out of a hat.
On French TV, I once saw an interview with an American actor who used the expression “12 step program” instead of AA to protect his anonymity. In subtitles this was translated as Alcoholics Anonymous. The American actor did not break his anonymity, the translator did. While I will refrain from using last names (including my own), those referenced may recognize themselves. They may be wrong, or not. So be it. Of course, as the details of my life emerge in these pages the possibility of who I really am will become narrower. Then again, I may be making all of this story up or at least parts of it. Half remembered conversations certainly will become fictionalized. One cannot experience an event like God and see and remember all things. What happened decades ago flashes back to us in an instant, but it is not reality. Reality is long gone. Maybe the past is out there somewhere in an alternative universe, but access to it is uncertain. It seems to be locked away in a house with very few windows (where we can peer in and glimpse its inner secrets). It is in the realm of ghosts, the realm of dreams; it is in a far off country that one only hears rumors about (and no one really knows if any of those stories are true); it is in another world.
Folks whose names I have forgotten will be given new names; in more than a few cases, I will intentionally change even the first names of those who were once close to me.
We miss much of what goes on around us. In writing this, things may become clearer to me. I may discover things that have been buried, repressed, forgotten. So we will take this journey together. We will see what we can see.
.________________________________________
Murmurs of the Heart
The vampires were closing in. No, this isn't the retelling of a B movie but a portrait of my state of mind. Every night I’d fall into an abyss and in the morning I’d wake up with the shakes and a tubercular cough (the result of chain smoking cigarettes and pot).
“Did you see her?” I called out to Rosalie from across the room.
“Who?”
“The woman, the ghost standing right next to me.”
“Not this time.”
I downed a large tumbler of white wine and lit a joint, took a puff and handed it to Rosalie.
“We have to get out of here.”
“Where will we go, Billy?”
“To Terrell.”
“How?”
“We’ll go to work for Bob. We’ll get an advance.”
Rosalie and I met at the same fly by night company—one that I helped form. In 1982, the TV show Dallas was popular and I’d hooked up with a group of ex commodities brokers (all alcoholics and addicts themselves) peddling (telemarketing) oil and gas projects to investors across the country. Originally Rosalie hooked up with the president of the company. Since he had an ex wife and a teenage son who often stayed with him, Rosalie moved in with me. We slept together that first night. I was twenty five, she was thirty nine. She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever known. She had short blonde hair, was five foot tall and weighed less than a hundred pounds and drank a fifth of scotch daily.
On New Year’s Eve we’d gone out with Jack (one of our associates) in his black Lincoln Continental. Jack had killed one man and severed the legs of another while driving drunk in that same car six months before. When Jack became too drunk, Rosalie and I took turns driving. But we were equally drunk, equally insane. I could not even sit on a bar stool without falling over much less drive a car.
Yes the vampires were closing in. But the darkness came from a sickness within and leaving town would not change that.
* * * *
Rosalie and I did make our escape to Terrell, Texas (a small town just outside of Dallas). We lived in a farmhouse in a rustic setting. We drank constantly. For a time, Rosalie’s mother and nephew moved in with us. This was a disaster—but one that led ultimately to my sobriety. My family suggested to Rosalie that I be locked up in Terrell State Hospital. This frightened me. One morning, after Rosalie had a few drinks she called the number of a married couple who were in recovery. We met with them and began attending recovery meetings. Rosalie relapsed after thirty days of sobriety and left me.
Soon after this, I heard one of my oldest friends in Dallas had been killed in a drunken motorcycle accident. I met Pat when I was eighteen and a freshman in college. Pat was five years older than me and was pursuing an MFA in art. He was a musician and a fabulous artist. We were great drinking buddies. I saw Pat buried when I was forty five days sober. I believe he has been with me on my journey of recovery, one that we have taken together in spirit.
As I write these words, I realize how blessed I am; how blessed I am to have gone over thirty four years without drinking any booze, or smoking any pot, snorting any coke or shooting any dope, or taking any kind of mind altering drugs. I'm down to aspirin and caffeine. And that is a miracle. I was once a three pack a day smoker—that too ended over thirty years ago. I am so lucky and so blessed.
* * * *
Together we drank fire and walked
on waves of guilt.
We spoke the language of the drowned.
At
night, I could hear the murmur
of her heart,
and feel her breath on my neck.
of her heart,
and feel her breath on my neck.
She
was so small and so pretty.
Asleep, she dreamt of a prince
and a white wedding gown.
While still a child, she offered her virginity to Christ
but
her father took it in a drunken stupor
and
left a hole in her psyche
she
would never fill.
She
entered the convent but never took her vows.
She
drank fire and
walked
on waves of guilt.
on waves of guilt.
She
spoke the language of the drowned.
She
made the call that saved my life.
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