I hear they had a daughter. You watch, they’ll make her testify or something. Talk about what an alcoholic her dad was. Make it clear this was all the fault of one idiot drunk.”
“Wow. Where did you hear that?”
I knew I didn’t want to hear any more. I’d heard enough. I started to run, and it was at the edge of the parking lot that I saw a bike leaning up against the side of a fire truck from the village of Barton. So I took it. I just took it—and I was off.
I’m not going to pretend I understand even half of the poems that Emily Dickinson wrote. But when I get them, I get them. I get the rhythms and I get the point:
Life, and Death, and Giants
There’s a lot more, but let’s start with that first line. How can you not love it? How could anyone not love it? Read it aloud:
Life (slight pause) and Death (slight pause) and Giants. I love that capital G .
Or this:
REMEMBRANCE has a rear and front,—
It really does, doesn’t it? Again, that’s just the first line. She goes on to compare remembrance to a house with a garret, and God knows I could use a garret to squirrel away a lot of my crazy mental shit—my crazy mental demons. Actually, I need way more than a garret. I need a self-store garage bay. You know, the ones that always seem to end up having a dead body in them? I practically need a warehouse.
And while I have pretty shamelessly thrown my brain under the bus and blamed it for some of the seriously bad choices I’ve made, I understand that it has its assets, too. It has its moments.
The brain is wider than the sky ,
For, put them side by side ,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside .
I love it when therapists talk about boundaries. I really could have used some, right? But how can you fence in a brain? How can you ask a person to rein in something that really is wider than the sky?
Andrea often looked like she’d been sleeping in eyeliner—which sometimes was the case, especially when we crashed after bingeing on OxyContin. But the look kind of worked on her. Even when goth was kind of passé, she could pull it off—I think because it always seemed like she was secretly so vulnerable.
When I look back on my days with the posse, I see in my head all of us who crashed at one time or another at Poacher’s. It was not really a wild crowd—it’s not like we were having raucous parties. Mostly we were just trying to survive, and the sex and the drugs and the robberies were not the product of some rager or keg party gone crazy. It was just how we kept a roof over our heads and tried to stay warm until, finally, we just hated ourselves so much—which was a very high bar, trust me—that either we left or we OD’d. The regulars, in addition to Andrea and me, included Missy, who was nineteen and was from Concord, Massachusetts, and came from unbelievable buckets of money. She had a pink sports car when I first moved in—not kidding—a Miata convertible. But one day her dad and mom appeared out of the blue to bring her home, and when she refused, one of them drove home in her car, so we lost that set of wheels. They couldn’t believe what a rat hole their daughter was living in. We couldn’t believe that they found her. She once told me that her house in Concord had six bedrooms and four fireplaces. She did cocaine for a while, which most of us didn’t, because she had the wallet to make cocaine happen. Poacherloved her for that. But it also wasn’t going to last. She claimed her older brothers used to abuse her, which was why she was so fucked up. I never quite believed her. I think, like a lot of us, she was just a head case and made stuff up.
On the other hand, I do believe that Lida, another girl, really had been abused by her stepfather. I don’t think she could have made up the crap she told me. She was my age. After her mom and dad divorced, her mom remarried, and her stepfather turned out to be a total pig. He used to make her suck him off for her allowance,
“Wow. Where did you hear that?”
I knew I didn’t want to hear any more. I’d heard enough. I started to run, and it was at the edge of the parking lot that I saw a bike leaning up against the side of a fire truck from the village of Barton. So I took it. I just took it—and I was off.
I’m not going to pretend I understand even half of the poems that Emily Dickinson wrote. But when I get them, I get them. I get the rhythms and I get the point:
Life, and Death, and Giants
There’s a lot more, but let’s start with that first line. How can you not love it? How could anyone not love it? Read it aloud:
Life (slight pause) and Death (slight pause) and Giants. I love that capital G .
Or this:
REMEMBRANCE has a rear and front,—
It really does, doesn’t it? Again, that’s just the first line. She goes on to compare remembrance to a house with a garret, and God knows I could use a garret to squirrel away a lot of my crazy mental shit—my crazy mental demons. Actually, I need way more than a garret. I need a self-store garage bay. You know, the ones that always seem to end up having a dead body in them? I practically need a warehouse.
And while I have pretty shamelessly thrown my brain under the bus and blamed it for some of the seriously bad choices I’ve made, I understand that it has its assets, too. It has its moments.
The brain is wider than the sky ,
For, put them side by side ,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside .
I love it when therapists talk about boundaries. I really could have used some, right? But how can you fence in a brain? How can you ask a person to rein in something that really is wider than the sky?
Andrea often looked like she’d been sleeping in eyeliner—which sometimes was the case, especially when we crashed after bingeing on OxyContin. But the look kind of worked on her. Even when goth was kind of passé, she could pull it off—I think because it always seemed like she was secretly so vulnerable.
When I look back on my days with the posse, I see in my head all of us who crashed at one time or another at Poacher’s. It was not really a wild crowd—it’s not like we were having raucous parties. Mostly we were just trying to survive, and the sex and the drugs and the robberies were not the product of some rager or keg party gone crazy. It was just how we kept a roof over our heads and tried to stay warm until, finally, we just hated ourselves so much—which was a very high bar, trust me—that either we left or we OD’d. The regulars, in addition to Andrea and me, included Missy, who was nineteen and was from Concord, Massachusetts, and came from unbelievable buckets of money. She had a pink sports car when I first moved in—not kidding—a Miata convertible. But one day her dad and mom appeared out of the blue to bring her home, and when she refused, one of them drove home in her car, so we lost that set of wheels. They couldn’t believe what a rat hole their daughter was living in. We couldn’t believe that they found her. She once told me that her house in Concord had six bedrooms and four fireplaces. She did cocaine for a while, which most of us didn’t, because she had the wallet to make cocaine happen. Poacherloved her for that. But it also wasn’t going to last. She claimed her older brothers used to abuse her, which was why she was so fucked up. I never quite believed her. I think, like a lot of us, she was just a head case and made stuff up.
On the other hand, I do believe that Lida, another girl, really had been abused by her stepfather. I don’t think she could have made up the crap she told me. She was my age. After her mom and dad divorced, her mom remarried, and her stepfather turned out to be a total pig. He used to make her suck him off for her allowance,
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