4th Week in Rehab

Fuck.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Every place is the same.  Fucking fuck.
God.  He’s everywhere. Here.  Before. Before that. And sixteen times before that.
Fuck.
It’s like nothing can be done without God.
god.
They have no faith in anyone in these facilities.  Why am I here. Why am I here.
?
Hey man.
(a large black woman with a hair net)
You ok?
I don’t know.
Fucking God.
God bless you, she says and leaves.
And all I want is a drink. Anything. Vodka. Gin. Bourbon. Grain.
Grain. 180 proof.
They come in and out of my life in here, slide in and out, like transients.  And they all spew the same old jive. God this. God that.  Carrying little printed Bibles.
Fuck God.
God left a long time ago, you pitiful, spineless fucks.  There’s no one here. We’re all alone.  God hasn’t been here in millenia.
She comes and touches my cheek.  She looks down in between my legs.
Alexandra.
She says she’s devoted her life to God and to the Twelve Steps and that each day is better than the last.
Another one.
Good luck lady.
But I still want to fuck her.
What did you say? She says.
I don’t know.
What?
What did you say? Just now.
I don’t know. Nothing.
Are you all right?
No.
Are they giving you meds?
Librium and…

in florida one morning high on meth i spotted a krispy kreme truck instead of going to work i followed the van all the way up military trail from ft lauderdale to west palm beach hoping it would lead me to the krispy kreme factory when instead it went to a storage facility it was a private moving truck bought from the franchise but not changed over to reflect its new status i lost my job as a doorman in boca raton and afterwards i went to a bar which served romanian visinata and got drunk on nearly one gallon of it

…diazepam.
They’re giving you diazepam?
Yes.
That’s good.  Have you found Jesus yet?
What?
Jesus. Have you found Him.
I don’t know.  Which annex is he staying in?
I laugh.  My face hurts. My head feels as if it’s in a vise.
She looks in between my legs again.
I want to fuck her.  This Jesus freak. This Bible thumper.  Is it wrong? Is it sinful?
What?
I don’t know, I say.  Why?
She laughs.  Why are you here?
I signed myself in.
Without Jesus you’re nothing.
All right, He co-signed.
I still want to fuck her.  More so now.  I hate her.  Alexandra.  I hate these people who find meaning in all the wrong corners.
What’s that on your cheek, she says.
A burn mark.  I burned myself with a hot knife sharpener.
Why?
I don’t know.  I need the pain. To keep me from going insane.
She puts up her hand and makes a “stop” motion.  And she shakes her head.
You don’t want to help yourself; I can tell that, she says.
And leaves.

–

Mark is the ex counselor who landed in here after a bad relapse in his garage.  He was caught by his wife drinking vodka out of a milk jug painted black, which supposedly held a spare gallon of gasoline for his boat.  Mark is a good guy.  But he’s also a God guy.  He smokes incessantly.  I like his voice.  He’s calm and settled.  I guess that’s what happens when you let Him into your heart.  I don’t know.  I don’t know about that.  Mark snapped one afternoon during a counseling session with a sixteen-year-old goth girl in Tallahassee, Florida.  She told him about being sodomized by her father with a toilet paper roll dispenser.  She confided in him that she liked it.  And that’s when he closed down his practice.  Mark is a good guy.  He reads from his Bible every morning.  He takes long breaths.  He doesn’t push anything on me.  He has a nine-year-old daughter.  He’s divorced.  His wife and kid live somewhere in Utah.
We’re in Erie, Pennsylvania, I think.
I play cards with Mark.  And backgammon.  He lets me win at backgammon. I can tell.  He makes one wrong move.  I tell him about my grandfather.
He tells me about the house they renovated before his relapse in the garage.
He was a professional chef, before he had his practice.  He met his wife at Florida State.  They were both MSW candidates.
Double sixes, he says.  Lucky man.
I move my pieces on points.
Mark is a nice man.  He doesn’t push God on me.  But I can tell he doesn’t understand how I live like this.  Without anything.  I can tell he doesn’t understand how I can ever get better, without God.  And it’s all right; because I don’t understand how he lives like he does either.
Wanna take a smoke break?
I say yes.
We go out.  He lights his Salem.  Then mine.  We stand there.  And don’t say anything the entire time.

(“Surviving Winter in Copenhagen”)

We relieved ourselves on the left flank of Christiansborg Palace, in plain view of the Folketinget, the Supreme Court, Office of the Prime Minister, and—we both hoped—directly below the chambers of Queen Margrethe II. We had travelled from Potsdam to Berlin, two brown boys on a stolen scooter in horizontal rain, then crossed on a ferry at Ahrensoop. Neither of us spoke Danish.
We were hungry and we had no money. So we sat on a kerb in front of the Copenhagen Kommune, across from the National Museum, and begged.
Three consecutive nights we slept on a bench inside Vesterport train station, but eventually we were hustled out by two policemen on bicycles.
A middle aged prostitute put us up in one room on the promise that we would clean her flat and both bathrooms.
We spent two nights there.
In the daytime we smoked her black hash and ate bread.
There were no jobs for two dark skinned Bulgarian transients.
I spent one afternoon digging out dog shit from the channels cut into my soles.
Anastas picked at a lesion on his cheek.
We had no food that winter in Copenhagen.
Finally, for nine days we were sub-contracted by a Chinese family to clean flats and houses.
And then we put up our own fliers in coffeehouses:

hi, we are student of denmark and we are greek and nepal, 22 year old males. we are looking for cleaning job in copenhaven, as we can do good in cleaning. we had cleaned since we was in denmark and we know how to go for it. so, it wil b thankful if u provide us this short of job. we peomise to do good in this feild.
thanking you
Prakash Budhathoki and Stavros Costagavras
telefon. 26744075
Rebæk Søpark 5, 6, -748
2650 Hvidore

The telephone number belonged to a public handset in the train station. No one ever called.
Anastas prostituted himself to a handful of Japanese businessmen.
We smoked Kent cigarettes.
And then Anastas

3rd Week in Rehab

Still there’s nothing. Just false starts. Blank sheets of paper. Scribbles sometimes.
I am reminded by the director that I checked myself in here voluntarily.
See? There’s your signature. And initials. Here and here. And here. You are not well yet.
I am not well.
You were not well then.
Should that be grounds for internment? No one is well.
We know best, she says.
Even Van Gogh was productive in the sanatorium at St. Remy. The little yellow room and all that.
It wasn’t yellow, she says.
The chair was.
No it wasn’t.
We go back and forth arguing details.
The ear he cut off, I say, was not for the prostitute. It was for Gauguin.
She argues that. People love to argue history. Stalin was best at re-writing it. People love to believe in love stories.
She says they’re changing the pills. Or the amount. Or the amount of shit in them. It takes time.
There is no work though. It takes time and there is no work.
“Surviving Winter in Copenhagen.” I have a title.
That’s good, the director says. There’s that. At least.
Time spent in incarceration is redundant. You start counting roaches scurrying across the floor and thinking of things like steaming broccoli. Making cheese out of hot curd. Legwarmers. Arms shipments to Jalalabad.
Your initials here and here. See?
You start thinking of clean calligraphy, semi-sweet chocolate, and Rolleiflex cameras. Schnitzels and a cold beer. Freedom. Outside.
When I was ten I flung myself off the main stage at Lido’s thirty feet below, into the pool. The club was empty. No one saw and no one heard. I had jumped the fence early, before even the housekeeping staff had arrived to wash towels. Mop floors. The restaurant served breaded pork cutlets to Central Committee members in the afternoons. And profiteroles.
“Surviving Winter in Copenhagen.” It’s a good start, she says. That’s all anyone ever needs.
They all talk in clichés, reading off three by five cards.
There is no work. There is all this time and no work.
She fills out some forms and tells me to take them to Admissions. Even the ink smells like formaldehyde.
I owe someone something. I’m sure of it.