The Fume-Soaked Land of Garning

When I was about fourteen or fifteen, I met up with a couple of interesting people via my brother-in-law, MM (R.I.P.). Even though I figured myself to be worldly and wise, I was an impressionable kid all the same. These two folks scared me to a degree…and the thought of them still does.

One was a fellow by the name of J. Holsemback. He was short, slight, and by all signs quite a happy man. He had attained a degree in some sort of psychiatric field at a university in Georgia but when I knew him he was unemployed. He could carry on intelligent conversation and made a fun, lighthearted game out of using unnecessarily large words in everyday conversation in a silly/goofy way. Even though he was way too old for me, I like-liked him, if you know what I mean.

About the second or third time I ran into Holsemback was at a huge open-pit barbeque party and he was sitting off to the side sort of slumped over. When I got closer to him, I was surprised to see that he was virtually hugging a gas can, mumbling softly. I decided to leave him be and he spent the whole night sitting there with his can.

Later, I asked MM about it and he grinned a little and said, “J has gone off to the land of garning again. He’ll probably be there awhile.”

I pressed him and he relayed to me the story of J. Holsemback, whom MM had known all his life. J was once a good, quiet boy that made awesome grades and easily scored a full ride for college. But, somewhere along his path, and at a point way beyond where most young people flail, Holsemback became addicted to huffing gas of all things. He was done with college, ready to start a career and all that jazz, but instead just sort of drowned inside a gas can. His whole life was nothing but huffing gas.

Every time I saw him after that I grew more and more disgusted. When he was lucid, he was still nice and funny, but the can was always there with him. And when he was full blown huffed out, he was creepy if not outright scary. To him, there was a whole kingdom inside his gas can and he called it the land of garning. Apparently there were people in there and he knew all about their day-to-day activities. There was a king and a queen and always a lot of “adventuring” happening at any given moment.

For all I know, there is an actual “land of garning” whether it be a real place or a place inside a piece of fiction, but I’d never heard of it before, nor have I since.

Needless to say, I was no longer crushing on him. Even if I could have gotten past the creepiness, which I couldn’t, he reeked to high heaven at all times and was clearly in no shape for romance of any sort.

The second person was a man named S. Gonzalez. He was probably in his mid-twenties and lived alone in his own mobile home in a trailer park on the Gordon Highway across from Ft. Gordon in Grovetown, Georgia.

The first time I met S I was with my sister and brother-in-law and we were walking through Grovetown because no one had a car back then…we walked everywhere we went. Eventually we came across S and a prostitute named Rita.

After talking for a while, we all ducked off the road into a little stand of trees to smoke a joint. Rita pulled out some Southern Comfort and we all just sat a while together. Then S did something else. He opened up a brown paper bag that had an empty bread sack inside and started huffing. I had seen enough huffers to know it was silver krylon spray paint. Ick.

But, man, S was so good-looking: tall and lean with gorgeous eyes in a Hispanic complexion. I figured it was just an occasional thing he did, or maybe I was just hoping. I was a teenager, after all, and a boy-crazy one at that.

The next and last time I met S, my brother, my sister, my brother-in-law and I did a bunch of mushrooms and walked all the way out to his trailer. The walk out there was fun. It was just getting dark and everything had cooled off nicely and we were all in a good mood.

I was in for a shock when I got to his place though. This is no exaggeration, but every visible inch of that trailer was covered in silver spray paint. It was on the walls, the ceiling, the carpet, the furniture, the lamps, ashtrays, dishes, books, magazines…even the toilet paper. And the smell! Ugh, it was just horrible. Obviously, his spray paint habit was full-time hardcore.

Well, the night progressed and the mushrooms began to really kick in and S. Gonzalez began to really freak me out. He hovered around me and tried several times to initiate a make-out session, but oh hell no I was not going for that. I cowered away from him and couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there. My sister said he tried messing with her, too.

I sometimes wonder about J and S. If I was a foretelling kind of person, I would predict them either dead at this point, or severely and permanently brain-damaged. But, I hope they were able to muck through it all somehow. Maybe I should have asked my brother-in-law about them before he died of a drug overdose himself some years later.

The main thing about these two guys is that they were able to do something for me that no one else ever could. I’ve seen some hairy stuff in my lifetime like heroin and other drug overdoses, and serious alcoholic effects, but none of that ever kept me away from those things. However, my experiences with J and S convinced me of one thing very, very clearly: do not, under any circumstances ever huff anything.

I was thinking about these guys the other day for some strange reason so just thought I’d blog about them.

This reinforces the idea that for me, life is good.

wasted day

I did get one article done, then when I was washing dishes I had a great idea for a story.  I sat down to work on that and then became obsessed with setting up a dumbass acronym for a fictional organization in the story.  After about an hour pissing around with that I realized I was just avoiding the actual writing because I honestly didn’t even need a gimmicky acronym.  All told I got a paragraph and a half written for the whole afternoon.  It’s almost time to make dinner so I’ll close the file and I’ll probably never open it again.  It can join the other files (on the other computer, acourse) that were started and then forgotten.

Bright side?  Maybe I’ll open the file tomorrow and write some more.  I did take notes before I started writing.

I watched the premiere of “The Cleaner” (Benjamin Bratt as William Banks) last night on A&E (I don’t have cable TV and don’t want cable TV, but somehow I have A&E and TBS).   I know it’s based on a real guy that’s helped hundreds of addicts and who literally talks to god, but I could have done without the religious element.  Though to be fair, that aspect was pretty slight.  It was a decent show, I thought.  Maybe I’ll catch it next week; I’m anxious to see how realistic the addicts are.  I don’t think it was a deep enough look to be able to form an opinion from one episode, but the dialogue was good…natural…funny.   Had some sad bits, too.

Okay, I’ve hardly been outside today so I’m going to go out and have a cigarette before I cook.  I can see a potential problem with being way down here at the bottom.  There will be days I’ll have to make myself take the stairs up and then the ones down to get some fresh air, but at least my cigarette consumption has been dramatically reduced because I’ve decided there’s no smoking inside anymore.

Have a good day.  Life is good.

my inner geek LOVES dr. horrible’s sing-along blog

As the LA Times reports, Joss Whedon’s new internet series, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, is a site-crashing success.

Starring Neil Patrick Harris (Dr. Horrible), Nathan Fillion (Captain Hammer), and Felicia Day (Penny), this show is a silly, charming, sweet-spot on the web.

Watch act 1 immediately…before the server crashes again.

disinfestation one

My father had pet names for all five of us kids, but I can only seem to recall two of them. He called me Sally and he called my sister Trinka-Jean. He used to sit me on the arm of the sofa and gently push my chest so I would start to fall backwards at which point he would “catch” me and call out Sal-LY. I don’t know why but it was great big fun for me, but then I was just a wee thing and I adored my father.

At one point in my very early childhood Daddy worked the evening shift, or at least a late shift for a while. The rest of us would have dinner and then when he got home he would sit at the kitchen table and have his own dinner. Even though I had already eaten, I would always sneak into the kitchen, climb up in his lap and he would feed me from his plate. It’s one of my favorite things to remember. Things seemed good then…really good. But I wonder if they truly were.

When I look back now, I realize that I always knew there was a big problem in my family, but children are resilient by nature and skilled at mucking through the shadows to find the ray of light. Also, for all I knew, every family in the world was like mine, and in a way, maybe they all were/are. Anyway, I learned early on to hang on to the good stuff…as most children do.

In the case of my family, the elephant in the room seemed to be Daddy’s alcoholism. At least that was the main focus for us all; the impetus for every decision made; the fault for every hardship endured; the sometimes-not-so-secret shame suffered by one and all. To say that it crippled the growth of my family is a dramatic understatement.

But — and not one of my siblings has ever vocalized this notion to me — what damage did the reaction of my father’s family incur? He received no support, he enjoyed no tolerance, he was offered no understanding. He shouldered that great burden of blame and shuffled on through, probably without a clue about how to get himself and his loved ones healed. For most of his life he was a functioning alcoholic, though there were certainly lapses in his ability to carry on. He had a wife and five kids to feed and for the most part he managed to do so even while constantly being undermined by my mother and shunned by the rest of the family.

I think how awful it must have been to know that everyone he loved expected nothing more than failure and disappointment from him every single day. How can a person ever be any more than that when it is so deeply embedded into the matrix of their existence? I think for that era of American society it was nearly impossible for a poverty-level, working class man to extricate himself from such a weary life, especially when not a single person on the face of the earth understood or supported him.

I’m so ashamed of the way I regarded and treated my daddy as I got older. It’s one of my deepest regrets.

The thing about Daddy is that even though he had basically no education, he was a smart man with good ideas. But because he was an alcoholic, no one ever believed him. No one seemed to have any faith in him whatsoever. He was right about a lot of things but his troubles were many.

I believe I have more insight into Daddy’s personality because I’m the youngest of the five. There are six years between my brother and me while the rest of them were all born pretty close together. I saw a lot of things they never saw and even though I was too young to have such awareness, I understood what most of it meant.

I made it through the first forty years of my life not thinking too much about all this. Oh sure, I had my moments of introspection and each one of them offered me another nugget of enlightenment, but it really wasn’t until about three years ago that my thoughts began to turn to my childhood more and more and more. Probably because of my son and my own family problems. I was struck by a sick-feeling need that I knew I could never fill in any traditional way. Suddenly I felt like I really needed to first try and complete my understanding of the family dynamics when I was growing up, and second to make amends for the way I interacted with my family…especially my parents…most especially my father. I believe this will be a key factor in achieving my own emotional and mental health.

That’s a hefty task considering that both of my parents have died, but maybe I can still pull it off in my mind and my heart even if only for my own peace.

I’m not a christian; I don’t believe in god; but I do believe that every person born has an energy that doesn’t ever disappear, even in death. So, maybe there’s a way to find peace.

Now that I’ve revealed a huge chunk of my flakiness I will sign off and say…life is good.

blech!

What a crappy weekend.

I found out that the man we rented the apartment from…the manager, not the owner…is moving away. So, guess who the new managers are? That’s right…the noise-makers from above. So, if things should get out of control with the noise and the parties, who can I file a complaint with? No one.

Also, my lease says no pets, but there is a dog that pitter-patters all day long upstairs, and I’ve counted three cats so far in the window of the apartment on the very top. Yet, I can’t have one.

Such is my life.

I’m having deep, deep, deep regrets about this place. I sort of feel like a prisoner who peeks out of my bars all day, but can’t actually seem to get out of here.

Eh, it’ll pass.

Truth is, I’m just in a crappy mood. On Friday, I had no less than four episodes of flashers in both eyes when I was trying to work. Needless to say, I had to stop. And anyway, I can’t do a thing with this laptop…I get warnings and freeze-ups and most programs just shut themselves off without any warning, and there’s still no money to get my computer fixed.  I should really just give up on it all and maybe get a fricking waitress job or something.

Plus, I’m terribly, terribly lonely. I’ve tried numerous times to reconnect with my friends but I honestly think I’m being ignored and merely tolerated. LM was supposed to get back with me about a job opp and a lunch date, but…nada. And that’s only one example.

Okay, well I’m just full of complaints so I’ll drag myself outta this and see what I can accomplish today.

Life is good.

Coffee Break

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve made the semi-upsetting realization that I get on my son’s nerves. I know, I know…most parents do, but I thought things were different with us. I suspect this is because even at nineteen years of age, he can’t seem to remember to do small things like wash his elbows, so I sort of bug him about those things. It’s for his own good (and mine because I’d really like to have a grandchild one day in the future) as poor personal hygiene is not generally known to attract girls. Not that he’s nasty or anything, I just hate seeing those elbows like that and there are a couple of other issues, too. Sometimes when you work in a job like his, it takes more than a soapy swipe to clean yourself, you know.

To make matters worse, his dad tells me I should hush about it one minute or I’ll make him move out before he’s ready, and then the next minute he says as a mother I should be telling him these things.

Whomever says that women are emotional and indecisive have clearly never met some of the men I know.

One of the upstairs girls continues to irritate me beyond description. There are two of them; one walks, talks, and just exists in a quiet, peaceful way while the other one lumbers across the floor hard enough to shake the walls, talks so loudly that I can hear every word she says, slams doors and cupboards, and even yells up at the other one from right in front of my GD window: “Back soon, honey! I love you!” And then, even though it’s fricking 90 degrees in July, she sometimes starts her behemoth of a vehicle then goes back inside for twenty minutes while exhaust fumes and noise just pour into my apartment. I actually have to shut the windows till she leaves.

But, I’m just blowing off steam about it. I fully understand that it could be a thousand times worse. At least her noise is everyday noise (only louder than most folks) instead of drunken rants or arguments or whatever. I’m just not used to it, I suppose.

‘Nuff about that.

I decided today that I’m going to hold off on the job. I can’t do that kind of work with this old laptop, which lags horribly and shuts down at random intervals. All that work stuff was honestly stressing me out to a maximum level so I decided to pursue some of my article leads until I make enough money to repair my computer. If they still want me after I’ve gotten the thing fixed, I’ll give it another shot.

There, I feel better about it already.

Recently I saw “Jumper”, 10,000 BC”, both “28 Days Later” and “28 Weeks Later”, and “The Number 23″. “Jumper” bites, “10,000 BC was decent, love both the “28 Days/Weeks” movies (I liked the first one best), and quite enjoyed “The Number 23″ as well. I also watched “Waitress” again…love that movie. It rocks. Next film for me is “Death at a Funeral” because I love Alan Tudyk.

Okay, off to do some work now.

Life is good.

Daily Toiling … Almost Over

Whew…I’m tired.

At this point there are only three “visible” boxes left to unpack.  The unnecessary stuff has been stored away for now though I have no doubt that one day I’ll have to tear through each one in search of this or that thing that has suddenly become quite necessary.  I did try to label each box but some were whisked right out from under my fingertips as soon as the flaps were secured.  No matter, though; at least everything is moved.

I admit that there are a few items left in the van that no one has the will to unload as yet.  I say, take it to the transfer station at the dump because obviously it’s not needed, but I’ve been overruled a few times on that notion.

So, apartment life is tough!  Last weekend the couple upstairs had a party that lasted, well, all weekend.  I don’t like that at all.  Not even one little bit, but what can I do?  Not a thing, that’s what.  No matter what I like or don’t like, I have to live here for at least one year (though honestly I hope it’s longer than that) so it will come to no good to make enemies of my closest neighbors.  All I can do is hope it was an isolated incident and with this being 4th of July weekend I guess we’ll see what happens.  To their credit they were reasonably quiet but they had a little bar-b-q right in front of the shared entrance so that it was difficult — putting it mildly — to get in and out.  Also, one of their guests stole our parking space twice then wanted to have an attitude when I politely asked about it…until he caught sight of BT, that is, then the attitude vanished.  The people that live there did apologize for it, so that’s good, but they are without a doubt the noisiest people on earth.  I’ll get used to it I suppose.

I’ve been working every day to get things in order here and for a while I was a bit disheartened.  There were only paths between stacks of boxes and virtually no elbow room so I wondered how it was all going to fit, but now I have to admit that my worry was for naught.  We had to put one of the big bookshelves in the hallway, which is thankfully pretty wide, but otherwise it all fit fairly well and now I have a ton of space in the living room.  The kitchen is pretty small…like it was added as an afterthought…but I have “just” enough space for everything because I’m also using my big white cabinet as a pantry of sorts.

LT got the big bedroom this time because he forked over money for the move (a good sized chunk, in fact) and because he spends a LOT more time in his room than I ever will in mine.  Also, he was crammed in that tiny trailer bedroom for four years without a complaint so I think he’s earned it.  The deal is that he must keep it clean and tidy; so far, he has not complied.

I got my deposit back on the trailer, minus the electric bill for June, which was 166 dollars (yikes!).  I was incredibly nervous when doing the walk through with the landlord because at the time we moved in he was using a property manager so I didn’t know if he had any idea about all the things that were wrong with the place.  I worked harder than I’ve ever worked on cleaning it up and it paid off because he loved it.  We really needed that money, too.  Big sigh of relief.

All right, all I have left to do here is a bit of picky cleaning here and there.  All my years working in a hotel comes in handy at times like these.  We used to shut down a wing at a time every year during the off season for “fine cleaning” at which time we moved appliances for deep cleaning, repaired damage, repainted, recaulked, shampooed everything that had fibers or fabric, and just generally made the guest rooms spotlessly clean and fresh.  I’ll try to do that here and best of all is that I won’t have to stop and put everything back in place so a hockey team can move in for three days and screw it all up again.

Next week I plan to start working, writing, whatever, and it will be so good to be back in the semi-swing of things.  Hopefully, this old laptop will keep up the good work.

Y’all have a great holiday weekend.  Life is good.