THANKSGIVING

Before I know it, Thanksgiving is upon us.  Just like that. Even though I usually pretty much dig the holidays, I am just not into it this year. Don’t want to mix with people now. Don’t feel like making small talk with the SWAT team of something like one-hundred-and-twenty ravenous, loud relatives. Aunts, uncles, grandmothers and cousins are about to descend on the house. A bunch of them are making the annual journey here from the hallowed ancestral grounds of Brooklyn, for the feast. Mostly, I guess, I’m just not up to fending off the inevitable artillery of questions and barbs regarding my somewhat shaggy afro, my glasses, and especially, my clothes. My purple pants and purple silk screen shirt, particularly, seems to really provoke white people. My father, for one, despises that ensemble.

“You look like one of those goddamned fruits from The Ice Capades, for crissakes, prancing around here in that get up.”

My sisters are calling me “Rooster,” in reference to the black pimp character from Baretta.  

Thanksgiving arrives anyway, despite my foreboding. All the siblings and cousins wind up sitting at one long table in the living room, as usual. It reminds me of the painting of The Last Supper I saw at Esperanza’s house. The heavy-duty adults occupy two other tables in the dining room.

I remain sullen, until about the time tales from the old days begin circulating around the table. Then I just can’t help but join in on the guffawing and the fun, and pretty soon my mood lightens up considerably. It’s like somebody turns on a cosmic switch, and everything is brighter. I’m in my element now - I’m in the storytelling spotlight. I go into the one about the time that me, Ricky, and Skinny somehow convince Daniel Webb to let us make a dummy using his best Sunday clothes, and one of his mother’s Styrofoam wig-heads.  While me and Ricky are laying it down on the curb to scare the shit out of cars and passer-byes, Skinny sneaks up to the payphone and calls the cops. Like, five minutes later, the cops pull up - we scatter - and they load the dummy into their trunk and drive away. With Daniel’s pants legs hanging out!

Man, the look on his face when he has to tell his mother! Oh shit, now that is funny… especially when she has to go down to the police station to reclaim the clothes! He gets a few raps on the head. We’re all howling, everybody taking turns recounting their stories, although we’re always interrupting each other with forgotten details. I’m secretly sneaking red wine from the adult’s table into my glass of Coke, and everything is a belly laugh.  Man, I love those belly laughs. The feast part is finishing up, night has already fallen, and we all agree to embark on our most recent tradition (the second year) of getting together with the McBride sisters. All of us, my sisters, my cousins - everybody - to go see a movie at Park Theater. I’m buzzed pretty good now, and the idea of seeing Kyla again has me all perked up. I dash up to my room, and pluck a joint from my Sucrets box of secret stash. It’s ulterior motive time.

THE LONG DOWNWARD SPIRAL

Joey continues his downward spiral from the Esperanza fallout!

The next night, I decide to buy that dime bag of Jamaican from Marc, and I pass the next few timeless days and nights, toking up by myself. I like this feeling. I mean, I really like this feeling. The solitude, too. I realize I also enjoy fucking with people, just like I did with Fat Jim that other night. It’s fun! I want to do more of it. Forget Esperanza. The hell with trying to understand freakin’ spirituality. This is my new religion - smoking up and fucking with people.
“Hey Marc, I want that hash, man.” I declare a few nights later, through the steam of the dishwasher. Marc halts in mid-scrub and looks at me proudly, as if I had just taken it up another level, or something.
“Yeah, dude - excellent choice!
Excellent!”
Marc has been philosophizing about its grandeur for, like, a week now, touting the miraculous benefits it beholds.
“Dude…this is, like, going to totally obliterate your perception of this reality, man, it’s-”
“I’m ready man.”
“Yeah…check it out man” he says as he pulls out a chunk of neatly wrapped aluminum foil from his army jacket pocket. This is what the Navajo Indians used, man. They’d, like, ingest this in their rituals, right, and then, like, totally go off into these other dimensions, man! They’d be turning into, like, wolves, and eagles, and shit…flying away, and coming back with these visions and prophecies and -
“Whoa! That’s bugged out, man”
I whisper in a kind of semi-belief.
I hand over twenty-five dollars for the privilege of turning into a bird. As a present, he even throws in an authentic ceramic hash pipe.
“Dude, he confides to me in a tone of reverence usually reserved only for Jethro Tull.
This shit is fuckin’ sacred, man.”
He must be right too. Although I remember very little of that first experiment with hash, I do recall this overwhelming need to save the soul of Jack the Barber, for some reason. Then later going up to his shop, and trying to drink a bottle of his Wild Root hair tonic.

DRUGS AND MADNESS

The days after Esperanza cuts Joey down - he spirals downward into destructive behavior

Blurry, gloomy days pass me by.  My routine becomes dominated by the whole panorama of suffering and longing that is apparently the human condition. Every night I come home from The Fox Hole, and laconically wait for my parents to go up to bed. Prowl silently up the attic stairs to my sister’s bedroom, where they’re dead asleep, and snatch Maryanne’s Eagles album, Desperado. Listen intently to Desperado, and Tequila Sunrise, in the darkness of the living room. Maybe twenty-times, maybe twenty-five. I don’t know. Night after night. I want more from those songs. I need more. I need answers. Every night, I hope tonight is the night it all becomes clear to me. Then I haul it back up to the attic, placing it exactly the same way I found it. I would never admit to liking the Eagles to my sisters, of course. No way. To them, I trash the Eagles. White hillbilly music, I call it. Totally uncool. Nor would I admit it to anybody else – except Esperanza, and only because  she loves their song, Hotel California. Nothing much alleviates the violent B&E (breaking and entering) of my soul, though.

I buy a spliff from my stoner dishwashing partner, Marc, at The Fox Hole. He’s known to have the most excellent stuff this side of the Yukon. First time I ever actually buy a joint, but fuck it! If it makes me feel better, then it’s worth it. Tonight, I smoke it up walking home through the desolate streets, and now again in the morning on the way to school, too. I don’t want to smoke with anybody, or talk to anyone, either. The next day I go to buy another joint, but Marc say’s this one’s on the house. Says he can get me some killer Jamaican, and some serious hash, too.  I tell him I’ll think about it.  

So, I’m on my way home after work, and I’m kinda stoned already, because me and Marc sparked up while we were doing the dishes. Then we drank a couple of Heinekens we stole from the basement, and now I toke up again. The wind is whipping up something fierce tonight, battering the creaky tree branches into a howling frenzy.  I’m puffing - deep, hearty tokes of that comforting Hawaiian, stokes up a nice warm fire inside my chest. Going down smooth, too, not like last night when I was choking my ass off. The mind starts to wander now, it wants to meander along on its own little road trip. Suddenly, the branches become sinister shelters. Behind any tree trunk could be a debaucherous villain -laying in ambush mode…waiting…waiting…

Goosebumps rise up and down my arms and neck. I can feel the presence of pure evil lurking nearby, so I surround my neck with my upturned collar, hoping to fend off the upcoming barbarianism.  

Steady.  Steady. Stay sharp, I try to reason with the mind, but the mind doesn’t want to hear any of that.  Onward I traipse, caution in every footstep. I step haltingly, cautiously into the icy night, paranoid that any footprint forward may be my last. What’s that noise? Uh oh. It could be anyone – anything - crouching behind that looming oak tree.  Maybe even Mr. Sulu. Mr. Sulu from Star Trek?! Oh shit. Ha-ha-heh. Mr. Fucking Sulu!  Maybe he’ll Kung Fu me to the neck - Haang-Yaaa! I can’t stop laughing now - freakin’ hilarious, can’t breathe…oh, what a fucking high! I gotta get some munchies-munchies! Three Musketeers bar. Gotta get one…no-fuck that! Three – three - four - Three Musketeers bars!  Massive craving. I turn down Third Avenue…must have Three –

Cumberland Farms! Yeah! Fat Jim -here I come! Whoa! As I enter the store, Fat Jim is immersed in the Bible, the wooden cross on his leather necklace prominently hanging on his white polyester short-sleeved shirt.

“Hiya Jim!” I greet him with a totally mental grin. I haven’t been here since the window shattering incident. Fat Jim grimaces in a very un-Christian-like manner.

I’m way too stoned to keep a straight face, and I’m giggling dementedly. He frowns, scowls, and goes back to his Bible, but my focus is on those Three Musketeers bars. I could afford to buy a couple, but I just want to fuck with Fat Jim. I want to pocket them. I pace down the aisles now, picking up Aunt Jemima’s Buckwheat Pancake Mix, and a jar of Marshmallow Fluff. I’m scrutinizing the ingredients as if they are of great interest to me. Waiting for my chance.  He spies my every move, one eye on the Bible, the other on me. As if on cue now, Mrs. Acker wobbles chaotically into the store, pulled mercilessly by her yapping little dog, Fritz.  

“Oh dear Jesus, thank God you’re still open. I never thought I was going to make it! She gasps and wheezes.

“Phew…just let me catch my breath…”

“Fritz, for the love of God, will you stop that infernal barking! I need a jar of mayonnaise – Hellmann’s - Mr. Jim…”

I see my opportunity. Fritz is racing around in circles, his leash getting caught on everything near him. I head back to the refrigerator with my other items, and pull out a quart of Cumberland Farms Grade A milk, laboring my way back to the counter, my arms full. Suddenly, my legs become ‘accidentally’ tangled up in Fritz’s leash. I careen back and forth like a drunken circus clown on stilts, juggling the quart of milk like it’s some lethal game of hackey-sack. Fritz whirls around in frenzied circles, and finally, I smash into the candy bar rack. The milk, pancake mix, and a cache of Snickers bars, Clark bars, and the coveted Three Musketeers bars, all fly into a sort of slow motion orbit. Fat Jim’s and Mrs. Acker’s eyes light up. The milk pirouettes through the atmosphere, finally plummeting to the floor with a loud SPLAT! Spraying everyone and everything in its circumference, I roll around on the floor, collecting as many Three Musketeers bars as I can, while stuffing them into my pockets.

Curses. Squeals. Yelps. Fritz furiously shaking the liquid from his tiny body.

A livid, milk-drenched Fat Jim shakes his fist angrily at me, as I get up and prance out the door, contented with my acquisitions.  

“Be gone, ye heathenish perpetrator of the condemned!”

“Ye heathenish perpetrator of the condemned?”

Fat Jim has obviously overdosed on that Bible.I roar with laughter at that scene all the way home, the picture of Fat Jim and his glasses covered with milk. Ah, that Three Musketeers bar tastes good! Yeah.

THE TOTAL BREAKDOWN

Joey is at Tijeras de Oro, Esperanza's salon - and he is determined to confront her about that guy in purple!

I whisper in her ear, asking if she’ll have a minute soon to go outside and talk. She’s busy right now, she says, but maybe in 15-20 minutes she can take a cigarette break. I say ok, and go back outside to breathe in the day. Purchasing some Chiclets, I begin ponder the upcoming showdown. I get back, we go outside, and she gives me a kiss on the lips before she lights up her cigarette.
“So, where you been, baby?” She twinkles her eyes like she does, and I start to melt and buckle. But, somehow I manage to hold on.
“I be wondering, where my little papi at?” she says through an exhale of smoke.
The Eagles song, Lying Eyes, suddenly races through my head.
“I been around, you know, working, keeping busy…
I’m being as nonchalant and cavalier as possible, as I continue chewing my gum. I’m trying to figure out what tack I could take, to confront her about this guy in purple.
“I called a couple of times, but nobody answered.”
“Oh yeah, my abuelita’s been sick this week, poor thing, she been in bed and everything. So she, like, couldn’t get up for the phone, or nothing.”
Smoke-smoke-puff-puff-exhale-gum-chewing-chew-chew. Nobody says anything for a minute or so, until she turns to me, almost like she suddenly remembers that I’m still standing next to her. I’m studying her face, searching for my ‘in’.
“So…what did you want to talk to me about, baby?” she smiles provocatively.
“Um…y’know, Esperanza, that Saturday night, y’ know, when we went out…and then we were in the car together? Y’know, that was kind of – great.”
She pinches my cheek.
“Oh, you so cute. Yeah, that was fun for me too.”
I feel myself quickly succumbing to her beauty, to her charm, once again. I fight the urge to collapse, to just give in. This time, I got to stand my ground.
“Um…so, like, yeah, so like last week -Thursday? I’m coming up to see you, right, and I’m, like, across the street down there, and then - I see you with this guy…you’re both standing here? He’s, like, wearing all purple (sigh)? First, you’re all, like, yelling at him, and shit - and then you slap him and -
“Oh, honey - that’s Hector,” she says matter-of-factly.
“Who…what…what was going on? I mean…”
“Oh, we was having a little argument and shit, that’s all.”
“I mean, but…like - who is he, this guy Hector?”
“I know Hector for a looong time baby, from around the barrio.”
“But…but - who is he? Like, your boyfriend, or something?”
She lets out a long drag of smoke.
“You could say that…like, yeah - we got, like, a history together”
“But… but - how come (gulp) you never, like…told me?”
She looks at me now as if for the first time, she realizes what I’m talking about. A mix between surprise - and like she’s trying to suppress a smile, or a laugh.
“Oh…papi…you…thought…you thought – we was like boyfriend and girlfriend, or something?”
I look at her silently. I feel the flush, the crimson, the embarrassment, rise up into my face.
“Oh, baby…I’m so sorry! I didn’t know you –“
She tries to pull me towards her, tries to caress me, but I move away.
“But – we – we…you took me to your house…we like - did it - in your car?!”
I’m hoarse now, almost yelling.
“Baby, I do like you! You’re so sweet! You painted that mural of me, and that’s, like, the sweetest thing anybody ever did for me…so I wanted to give you a present. Like a fantasy, y know? Hector, y’ know, we been like, together…like knowing each other, for a long time-”
“He’s your dealer too? (I snap) He get you your-”
“What?!”
You’re…on…doing…something Esperanza! Why…why do you do that to yourself? You’re so…so beautiful! You could…you could – do – be anything you want.”
“You don’t know what it’s like in the barrio, papi. It’s different than where you come from. He-he helps me…he helps me – you don’t know… you too young…you too young!”
I turn around.
She continues to talk, and then yell, as I walk away, but I can’t hear her. I don’t want to hear her. The whole world is a blank.
I know if I had stayed one more minute- one more second-I was going to break down. Bug out big time. Just keep walking. Storming down the street, I’m blistering. Blustering. God!! These fucking people staring at me. What the hell are you looking at?! Get the fuck outta my way! I don’t yell, but I’m looking for someone to just bump me. Just let them make eye contact, even. Shame. Intense, profound shame.
Epic shame. Alienation. I don’t want to be part of this human race, anyway. Somehow, I make it down to Warnanco Park. Just get to the wooded part. Get to the wooded part - and you’ll be all right. You can exhale. Throw up. Whatever. I sit there on the ground, on the crunchy dead leaves, with my purple pants, my purple shirt, and my black coat. I feel every bit of meaning, every shred of identity, every sense of who I think I am, has been sucked out of me. Like I’m a human Slurpee, and the only thing that’s left is the misted concoction of super-sweet chemicals at the bottom of the plastic Big Gulp cup.
She was going to laugh at me! Why don’t you just lop my fuckin’ johnson right off, huh? It would be less painful. The ultimate castration. Who am I now, anyway? I can’t go back to who I was, or what I was, before I met Esperanza – because I have no idea of who that person even was. Like I never existed before I met her. I’m unformed. Like a fetus. I lie down in that fetal position on the cold hard ground, on top of the brown crunchy dead leaves.