Seams

I had no plan. I had these $5,000 checks--thanks, Navy--but I owed payments on my car. Plus there was something horribly wrong with--can I say dick? A big fucking light colored scab. Everything was basically bad.

It was bleak. I was in my car and it was dark and rainy at like 4:42 PM. I thought: "Let's head down to the Tacoma Narrows bridge and just jump. That's a plan." My brain just goes to that. Like, "Just fuck this shit!" But I didn't.

I drove. Over the narrows to Seattle. Naturally I went to the pool hall. I had a key--I'm still close friends with David Bersenadze, a father figure. Golden Fleece Billiards! So there's a couch, I have a key. I just started staying there.

I needed work. One of my customers, Alex--who'd regularly shell out eighty or one fifty for the opportunity to learn a little something--I told him I need a job. He's like, "Great. I've got a manager I'd love to fire." To cut the other manager out on tips, I was put in as some cousin of a Patsy.

I interviewed with Alicia two doors down from the club. She was impressed, and I started managing at Sands Showgirls. I enrolled at South Seattle community College, and the GI Bill was $2,600 a month plus paying for my classes, but I had class full time and I was working the strip club full time. I would go to the first seven minutes of my last class then screech up to Ballard to go to work all day.

I was making at least $5,000 a month. Balling out of control. I was like "I got a car, I got a job, I got school, I got all this money, there's strippers everywhere, I'm gonna do some drugs. That's what I'm gonna do. This is gonna be great." And I was absolutely obsessed with pool. I'd go to school until noon, work noon to eight, play pool until two. I would go from the pool hall to the coke dealer. Suddenly it's six in the morning, I'd better blow my nose and take a shower. Do it all again.

That lasted a year. Then I had to drop school. In retrospect, that's the last thing I should have dropped. I'm 30 now and I wish I could go back and beat some sense into myself, but I never had the discipline for it. I didn't have a good excuse, I used sophomore philosophy to tell myself that school was bullshit. Anyway, I got out of school and had this money that I now still owe from the GI Bill and I used drugs to spend the money. "He used drugs to spend the money." Whatever.

I found some DXM pills--it's fun to drive on those--went back to my place, and when they started coming I sat on a curb and scarfed some mushrooms. I love a curb. When I woke up I couldn't really speak. Really high voice and couldn't make my mouth do stuff. I must have hit one of them reset buttons you need a pen cap to hit.

So I quit everything. I just did. Smoking. Drinking. Drugs. I was feeling good. I was hitting the deck, twenty push-ups every 15 minutes. I was a powerful animal.

I was playing the best pool of my life. A bunch of road players were in from Texas, professionals, and I was beating them. My mind was running a mile a minute. Then it ran two miles a minute, and that's when I had a problem. I started connecting a lot of things I didn't need to. Every single object, every person, because everything is a color and colors had meaning.

There were factions and an impending war. The tangle of problems was insurmountable and I was watching a cat climb the tree in my yard. I called my aunt Theresa, and they took me to the hospital. They made me voluntarily self-admit. I didn't want to--I didn't understand what I was signing. I tried to make a break for it. I remember looking back at my uncle who was chasing me and he had this look on his face, desperate and hopeless, eyes wide. He's jogging after me, but knows he can't catch me and I probably won't listen to him. He's scared.

I found this van stuck up against a light pole, the driver needed help. My family caught up--my uncle and aunt and other uncle--and I got them to help push. Blue van. We needed to join Team Blue. That was our last chance before Team Gray got us, because my uncle's car was a Gray Tesla and he was taking me to a Gray hospital. If I joined Team Gray that was end. We got the van in motion and I jumped in the van. "Come on guys, get in, we gotta get outta here, let's go." But they didn't. And the guy whose van it was must have been thinking: "Wow, this is something else."

They took me back to the hospital, and I absolutely refused to let 'em take my blood. They were going to run a diagnostic on it, figure out what my glitch was, and then use that to make other robot people better. I had working theories. I remember thinking "you can't have my blood; that's my property." I'm out here "sovereign citizen" on this shit, not giving them my blood, and they say "Great. So you're not leaving. You're staying here overnight until you give us your blood. You are stuck here, asshole." I said "Wait! No, I'll give you my blood!" and it was too late, too late. I was alone.

They took my clothes, gave me a paper gown, but I refused to give them my underwear. That was their mistake. The door wasn't even locked. Someone brought me apple juice. Oh I get it, apples--teachers; they're trying to restart my programming with education. I dashed out, left the paper gown. Someone called "Wait." Someone did the arms-and-leg-wide stand-in-the-middle-of-the-hallway thing. I gave one juke and they were done for and I ran out of that joint. 'Cuz most people are not ready to be in sports at any given moment.

I got out of the hospital and thought I had lost a dimension, downgraded to a lesser animal. Walking down the street in my underwear, people were looking at me like a stray dog, like, "Huh, weird, that's unusual but whatever, they're not part of my dimension." I don't have my phone, my wallet, my keys--any of that shit. I don't have any clothes. How do I start from nothing?

Hang on. I wanna get a cigarette. Hang on a second.

So I'm in dog mode, I dog-walked my way up to Ballard High and I see the teachers striking. There was a mob. Pickets. They were shaking them at the cars. They wanted more money. They were all wearing red. They seemed like a team. Team Red. Team Gray is definitely bad, so maybe Team Red? Everybody was forming teams. It made plenty of sense for me, as a shirtless person, to say: "Clearly I'm unaffiliated." So I asked for affiliation: "Hey, I want to join team red, will you take me in? I don't know what you stand for. You stand for Red. Fine."

They were compassionate, concerned teachers. They brought me clothes and shoes from the lost and found. Kept me docile until the police showed up. Like a stray dog. Even the way the police talked to me, with softness. "Come on, it's okay, come with us." So I hop in the back of the car, and they take me to a higher security room in the hospital.

Just before they usher me into the room, I realize I'm about to be locked up, so I turn and I try to escape again. I barreled through a guy who was at least 250 pounds, the look of fear in his eyes--that's how I knew I had him--I was so animalistic. I put him on his ass. And then there was another guy who was like, "I will tase you." I remember going from full athlete mode, like "I'm a football player and I'm going over there" to this guy pulling out a taser and I just deactivated. Emotionlessly, immediately. Alright, you win. I'll go back in.

I went ballistic. The gurney thing I was on, I flipped it across the room. I was banging on the walls. I yelled a lot. I exhausted myself. I was half dead, half ethereal. I had a bottle with a little water in it and I was thinking, "Well, when that's gone, I'm gone. It's my remaining soul." I promised myself to God, so we could get through the situation favorably. I righted the gurney, picked up the food tray and went around the room picking up every piece of lint I could find and putting it on the tray. Trying to atone.

A crisis responder shows up to the window. I was very glad to find a person, an interact-able thing that maybe could help me.

I said, "Tell me exactly what you want me to do."

He said "I want you to lie down on that bed."

"How long?"

"Five minutes."

"How long is five minutes?" I'm getting more intense, "How long is five minutes? I don't have a clock in here! I don't know what that is!"

He said "I, I don't know. I don't know how long. It's five minutes!"

I laid down. In the next room over my entire family, grandma, grandpa, aunts and uncles, crying and discussing how they were gonna have to put me down. I made peace with it. Just had to let them kill me because I didn't have any other moves. I laid there and waited to die, then six people, orderly on Team Gray, came in and held me down. They strapped me to the bed and pulled out a needle. It was a euthanasia. I was ready, and they stuck me.

Of course, it was some kind of tranquilizer. They rolled me out, I didn't fall asleep, they put me in an ambulance. Looking out the back window, I couldn't see any lines or textures, but the sources of light. The streetlights were stars, just riding. It was very lovely. I was just watching the stars. I ended up in Cascade Behavioral in Kent.

Right away I'm figuring out how to get out. I'm a sovereign citizen, baby. I'm reading over the laws they have to post on the wall. I got a pencil and paper. I'm trying to Better Call Saul my way out of this joint. Two beds to a room, a desk in the hallway. A sign next to a locked door said "be careful of elope." I was making philosophical arguments with the desk guy and the guy who was trying to diagnose me and help me, made them both painstakingly define every term, quibble on every word.

I was in there three days. I got some visits I can't remember very well. John Paul and Gus, Theresa, my mother. This is after she called Seattle PD to issue a death threat. I was popping these pills, I mean, they were telling me to pop these pills. I felt my mind come through, I was ready to get outta there.

I was in there with some really no bullsiht loony people. One guy walked end to end forever in the halls all day long. A big beard, old guy. Eyes like he was on meth even though he couldn't have been. I asked him "Why are you walking?" He answered me. He'd never said a word to anybody, so the staff was asking me, "What did he say?"

There was another guy who saw me reading the bible and said "Oh, you're trying to solve the millennium puzzle. It'll drive you insane." Now I laugh, but I didn't want to be around that.

My mom and aunt didn't feel I was ready to get out, so they took action. I was stuck for two more weeks. Not helpful. I got switched to the suicidal wing which was better. They put me in a room without a door. That's misleading; it sounds like the opposite of what it is when it was decidedly an unclosable space. There was a computer I could use, I got on Facebook and messaged a few people, and the computer went away.

Joe picked me up when I got out. We went to Ballard and I got myself a pack of cigarettes and a beer. It was a good cigarette. They say cigarettes are good for schizophrenic people and at the time I thought maybe I was that. I don't think so now; I think I was doing drugs.

Obviously, I lost my job at Sands. I left school. I still wanted more income, so I went and took a second job for Tom from the pool hall. He was the best pool player in Seattle, so obviously I looked up to him too. Anyway, he gave me a job. Doing lawn work, for a couple weeks.

Right when I got outta the hospital, I got off my drugs. You have to take 'em when you're in. And then I had a relapse with my mind. You're not supposed to just cold turkey those things, supposed to wean. I went off of 'em and I was going crazy again, kind of.

I went to the pool hall and it was like the last, one of the last days it was open, maybe the last day it was open. I remember one of the guys. One of the superior players named Preacher Ron, and I told him I was quitting pool. He cried. He was sobbing and telling me that I had so much talent and I shouldn't quit pool. I thought: "This is just too much. What is the meaning of this kind of shit?"

I got shoved onto a plane down to Arizona right when I had that mental relapse. Flying while your brain isn't working, that's weird. I stayed with my mom, Petra, for less than a week. I was terrified of her.

But Petra's boyfriend. He didn't like me. I think Petra's dog near tore his throat out later. Anyway, he wanted violence with me. I called my friend, said I needed to go. He must have bought me a ticket, it's blurry, but I got a ride from Patrick down to Flag and jumped on the plane. It was an emergency. I could not remain there. I could not. I used every piece of my willpower to get away from that place.

I got back to Seattle, got a job at the club and a job at some swanky-ass brunch joint. I can't remember the street, not even the name. I'm blanking. I just literally went door to door saying: "Do you know anywhere that might be hiring? Do you know anything about anyone getting any jobs at any time at all?" Ultimately I got a job because I happened to run into a manager at a diner and I fucked her for a job. She didn't know that, but that's what happened.

But how I got that job, DreamGirls--I just went in there and said, "I already have a manager's license. I know this job."

They said, "That's great. I can't believe you would be so dumb as to try to stay in the stripping industry."

It's hard to tell, it's hard to remember everything and there's lots of shit going on at once. Kind of. Anytime you're telling a memory, you're gonna distort it. But if you don't tell it, there's nothing to distort.