The Fruits of Insomnia

I couldn't sleep last night, and at 4:30 a.m. I turned on the tube and watched the last half of "The Bellero Shield," a 1964 episode of "The Outer Limits." The star-studded cast included Martin Balsam as a brilliant scientist, Sally Kellerman as his scheming wife, Neil (Commisioner Gordon) Hamilton as the scientist's ball-breaker of a father, and Chita Rivera as the scientist's streetwise housekeeper. All the humans in the story are sacks of crap, and they ultimately destroy their would-be redeemer, a space alien named BiFrost. It wouldn't be cheesy sci-fi without a Christ figure, would it?

Altar Dogs

Tonight I attended Mass at St. Cecelia's in the Back Bay, where several parishioners brought their pooches for a blessing in the name of St. Francis. During the Consecration, one mutt barked just as the Host was being elevated. (Why didn't someone just train him to ring the Communion bell with his mouth?) As the assembled dogs were being sprinkled with holy water at the end of Mass, a blonde lab and a shepherd-collie mix had a verbal disagreement, although it was probably just some canine business that had nothing to do with theology.

Later in the evening, I saw four raccoons manage to make their way across Broadway, Somerville without being hit by the # 89 bus. Francesco di Assisi even watches over pests!

No Surrender

Haiku for a Harvard Square Street Performer*

Older hippy guy,
With an Uncle Sam Puppet,
Baffling passersby.


*He has been working Brattle Street for years. He is no ventriloquist, and he just moves the marionette's jaw while he tells political jokes, mostly about Reagan. I'm not sure if he has lost track of time or if he considers the Gipper stuff to be his best material. I admire his perseverance and always give him a buck.

The Thing That Ate Cambridge

When I first lived alone, in a 1.5 room studio near Harvard Square, I ate mostly takeout and pasta. (The kitchenette probably still reeks of garlic from all the spaghetti aglio e olio I whipped up.) I gained a lot of weight, then went on a crash diet, a regimen so intense that I had to test my ketone levels, and I lost 60 lbs. in three months. After these 90 days of grilled chicken or fish, turkey on whole wheat, and steamed vegetables, all in tiny portions, I was supposed to move on to a "maintenance phase." Brothers and sisters, I never made it.

One night I had a craving for Maple Leaf hot dogs, the kind with natural casings, and I went to a place that served them, the Tastee on J.F.K. Street. It was late, I was the only customer, and when I ordered two hot dogs, the counterman, perhaps a closet commie who wanted to stick it to his boss, gave me a bonus.

"These are awful small," he said, double-loading two buns. "Take four." If I was a processed meat addict, this guy was my co-dependent.

After that I really fell off the wagon. I had Sicilian pizza at Pinocchio's and burgers at Mr. Bartley's. I went for late night walks to the Hong Kong, and because there was one particular appetizer I always got, the clerk at the cash register dubbed me, "Crab Rangoon." I had lamb vindaloo at the Gandhi in Central Square, and the hot curry furnished me with a rationale to insulate my gut with mango shakes and puffy bread. My dining companion K and I found a Burmese place called the Mandalay on First Street. I wolfed down the shepherd's pie lunch at the Plough & Stars. I visited Charlie's Kitchen more often than I visited my parents. I would hit bottom on Saturdays, when I would get a luncheon special at the House of Peking on the 1100 block of Mass. Ave. and chase it with some ice cream from Baskin Robbins on Bow Street. The combination of starches would cause drowsiness, and I would just barely make it home before my knees would buckle and I would crash on my futon in a glorious Glucose Nod.

Some of those eateries are defunct, but I'm more of a gourmand than ever. I live in beautiful South Medford, a block away from my mother's place on Winter Hill in Somerville. Ma is 80 and can fry cutlets in her sleep, so visiting her condo is a near occasion of sin (gluttony). Is there a league for Over 50 sumo wrestling? And if so, do the wrestlers get free tempura?

"Hogan's Heroes" it Wasn't

My late father was in the U.S. Army's 86th Infantry division during World War II. The division entered Germany in March of 1945 and fought in various engagements, advancing all the way to Mattsee, Austria, where they captured the crown jewels of Hungary. But when my father spoke of the war, he stressed not the glory of victory but the grotesque nature of armed conflict.

He crossed the Rhine not long after his 19th birthday and saw that the river was full of graying, bloated corpses. His platoon took machine gun fire from emplacements manned by 12-year-old boys and elderly men. There was a horrible "friendly fire" death in his company when a G.I. returning from a night patrol thought it would be fun to hide in some bushes and practice his high school German with the company sentry. A mean redneck in his platoon would throw packets of chewing tobacco to children who asked for chocolate. German prisoners would weep during processing and beg that their watches and wedding rings not be stolen.

News traveled slowly in the chaos of battle, and one day in April of 1945, a Catholic chaplain informed my father that his brother Jimmy, a sergeant in the 4th Armored Division, had been killed in February near Bastogne, Belgium. My father became both despondent and angry, and he destroyed the one souvenir he had planned to bring home, a little doll dressed like a Wehrmacht soldier.

"I wanted to hate the Germans after that," he once told me. "But after I saw what the war did to German kids, I just thought that it was all one sad deal. Little German kids, the only way they knew to play was to march around in formation. You didn't see little girls playing with dolls, or boys playing ball. It was all military."

The division left Europe in June of 1945 and went to the Philippines later in the year, arriving just as the Japanese surrendered. My father said that he and his comrades received combat pay because there were nationalist guerrillas in the hills around their base, but that, "They never fired a shot, so we just ate bananas and went bowling." He made it sound like an army version of "McHale's Navy," which is the sort of mercy I wish for every person who is caught in the absurdity of war.

A Good Name for a Punk Band?

When I was 14, I used to tweak my elders by bringing home an alternative weekly called the Real Paper. One Sunday, my maternal aunt Helen, a dear woman with a voice like Edith Bunker's, picked up the latest issue of the Real Paper and staring leafing through it.

"I DIG ENEMA THRILLS!" she suddenly screeched, quoting the heading for a personal ad. She was evidently shocked. Mission accomplished. . . .

Soigné

Jerry Lewis, Call Your Sommelier

I once went to a house party on Winter Hill, Somerville where there were some actual French people in attendance. I had met the French crew a couple of months before, and they had been enthused about visiting the U.S., but on this evening they were full of complaints, about the Boston "Metro" not running late enough, about a lack of decent bread in the area, et cetera.

They had bought a mixed case of wine for the party and were holding an impromptu tasting. At one point I poured some white wine into a glass that I had just drunk red wine from. I did it on purpose to hear the oenophiles shriek, which they did. A nice French woman showed me that I should use a fresh glass, and she was as patient with me as a loving mother conducting potty training.

Later, a young man named Michele was swirling some sauternes around in his mouth and managed to spit some on his shirt. "This sometimes happens," he said, a tad embarrassed.

"That's okay," I answered. "We do that with beer at baseball games." I'm not sure if he knew I was kidding.

Synchronicity

When I was a kid, a friend of mine had a bat fly into his house while he was watching a Christopher Lee vampire movie on tv. His brother, wielding a broom and remembering the common wisdom about bats getting into people's hair, donned a football helmet and wrangled the thing outside.

Years later, I was watching, "Play It Again, Sam" for about the fifth time at the Harvard Square Theater. The film reached a scene in which Woody Allen's character, looking for love in a San Francisco art museum, attempts to chat up a beautiful woman who proceeds to give Woody an existentialist, depressing earful. (Woody: "What are you doing Saturday night?" Woman: "Committing suicide." Woody: "How about Friday?") During this particular viewing, just as Woody asked the woman what a certain Jackson Pollock painting meant to her, and she replied, "It restates the negativeness of the universe," the image on the screen dissolved. The film had melted in the projector!

Members of the audience were yelling for refunds, but I just laughed and left. I'm planning to see "Strait-Jacket" at the Brattle later this week, and I'm hoping for an appropriate sideshow.

Bob White's Birthday

You know for years, I was convinced you had to be dead. You and many of your fellow residents of Queensbury street were not living lifestyles that were conducive to longevity. Then when we reconnected so you could be interviewed for the film I was rather impressed. You seemed to have made it through the gauntlet.
I wonder now what you would think if you could hear all the discussion, war stories and respect people had for you. You were not my favorite person Bob. You had an unpleasant side to you that I wanted to avoid at all costs. But you were an Icon. An Original. And One Of Us. I am amazed at how sad and empty i felt when I heard you were gone.
I hope you have finally found peace. We are all thinking about you, on your birthday.
And yes, I know you would hate what i have written cuz it's stupid, sappy and sentimental. Fuck You Bob!
Photo by Eric Systrom

Speaking of Reptiles. . . .

I have an idea for an adult film in which Flo from Progressive Insurance romps with a man-sized Geico gecko. The ancillary expenses would merely entail a simple set, a lizard costume, and some red lipstick. Having the gecko remain small would be more perverse, but this would require special effects and would be blatantly derivative of the story, "Six Inches" by Charles Bukowski.

I am jesting as I write, and yet I blush. Blessed Solanus Casey, patron of weird old bachelors, pray for me.

Cold Blooded

According to today's Boston Herald, a 4-foot long female alligator was captured yesterday along the banks of the Charles River, on the Dedham-Needham line west of Boston. There have been 22 alligators found wandering New England since the beginning of the year, and it is believed that the creatures were imported into the Northeast illegally and abandoned by their owners.

I know that there are folks who like exotic pets, but I'm still trying to fathom the ferret craze. ("Would you like to come up to my place and see my weasel?") Keeping a personal alligator is beyond the pale. Do people like gators because they're easier to keep than crocodiles? Does one feed them Purina Alligator Chow? Are they good with children?

In Florida, where the alligator is a general nuisance, the latest trend in animal companions is the Burmese python. These massive snakes often escape, or are dumped, into the Everglades, where they wreak havoc with the ecosystem. They also occasionally visit suburban neighborhoods and swallow cats.

When there are millions of fellow mammals in animal shelters awaiting adoption, why does anyone choose instead to smuggle a latter-day dinosaur from Boca Raton? Enough already with the reptiles! Just get a damned dog. If they were good enough pets for Neanderthals, they're good enough for you.

Calls from home

Dad was at his girlfriend's because she can't go out, being on an oxygen tank. Why did he call during the day, in the middle of the week? News of suicide, an overdose. That's the second this month ... not that I was close, like the last one. But she was a year older, and lived a few blocks away. Our fathers are still tight, old boxing cronies, and her younger sister and I were best pals in second grade. She was the "tuff" girl that the other girls emulated, but never mean.
At the end of the conversation we discussed another suicide, this time a jumper, who I only remember as a tiny kid, from the next street over. I've taken to reading my hometown paper and it was reported as a homeless man jumping from an abandoned mill. It's hard to picture that in my mind.
Six blocks, two deaths. Hmm.
I keep meaning to tell my Dad that I'm engaged but I just can't seem to find the right time.

I have a love/hate relationship with Price-Rite the discount grocery store. On the one hand, its really cheap and I love that you really get a lot for your money there. On the other hand, its a horrible shopping experience. Everything is in boxes, and not put out nicely on shelves. The meat is always questionable looking. But the vegetables are outstanding and very very reasonable in price. But often the vegetables are not perfect. You can get red peppers for 99cents lb. At Stop and Shop they go for $3.99, but they are perfectly shaped. The ones at Price-Rite are sometimes funky shapes. And this goes for other veggies too. So last night I opened a 5lb bag of carrots and look what I found!
Is it the lower half of Jesus? Or The Virgin Mary? Or Maybe Elvis?
Wonder what I can get for it on Ebay? Well we will never know because after I shot the pics, I chopped it up and put it in a salad. It was delish!

I Wonder What Mr. LaRouche is Doing?

Today is my birthday. Other people born on September 8th are Sid Caesar, Peter Sellers, Patsy Cline, Lyndon LaRouche, and the Virgin Mary. Someone is taking me out for German food, and since I'm named after an uncle who was killed fighting against the Wehrmacht in WW-II, I suppose this closes a circle.

To the Max

A zillion years ago, at the tail end of the Carter Era, I worked in a family-owned hardware distributorship in East Cambridge, Mass. One of my coworkers was a little old Jewish guy named Max Gass.

The name Max Gass may sound like a Mel Brooks shtik, a character with horrible flatulence, but Max was a dignified man. He wore glasses and a neatly clipped moustache, and he donned a dapper fedora when he set off for home. He was in his late 70s and was a retired high school teacher. The word was that he had been denied a university teaching post because of anti-Semitism.

Max said he needed to get away from Mrs. Gass for a while every day, so he asked his friend Mr. Kaufman, owner of Kaufman Industrial Supplies, for a part time job. Every weekday morning, Max would humbly pack boxes in the shipping department at Kaufman's. I was the shipping clerk, and I had great conversations with Max on a variety of subjects. He was of the opinion that vampire movies destroyed the morals of the young. He was worried about his digestion, and every workday at 10:00 a.m. he would put on a yamulke and have a mug of hot water and a banana, a combination that he believed would keep him regular. Once, someone at work played a joke on Max by stuffing a pair of dungarees and a pair of sneakers with newspaper, placing the half-dummy in the men's room toilet stall so that it appeared to be a person hogging the crapper.

Max confessed to me about his wildest caper, when he was a young man during Prohibition. He and some friends went to Montreal on the pretext of going to see the great actor Boris Thomashefsky in a Yiddish theater production, when the main reason for the trip was to have alcoholic drinks! Max's little mamele (mother) was never the wiser.

About a year after I left the place, Max had an industrial accident when a steel locker fell on top of him. He put my name as a witness on the accident report, but he wasn't trying anything fraudulent, he was merely confused. He stopped working not long after that, and he died a couple of years later. I always smile when I think of him, and I believe he may have been right about the whole vampire phenomenon.

Plan 9, Channel 7

I had written this for Bob and posted it originally at Bad Girls Go To Hell, a poetry website that I'm part of. Bob was, and remains, our only follower. I created this blog partly for him to share his writing, but he could never get it together to learn how to post.

Are you happy now?
Am I supposed to send
the flowers of romance
into the void?

F.Y.B.W.
1962 - 2010

©Donna Lethal

The Beauty of Anti-Triumphalism

In Boston there is a subculture of unemployed individuals who spend a lot of time in Catholic churches, and since being laid off last year, I have become a member of the tribe. One day I went to a 5:15 p.m. weekday Mass at a Franciscan shrine downtown. The priest came out of the sacristy with aid of a walker, the lector was an older woman with a hunched back, and one of the men who took the collection had a prosthetic hand. The scene reminded me of the title of a Flannery O'Connor story, "The Lame Shall Enter First," and I found it all to be sublime.

Mother and Daughter

Muriel Pereira is a short rotund woman. She walks hunched over slightly with the peculiar shuffle of someone with osteoarthritis of the knees. In her late fifties she is often wearing large sunglasses, even indoors.
Muriel suffers from mental illness but also personality disorders. Personality disorders are not treatable. So you have to learn to live with her. Muriel’s glass of water in life is forever half empty, never half full. Everyone and everything that goes on around her must be criticized, and belittled.
Raised outside of Boston, she led an interesting life as a young person. Very bright, and college educated, she is multilingual. At one time she was a travel hostess, leading trips to Spain and Portugal. I am not clear on how she ended up living in Fall River. She is married to Nuno, whom I hear about all the time but have never laid eyes on.
I have seen her get in fights both verbal and physical with other club members at Towne House. Towne House is the clubhouse for the mentally ill we both attend. Once in the kitchen she got into a slapping girl fight with another member and they both ended up in handcuffs and carted off to the police station. Muriel is very paranoid. Sometimes she will see someone wearing an item of clothing and insist that it's hers and its been stolen from her.
Murial is also a busybody. She will overhear things, and always think the worst. About 9 years ago I was playing video games with another member named Jane. Jane is a former drug user, but had been clean for about a year. Jane asked me about how much it cost to feed my dogs. I told her that a bag of “Joy”, the brand I was feeding at the time was $15 a bag. The following day I got called into the directors office. He tells me Muriel has accused me of dealing drugs on Towne House property. At first I was totally confused by this accusation but then it came to light that she had heard me talking with Jane. I realized then what she heard. I don't think I ever laughed so hard. I brought in an empty bag the following day to show Muriel and the rest of the club what a $15 dollar “bag of joy” was. Jane no longer attends Towne House because of incidents like this.
Muriel also has an obsession with food that is mind boggling. She talks about it constantly. Every item of food made at Towne House is awful and of course if she were in the kitchen she could do it better. She criticizes everything, and accuses staff of shorting people on food when they serve it. She shows up at the club with numerous shopping bags every day, filled with food. I think she is afraid that if she does not carry it with her, she will somehow not be able to get any if she needs it. Muriel has no one but her husband and herself at home. They receive food stamps and Muriel makes it to every food pantry in Fall River. She also signs herself up for all the holiday food baskets, from multiple agencies. Muriel tells them there are 5 people in her household. Herself, and her husband and their 3 kids. Thanksgiving and Christmas find her with so many turkeys and hams it's really scary.
Muriel has 3 children. Two boys and a girl. All the children were removed from her custody as infants. I am not sure what the specific reasons for this were, but I can imagine why it happened. The two boys were adopted by the same family. Now young adults they are in college. I don't think she has actual contact with them, but she is kept current on their lives.
The girl is now 19. Her name is Debbie.
I first heard of Debbie a decade ago, when she was a patient at a state hospital in Worcester County Massachusetts. Debbie would call her mother at Towne House, and be hysterical. Every call was about a crisis. Muriel has no home telephone so the only way she could contact Debbie and vice versa was through the Towne House Telephones. It fascinated me in a very sick way, that this mentally ill, unstable individual had an equally sick (if not more so) child institutionalized by the state.

I have been a Towne House member since 2001. At times I have been a more active member than others, using the club resources and facilities but not always participating in the day to day activities there. In 2009, I began attending more regularly again. There I met Debbie, Muriel’s daughter.
Now the idea that multiple generations of the same family are attending Towne House together, is sort of disturbing to me. But Muriel and Debbie are not the only ones. Faith is there with her son Tommy. She's about my age and Tommy is 19. Helen attends also with her daughter Tiffany. Tiffany has a job though and so does not come every day.

Debbie is short and chubby and definitely looks like a younger version of her mother. Her hair is peroxide blonde. She wears slutty cheap clothes from Walmart and the Fashion Bug. Because of some of the meds that she is on, she has a very strange affect. She stares straight ahead and is unable to make real eye contact with people.
Debbie is very out of control.
When I first met her she was living in a group home. She had to account for where she was, and had a curfew at night. There were a few incidents where she disappeared and had to be located by the police and returned to the home. She was fucking anyone who asked. Without any kind of precautions. Taking all sorts of street drugs and failing to take her prescribed medication. Hanging out in nefarious parts of town, with all sorts of lowlifes.
Her mother would start wailing how Debbie was smoking pot, and this was causing all her problems....
I think smoking pot was the least of Debbie’s problems.
Then she became obsessed with getting her own apartment. No one thought this was a wise idea.
Somehow she convinced an agency, to give her the first and last rent for an apartment. You would think in a case like this that there would be caseworkers and protocol that would ensure that she found a safe place to live, with a lot of support.
Instead she found an apartment in the worst part of town, in a building that had previously been condemned by the board of health and declared unfit for human habitation. And the agency handed over the money and she moved in. There were no locks on the doors. The place was infested with cockroaches and there was no heat. The second day living there she walked into the apartment to find a junkie shooting up in the bathroom. One of her neighbors threw him out.
She had a mattress and box spring on the floor, and some kitchen stuff but that was about it. Now her decline escalated.
With no rules and no boundaries she stopped taking her prescriptions altogether and was out all night inhaling every substance offered to her. She pretty much stopped coming to Towne House, and when she did she was really out of it. Her mother spent hours on the phone daily trying to get someone to intervene. Finally after a month of drama and heartache, Debbie was hospitalized. I was relieved. I was really worried she was going to end up dead in a dumpster someplace.
This was 6 months ago. She is now hospitalized at Taunton State. I heard she is really doing well, and they are talking about matching her up with a roommate and getting her an apartment on Main St. in Taunton. I cannot believe that in such a short time anything much has changed. Once she is out, how long will it take for her to be right back where she started all over again?

The Dental Lottery

As a child I had excellent dental care. Although I hated my dentist, my mother dragged us there religiously. The dentist was actually a family friend and his daughter was one of my playmates. Dr. Lipson filled my cavities while telling me horror stories about the M&M's and caramel chews he could see in the back of my mouth. Oh the shame and guilt! And I had to see this man on all sorts of occasions like Passover Seders, and sleepovers with his daughter. He always made me very nervous.

After I left home though my dental neglect began. I had a really great job in 1987, working for the city of Boston as an Animal Control Officer. As with any government job it had excellent benefits so when I had my wisdom teeth out, it was no problem. But by then my depression was helping me to neglect my teeth, and I was no longer brushing or flossing.

One by one, I lost teeth. An old filling fell out of a molar and after a year, the pain was unbearable. By that time I was on SSI and Mass Health. Mass Health at the time would pay for filling cavities, cleanings, and dentures. But that's about it. So an inevitable trip to the dentist leads to me being dressed down verbally about the state of my teeth while the offending molar is yanked out. That certainly was a great way to make sure I was not going back.

Over the next twenty years I lost two on the left bottom, one on the left top, two on the right top and one on the right bottom. But amazingly I still had all my front teeth!

In June of 2009, I convinced a new medication provider that I did have bi-polar II and she prescribed Lamictal, a mood stabilizer. The previous provider, had me on 100mg of Prozac (an enormous dose) that was very obviously ineffective.When told that my highs were too high and my lows were too low, said I was just fat and depressed.

"My Lamictal Summer" as I like to call it, was the most amazing summer of my life. It was if a grey cloud had lifted. No more days in bed, unable to do anymore than roll over. No more euphoria when my mood would shift the other way. I started to get everyplace I needed to on time. And I started to brush my teeth , and floss again. At first my gums bled, but after a few weeks, that stopped. My front teeth which were sorta yellowish and dingy started to lighten in color.

I started to notice a lot more about my surroundings and the people in them. So many people at Towne House, the club house for the mentally ill that I attend, have no teeth. NONE WHATSOEVER!
Mass Health will not pay for any kind of dentistry but will pay for extractions. People on SSDI who end up with dental problems most often get coerced into having their entire mouths emptied of teeth. Mass Health used to pay for Dentures,which were notoriously ill fitting,but that ended last year. The other problems with the dentures is that people have a very hard time getting used to them, or sometimes they got lost. Mass Health would only pay for one set. Now they won't even provide that. So there are numerous people walking around at Towne House with no teeth at all. And they are not old. Their gaping maws are ugly, and disturbing to see. Not having teeth distorts the face. It also ages people before their time.

Employment is difficult enough with mental illness. The state of the economy makes the odds of being employed AND having mental illness astronomical. Why are we handicapping this vulnerable population even more than they already are? I am just flummoxed by this paradox.

I started school in June. The idea was daunting and there is such internal pressure from myself to dress better, and have a decent haircut. My age and weight are bad enough. I don't want to stand out too much. It ocurred to me that if I had missing teeth up front or no teeth at all, I might not be have been able to even think about doing this.

A friend works as an dental receptionist. She informed me in May that come July 1st Mass health will not be paying for filling cavities anymore. I did not know this. I also have not been to the dentist for any kind of maintenance since my last tooth extraction in 2007. When I asked her about an appointment she told me that the dentist is no longer taking any new patients but she'd see what she could do. A few days later she called to tell me I can had an appointment for a teeth cleaning in two weeks.

I arrived at the dentists office wary and unsure. I hate the dentist so much. Its an irrational fear and I know this but it still makes my fight or flight instinct kick in. Mostly flight instinct. The dental hygenist was very sweet and nice. She had a calender with a Friesan horse on it. I asked her about it. She was shocked that I knew what a Friesan is, and we talked about horses and all sorts of animals. I also told her my story of dental neglect. As the cleaning progressed she found that I had one filling that needed replacement, (according to my calculations it had to be almost 40 years old!) and two cavities that needed to be filled. Then she announced to me that my front teeth were so perfect, they appeared like they had been capped. I informed her that they were all natural, I do not have any capped teeth. Together we marveled at the state of my teeth despite the neglect. I made a couple of appointments for the following weeks to have the work done. All before the July 1st deadline. I told her I think I have won the dental lottery. She agreed.

More Tales From The Soup Kitchens

Church of the Holy Spirit has a soup kitchen. Open Mondays and Fridays from 11am til 12:30. Again there rarely is soup. The “consumers” as most agency's now refer to us, are the same faces as 1st Baptist Church. The servers are different though.

There is the woman about my age at the next table with a tattoo of an Egyptian eye on her forehead.

A guy sits across from me. He's in his mid thirties and he has white supremacist prison tattoos. I am tempted to tell him he is sitting across from a Jewess but decide maybe I should keep quiet about that.

All the people from Towne House,the local clubhouse for the mentally ill, eat here on Fridays because the meal you get at Towne House costs a dollar and isn't as good. Many of the Towne House members walk by and say hi to me. We are the dysfunctional mentally ill family.

Ed is a lifelong resident of Fall River. A brilliant man who is trapped by his mental illness. He does a lot of advocacy for Towne House and NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill), and is an avid participant in the goings on at the club. Evidently he cannot pass a CORI check because of things he did when his illness was untreated. This makes his ability to be employed severely limited. I have heard that there are lawyers that can get that sort of thing expunged but it is out of reach financially for Ed. Ed has a bottle of hot sauce in his pocket everywhere he goes, and he always doctors the food at Towne House and the soup kitchens.

Frank is homeless and spends his days trash picking, and at Towne House. He is sometimes so filthy that his skin appears 3 shades darker than it actually is. He always carries around many bags full of bottles and other valuables he finds in the trash.Frank is schizophrenic and also a heroin addict. He was recently diagnosed with cancer that has metastasized everywhere. I wonder what is going to happen to him as his disease progresses.

There are also some women with children. I always feel very badly seeing children here. Do they think this is like going out to eat at a restaurant ?
I look back to my privileged childhood, and give thanks that this is not one of my memories of growing up.

At this soup kitchen, after you eat, they also let you take home donated bread. But you can't have the bread unless you eat the meal. Sometimes I sneak in and get bread without having dinner.

It's day old bread but who can really tell ? There are two large tables, On one end is white bread, hot dog and hamburger rolls. In the center is the whole wheat and multi grain breads. Some are just store brands and other are brands like Natures Promise which goes for $3.49 a loaf in the store. At the end are the artisan bread loaves. Focacia, Kalamata Olive, Roasted Garlic, Seeded Rye, Sourdough, Whole Wheat Raisin Pecan,Whole Wheat Cranberry Pecan, Something called a California Loaf that is a huge round, loaded with dried apricots,figs,golden and brown raisins. It makes a lovely breakfast toasted. Also lots of whole grain breads in various shapes.

Of course because this is Fall River, the white bread and hot dog buns disappear first. Usually nothing is left when the kitchen closes. Some people take sliced whole wheat or multi grain loaves. The older adults who are trying to eat better choose those.

The multi-grain loaves and artisan breads sit there. I don't feel guilty one bit, and fill two bags. No one even looks at it. They are squabbling over the white bread.

The cranberry pecan loaf has a price tag on it from Lee's Market in Westport. Lees is a fancy gourmet grocery that I cannot afford to shop at. The tag says $6.99.
I take all the bread home, slice the unsliced loaves and freeze everything. I'll have some nice sandwiches next week.

Mental Illness, Addiction and Poverty.

David is drunk again. In his late 40's, 5'9, maybe 170 lbs. The absolute worst acne scarred face I've ever laid eyes on,with greasy hair, cut in a seventies shag. Not a retro style either, you definitely know he's had the same hair cut since high school. Muddy brown, streaked with grey and facial hair that is weird, It appears he has sorta shaved but I think it's really mostly because the pockmarks are so bad that it's hard to get it all.

Poor David. He has worked part time at a commercial laundromat forever. The laundry has gone out of business because of owner mismanagement, and now he just got a letter from Social Security saying he is off the rolls and owes them $95,000. They say he never declared he was working for the last 10 years. Considering he has been filing taxes, I don't know how this happened. With every decision from SSI you get a period in which you can appeal. In the end I really don't think he will owe them any money but for now it's a crisis. He lives with “his girl Tina” as he refers to her. That night they go home, he drinks(she doesn't), and they fall asleep. David awakens in the middle of the night and declares he is going to kill himself, there is no more reason to live. Tina calls the police who haul David off to Corrigan, a state run mental health facility in Fall River. Corrigan has him admitted to the Arbor, a private hospital in Attleboro,near Providence RI.

David stays the minimum 14 days. While he is there, obviously there is no alcohol. They adjust his meds, and he gets some perspective. Considered not a danger to himself anymore they release him early in the week. By Wednesday he is already planning to drink again on Friday night. Tina won't let him drink at her apartment so he is going to do this at Mary Ann's house.

Mary Ann and David have been friends since childhood. She refers to him as "brother" and he always calls her "sister".

Mary Ann is 49, 5'2” short dark red hair, and weighs about 225. She would be considered pretty butch but she is a raging heterosexual. She actually has a degree as a machinist. Married to the same man for 35 years on and off (there were divorces and separations and a few different weddings)her husband Bill died a year and a half ago. Mary Ann seems to have her shit together more than the rest of this crew but, also seems so desperate and lost without her husband.

Mary Ann has a heart of gold. She has taken in a stray named Fred. Fred is 69 and bi-polar. He is a fireplug of a man, still handsome with light grey hair. He is also sort of her beau. There is no sex though because Fred broke his penis about 20 years ago and is impotent. So they just snuggle. When he takes his meds he's ok, but when he forgets or skips doses suddenly demons are everywhere. People are breaking into,and as he says "fucking with his car". He can't let this happen so he “hides it” by parking on other streets. Other times he has to sleep in the car to make sure it's ok. He also believes random people are going to the bank withdrawing money from his account. One time he drove to the bank with Mary Ann. While she waited in the car, he went inside to make a withdrawal and slipped a note to the teller that he was being held hostage at Mary Ann's address. Later when they arrive back home, they discover that the back door has been broken down and there is a note from the police to please get in touch. Fred does not want Mary Ann to call, he thinks it will cause trouble. He won't tell her why he thinks this or what he has done. Because they don't call, the police show up again. The police tell Mary Ann the story, and she's horrified . Realizing the detective in charge was a neighbor kid when her children were growing up, she calls her daughter and asks her to come over. The detective and the daughter talk, and Fred is let go with a warning not to do it again.

Fred also disappears a lot, sometimes for a week at a time. When he gets his check for the month he often takes off for Mohegan Sun. He never calls or checks in and Mary Ann worries endlessly. She will drive around Fall River til she finds him. After he has lost all his money he comes back and she'll find him sleeping in his car at Ruggles Park. He’ll brushing his teeth at the water fountain and taking a shit outside between his open car doors.

Mary Ann also lives with a roommate named Mark. She started renting him a room after her husband died. I guess you would have called him a boarder in another age. He pays rent and in return gets a furnished room with a bed, laundry services, meals, and for paying half of the Dish Network bill, satellite TV.

Mark is 56, neat grey hair, moustache and beard. He smokes and has some sort of chronic lung condition where he is constantly coughing up phlem. It is very difficult for me to be around him too long without feeling nauseated listening to him hack up his lungs. Mark has been married and divorced. His last girlfriend two and half years ago, pressed charges against him for beating her up. He spent a year in jail. Since then he has been single and dates nobody.

Mark and David go everywhere together. Mark does not drink. He is also a miser and spends none of his money except on necessities. David has an old conversion van so Mark is the designated driver. Mark also is a bank, lending David and Tina money for cigarettes,marijuana, and for David to get alcohol.

In order to drink on Friday night David sells his food stamps to Mary Ann. He had $60 worth so he sold them for $30.

Tina won't let David drink at her house. David is a mean drunk. He gets very verbally abusive. Tina is a cunt and a whore, no good and a loser.

Fred has disappeared again so Mary Ann, Mark and David hang out at Mary Ann's house, watching TV til David drinks himself into oblivion.

The next day Tina is fed up and breaks up with David.

They have an actual fistfight at Towne House, a clubhouse for the mentally ill, and the staff person there has to call the police. Since David has been living with Tina, he leaves and moves into the woods,living in his conversion van. The next time I see Tina 3 days later her face is still swollen from crying. She does not want him to drink but is still in love with him and can't imagine life without him.

Mark and David hate Fred. They think that Mary Ann is too good for him. When David gets drunk he fights with Fred. He tells Mary Ann she should be with no one in order to honor the memory of Bill her former husband.

Fred is gone for a week. Mary Ann is very sad and talks about how Fred has to move out of her house, she can't be responsible for him anymore. I think this is a really good thing and encourage her because I know Fred is never going to change. I tell Mary Ann that either she has to accept him the way he is or tell him he has to leave.

She keeps repeating the plan to me and others and seems to be resolved to do it.

A week later Fred reappears at Towne House. He has been there since 7am and is waiting for Mary Ann to show up. When she arrives and finds him there, she tells him it's over. He must get the rest of his stuff and go. But then he offers her $125 for the month so he might be able to use her house for showers and laundry. Her plans fall to pieces and she takes the money.

Mark and David have a fit. They are really angry at Mary Ann for this. Mary Ann can't believe that Mark thinks he can tell her whom can come to her house. If she wants to allow Fred to come over than Mark has no right to an opinion. Mark is so mad that he spends the night at Tina's house.

I meet them all for dinner at the 1^st Baptist church soup kitchen. Mary Ann, Fred,Mark and I all eat supper together. David is hanging in the woods with his brother who lives in some sort of tent city. Tina is home crying. Mark rides in Mary Ann's car with Fred and sits at the same table but won't speak to Fred.

I don't know why they call it a soup kitchen. Very rarely is there soup.

Tonight we have salad, roasted pork loin, red bliss mashed potato's, and mixed veg. Cake for desert. The only thing I hate about it is the prayer they say before the meal starts. If there really is a god why are all of us sitting here at a soup kitchen, instead of being chauffeured in a limo and eating at Nobu? Why are we all suffering from mental illness, addiction, and poverty ?

My Junior High School

I went to junior high school in Somerville, Mass. from 1968 to 1971, and it was a barrel of fun. Male substitute teachers would claim to be crazed Vietnam vets so that kids wouldn't start any crap in class. The student body was once shown an anti-marijuana documentary narrated by Sonny Bono, a laugh riot in which a kid tries pot for the first time and hallucinates as if he's eaten acid. Of couse, this led to a spike in cannabis use.

I was one of the little four-eyed kids who took Latin. Our tribe was subjected to extortion attempts by boys who later went to the vocational high so that they could have access to burglary tools. "All I find, all I keep," they used to say during shakedowns. I was kicked in the shin by one of them once, but I never coughed up any dough. Although being without funds would have been a good excuse to decline the American Chop Suey that seemed to be served every day in the cafeteria.

One morning our phys-ed teacher, a locally famous ex-jock, sat us in the gymnasium bleachers and sang his own cover of, "Is That All There Is?" I don't know if he was stoned or channeling Peggy Lee, but it was precious.

All Together Now

My personal shame,grade school ,fires and explosives

I have so much to be embarrassed about.
The bomb scare to the federal court house on the day of my friends hearing.

Setting the neighbors piles of leaves on fire on my paper route.

Sending my brothers stolen porn to the neighbors in retaliation after blaming me for the damage to their new deck from a "FIRE OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN."

That's what the cops said.

The time I put my disected frog into my teachers purse because she kept me back a grade for coloring my page completely black.

I polished that fucker.


The frog happened several years later. I saw an opportunity and ran with it.
All the fire alarms and m80s in the plumbing.

Stealing money from the school bands coats left indoors while they practiced out on the field.

Throwing snowballs at unexpected motorists.

Setting a neighbors laundry on fire as it hung on the line in their yard to.....dry.

Setting the neighbors shed on fire. My idea , but I didn't light it.

By 5th grade I would mature, I began smoking to prove it. I'd keep my fires to myself.

HATERS

Please don't block my twirl , I've asked you repeatedly, and you are scrubbing on my last nerve.

Dorothy

It's not you it's me............see I'm , well , see it's hard to explain....... You know that guy at the........oh nevermind.............. Really it's so silly............ I like you, but well I have this.......... oh how do I say this without sounding like a comlete fool...........rule.......well it's not a rule really......sort of a......you know?............gosh I'm really sounding crazy.............I'm not.......well my brother might disagree with me on that (laughs),......he thinks I'm nuts. yeah my own brother......gosh i'm doing all the talking.........you've not said a word?..........No but I'll try anything once.............I'm not going to get addicted am I?

But I Won't Even Be HOME Until After 6 ...