novembre ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- the first stone people that i love, part one. i thought about this and realized he has been sober for probably eight years. i've heard references made to how he was before, but they've always been vague and elusive, so i imagine he was a monster. the disease spreads out and infected his whole life like cancer seeps through the body. first it was just in your liver, and now you can feel it in your fingertips, and now you are homeless. it's been years and he's still technically homeless; he's unable to open a checking account and has no credit. he works as a bus boy but he's working now, going to meetings and subletting friends' apartments when they are on tour. in september when i couldn't make rent it was he who fronted me the money; he out of everyone held no judgement and no qualms. i met him outside a coffee shop on telegraph and drove him to his bank's atm. i was playing simon and garfunkel in the car, a song about being in the throes of addiction was playing, and i remember noting how this was one of my favorite songs before chiding myself for saying that out loud. he wrinkled his brow and listened to the lyrics for a minute before we started talking about kansas, and how we'd both ended up living in lawrence (though at different times). he wears his sobriety like a jacket. not just a badge. he has to. our mutual friends are all lushes. i don't know how he can stand it, at shows, people wobbling around him. (i've since met some of his sober friends, and they all have this mutually identifiable look in their eyes -- loss mixed with pride of recovery, and something else, something like fear and exhaustion, but mostly pride -- that i don't think i'll ever live enough to call my own. do you even want to live enough to be able to claim such a look?) i stood next to him, awkwardly watching the cars creep in and out of the shopping mall's parking lot because i didn't know what else to do, as he withdrew three hundred dollars from his savings account and handed it to me right there. we had to go back another day for the remainder because his bank won't let him withdraw more than $300 per 24 hour period. i paid him back two weeks later, but i remember how unchecked and clear his face was when he explained to me how he didn't mind lending me $430 at one time. he said, "i wouldn't know what to do with that much money anyway," before his face closed back up again, and i wondered about temptation and how we have to be our own white blood cells, keeping our own cancers from spreading again, after remission. 9:43 pm - 11.24.05 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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