How sweet it is

Up until January first of last year sugar was to me what processed poppy sap is to the main-lining addict. And as with a junkie I used a spoon. Mine however was not implemented to render heroin with flame and water into an injectable solution. Mine was used for shoveling ice-cream down my gullet. Every conceivable night I could I downed a pint of Haagen-dazs, most often Macadamia Brittle. And with it too night after night over many a year I consumed a half pound of chocolate. I'd gorge until a sugar saturated stupor overtook me and left me near comatose and sprawled in disarray upon an easy chair. While doing so more often than not shame would descend to envelope me. For shame and compulsion were intricately inner woven.

As to how I arrived at such an ever occurring state I can easily look back and see if not the fully formed dark bloom of compulsion then at least its deep roots. From early on in childhood I sought comfort, fulfillment and refuge in all goods sugary. In the breakfast hour I reveled in multiple bowls full of Sugar Smacks, Fruit Loops or Captain Crunch. Or else pieces of toast slathered with butter and heaped with brown sugar and cinnamon. In the hours between meals I nibbled at candy in any one of its manifold forms. Lunch and dinners too were never complete without dessert, be it cookies, pie, strudel or cake. And then in the evening there was always a pause in television viewing for something sweet such as ice-cream topped with chocolate sauce or hot fudge.

During my teens my sugar compulsion took on an added twist; I only ate items in odd numbers. This was especially true when it came to cookies. I'd eat only 1, 3 or 5. Never 2. Nor 4. It was a quirk that would stay with me for decades to come and later, when I tried to vanquish my food obsessions, morph into hopes pinned on dates and numerology.

As a waiter in my late twenties and early thirties I stole desserts from my employers and surreptitiously stuffed my face with little regard to taste. I can remember clearly one night while working at a bistro in Boston when an empty wine bottle slipped from my tray and smashed on the patio floor. It just so happened at that very moment I was already seething with disgust for myself and all of humanity. I was in those years a tightly wound tic. Rather than attend to the shattered bottle I marched into the walk-in cooler and stuffed myself calm with handfuls of chocolate moose. It was in no way an isolated incident. My restaurant working history was rife with many such moments of gasping down desserts in moments of stress as if they were the very breath of life.

Later on in my forties I worked for a spell in the catering industry and my pattern of behavior resumed as if never paused. Whether I was wound up or they were just close at hand I jammed desserts into my mouth when no one was watching. I ate until numb with shame and nauseated.

Why did I not stop or eat normally? I tried. Time and again. Year after year. I'd stop out sheer disgust. Or on a specific date. Numbers, numbers, numbers. I willed myself to believe in them. I added up the day and the month and year into a fortuitous sum, or stretched the dates out before me and spoke them aloud as if reciting a magical incantation. Holidays too promised good tidings for changing my behavior. And I would quit. But not for long. I'd once again eat sugar. Then I'd quit again. My history of eating sweets is rifled through with days I quit and swore most adamantly to never again eat sugar. But no matter my resolve or determination the night - and it was most often night - arrived with me bargaining with myself once again to feed that insatiable hunger. I'd tell myself that another day in the offing was more fortuitous for quitting sugar for good. And so I would once again stuff myself silly. There was also the argument after any number of days of abstinence where I swore I could now consume like anyone else free of that dictating compulsion. So I'd try to eat just a little. And I would fail. I would yet again be a daily slave to the unquenchable craving. I was proof positive of two sentiments: One's too many and a hundreds not enough. And It's not what you eat, it's what's eating you.

Sugar was my longest and most intimate relationship. I preferred it over human contact. Many were the nights I took a pass on being with friends to go home alone and gorge on sweets. I would be out and about and in a conversation with someone and the compulsion would take hold of me. I'd lose track of my thoughts and the thread of the conversation. The other person would be speaking and I would go through the motions of caring the whole time salivating over my thoughts of getting home to my buddies, ice-cream and chocolate. Shame too as I mentioned was never far away from my compulsion. The two were intrinsically linked. I would for instance get embarrassed and bruised by the check-out girl who made note of my frequent purchases of sweets and respond by going home to eat in a near frenzy. The next day still hurting I'd go out of my way to shop at a different store where I was less known. For all else be damned I would not let scrutiny stop me. I had to have my ice-cream and chocolate.

Ever onward rolled the juggernaut with shame breeding compulsion and compulsion breeding shame. Both with a hunger never satiated. I was ruled and I complied. It did not matter that on any given day after bingeing I could not face myself in the mirror. By that night I would once again be squirming with a want beyond reason. It would send me once again scurrying to buy ice-cream and chocolate. Or perhaps not, for a day or two. I'd hold off. Somehow. For believe me, when I fought that demanding urge for sweets I was in emotional agony. I was as bereft as a baby denied its mother's teat.

Then came January first of the last year. Once again I swore off sugar, this time for a year. For some reason I can't explain I was able to do what I'd never been able to do for any length of time. My previous record of abstinence from sweets lasted only a month, and it was one fraught with mind twisting compulsion and aching emptiness. This time however things were different. Sure the first week or two I squirmed with want for my buddies. But I was able to somehow not fall prey to the obsession. And one day at a time, the days added up, some seemingly slower than others, they passed until I'd made it through a year without gorging on sugar and sweets.

Now what?

In spite of that serpent like voice that swears a little won't hurt me I think I'll go completely without all things sugary for another year. One day at a time.

Silver Christmas Tinsel

On Christmas mornings in my youth my brother and sister and I would bolt awake shortly after dawn and dash into the living room to ogle the mound of gifts beneath our silver tinsel Christmas tree. With a rush of excitement we'd have a go at our Xmas stockings that were laid out in our traditional spots around the tree and stuffed with such goodies as playing cards, jacks and rubber-ball, whimsical surprises, colored pencils, dice, and, my perennial favorite, the Whitman's Chocolates four piece sampler. I'd make short work of the chocolates and jacked up on sugar and giddy with expectations my siblings and I would wade through the gifts and try to guess by heft and a couple shakes what was inside each box. Shortly thereafter my parents would get up while kidding us about the early hour of their rising. And with good cheer my mother would whip up a festive pancake breakfast. Then we would gather around the Christmas tree and turn the mound of gifts into a mound of torn apart and discarded wrapping paper.

One year we had a second Christmas at the house of my grandparents Nana and Pa. On the trip there however I was nauseated and we stopped at a pharmacy in a city along our way with the hopes of getting coke syrup to settle my stomach. The pharmacist told my father that he was out of luck that the store didn't have what he was looking for and that there wasn't another drugstore for many miles to come. With disappointment we drove off. But we hadn't gotten more than a block away when I spotted a sign for another drugstore. With the pharmacist's insistence that there wasn't another drugstore for miles around still ringing in his ears my father stopped with some reluctance. It couldn't be. Sure enough however it was a second drugstore. It also had the coke syrup. My father got back in the car with the curative and a good mind to punch the first pharmacist in the nose for lying to him when he had a sick kid to attend to. My mother said to chalked it up to the guy being a jerk and my father swallowed his anger. And we were once again on the road. I would however remember that lie for many years to come and it would fester and lead in part to an over all cynical world view: you could never really trust anyone.

Christmas Eve in 1969, when I was twelve, our family was invited to a party at the home of Jack Dempsey. The festivities took place in his cellar. It had been converted into a family entertainment center equipped with throw-rugs, plush seating, stereo system, and a bar. Jack Dempsey was like my father a prison guard. Though friends however the two men were of different mind-sets. For, unlike my father, Jack Dempsey had ambition. (This I'd learned through an overheard discussion between my parents.) He was going to school, studying for tests, and ascending the ranks in the prison system. I was in awe of the man and his possessions, for he was I could readily see better off than us. Here was my first example of someone not living by the code of my parents: Be grateful for what you've got, a philosophy honed in large part by their having lived through the pains and wants of the Great Depression. Here was proof of the possibility that I might one day aspire and claim a place in a strata of class above my family's own. Later that night Santa arrived at the party and handed me a gift. It was the 45-rpm record of the Temptations performing Cloud Nine.

Over the years of course besides the goodies from Santa we also gave one another gifts. One year early on I gave my parents a pewter cocktail set that I'd picked up at a church sponsored tag sale. They never used it. One day a year or so later I found it packed away on a cellar shelf for useless junk and experienced disappointment that ached and throbbed in my chest. But life went on. In the Christmases of my callow teens I gave my brother albums of bands I liked with the thoughts I'd later claim them for myself. Our stocking stuffers changed too in my latter teens and early twenties. Instead of jacks and rubber-ball and colored pencils we got packs of cigarettes and scratch-off lottery tickets. Some traditions however remained. Our Whitman's Chocolates sampler I was always happy to see was a consistent stocking-stuffer. And somewhere along the way my parents one year gave my brother a drum-set. For they were generous and as I'd one day come to see very tolerant and giving to sacrifice their peace and quiet to my brother's diligent practicing and more to the point my daily pounding out lumbering renditions of the drum solo in Inagaddavida.

In the weeks leading up Christmas time I could be a nuisance, too. This was especially true the year I got it into my head that I just had to have Lotus the three album set of Santana live in Japan. I connived and wheedled my parents in the weeks leading up to the Christmas. Every day I'd mentioned the albums. They told me to lay off for crying out loud. But I would not can it. I badgered on. I just had to have it. They did not disappoint me. Come Christmas day a gift wrapped Lotus was laid out in the mound beneath the Christmas tree. My father an ardent Frank Sinatra and lush jazz fan humored me and turned over the family stereo to a playing of that all so important gift. As I glowed with each guitar solo my father shrugged his shoulders. To each his own.

Adulthood brought along a more subdued Christmas spirit. My parents however lost nothing in regards to their generosity. There remained no matter the year a mound of gifts under the tree come each Christmas. Sure in those later years the gifts were more utilitarian and the stocking stuffers bore less whimsy. But my parents gave freely of themselves and took more delight in the gifts they were giving rather than getting.

Christmas in 1989, found us gathered around my mother's hospital bed. We gave her that year comfortable sleeping clothes. She would as it turned out never get to wear them. For three days later she died. And Christmas as I knew it, a magical day when all slights and familial squabbles were forgiven with a blanket amnesty, was forever linked to the past. In subsequent years I would experience melancholy each holiday season. But I would carry on and find in the quiet hours of Xmas some solace in my cherished memories of that special day of the year when we as a family somehow rose above our individual human frailties and loved one another unconditionally.

Never out of style

The chair was made of metal and tubular in shape and had a footrest and a seat of padded yellow plastic. It seemed to appear only at haircut time, leastwise I've no memory of it being put to any other use. My father would sit me down upon that chair and drape a protective bib around my front which acted as a slide if you will for clipped-off hair to slip down to the floor. As my father went about giving me a crewcut the air would be sweetened by the aroma of his pipe that was redolent with aged tobacco and its hints of burnt sugar and butterscotch. Bob Steele a local AM disc jockey would be emanating from a nearby green plastic portable radio. He had a sonorous voice and spoke between songs of interesting facts and proper word usage. He also hawked P.O.M.G., peace of mind guaranteed, the tag line of a Hartford jeweler and sponsor of his show, which, when Bob Steele wasn't speaking, consisted of big band tunes and the standards as sung by such stalwarts as Tony Bennett, Johnny Mathis, and my father's favorite, Frank Sinatra. You could listen to Bob Steele's show and remain blissfully unaware of the turbulence of the sixties then raging nationwide. My father was quite the fan.

When I entered first grade in 1963, I stood out in class for I was dressed in the fashions of a decade passed and unlike my classmates I had my hair shorn to military specification. I'd come home from school in tears after a day of being ostracized and teased. Please, I implored in tears. Let me grow my hair and dress like the other kids. But my father wouldn't have it. Not in his household he said. And his word was law and the law did not bend for several years to come.

Finally however after much pleading by my mother in the summer leading up to the sixth grade in 1969, my father acquiesced and took me shopping to buy a pair of bell-bottoms the current fashion of pants, one that my father had earlier damned as worn only by assholes. I can still remember that day of shopping and the thrill of searching through the stacks of bell-bottoms for just the right pair. And I found them. They were brown and white striped and had a very wide bell. I also bought a cool shirt and a wide belt to go along with them. I was from then on with my father's tacit silence and outlay of cash dressed in the fashions of the day.

My hair grew longer and unruly and I kept it I parted on the side. At night I would wedge the right side of my head into my pillow and try to will myself into not moving in an effort to keep my hair flat against my head. Invariably however I tossed and turned and my hairstyle suffered. But I refrained as much as was possible from visiting a barber much to my father's chagrin. By the time I reached high school I'd firmly taken my place among those who were labeled as freaks.

One Saturday afternoon during my Senior year in high school in 1976, I went shopping for clothes while incredibly stoned. I picked out a pair of pants that were baby blue crushed velvet with elephantine legs and front pockets I could barely get my thumbs in. They were 36 inches in length; I wore 33" by 33" in pants so I had to have my mother take up the hem. When I modeled them for her she said, "Oh. I see." The following day when I was no longer stoned I thought what have I done? But I shook off my uncertainty and wore them that Monday to school. At one point that day I stepped into the bathroom to take a whiz. There were around ten guys in the bathroom and all talking between them ceased as I stepped up to the urinal and did my thing. No one spoke the entire time. Then as I flushed and was done and just about out the door they all burst out in uproarious laughter. I never wore the pants again.

That summer I cut my hair shorter and began to comb it straight back. I'd been led to do so by hanging out at a local disco. For it did not take me long to assess by way of the club's other patrons that long hair as I wore it was no longer in style. And I wanted to fit in. So my daily garb changed too. No longer did I wear denim and construction boots. Instead I wore platform shoes and flashier clothes of unnatural fibers and polyester. My new outfits were diametrically different from the dull and muted colors I had up until that point worn. My parents who returned from a two week vacation unaware of my transformation had to ask whose clothes was I wearing. When I told them mine they were stupefied.

In the 80's I swore off man made fabrics cut my hair shorter and had a rat tail in back some seven inches long. It was all the rage. My clothes were mostly thrift store bought. One garment I owned was a suit-coat on which I scrawled on the back across the shoulders with a black magic-marker, "All dressed up." I also wore a lot of T shirts promoting bands I'd an affinity for such as The Pretenders, The Clash, The Sex Pistols, and the band that I was in, Cargo of Despair. At one point during those years I gave my self a haircut. I butchered the job and had to resort to a barber to remedy the mess I'd made. To the barber's inquiries of how my hair had gotten into such a state I told him my girlfriend had cut it. "What," he said, appraising my work. "Did you have a fight with her beforehand?"

Over the proceeding two decades the length of my hair would vary. I would go through spells of wearing it high and tight a.l.a the military when I felt a need to get serious in life. Other times I'd let my hair grow out until you could call it a mane. I had flat tops and buzz cuts too. Overall however my hair style was mostly short and neat. It remains so to this day albeit my hair is now gray. I've also gone back to wearing denim pants and somewhat muted shirts. It's the way I dress most every day. It seems to me at least to never be out of style.

With a bottle over my head.

When Timmy C. broke an empty beer bottle over my head I had an out of body experienced. I was suddenly above myself looking down. And this is what I saw. A gathered crowd was backing away in a widening circle. I had Billy B. a local high-school basketball superstar in a head lock - it was the only way I knew how to get him to stop punching me - and we were spinning around. As we did so I could hear the grunting of a wounded animal. It took me several moments to realize that the wounded animal was me. I let go of Billy B. and wobbly stood my ground. I was once again in my body, albeit with blood streaming down my face. The reason for my predicament was a simple one. Timmy C. did not want to pay me the four-hundred dollars he owed me for coke I had fronted him. Such are the occasional pitfalls when dealing drugs.

Turn the clock back to the beginning of my time in illicit commerce of illegal substances and you would find an average moody and petulant teenager selling joints for pocket change. From there I escalated to buying quarter pounds and selling them off in ounce and half-ounce quantities. I did so in pursuit of that most holiest of grails of a pot smoking teen: Free dope.

What a thrill it was to gather in the apartment of a friend and break the seal of a one-gallon size plastic baggy stuffed with a quarter-pound of pot and breathe in deep its earthy aroma. I'd dump out the contents on a coffee table and revel in the pile, digging my hands through it. Using an album cover or a shoe-box top I'd set it at an angle and sift some pot atop it ridding it of seeds before rolling up a joint to give it a try. Then I'd divide up the dope and heap it into sandwich size baggies. I'd measure by eye, two finger height for twenty dollar half-ounces, and four fingers high for a forty dollar ounce. Rarely did I ever resort to using a scale. Once the work was done bagging up the dope we'd smoke another joint and listen to music or stare at TV before I went off to recoup the money I'd invested in the weed.

And seldom was heard a discouraging word. For pot smokers were for the most part a forgiving and accepting lot. Such was not always the case with imbibers of powders and pills. They tended to be while under the influence, as friends and I put it, Skooky.

One time I was selling hits of what was purported to be THC - the active mind altering substance in Marijuana - and which was in all likelihood some form of animal tranquilizer. I was at a concert at a civic center and I'd taken a hit myself and was, as I can best describe the high, like an alzheimer victim lost in a penny arcade going full bore. I was dressed in a yellow T shirt with a shiny silver and black image of Groucho Marx and about an hour after I'd sold off all the dope two guys confronted me and my companions. One of the guys could barely stand up. The other pointed at Groucho and said blah blah blah. It took several moments in my addled state to understand what the guy was saying. It turned out he was claiming he hadn't gotten off, that the dope I'd sold him was no good. It must have taken a full minute before this sank in. Then it hit me. There was no fucking way he couldn't have been high if he'd swallowed the hit. I told him he was full of shit. He wouldn't let it go. Finally one of my unarmed companions had to threatened to stab the guy before he gave up and skulked away leaving us alone. Lesson learned: Don't dress so conspicuously when dealing dope.

A few years later I was introduced to cocaine at $90.00 a gram and $50.00 a half-gram. After several snorts I was scheming to get it for free. The solution? Become a dealer. I bought an ounce and with a half-ass scale I was in business. The price for the ounce was such that I wound up with four free grams of coke for my troubles. I never stepped on it. That is I did not dilute or add to the cocaine's weight with such substances as powdered milk, laxatives, or procaine. I sold the coke as is. And most of my customers came back for repeat business. There was however moments of buyer's remorse after all was snorted and pockets were poor, and there was at times hemming and hawing over whether or not the gram looked at full weight. But for the most part everyone was satisfied. I did get one late night frantic call from someone wanting to know what I'd cut the coke with. Turned out he and another guy had injected the coke and had painful complications. But that was just a one time thing.

My customers were almost to a one weekend recreational snorters. We'd lay out lines together and chatter away, smoking and drinking, before laying out another line. It was all so fine and dandy, cash and carry. But then I made the lazy mistake of fronting Timmy C. four grams over the course of a few nights with his solemn promises to pay me in full on the upcoming weekend. Timmy however was on a cocaine and alcohol fueled bender, I would later learn, shirking off work and all responsibilities and before he knew it he'd lost his job and had no means or money to pay me back. I began dogging him. And at one point in a bar room confrontation I jammed a child's toy gun in his neck and said, bam bam. I wanted my money.

Some weeks later there was a graduation party along a seldom used paved road. Friends and I had just smoked a joint rolled with the album-jacket sized rolling paper that was included in the latest Cheech and Chong record, Big Bamboo. We were blitzed and stumbling about. Out of nowhere Timmy C. was in front of me. He said he was sick of me bugging him. It didn't make any sense. He owed me money. He was the bad guy here. He punched me in the face. I shook it off. He punched me in the mouth. I cleared my head and took a swing at him. I'd never in my life swung a punch at anyone. Billy B. Stepped in between us saying I was too big to fight Timmy, that it wasn't a fair fight. Then he punched me in the face. That's when I got Billy B. in a headlock that would end with a bottle breaking over my head.

Man after that was I holding a grudge against Timmy C. I swore I'd get even. But a short time later with out resolution my brother and two friends I headed west in a van. The following week in a call home my sister told us the latest. Timmy C. had gone on to rip-off Billy B. who responded by beating Timmy C. so bad he later woke up with one side of his body paralyzed. With thoughts of divine retribution I let go of my obsession of getting even with Timmy C. He would it turned out walk for the rest of his life with a noticeable limp. As for me I gave up dealing drugs from the bottle day forward. It wasn't worth the hassle. And in the end I made it through that time period relatively unscathed and with all debts forgiven. I no longer imbibe mind altering substances. Life as it is is mind altering enough.

Blue Lips

When my sister happened by my parents house one winter afternoon twenty years ago she found my mother blue in the lips and struggling for air; The idiopathic pulmonary cystic fibrosis that had reign over my mother was robbing her of breath. My sister took charge. Bundling my mother and her oxygen tank into her car my sister made the ninety minute drive to the Deaconess hospital. It was there that my mother was undergoing experimental outpatient treatment for her respiratory malady of unknown origin. On that particular afternoon due to her condition my mother was admitted as an inpatient with the understanding her stay would be short term, just until she had regained her strength. Ten days later however on the twenty-eighth of December, 1989, my mother would take her final precious breath.

Memories of those last ten days of my mother's life have mostly tattered and frayed and gone the way of forgetfulness. Some images and happenstance of then however have left there indelible mark. They still have me marveling some twenty years on. Chief among these is the matter of coincidence: I was at the time of my mother's stay at the Deaconess working there through a random assignment of the temp agency I was employed by. I could just as easily, as with a coin toss, have been working somewhere else. But as fate or the cosmic alignment of the stars would have it I was working at the hospital and thus able to be in my mother's final days close to a constant at her hospital bedside.

My mother's condition was such that every breath was a labored one and the last thing she needed was an exchange of words emotionally charged. Thus I held my tongue. For you see at the time I had issues that were I believed childhood based and I wanted almost more than commonsense would dictate to have my mother confess her shortcomings in parenting. But as I said I kept my opinions to myself and as I watched my mother weaken regardless of her doctor's insistence she was on the mend I kept my accusations of her perceived failures to myself. At the close of visitor hours each night I bid my mother well and went home to place late night calls to fellow members of a support group for painful childhoods. I cried that I was watching my mother die. And I was advised by those wiser than me that I could be a loving son by simply being at the bedside of my mother, and that by doing so I might also heal the places where they hurt.

Shortly thereafter one morning when I entered her room my mother implored me to her side. She'd had awaken in the night from a horrible dream in which television newscasters were pronouncing her imminent death. She had responded to the nightmare by tossing a water pitcher at the offending television screen. That morning as she told me of that awful dream she gripped my hands tightly and fought for the breath to tell me how frightened she'd been. I did my best to comfort her and reassured that I was there for her. Later that evening at the end of visiting hours I made my leave saying, "Sweet dreams, Mom." My mother replied, upon freeing herself from her oxygen mask, "Then I will dream of you." It would remain one of the most cherished moments in my life.

That Christmas my brother and sister and father and I gathered around my mother's hospital bed. We did our best to prop up the illusion that soon my mother would walk away refortified by her hospital stay. Her weakness however did not bode well. But there was hope. And there were prayers. We leaned upon the both of them as crutches. And with their support we stood around her bed doing our best to deny what our eyes were telling us, here was our loved one in the act of dying.

On the morning of her final day my mother's sister and I conferred. My mother's condition was noticeably worse than it had been up until that point. We debated whether it was time to call the rest of my family for a final vigil. In a decision perhaps born of our refusal to face the truth we put off the call until at least later that night when I got off from work. I went about my courier duties and my aunt stayed at my mother's side. At the end of my shift I ate a hasty dinner at the cafeteria of the Beth Israel hospital. Afterwards I stepped outside and facing west I saw a magnificent sunset of vibrant pinks, oranges and reds.

When I got to the Deaconess my aunt and I rallied around what I should do. There was no getting around the fact: My mother appeared to be at the end of her life. I made the call. In the time it took for my father and sister and brother to arrive my mother's vital signs crashed. It was then only a matter of hours.

We gathered about my mother's bed. A priest was summoned to administer final rites and holy oils. In turn each of us made our final goodbyes. At one point as my brother agreed with my mother that there had been some rough passages in their respective lives my mother said with a chuckle, "not so fast." She did so with the timing of a seasoned standup comedian. And I thought who is this woman cracking jokes on her deathbed? Certainly it couldn't be my mother. But it was. My father meanwhile was railing, "Why couldn't it be me instead." As my sister stood off to the side, her fists tight to her lips. I watched it all unfold around me while remaining detached as if a documentarian.

My mother was hooked up to a machine that administered morphine. She and my father had both previously agreed to no extraordinary means of prolonging her life. She would go when her time came. My father and brother and sister and I sat about my mother's room not talking, waiting for my mother to take her final breath. Hours passed. We sat there waiting. She labored on as if not fully willing to die. Then we four all fell asleep. It couldn't have been for any longer than a moment. And in that moment my mother died. For just as quickly my sister snapped awake and found her so. We were now a family of four.