Jerry Wick & Jenny Mae part 49: Thinking 1985/2012

Thinking. 1985/2012

Weaving through traffic, driving the first new car I ever bought on my own at the age of 40, music blaring as I sing along as if I am in a bullet traveling 45 miles an hour through downtown Columbus. The songs reach back to childhood (Springsteen, Rolling Stones, Woody Guthrie) to my twenties, (New Bomb Turks, Superchunk, Sinead O’Conner, Dinosaur Jr, Matador Records) and then into the present, (Allo Darlin, Sea Lions, Luke Roberts), giving me moments of elsewhere while waiting for a mini-van to get the fuck out of the way. Watching pedestrians as they bustle with bags and briefcases across steamy downtown streets, all the seriousness that a suit can imply, stuck on faces that look straight ahead; no doubt they are thinking of jobs to be done. In the car, contemplating visions of the past while guitars blast into my ears, I invariably think of a father long gone–a man who choose to vacate his family years ago, I think of Jerry, who is always just a flicker of thought and finally of Jenny and what her life is like these days.

Bruno shouts from the back seat, “daddy, punk rock, daddy, punk rock” , leaning down I skip from a Puccini aria to the Dogmatics, and he is pleased. One day, he may have the faint impression of a memory, sitting in the back seat as his father dodges slow cars, singing along to the soundtrack of Bruno’s childhood. I feel alone. Sensing that all the other inhabitants feel the same as I do, constrained to their bodies, thoughts limited to their own experiences, yearning to feel together if not for just a moment. But with the knowing of the isolation that rises again, the feeling that not only intercourse can relieve because the moments after intercourse are a reminder that yet, again, we are all alone.

It’s a science fiction experiment, these bodies of our, like tiny droplets of rain, hurtling towards the soil until our souls splash and explode against the concrete and dirt of our lives. Swallowed by the force of the ground. It is the music that keeps the feeling of life while sitting in the white Volkswagen with a boy in the backseat, shouting above the din, “daddy, more guitars, daddy, louder.”

The phone rings, yet another example of science fiction come to fruition, “hey, just want you to know, I’m still alive.” It’s Jenny, in the hospital again. “shit is crazy over here,” she explains, her voice muffled from the sheer tiredness of life, “but they can’t kill ole Jenny.” She has the memory of an elephant, at moments she is able to conjure a piece of the past that, even if I were there I would doubt that it would happen, some of it so surreal and outstanding that I scarcely believe that it happened. “I was thinking of that one time we had that New Year’s Eve party in that hotel in Springfield with your brother and all his fucked up friends. Remember?” Searching the moldiest canals of my mind, past exams I took, under papers I wrote, children saying the most fucked up shit, I bump into the memory, sheltered away some twenty-seven years ago. “Um, yeah sorta.” “Remember, you and I went and fucked in that broom closet and then went back to the party . We paid that security guard $20 to pretend he was arresting Donny Acuff, and then the guy got fired and ended up back at the parsonage partying with us all night. And what’s her face killed Russ, your goldfish? Boy, you told that bitch off.” Pulling into the parking garage, I try to balance the memory with the idea that part of my job is to advise treatment, justice and compassion in court today. “er, yeah, I remember that, but I can’t really think about that right now.” “That shit was funny. Anyway, I’m doing ok, trying to figure out how to get my legs working, and I failed my HUD inspection.” Jerking to attention on this last note, “What, how can you fail a HUD inspection when you are in a nursing home and have been in the hospital for two weeks?” I ask, flabbergasted that some moron at the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority would do such a thing. “Do they know you are in a nursing home?” “Yup, of course they know. They said I still had to do it, so I called a friend to go over there. Everything has to be fixed within ten days or I will lose my Section 8 voucher. But my friend said he’ll fix it.” Thinking to myself, the same friend who beat the shit out of you last month.

“Find out who your worker is over there and I’ll send a letter over and make a few phone calls.” There is a pause, “I don’t know who it is, all my paperwork is at the apartment and I can’t leave here, fuck, I can’t walk.” blowing an air of frustration, with cheeks in full puffed mode, I answer, “Ok, I’ll find out.”

Being poor is not easy, especially in America where people tend to be shuttled between bureaucratic paths that resemble something between a Kafka story and the story of the little girl who feel down the well, at times frustratingly sad but also bold in the ironic malice of workers whose job it is to guard the most basic rights of the poor. I see this on a daily basis, the vilification of the poor and mentally ill, as if those who are blessed with opportunities had in some astral manner, earned these opportunities. The belief that being born into opportunity gives someone the license to dis-empower the powerless.

Every state in the Union has its own laws and guidelines for social workers, counselors and outreach workers, with some states requiring a four year college degree plus the passing of a licensure test to practice the art of helping. Others, have laws that have a minimal requirement, with any four or two year degree sufficing in allowing, someone, usually with good intentions to work with the poor, mentally ill, homeless and addicted. Sadly, in the midst of slogans, uninformed opinions, we, collectively wage war on the underclass as if brandishing their shortcomings in front of them, we will somehow protect our own. Draconian voting laws, every form of stereotype, whether under the guise of patriotism, religion and or capitalism is used as a weapon to keep ourselves from looking at what is barely ours. A fragile shell that is protected by the opportunities that most of us are born into. It is a skinny path we walk, one filled with dangers that can dart suddenly from the underbrush of our lives, in the form of an accident, cancer, job loss, addiction or mental illness. I choose to do what I do as a way to relieve my own guilt for the underprivileged and at times, I do it with a chip on my shoulder, as I have no use for the shaming of the people I choose to serve. I am blunt with the truth as it is the only way I can make sense of the suffering I see, perhaps, I do it to make sense of  the confusion I was brought up with or maybe it is a calling.

There was a large farm next abutted next to the tiny chuck of yard where the tiny ranch house stood, a house that resembled one of millions in America, this one set right of the old National Highway. Three small bedrooms and an unfinished basement where Jenny and her younger sister slept, a piece of 1970′s frayed green carpet kept bare teenage feet from slapping against the concrete. Upstairs their little brother Tony slept in the same room with another younger sister, Megan and down a “hallway” that consisted of two medium steps from the closet sized bathroom was the parents room. This was the third house the family had lived in over the past four years, all of them less than a mile apart. The farm behind and next to them was abandon, the silo standing as a white beacon of failure to every passerby. This was the mid-eighties when the scorched-earth polices of Reagan capitalism cindered many a family farm, but the workings of these policies were cloaked in the feel good speech of an old actor who while robbing the heartland blind made us all feel a little safer. Jenny and her siblings each raised a lamb for the annual Clark County Fair, active members of 4-H, they realized the fragile lesson of life, death and the meaning of the cycle of hardship. The sheep would be slaughtered after the fair, and hopefully each child would be able to sell the animal for a good price, money to be invested in college, a car or to help the family out.

After school, we would climb into my tarnished Ford Mustang, bits of it chipped at the bottom with bucket seats that sat so low to the ground you could swear you could feel the heat of the asphalt under your ass. She would run the sheep, who by nature are not the brightest animals, trying to get them in shape to tone the muscles that would soon be ripped from bone and consumed. The animals would stare at her dumbfounded as if she were an alien, they had no reason to run in circles, besides they thought, “it’s hot and we are wearing wool for christsakes!” I would laugh at her efforts, drinking sun-tea while her mother shook her head, “it looks silly, I know, but she wins every year.” This was true Jenny won a lot of contests, her intelligence hidden by her quick wit and outrageousness. She won first place in the State of Ohio Soil Judging Contest sponsored by the Future Farmers of America, as a junior in high school although she was neither a  farmer presently or in the future. She twice won the State of Ohio Wool Judging Contest sponsored by the FFA. She was in the National Honor Society and was warned by several teachers to be wary of me, due to my mischievous nature and poor grades although I came from a long line of professors and professionals.

We would walk the abandon farm, in the cold and the warmth of spring, trasping over withered husks of corn, clumps of dirt that remained unmoved season to season, the massive wooden doors of the farm remained locked, shackled together with a rusty thick chain. We tried in vain to get into the barn, with the simple reason to unhinge our teenage lust in the dark shadows and moistness of mildewing hay that was waiting for us behind the tethered doors. The raspy corn would crunch beneath our shoes, the wind would sail across the unproductive patch of earth that surrounded us into our chest, holding hands the questions of our adolescent minds abounded as if compelled by the chilly wind. She would explain things to me as we stepped over forgotten plants, pockets of dirt that remained upturned and why certain crops could grow in Ohio and how crop rotation works. This was all new to me, I had assumed through my lens of persecution that farming just involved listening to Hank Williams Jr while riding on a tractor and telling nigger jokes. Of being provincial and dismissive of outsiders, like myself, although it would take me nearly thirty-five years to come to terms that I was an outsider nearly everywhere I went, including, at times my own house. The lump of distaste and protection I had accumulated over four years in living in rural Ohio slowly melted during this time, and an understanding of the wisdom, care and struggles of my classmates and neighbors came into focus. As Jenny called me out on my class snobbishness, one that was rooted in a liberal sense politics, as we were by all accounts poor in a monetary sense, I felt more at ease in my surroundings.

Nestled in the dirt roughly 200 yards back from the farm, her own house a dot in the distance, we found the carcass of a cow. Almost complete, it’s bones, weathered white  and picked clean by birds, rodents, bugs and seasons, we crouched around it in awe. Who would let an animal die out in the field, let alone wouldn’t the animal be noticed? “How does this happen?” I asked, crouching down, examining a hip bone, half buried into the dirt, the white bone resembling a conch shell in the middle of Ohio. She pulled it out, clumps of dirt sticking to its side, it was too cold for any insects, “it’s weird, huh?” I took a few steps back, resting on my haunches, keeping my balance with my left hand I felt something hard in the dirt. There was another carcass and soon we noticed roughly four or five cow skeletons. It as if we had managed to slowly walk into a cave, and slowly brushed a beetle off our arm and noticed that there were thousands crawling around us. “Christ, look at all these fucking bones.” The sky was gray, with soft rolling clouds hanging above the earth as if they were licking their collective lips readying themselves to unleash a torrent of cold rain. A splash of lightening shattered in the distant. I looked at Jenny and she stared at me, a large thick raindrop exploded between us. Wind seemed to gurgle in our ears, and she tried to put the hip bone back where it had submerged, as if it were never disturbed. “I don’t know why anyone would let these poor animals die out here and never collect them”, she said more to herself than me.

Jerry Wick and Jenny Mae pt 48: Dampness

Pt. Dampness

Jenny’s coat wrapped around her body as if it were beaten into her, the rain fell between the cracked plastic and settled into the rotting poly-cotton stuffing that peaked through as if it were making baby faces to the outside world. She huddled into herself, shivering on my porch as the rain whipped behind her. At the end of our walkway, William, waved shyly, his blue eyes a stark contrast to his brown skin. I stepped out onto the porch making sure that none of the cold could slip into our warm house, my wife stood in the kitchen, head bobbing in the background wondering who would be knocking at the front door in this weather.

We didn’t have too many unannounced visitors, and as we settled into the house we had planned to remake into our own, we preferred it this way. As sobriety surrounded us, the clamoring for social affirmation diminished and we simply kept to ourselves. Jenny was swaying, almost to the vibrations of the house, the wind, or some internal song churning into her ears. It had been a long time since she swiped makeup over her face, put a line of lipstick around her lips or wore a necklace around her neck; the skin on her face was taunt, tan from the sun and as weathered as the paint peeling off the side of our house. Her hands were leathery, the ends slightly yellowed by cigarettes, light brown spots a gift from the sunshine, it was hard to believe that just five years prior she wore silver bracelets and pearls.  She had been through a lot this past year, from living in South Beach, in the mansion of a millionaire, to the streets and jails of Miami to the streets of Columbus. During this time she went from making a record with a new collaborator in Boston to having almost everything she owned put out on the sidewalk. I had been given her trumpet and a small suitcase that held a few of her CD’s and records but the rest was gone. She had nothing to play them on and her lungs were no longer capable of blowing a melody into the trumpet.

Her artwork, which she created in manic bursts, had been dumped into trash bins, which would happen anyway over the years as she would gather up some of her belongings and then discard them within a few years as the urge to move would be greater than the need to stay. She had painted hundred of doilies with thin limbed characters holding glasses of wine or playing skinnier pianos, other creations where painted coconut shells that appeared to be a mash-up of dive-bar art with deranged arts and crafts that would horrify most average JoAnn Fabric’s shopper. At one point, while living in Florida my wife and I drove down to Miami for an art show my wife was participating in. We went out to dinner with Jim Williams and Jenny on a beach front restaurant that not only smelled of seafood but of money, the wait staff knew Jenny and Jim and brought them there drinks without them asking what they wanted. The next morning we went to the sprawling house that Jim lived in with his elderly mother, he inhabited a sort of mother-in-law suite that was attached off the living room. The house was stuffed with garish art work and a baby grand piano collected half a room of dust in one corner, as we passed it Jenny said, “His old bitch of a mom won’t let me play it, we had to move to this other part because her and Jim kept yelling at each other.” Jim’s unit was crammed with recording equipment, keyboards, guitars and a big red bass the bounced the sunlight off of its shiny exterior. “Jim bought me all this shit, even if I can’t really play guitar, he wants me to make another record.” The back yard was complete with a bar and dozens of painted coconut shells with dangling baubles, gold chains and the hair of the shells were combed down to make glamorous “sea” models. Jenny said she was trying to make a “whole platoon of these things, I wanna string them around the whole yard, so when it’s night time, the moon can bounce of their jewelry. I have about forty of them done.”  These too, in their ruffled glory were tossed to the trash bin when Jim died.

“Hey, Bela, I know you’re busy,” she stuttered, “but we need to use your bathroom real quick, the Tim Horton’s power went out and William has to take a shit and we don’t have anything in the tent. In case you didn’t notice, it’s kinda raining out.” She grinned when she said this last line. Jim waved in the background as if waving to the President in a motorcade, weakly smiled back, I turned and said, more to my wife than Jenny, “sure come on in, but be quiet the baby is asleep.” Williams started stomping and rattling the rain off of his soggy body as he trudged up the steps, Jenny with arms folded refused to go farther than the front entrance. “Jenny comes into the kitchen, do you want some water?” my wife asked. “No, I’m cool, I’ll just hang here, I don’t want to wake the baby and I’m real wet, if you can’t tell.” The smell of alcohol shrouded her voice, and I realized that breakfast had been served in the homeless camp.

William smiled as he entered and was prone to over thanking us so I nodded at him and casually mentioned that anytime we could help we would. When manic and drinking, Jenny usually spoke with pressured speech, jaw set tight, and her lips stretched around her teeth as if they were made of crystal. Her blue eyes held droplets of water, and for a moment the room was illuminated in these gobs of heavy water, she looked like a battered Christmas tress waiting to be cut down. “I’m sorry to come over here, especially when we have been drinking, we have to get a little bit in the morning, you know, I don’t want Merijn to see me like this.” She paused. “It’s embarrassing.” Most of my life I have never been at a loss for words, but at certain times in dealing with Jenny I was. There were a few moments when all was quiet, the sound being interrupted by William unloading in the other room. We laughed, “I swear to God, I’m going to kill him. Jesus, his ass is going to wake the baby,” she muttered. I heard my wife go upstairs, “bye Jenny.”

Earlier that year, after Jenny had been evicted from the Ohio State School of Music I woke up one morning and found her sleeping at the end of my driveway under the front end of my car. A congested mass of hangover, twigs, frayed nerves and sweat, with a large piece of Little Debbie Snack Cake plastic stuck to the side of her face. “Shit,” she said when I aroused her, “I didn’t have any place to go,” wincing as she pulled the plastic off her face, “what the fuck, I don’t even eat this shit.” “It’s probably from the plasma center customers, they are always throwing shit in our yard, candy wrappers, cigarettes, roaches, I even found a crack pipe in our yard.” That night, I let her sleep in our garage but told her she couldn’t drink in it and couldn’t tell Merijn. I found her gone the next morning, the garage door open and an empty bottle of vodka upstairs next to her make-shift bed. She walked in while I stood standing there, my head trying to shake the disappointment from my shoulders. “Oh, shit, sorry,” she tried to explain, I told her to leave and she started screaming at me, “God-damnit, you’re so fucking uptight, I can’t believe anybody would live with your ass. You fucking control freak, what the fuck, you are such a son-of-a-bitch. Fine, I’ll fucking find my own place, I don’t need your fucking help if all your gonna do is try to control me!” Taking a breath as if it were water, I paused, counting, “Jenny, there is some expensive stuff in her, what did I say, this is Merijn’s studio.” “Fuck you, it’s not that it’s you want to tell me what to do, always.” She continued yelling as I went into the house and called the police; by the time they arrived she was gone.

A small pool of water collected at her feet, looking into the puddle she bent her neck slightly like a scientist gazing through a telescope, “I don’t think we’ll stay out there long, some guys from the shelter are trying to get us out of there. But I and William want to stay together, they think I could get my own place but I want him there. The apartments they give you are in the hood, I just don’t feel safe. We saw a few of them; can you imagine me stumbling out there in crackville central? I’d be eaten alive…no, I want him there with me even if he can be a pain in the ass. He doesn’t smoke that shit anymore, he did once and I told him to forget about me if he was going to do it, I’m done with coke especially after Jim died.”

Jenny’s apartment is on the east side of Columbus, it is her second apartment since living on the streets in 2005, it’s a bit safer than her first one she shared with William, the one with gun holes in the walls, roaches openly defying a person who chose to sit on the threadbare couch, and the group of young African-American teenage boys, conferring in the parking lot at all hours who would always acknowledge be with a nod. I would do my visits there, with my work badge attached, the one that said that I worked for the largest community mental health center. Even drug dealers have a soft spot for social workers. It gave me access to the most dangerous of places.

Her current apartment is still in an unsafe part of Columbus, especially for a mostly single woman who has no income and who battles inner demons on a daily basis. She doesn’t go out at night and takes great care to make sure she has the required reserve of alcohol in her cupboards, under her bed and strews around the house before night falls. She drinks bottom basement vodka, which is usually Kalashnikov, long gone are the days when she would drink Stoli’s, Grey Goose or even Skyy her needs are more basic at this stage of her life. At one point her liquor cabinet was full, with Dewar’s, Makers Mark, Jamison’s and imported beers stocking her refrigerator and pantry, her vodka at that time would be housed in the freezer, as it would not be consumed entirely during the course of the day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and late-night keep me grounded. She pours it into a large tumbler that she keeps next to her bed, mixed with a splash of fruit juice, a twisted reversal of a standard drink. Her artwork climbs the walls, paintings of landscapes, black and white photographs she has torn and forged from discarded library books and old Life magazines. Photos of young romantics, cuddling in outdoor cafes, the scent of love on their necks as they take in the scents of whatever far off city they happened to be captured in, Paris, Antwerp, and Brussels, whatever. The smells of the cafes mingling with the cigarettes that hangs, as if they were props, from long thin fingers while the other hand is intertwined with their lover. For Jenny, it’s the idea of romance and the reinforcement that desire is not tossed asunder as one age, the fact that ideas live in a person’s head regardless of circumstance. She is proud, and her defiance to her situation, while at times appears to threaten her life, is one to behold. The photos of a young John Kennedy and of a determined Leonard Bernstein attest to the culture that have sprung from her well of life in spite of the pain she has tunneled through over the years.

Life is difficult for everybody, and as age grows around our ears, crowding our brains with the trivial and the serious, oftentimes in the same moment it is easy to take the burdens of daily life as a personal Odyssey although for the most part the majority of people I know have a journey paved with soft beds, scrumptious meals and a fairly easy commute to work, there are many where life is a continuous botched attempt to find a moment’s solace. Nearly every time I want to cook an elaborate meal, I run to the store in my 2009 VW, complete with MP3 player and heated seats. There is one mederterian store across the street from my house, and two large grocery stores within one mile of my house as well as five pharmacies within a one mile radius. I mutter under my breath while I stand in line holding a bunch of cilantro and a habanera pepper, thinking of my valuable time.

Chronic, long-term alcoholism can result in a condition called alcoholic peripheral neuropathy, which in laymen’s terms means that muscles cannot receive vital minerals, potassium and calcium due to liver damage. This can result in an awkward gait or at worse the inability to walk; it was one reason why many alcoholics die from taking a tumble down the stairs even though they might not have had very much to drink or anything at all. At times, both William and Jenny have a need to use a wheelchair or a walker, a startling experience for those of us who knew her in high school when she used her young legs to run cross country on a team that won the State Championship, or the young woman who graced the field of Ohio Stadium during half time of a Buckeyes game while marching in The Best Damn Band in the Land. One afternoon, circa 1996, I was leaving Bernie’s Bagels, stepping into the sunlit afternoon from the damp underground bar after taking a short beer break from Used Kids; I passed Jenny replete in gray sweat pants, running bra and white tee-shirt, running down High Street. “Jenny,” I shouted as she galloped past, “what are you doing?” She turned, blowing out hot breath, “shit, I got to get into shape; I thought I’d start running again. What are you doing?” Glancing down High Street, I answered, “oh, I just went on my beer break, Larry’s isn’t open yet so I went to Bernie’s. I’m on my way back to work. I have time for another one, if you want?” Jenny looked down at her brand-new running shoes, glowing white and unblemished from any dirt, fresh out of the box, “sure, I can always run later.”

Running became a passion of mine, shortly thereafter; I started in 1992, to ward off a beer gut that started creeping over my jeans. It blossomed around 1998 when I took to running roughly five miles a day and erupted in 2000, when a personal life that was crashing around me, and an inability to quit drinking once I started I trained and ran a marathon. I did not let a hangover cripple my runs and at one point ran eighteen miles with a hangover that would have immobilized a small dog, cursing my legs and my body the last two miles, I found solace in the long runs where music would guide my emotions and for a brief period I had a purpose even if it were only to put one foot in front of the other for two hours while the OutKast or Superchunk provided the background to the pleasures of my thought.

The journey of running has little to do with the physical aspect, which is easily solved through practice and finding a pace that fits one’s body, but the key is the isolation as feet pound against concrete, step by step, mile by mile until there is nothing. At about forty minutes the brain releases a flood of dopamine into the body, about the same amount as a small shot of heroin, and from there, feeling the runner’s high, a runner finds relaxation and perhaps the glow of creativity. Shortly prior to the summer of 2001, while training for my second marathon, my spouse got a job in Gainesville, teaching Fine Arts at the University of Florida. A dream job for her. I was running daily, drinking roughly four days a week, staying out as late as I could and starting arguments with her on the nights when she wanted me home, so I could escape into the bar lights and the mist of alcohol. Jerry had died shortly before then, Jenny had moved to Miami and I was unmoored, restless with pangs of secrecy and self doubt, even music did keep me grounded. In June while I was in Oklahoma for my cousins wedding I got a call from my wife, “honey, I have some bad news,” she said as I stood above the toilet, willing a minor amount of urine to come out, my head balanced against the wall as my wedding party hangover threatened to dis-rail the soft grip I had on my dick. “What?” She answered slowly, “the record store burned down last night, it’s in ruins, and everything is destroyed.”

Running became something that helped absorb whatever thoughts I had mounting in my mind, diverting fear into the pulse of my headphones zapping mix-tapes into my ears while sweat poured down my back, it was a daily practice that I still continue although the fear has since left me many miles ago when the drink found another person to occupy. The fear now is of age, of finding time to cram the lilting dreams that still drive me today, dreams for my children, dreams for my job, dreams for my friends, and dreams of finding time to write all my ideas.

Jenny is frail, with thin arms and legs that are slivers of skin, her clothes hang off her as if she were truly skeleton pried up by skin. She shakes and wobbles when walking, and with William in a nursing home, she has taken to wheeling herself around her small apartment. She needs medication but does not have health insurance and no income; both she and William live off of his Social Security that she helped him get. She has been hospitalized at least five times this past year but in an all too frequent encounter I have daily, the system has failed her. Several times, I have spoken with social workers while she was in the hospital to help her get her Medicaid as she easily qualifies, it has never been done. She was linked to a mental health center some years ago and got awful service, where her case manager lied to her and never followed up. Her case was eventually closed as her case manager stated “she refused services” although I had spoken to her case manager directly explaining her needs and advocating for her.

The nearest grocery store to Jenny is roughly two miles from her house, it takes her three buses to get there, and fare for a bus is $4. There is a convenient store about half a mile from her apartment as well as a Dollar Store, she buys pasta and tomato sauce and sometimes sells her food stamps for a ride to Kroger. She is given prescriptions when she leaves the hospital but is unable to fill them as she has doesn’t have insurance. She has not been able to have any mental health service in five years as she doesn’t have any insurance. The only alcohol and treatment center in town will not pick her up, she will need to call every morning by seven am and the get herself there by eight if a bed is available. It is nearly an hour and a half bus ride to get there. At times, she feels stuck, hiding in her apartment, huddling in her bed, watching reruns of the Golden Girls, at times feeling the inspiration to paint a picture or play some songs on her keyboard.

Days clog into one another; the fermenting carpet that is dotted with vomit, coffee and vodka and juice droplets makes the apartment more oppressive. Lately, with William sleeping against death’s door, Jenny is again reminded of what she has lost. Her eruptions are always on the phone, and while the anger has long since been wrenched from her voice, the fear remains steadfast. She calls and I listen. Listen. And then I listen some more. While my son points out the back window of the car, noticing the fire engines, a dog or the billowing blow up advertisement of a Jiffy Lube sale, Jenny issues a play-by-play of the madness in her world. Her life is one of frustration, of a beginning that never really begins and an ending that is clouded in the annoyance that the little things never get done or have never arrived.  The oddity of my own life is that I have spent a good deal of my days the past seven years helping many people like Jenny, at times helping the person leave the shell of poverty, mental illness and addiction but most of the times, offering a concerned ear to the decimation of their lives. I get paid to be compassionate. With Jenny, there is always the wish that something would click but I have learned in my life that I cannot put my own expectations for her life as a guide to measure her life, so I listen some more.

Jerry Wick & Jenny Mae part 26: More insanity.

2004.

There was a feeling of normalcy to my life, my wife and I had just come through a tunnel of self destruction that was so fraught personal chaos it appeared for a moment that the world around us had collapsed like a shattered bottle on cracked pavement. There were moments in the preceding years where the skin on my body appeared to be a separate entity, slithering away from inner thoughts that bordered on frenzied imbalance. I had awoken from years of creating a world of the absurd to find myself without any idea of how to proceed from a strangulated sense of self based off a few years of my early twenties across the threshold of my mid-thirties. For a while I was the walking embodiment of “what-the-fuck.” We had purchased a beautiful old house between the duplexes of north campus and the middle-class pleasantries of Clintonville. We were giving in to the passiveness of normalcy but not without an air of liberal steadfastness; it was as if we were challenging ourselves to stay rooted in the urban confines of Columbus even if we had to live next to a plasma center.

My wife had moved back to Ohio, we both chased and embraced a sober lifestyle built around a need to make up for lost time, not only in our relationship but as adults. I decided to return to college, an endeavor that had scared me shitless in my twenties. The last time I had been in college was fifteen years prior, I had dropped out due to frustration, fear and finding a community that had a disregard for convention living. Soon, after buying and fixing up our house, she became pregnant with our first child. The fear of a domestic life was slowing ebbing away. Jenny soon arrived from Miami, she and Jim Williams had gotten into another fight and he sent her back to Ohio.

Jenny had a tough time that year in Miami; she had entered treatment for substance abuse and bi-polar disorder numerous times. She was picked up by the Miami police on multiple times on charges of public intoxication, disturbing the peace and for being a danger to herself. At one point she was always taken to the psych ward of Jackson County Hospital where she would spend anywhere from two days to several weeks as the doctors tried in vain to subdue the demons that danced in her head. It was not uncommon for me to receive up to twenty calls a week from Jim about Jenny’s behavior. Finally Jenny was arrested in on charges of petty theft; she had stolen a mango shake as a joke and spent ninety days in jail. This was the longest period that she had ever been sober since her early teenage years. At times she would phone me from jail and tell me horror stories of the abuse that went on in the Dade County women’s jail. Only her humor saved her, she was beat up several times and was once put in isolation for her own protection. In one completely lucid moment she confessed to me, “I’ve always drank because I’ve always been afraid. Even when we lived together, I put our bed in the closet because I was scared people would get me.” When she got out of jail, Jim picked her up and soon enough the jail detox didn’t set and they were off to the maniacal races, filled with shouting, bruises and tears wrapped around epic bouts of laughter and love making.

She arrived in Columbus and quickly returned to her mothers, this last roughly a week before her mother shipped her back to Columbus where her bridges had been torched in the past few years by her unbalanced behavior. She quickly found refuge in the kindness of Wil Foster who used to play in her band. Wil tried to help her the best he could but soon even the bottomless kindness of friendship finds its basement regardless of how much the idea of love will inhibit reality. Soon, Jenny was on the streets. I awoke one morning to find her asleep in front of my car, a heap of booze soaked personhood nestled underneath a few articles of clothing and twigs.

She quickly got her wits about her, if anything Jenny is a survivor, one who can determine the safest in not most implausible way to safety through a burnished life of unrequited mistakes. Jenny was soon residing in another’s former band mate’s kindness; she had met Sean Woosley in 1990 during our final break-up. She had renamed Sean, Robin and for nearly the first five years I knew him I had assumed his name was Robin. She and Robin both had an affinity towards bourbon, beer and quick wits. The two of them, at times could have matched the best dialogue of MASH and or Mel Brooks movie.

I went to Sean’s house one night to check on her, Jim Williams had called me and said he wanted to bring her back to Miami, that if I couldn’t help her he could. Jenny didn’t open the door and I wasn’t sure what to do, trying the door knob the door opened directly into Sean’s bedroom. I could see directly into the living room, the stereo was playing “Bee Thousand” by Guided by Voices. Shouting out Jenny’s name, I proceeded with a sense of trepidation and doom. On the floor, surrounded by stacks of CDs was an empty bottle of vodka, moving towards the kitchen there were several empty 40 ounce bottles of beer and another half empty bottle of vodka. I yelled her name again, fearing that there would be no answer. A painful grown came from the bathroom, and against the corner was a tattered woman whom I had thought I once knew. She smiled a smile that was broken and carved with years to twisted decisions and suffering, “hey, baby” she murmured. I called my wife who instructed me to call 911. Within a few minutes an ambulance arrived and all I could do was show them what she drank. A voice slurred with tears, snot and vodka she protested about going to the hospital. “I ain’t that fucked up, I’ve been worse.” I nodded that this was probably true.

The ambulance had a small window that separated the cab from the rear, I tried to supply enough information that I knew about her. She doesn’t live here, she lives in Miami, she is 34 years old, and she has no money or ID. She has bi-polar disorder. She doesn’t work. Suddenly Jenny became lucid and started flirting with one of the EMT’s, “that is a sexy mustache you have there young man, you can call me mama.” Soon there was laughter from the rear of the ambulance. In another moment Jenny crossed to another side, “Hey, don’t you try to fuck me!” she screamed. I looked back and she was trying to sit up, the mustached EMT looked at me baffled. “Get your fucking hands off my tits!” He instructed his partner to stop the ambulance. “I am warning you to settle down or I will put you in restraints” he said. “What so you can fuck me? Go ahead a try it.” This went on for the next two minutes before we arrived at the hospital.

In the emergency room she was talking, laughing again and then she went back into a slurred stupor. She had a BAC test and the doctor, a small Lebanese man with a gentle disposition was shaking his head. He said she has a BAC over .40, “I have never seen one this high and I can’t believe she is even talking let alone alive.” She was dehydrated and I spent the next fourteen hours next to her in the emergency room, at times filled with disgust, horror and disbelief. On the late afternoon of the next day after hours of IV’s she was discharged. I went home and she went back to Sean’s, she phoned me later that night offering me thanks. Her voice was a bit off. “Are you drinking?” A pause, “um, just a little to tide me over.”