BACK IN BLACK: Part One (TheRapist Continued, Again)

I'll never forget the day...

Thursday, February 9th, at 6:00pm. That's when my world exploded.

I'd been pounded by negative energies with a driving baseline, shattering my eardrums so anything, even positive, was an irritation.

I had set myself up. I'd made myself a victim, attracting the wrong energy. I always lived my life under the rule of not inviting the unwanted, but I had opened the door to negativity. I told the universe JPG was weak, and nature, life, the fucking universe, never tolerates weakness. Natural selection; the strong survive, and the weak are pummeled to dust.

It was one of the few nights I had off from work. Like most nights, I was lying in my daddy chair, half-naked, watching On Demand programming, bored. Everything lost its thrill. Video games, movies, television, it was all tainted with psychobabble. They were escapisms keeping from dealing with real life and growing up. I wasn't writing. I had lost all inspirations and motivations to create. I thought I was void of ideas, but more accurately I was running from them. Characters and plotlines became ghosts and goblins I feared.

My wife answered the door. It was the manager, and I went into the bedroom to put on some pants. I'd already had it out with the man two months prior, when he was to repair a busted lock on my door. He was procrastinating and I confronted him to repair the lock. Three times he scheduled an appointment, and three times no one came. "You have three lock, you don't need a fourth." was his explanation. But that wasn't the point. He said he would replace the lock, and I was holding him to his word. Also, I wasn't paying rent so I could wrestle with my front door. I moved in with those locks, and I was paying to keep them. When they did finally show, they took the damaged lock, but didn't replace it, leaving a hole in my front door. When I complained again, their solution was switching the backdoor, putting it on the front, and covering the hole in the backdoor with a metal cover. I was told twenty-four hours and all would be as it should, but that never happened.

I wrote the owner, but she did nothing. I went to the Housing Department who advised to send two more letters for service before sending an inspector. I followed the rules, and nothing happened, so we scheduled for an inspection. The inspector came and went. He looked around and basically told us we were fucked. There was nothing he could do about the lock. The law said we didn't even have to have a security door, then he quickly pointed out what we thought was a gate was nothing more than a glorified screen door. There were several things around the house that needed attention and were left unfinished. All of which had nothing to do with housing code standards.

I stood dumbfounded as the inspector went room-to-room dismissing our complaints. We're good people and responsible tenants. We paid our rent on time. Never had a complaint against us. Still, there was nothing we could do to protect ourselves against what we would learn was the first attack. The second came on Thursday at 6 pm. I stood in my bedroom, slowing putting my pants on, and listening to the muffled voices of my wife and the manager. I waited for it to end, but when it didn't I knew I had to do something. I appeared behind my wife and the manager jumped back. I saw it, he knew it, and I still hold on to it. I made someone afraid. He handed us a slip of paper. My wife said we were being forced out. I hid my shock and anger while deepening my voice: “We’ll check with a lawyer in the morning, and see what she can and cannot do.”

When the door closed, we fell apart. My wife was in shock, and I prayed internally as I read the declaration to relocate my family so she could move her parents into our unit. It was the first time Id’ read any legal document so carefully, studying, looking for every interpretation, anything I could use to save us. The next day, I went to the Housing Department and there was nothing we could do to protect ourselves. Even thought there was a “bad faith clause” it was inactive unless we could prove they the owner didn’t move her parents in. I played phone tag with the Housing Rights Association. I called a lawyer, who read off twelve things I could sue for, if we could prove the owner was cheating us, which we couldn’t.

The first thing I did was go to my father, who had prepared for this ever since this same person kicked my mother out of her unit. My father had a place all lined up in one of his buildings. Honestly, I was excited. This was opportunity to really save some money. I’m well aware that my father’s properties are in areas I would prefer to steer clear of, but my mother’s place is decent, in a decent neighborhood. I thought, surely, as the father of his grandkids, we would get an even better place. Maybe, he’d even rent us a house.

84th Place. Crenshaw and 84th Place. It took a while for the address to seem familiar. I’d spent my youth there. Back when my father was in the furniture business and worked out of Mansion House. There was nothing to do for a ten year-old, but play in the back alley, and going back and forth to the local library to steal comics. As I drove to 84th, the scenery became more familiar and I was dreading my destination. When I got there, I was in shock. I knew exactly where I was, and I couldn’t believe this was where my father wanted his son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren to live.

It was a dump. No need for me to describe any further. Simply, imagine a dump and you’ll see it. It was the universal definition for a dump. It intersects with every dump, in every reality, in ever dimension. I called my wife, but I was speechless. My shock went up against my instinct to run from danger, and shock was winning. I stared at that building, wondering what my father was thinking. Later than night, I returned with a friend who couldn’t wait for five minutes in his parked car without being afraid. As bad as the area was during the day, at night it was mush worse. John Carpenter couldn’t imagine a worse place. The freaks and bangers had crawled form the sewers and were walking the streets. I took some pictures with my cell for my wife and got the hell outta there.

Taking my father’s place was an option I could not entertain. It was my greatest fear made real. Since I was a kid, living in Orange County, I’ve been afraid of living out Good Times, Sanford and Son, and What’s Happening. Someone like me, who lives their life via television and movies, seeing those shows was terrifying. I’d never knowingly touched poverty for any longer than a weekend visit. Making my stay permanent was stupefying. Taking my family with me was unacceptable. That is when I truly became afraid. My safety net just fell apart and I was on my own. I had four weeks to find a new home with crap credit my only obstacle.

Fast forward: it took two weeks to find a new place to live. During that time, I barely slept, my children became ill, and we were subjected to human greed in its most base form: real estate.

Real estate has to be the gold rush of the millennium. We drove from West Los Angeles to North Hollywood and saw some of the crappiest apartments I’d never imagined. What passes for a “newly painted” apartment my six year old can surpass with a brush and water colors. Security was a luxury, and common human decency was as vacant as the apartments. We hit the bottom of the barrel when we answered an email from a Persian apartment manager/owner.

We were honest in our profile that we had poor credit, which made the email we received all the more suspicious. In two-weeks, it was the only email any manager or owner had sent. The apartment was east of Crenshaw. As my MPV turned into what could officially be called the ghetto, I felt my stomach turn. My wife rolled up her window, and my kids went silent. We were strangers in a strange land and no matter how brown my kids and I were it wouldn’t be enough.

BACK IN BLACK: Part One (TheRapist Continued)

I was a crackhead squatting in a foresaken building that was once my mind. Where I had loathed my appointments, I looked forward to them, my next fix. A direct shot of self-pity and transference straight to the brain. Like Randel P. McMurphy, I was a sane man in an insane world being negated until death was an improvement.

I was a perfectionist, and that was wrong.
My likes, my loves, were tainted; forms of escapism that trapped and kept me from growing. And my lack of interest, my failure to be entertained wasn't the sign of multimedia drivel, but a mind long bereft of reality.
I craved affection, and that meant I was greedy.
I saw life as senseless when surrounded by the walking dead, and that made me self-destructive.
I was stuck somewhere between adolescence and childhood. My search for truth stemmed form my mothers habitual lying making my quest ingenuous, a byproduct of bad parenting. The more I opened myself, the more I felt like an wound left open to the air; healing slowly, getting dirty, infected. I was festering; traveling back in time to a person I thought long forgotten. But, he came back, that lowly boy undeserving of love. And in that heap of despair I found commonality with my mother and the world. We became one. I was a victim, prey, and the wolves began circling.

But things came to a head. Something was stirring. It wouldn't sit still. A voice in my head kept saying: "It's all bullshit. Get off your ass. Do what you know you need to. Now!" There were nights when HST would visit me. One in particular, when I was watching The L Word, HST came to me and I beat the shit out of my laptop, slamming keys so hard I woke my wife. My anger was exploding like planes colliding into the Trade Center, and bodies were jumping from windows because they couldn't deal with it. But, not even HST could battle toe to toes with the self-doubt gripping me. In mid-thought, I stopped what I was doing. What was I doing? Were these thoughts, these truths, even real? And, HST forgive me, I actually began to wonder if life would be better as a "normal person."

That's when the wolves attacked.

BACK IN BLACK: Part One

I can’t believe this page is still up. I came back; pretty sure it was taken down. It’s not so funny how someone can mistreat what they love, and need. But I’m back – again – and it feels good.

Where was I?

In a dark place I thought I’d never escape. Therapy. I was already fucked up when I started, but I could still see the light and had a chance of getting out of it. When I started “counseling”, it was like going from general population prison to solitary. At least, in gen-pop, you can see the sun.

This is tougher than I thought. For three days I’ve read over old blogs, trying to get the “taste” back, and I thought I had it. I’d think over beginnings, one after another, each getting better and better. But now, it’s like pulling a tooth. Feels good, though. An uncomfortable yet stimulating feeling, like courting an old flame months after the break-up. The last time you saw one another was painful, but now all you can think about is the sex. It’s all-new again. You can’t wait to perform and show him or her what you’ve learned from the experiences between then and now. I’m anxious; waiting for the rush, the vibe, to slip into the jazz; that state of semi-consciousness, where HST takes over and I become a writing god.

Chapter 1 TheRapist

I started seeing Dr. Shrinker last year in September or October. I’ve written about it already. I spent weeks just unloading on her all the things I felt were wrong with me. I was convinced I was fucked up and needed help to get out. I was tired of slipping in and out of depression, the anxiety, poor self-esteem, and failed diets. I just wanted some answers. Why was I like this?

Once a week I’d go to her office and sit in a chair about five, maybe ten, feet away from her and just start talking. Ironically, the light would always shine on her, leaving me in the dark. There were a lot of days I dreaded going because I’d leave feeling worse than when I arrived. Other days, I truly had nothing to talk about, and I started cataloging events just so I’d have an inventory of topics to bring up.

At first, she said nothing, and I did all the talking about my life and how it sucked. The first words she spoke to me where about signing a contract – “Message!” In this contract, I was agreeing to attend my regular weekly sessions. If I missed a session, for any reason, I would be liable because she couldn’t bill the insurance company. Right then, I knew I shouldn’t continue. Everything about her was wrong. She never greeted me or responded when I said hello. And she worked herself into almost every scenario. For example, one day I mentioned how I felt like Alexander in the self-titled move by Oliver Stone. The character was portrayed as someone very misunderstood. There’s one scene in particular where he’s standing on a hill delivering his "I am William Wallace" speech, and as he’s speaking he can feel the dissension in the ranks. No one could understand him. They were too consumed by their own greed, prejudices, and limitations. Alexander stood on that hill, almost begging his people to see what he saw, to share his vision. But, they refused.

I told Shrinker that’s how I felt every day. I was so alone in how I thought, in what I believed, that I started to deny my own humanity. The world we know was a lie. Only I saw the truth and I wanted to shove it in their faces. I wanted to stand on a hill and lead everyone from the darkness, the ignorance, fallacies, and lies. She said: “I think what you’re telling me is you want me to join you in this struggle.”

…No.

It had nothing to do with her. In that room we were separated from the world, and she wasn’t one of “them.” She was an indescribable “her” to guide me through the shit storm of my mind. In that limbo I was Mork and she was Orson.

It happened again and again. Every time I’d unload something sincere, she’d inject herself into my trauma instead of helping me understand it. Even though I knew what she was doing, I was too hooked to call it quits. She already shot me full of her junk. I was fed sugar and tricked into the white van. My pants were unzipped and some fifty-something woman was jerking me off. I went there fully prepared to embrace the blame for my problems, but that didn’t mean I knew the solutions. When I went to see her, she took the blame away. She did what I had learned to stop doing almost ten years ago…

It was the first time I’d meet a writer in the flesh. Steven Barnes, author of The Kundalini Equation, Blood Brothers, Iron Shadows, Street Lethal, and several teleplays was having a book signing at a small bookstore off Ventura in North Hollywood. It was Merlin’s idea to go and we dragged our wives along. When we got there, Barnes was already in a long conversation, so I just laid back and listened. I’d already read his book and was a big fan. This was back, before I liked reading. Blood Brothers was the first science fiction novel I read and loved. As I listened, he said something very profound.

“You become an adult when you accept responsibility for your actions. Stop blaming your parents for whatever they did or didn’t do in the past for the mistakes you make in the present. Accept the responsibility and become a man.”

Okay, that’s not exactly what he said. It’s been too long for me to remember word for word, but like Andrew Adamson’s interpretation of CS Lewis, this is what I remember. He was looking at me when he spoke, as if he knew who I was and how I blamed my parents for every fuck-up. At that moment, I would stop.

And, I did stop. My life became mine. I took ownership of it. And when I did, one of the immediate changes was how I saw my parents. It was the first step in what would become a healing between my father and I. But, when I told this to Shrinker, that I wasn’t there to blame my parents for anything they’d done to me – I wouldn’t become a cliché – she said: But we can’t deny, whether we like it or not, there’s a part of them in us.” I believe her exact words were: “We all have a little mommy and daddy inside us.”

With that, ten years of therapeutic soul searching was flushed down the toilet. I regressed. I began therapy looking for a way to save myself. I was a changed man watching myself slowly revert to that adolescent going nowhere. That twenty-something boy had become a man in his thirties, only to watch everything slipping away. And my savior was a dope dealer.

To Be Continued (I will be back. Promise.)