THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Eleven

I don’t understand it all, but I am changing. What I am experiencing is about me, but I’m convinced that there is a connection between my experiences and what is currently going on in the world. I’ve been reading various laymen’s guides to quantum physics. Sarah is right. Lilliput is a wacko world…that’s the world of little people in Gulliver’s Travels. In the quantum world light waves turn to particles when they are observed. Instantaneous communication between quanta is beyond the pail. That’s a big one, as it disproved Einstein’s position that nothing could travel faster than light. A French guy named Alain Aspect proved it in the early eighties. Where was I? Twenty years have gone by and I still believe nothing travels faster than light. Certainty and Newton’s classic physics was dethroned as king and replaced with the weird world of probabilities. Why is this important? Because, you wouldn’t have the internet without it, that’s why. There are many other things, too, but the internet is important to me. Nothing is certain to a point of one. Nothing! But some things are more likely to happen than others. This is why Sarah is sometimes wrong in her readings. Anything and everything can change on a dime, and the change occurs now and the precipitator of change is choice.

I’m a speed reader, which is why I can go cover to cover through the Times every day and still have some of my day left. I didn’t go near the texts that Alexander Hastings reads as easily as I read a cartoon strip. They are hieroglyphics to me, brain poison. But, there are many brilliant people who have the gift of making clear the incomprehensible. I have no desire to challenge Stephen Hawking. He’s the brainiac whose mind is encased in a body that no longer works. I just want to understand the stuff, and how it might relate to what I am going through. I was given a puzzle where the pieces are doled out piecemeal, and they are all white and there are no straight border pieces. Only a fool would undertake such a mind-annihilating endeavor. My father used to call me a fool. Finance is where it’s at he used to tell me. Only a fool would choose the mind over money. He was poor all his life. I guess he was a fool, too.

David Cawley continues his appearances in my dreams. I don’t know why he doesn’t come out and say what he wants. He asks questions. I could ignore them as most do regarding their dreams, but I have chosen not to. What are you doing? That was his last question. What do you believe, Augusto, and what are you doing. The two are connected somehow, two white puzzle pieces that fit together. Belief and doing! I better pay attention to my driving. Too much thinking to be on I95. I’m in the right hand lane. I decided it’s not my place to vent anyone’s pent up anger. I’m through with the saving business, not that I wouldn’t pull someone from the Hudson. What I’m getting at is that I am finished, as much as anyone can be finished with anything, with deciding who needs fixing and who needs saving. I’m not heading back to Connecticut to save James or to fix James. I’m going for me.

The biblical story of the Good Samaritan has a power over us, over me. From this moment forward I will only offer advice if it is asked for. It hadn’t occurred to me before my dream era – that’s what I’m calling it - that when my friends or colleagues offer me unsolicited advice I usually get my hackles up and dig in my heels. I give them a polite thank you, but my hidden response is invariably a solid, fuck you. Debra once suggested that I try growing a mustache. That was the one time I came out with my hidden response. She never suggested it again and I never grew a mustache. I did wonder, though. In visiting my sister I want to be with James without telling him he is screwing up his life. I want to notice him in his heroin induced state and my response to it. Hell, who am I to say what another individual might be exploring in this life. I have a hard enough time figuring out my own.

My drive this time is uneventful. No finger birds, no swearing mothers, just a few tailgaters that I ignore. That is odd, by the way. I hate being tailgated and I usually slow down or signal them in some unpleasant way. It only served to make matters worse. By ignoring them I discovered that I encountered fewer of them, and the ones I did draw to me drove around me quickly. Their tailgating didn’t seem as important anymore. Important…I wonder if lessening the importance lessens the incidence of what I had considered important. Were it that easy! I could make a million bucks on weight loss alone. I could call the book, Worried About Obesity? Fagedaboudit!

Rose and Charlie are away for the weekend. They welcomed my stay, as they were not happy about leaving their home in the hands of an addict. That is how they refer to James. He is becoming something other than James, their beautiful boy. I have come to the realization, true or not, that James is using his heroin to allow an aspect of himself to come forward, an aspect that he can’t allow out in a straight state of mind. I want to see James in his element. I have patients that do that. Henry Toodom is one of them. He is an alcoholic that I am convinced uses alcohol to vent his rage. Sober Henry is Mr. Milquetoast, quite unbalanced in his personality. Give him a few drinks and you wouldn’t recognize him as the same man. Henry is what we refer to in the business as a rageaholic. There are other rageaholics that are in a rage, drunk or sober.

As far as I can tell James is, or I should say was, balanced. He’s told Rose that he goes so low psychologically that the only way he can stand being with himself is when he gets whacked with his drug. I want to see him when he is not so loaded he can barely stand. I want to see him when he’s high, but is coherent enough to deny that he is high. Who is he in that state and how do I respond to that state? If I’m going to write a new book then I have to know what I’m writing about.

James’ isn’t home when I arrive, but then I didn’t expect him to be. I know where the spare key is hidden and fetch it from under a garden rock. It’s one of those fake rocks that hold a key, the kind that all burglars know about. Rose might as well have left the house unlocked and hung a ‘welcome burglars’ sign over the front door. I guess the illusion of safety is better than a constant fear of felons. It is quiet. I know Rose appreciates quiet. I roam about the house, feeling into its energy. There are pictures of James all over his parents’ room, the majority of them put there by Rose. I remember this one. He was seven and Rose had him in a pony tail. Her love for long hair began with her love for Jim Morrison. James’ hair was nearly platinum then. He got into a fight with a big kid in his class who gave James shit about the pony tail. Rose delights in retelling that story. In each telling the story is a little different and the bully is a little bigger. James didn’t seem afraid of life then. He does now.

Stephen King was his favorite. I say ‘was’ because he doesn’t read anymore. He was reading King at eight years old. Is it a coincidence that he was peering into the dark side long before he chose to live in it? Was he getting a sense of the monsters that would eventually become symbolic of his drug? If all time is simultaneous then his present may have influenced his choices in the past. The past didn’t influence his present in this case, the present influenced his past. James was prepped for the demons. He knew they were coming? How?

I walk to the end of the upstairs hallway and enter James’ room. Rose has stopped picking up after him. She may have likened it to picking up snow flakes off the ground while others were still falling from the sky. You get the picture. There are three ashtrays full of butts and blunt tobacco. Empty Gatorade bottles are on the floor and his two trash baskets are over flowing. Clothes are everywhere, including damp towels. I can see the care that Rose has taken in decorating the room for her twenty year old son. She framed several record album covers from the seventies and hung them on the walls. Hendrix, Morrison, The Birds, The Beatles and many others are represented. James was introduced to music by Rose. I remember him telling me how he wished he was alive during the days of Woodstock. Rose was there. I wasn’t. Maybe James was there. These are different times.

I hear Sympathy for the Devil on my cell. It’s my favorite Stones’ recording. I listen to a bar, sing along and then flip the phone on. It is Sarah.

“Hi Ben,” she said. “Are you there yet?”

“Yeah, I’m standing in the middle of a trash heap. I’m in James’ room. No one is home.”

“I don’t want to bother you, but I thought you might appreciate this. I just did a reading for a woman, a new patient. It seems her son is having a problem with drugs and she wanted me to do a reading for the young fellow. Believe it or not, she brought his bong.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I usually need an item of the person I’m doing a reading on. It’s probably not necessary, but I believe it is. I assumed she would bring a shirt or something, but she brings his bong. I swear to God, Augusto, I couldn’t stop laughing. So we get down to business and here I am rubbing this bong like it’s a crystal ball. The kid’s energy is thick and tight, guarded, you know. I could see strands of energy trying to penetrate his, but he won’t allow it. The next thing I know his energy shifts. The kid is home getting high with his friends while I’m here with his mother.”

“Big surprise, there,” I said.

“The kid’s energy opens. He lets his friends in. Augusto, it’s like he becomes who he won’t allow himself to be in an unaltered state of mind. I couldn’t quite get what it is, but he feels like if he shows it to others they will see him as weak. I thought I’d share this as I know you are going to try and find this in James.”

I thank Sarah for the information and spend the next twenty minutes engaged in the kind of small talk couples engage in when they are in the early stages of a mutually exciting relationship. Friday night is for James. Saturday is for Sarah. Both are important to me. I look at my watch. I have at least seven hours to kill before James might show up. I don’t feel like running. I’m not tired. I’m restless. What to do? I sit, quiet my mind and wait for an impulse. I call Sarah back, and then drive to Norwich. Why spend seven hours alone? Plans are more pliable, less black and white than they used to be, when I allow it.

It is midnight when I get back to Storrs, and surprise of surprises, James is home. He is watching TV in the living room. From what I can tell he has a low grade heroin high going on, a fact that he would deny to the death if I confronted him on it. It isn’t my intent to challenge him, but rather to observe him. James is happy to see me. He gives me a hug, which he hasn’t done since he was little, and then gently rubs the top of my head.

His speech pattern is different, strained, but not consciously strained, and higher pitched. If you didn’t know James you wouldn’t know he was high. You might think he was odd and overly talkative, but not high. You have to know him to know. He is not the same person straight as the person he is showing me now. This James is talkative to the point of wanting to slam a strip of duct tape over his mouth. I’m not looking for what differentiates the two behaviors. The hug and the pat on the head is a sign. I feel it to be a sweet and caring behavior. He is letting me know without subterfuge that he loves me. It wasn’t a man hug. It was an ‘I love you’ hug.

I ask James why he is so happy. He says that this is his natural self and that what I usually see and interact with is his depressed self. He thinks he is a manic depressive, the popular term being bipolar. I have regular disputes with my colleagues about the frequency of this particular diagnosis. James is not bipolar, but he likes to say he is when he is high. It gives his use legitimacy. I use drugs because I’m not normal…that sort of thing. Until James started using he was the most normal young man I knew. It makes me sad to see his pain. He receives a call from one of his friends. I hear a few bits and pieces. He says he really needs a girl friend, someone to cuddle with. He used that word. He didn’t say he was horney and needed to get laid. He wants to cuddle. How can he not know how loved he is? James finishes his call and gives me another hug. He heads upstairs and to the potential peace that sleep might bring.

James is in the process of allowing highway normal to squeeze him into its two lanes. He’s an off-road kind of person and can’t be driving a four-door sedan through the Sierra Nevada. He’s trying to drive the wrong vehicle and it’s killing him. He’s medicating himself to fit into what he thinks he should be. I envision highway normal with six billion lanes, all responding individually to whatever direction the driver turns the wheel. This is about comparing. When James, and me for that matter, decides to quit comparing ourselves to others highway normal will accommodate us. James may need to rethink his tough guy persona when straight. It isn’t him. Whose influence is he allowing to drive him into a persona that he is not? Maybe it’s not a person. Maybe it’s the culture itself. Some allow a far greater influence than others. Where does the authentic self lie? I don’t know yet, but I am determined to find out. I grab my mug and head off to bed.