6

   I've had a bit of a block. A tough year can do that to a person. So I won't gild the lily by saying things like, "Here. Enjoy!" All I'm going to do is run through a chain of events that changed a few people forever. I'm going to tell it as quickly and precisely as possible. In other words, as if something's out to stop me - because, let's face it, that is in fact what a block intends to do. Maybe people work better with a deadline, with someone (or something) riding their ass to just get it over with. It lends a sense of frantic urgency to the proceedings, that's for sure.

   I'll start with a message from an old friend. Then I'll plunge in. The waters are very deep...

   "My dad taught Michael for a bit in high school. He says he was one of the few people in this world who lived every day to the fullest and got the most out of life he could. He left us far too soon, but he really made a positive impact in this world greater than most folks who live til old age do. I am so sorry for your loss. The entire Tournear family is intelligent, loving, and witty. You will help each other through. Much, much love, Mark."

   -Laurie

  

   Sometimes the best intentions can have the most disastrous outcomes. How that phrase bit me when I thought of it for the first time a couple of months ago. Maybe a few pages from now, you'll agree that it does slip sharp, venemous fangs in.

   I guess I didn't bring up Michael very much before this because I've still had a lot of grieving to do. It washes over you like the sea crashing onto a rocky point. The water runs right across you, contouring itself to your body. But it takes time and maybe a little effort to dry yourself. Your lighter and your phone are shot, and with wallet photos it's hit or miss. You heal, but things are eternally altered. There are scars.

   (I wound up going through a lot of therapy later, but they always wanted to gloss over this part and get back to the topic of the hurricane. Maybe it was a directive issued by the American Psychiatyric Association. It's no wonder I dropped the treatment, huh?)

   We won't spread a coat of varnish and call it good today. I'll open the floodgates and let this vile soup out.

   I've heard Michael referred to in conversation as the black sheep of our family. Was it because he was the first of us to smoke? Or that he always seemed to be part of the sort of crowd that trouble gravitated to? Hearing that today, it seems a little rude. But I'm biased. Monday morning quarterbacking is my only remaining option.

   (I'll admit he was pretty sharp at the art of swindling. At 12 years of age, he was the most clever shoplifter I'd ever lain eyes upon. He came out of a store this one time with maybe 20 cartons of cigarettes and a bottle of Wild Irish Rose stuffed down his pants. Not a fairy tale.)

   But people that say those sorts of things always forget to mention the amazing things about him - like how he'd wring every drop of enjoyment out of each day, as if in a race with time (man's only natural enemy); or how quick he was to smile at you, to tell you that he loved you, or to give you a hug. Most people are lacking in those qualities.

  

   His legal troubles began when he was still in school. He began dating the daughter of a police detective. Her father, knowing exactly what crowd he was a part of, laid down the law. They were not to see one another. They decided to run away together, across the state line to Mississippi.

   I don't remember all of the details: whether he asked someone to come get him, or if they were caught while there. The end result was the same. Michael was sentenced to his first go-round as a ward of the state. It was juvenile detention that first time.

   I'm not trying to build the impression that the local police department was out to get an innocent. I've already stated that he was always up to something, but things eventually deteriorated to the point that they were always looking for a bust - even when he was playing nice.

   I found out for myself one night when he asked me to take him for a ride. He wanted to show me a '66 Plymouth Fury that he was thinking of buying. He kept going on and on about how that model was a V.I.P. Edition, so I agreed.

   My car was brand new, and my temporary plate had come untaped from the rear windshield. It was only a 15-minute trip, but as luck would have it, a deputy pulled me over to check it out. When he saw my license, he asked me if I was the one that had run off with the cop's daughter. And you wonder why the Tournears buckle their seatbelts and drive the speed limit? ("Heh heh heh," sez the Crypt Keeper.)

   Naturally, more troubles followed. He wound up going to jail several times. But who's to say that he wouldn't have done his stretch that first time, then did his best to be a good boy? I just wonder if always having that black mark against him made him think he had no other choice but to live outside of the law.

  

   His newly acquired classic was the beginning of an obsession with older vehicles. If it was sitting in front of someone's house with a big For Sale sign on the windshield, he'd be in touch with them pretty quickly to discuss price. Then again, if your old clunker was sitting in the backyard under a coat of dust with tall grass growing up around it, Michael would eventually try to persuade you to sell it to him. He could get any engine to run, but was equally adept at taking whatever parts were compatible with another vehicle if they'd be more useful elsewhere. That was a talent that went all the way back to childhood, when he'd take apart motorized toys and rig the motors to run little gadgets of his own design - I remember a few handmade boats and cars. He later learned a lot by spending time with our cousin Yale - who was already on the way to his career as a commercial fisherman, and had been working on Uncle Russell's boat and tinkering with old junked-out cars since he was big enough to pick shrimp or change an oil filter (which in our little neck of the marsh, comes at a young age. We still scratch our heads at some of the kids today, who remain unemployed until they begin college - our little fishing community was built on a strong work ethic). I saw Michael go through many cars & trucks, but I still believe that the Fury was his favorite. Eventually, his skill with auto mechanics caught someone's eye, which led to a job with a local towing service that had a junkyard (can you say spare parts?) and needed someone to do mechanical & body work. Before long, he was working on stock cars for friends that were into racing.

   (Just prior to this, he worked for a contracting outfit as a wireline/pipeline construction helper. During one of his trips to jail, I worked part-time in his place. When he got out, they kept both of us working long enough that we got sent out to a few job sites together. In the years since, I've spent so many hours in a deep blue funk, trying to recapture every detail. Every minute. Every word.)

   What happened was this:

   Michael began an affair with a young lady that lived in Grand Bayou (said affair resulting in the birth of my beautiful niece, Jaci). He would routinely come over, then leave his girlfriend - whom we'll call "Jane " from here on out, in an effort to avoid using the impersonal "girlfriend" 4,000 times or so - at our house while he'd head off for a tryst with this other woman.

   She and my wife became best friends (some people claim they were lovers, but in light of what happened, there were so many different stories being told, and I just didn't have the strength to listen to every tall tale that was making the rounds). They remain close to this very day.

   We'd already been clashing a bit over the fact that she thought my mother judgmental, and didn't like the lifestyles my brothers were living. Family time became one-sided. I'd bend over backward doing favors for her entire family, but we couldn't even take the time to see mine. Whether it was refusing to suffer the wait while I looked through the records at the thrift store where my grandmother worked, or generally avoiding my mom, whom she thought too judgmental and controlling. There was always a perfectly acceptable reason for staying away.

   It's a shame about the thing with Mom, really. What mother doesn't think she knows best for her children? We lived two streets over from one another. There was no excuse.

   With her new friendship, things got worse.

   When they were fighting, my wife would try to shield and protect her from Michael. With alarming frequency, the instances of him not being allowed in the house because Jane didn't want to see him increased.

   My stepfather's family had a Christmas party at a lodge in Buras. Michael wound up being ejected from the party after they got into an argument.

   A few nights later, we were exchanging gifts early, because I had to be back offshore before the 25th. She was still angry about the party, so she begged my wife and I to keep him away. Eventually I bent to pressure and went on the back porch to talk to him. He chastised me pretty harshly for choosing friends over family. I persuaded her to talk things out with him, and we asked them both to spend the night with us. It turned out to be one of the last times he was at my house.

   But not the very last. That happened in January.

   My sister-in-law's youngest son came to visit for a few days. On the day she was due to pick him up, she called to ask if we could bring him home. As usual, we had a houseful, so I gathered his things and brought him to Buras alone...

   When I got back, I was informed that the police were on the way to pick my brother up. Apparently, he and Jane got into an argument on the front porch, and she tried to go inside. He attempted to restrain her. My mother-in-law, who was outside smoking, tried to help and a tug-of-war war ensued. Then, according to their claims, he raised a hand as if to hit her. Feeling threatened, she told my wife to call the police. (She later told my mom that she didn't really think Michael would have hit her. Once things had gone irrevocably wrong...)

   Michael had no desire to go to jail again, so he disappeared quickly.

   My wife called my mom and told her that the police were on the way. Mom rushed over.

   Meanwhile, I was stuck with the indignity of having to write out my wife's statement for her. How I cursed the fact that I had the best grammar that night.

   We'd expect no less than what Mom delivered. She skipped the pleasantries and went straight to nuclear.

   "Did you bother to think about the fact that Michael is on probation, and he could go to prison for 7 years?!? You never get the law involved when it's family! You handle it on your own."

   Right about that time, we heard Michael yelling for Jane to come outside and talk to him. Mom and Steve ran outside to see if they could do anything before things got out of control, as they are so often wont to do.

   The rest of the conversation I only heard, but I might as well have been out there. I've been hearing the words in my dreams ever since.

   That parts that are always the same are the police officer ordering Michael to approach slowly with his hands in the air; Michael refusing and stating that he isn't going back to jail, he just wants to talk to Jane, he can't be brought in for that; Steve telling the deputy to put the gun away if he didn't care to have his fucking teeth knocked out.

   Then the horrors begin. In some of the dreams Michael is shot dead in my front yard. In the others, my stepdad gets between them before the gun goes off. In either case I wake up praying for sanity. I imagine I'd be sitting in a rubber room right now had either of those things occured.

   Mom ran back inside screaming "I need to use the phone, now!"

   "Michael has a gun?" asked my wife.

   "Of course not! The deputy pulled a gun on him with no provocation. Steve jumped between them.

   "Wait! He's picking up now...

   "Jiff, this is Remonia! Your deputy just pulled his weapon on my son, and my husband stepped between them! You better come get him before sombody gets killed!"

   Fearing a reprimand, the deputy holstered his firearm. Michael was never one to ignore opportunity when it knocked. He took to his heels and disappeared back into the woods. Without a moment's pause, we all followed.

   I guess it was a foolish thing to do. Any of us could have been shot, but we didn't care by this point. We were worried sick.

   By the time we came out on the other side (in my mom's neighborhood), backup had arrived and there were half a dozen or so policemen combing the street with flashlights.

   Michael was at Mom's house, trying to get into her front door. One of the deputies asked him to come down so they could talk.

   "No! I told you I'm not going back to jail."

   When one of them came onto the porch and tried to grab him, Michael turned around and threw a punch at him.

   "You motherfucker!" he said, and dove at Michael like a torpedo, knocking both to the ground. There was a short scuffle, but soon enough he was handcuffed and taken away.

   Mom let me have it the next morning. It didn't matter that I was gone when things went down. I think she was mostly lashing out because my wife wasn't going to face her.

   Substantiated or not, she was afraid of what my brother might be capable of. Her fear, coupled with the evening's events, had rubbed off on the kids. So instead of leaving bad enough alone, she decided to file a restraining order against him.

   My brother was no longer allowed at my house. Would in fact be arrested if he showed his face there.

   ... and there was nothing I could do about it.

   Our relationship with my family went from strained to almost nonexistent. I didn't have a clue, but the after-effects of that night would alter the landscape permanently. There's still something there, but one must circumnavigate the craters left by the quakes.

   As if the arrest wasn't enough, now everyone was even angrier. Sure, I could go somewhere and see him, but - as stated - he wasn't allowed at my house, and under no circumstances could he approach my wife or my children.

   This is the point that estrangement occurs. Your options - avoid everyone with your partner, or make an effort to see them and be overwhelmed by the outpouring of vitriole - both stink.

   I finally realized how angry he was at me when she had another death in her family. She asked me to call Michael's house and ask if she could speak to Jane. He told me no and hung up.

   This poisonous cake was definitely done, because here came the icing.

   We went to the Mississippi coast to attend a Prince show and have a little honeymoon (we never had a first, so we can't call it a second). Jane and my stepsister stayed at the house to watch the children.

   At some point during the weekend, my sister called to tell us that Michael had come to the house to pick Jane up. He had grudgingly accepted their friendship, but to honor the restraining order, had been coming only halfway down our street to pick her up. This time was a direct violation. My wife urged my sister to call the police, and he was picked up again.

   Yale put up the bail money, so Michael signed his truck over to him as payback. He got his hands on a four-wheeler somewhere and began using it to travel all over the parish. This, to bring your mind back to beginning of this passage, was when good intentions - sure, we'll call them good no matter how misguided they were - led to complete and total destruction.

  
   During the last month or so of Michael's life, he seemed to be making peace - with himself, yes, and with others that he'd burnt bridges with at some point. He spent a lot of time studying his bible and talking with my cousin while working on his shrimp boat. He told me later that my brother was constantly showing him passages that he found inspirational. He approached my father-in-law in a bar one night, apologized for the disturbance at our house, and said that he missed his niece and nephew very much.

   The last time I was with him, we had just gotten back from evacuating for Hurricane Ivan. A spider bite on his leg had left him feverish.The wound was not healing. He spent the evacuation with my dad. The pictures they took wound up being his last. My "brother-in-law" and I visited him at Dad's house. They had a pretty animated conversation. He didn't speak to me much, and still seemed rather delirious.

  

  
   On September 27, 2004 he skipped a trip on the boat. He had to go to court for the restraining order violation. He rode up to Grand Bayou to see Jaci, after which he stopped at Fremin's to see Dad. They took a ride across the levee to see a dock that Dad had been building.

   When he dropped him off, he said, "Dad, Carol is one of the best things that ever happened to you . Don't worry about any of those skirts you've spent the last ten years chasing. Just stay with her. She's really settled you down. She's good for you."

   He then stopped at Aunt Betty's to tell her goodbye. We always wondered whether he meant that he might be going to prison, or if he'd had a premonition. He stopped at Mom's and soberly told her that he was tired of fighting. He just wanted to find out what court costs he'd have to pay and serve whatever time they gave him.

   "I'll start over with a clean slate after that. I don't want any more trouble."

   Then he changed the subject and told her there were some places he wanted to take her riding. He said he'd been back there with a lady, and that the ruts they had to navigate drove her wild. Said if he brought her back there, she'd have Steve back there riding soon enough.

   That evening, as I was packing to go back offshore, my wife told me that she'd been talking with her dad, and that they felt that Michael wanted to make amends with people, and seemed to be making an effort to straighten out his life. She'd decided to drop the restraining order when they appeared in court the next day.

   "But we'll tell him that he can come over as soon as the kids are comfortable with the idea of seeing him again," she said.

   I'm sorry, my dear. It was too little too late.

   At 8:00, I cut my hair, showered, and laid down for a nap.

   The phone rang at 10:30, jarring me out of my mini-coma. It was a habit I'd conditioned myself to as preparation for long road trips. My wife got up and answered it.

   "It's for you."

   "Who is it?" I mumbled.

   "The police."

   "What?"

   I took the phone.

   "Am I speaking with Mark Tournear?"

   "Yes, sir."

   "This is Dale Pelas with the Plaquemines Parish Sheriff's Office. Do you have a brother named Michael Tournear?"

   "Yes, I do."

   "We need you to come to the hospital. Your brother's been in a four-wheeler accident."

   "Okay."

   "You should call your mother, too."

   "Yes, sir. I will."

   I hung up and told my wife what had happened while dialing Mom.

   When I got her on the line, she asked - herself more so than me - why these things kept happening and what could possibly strike us next. I assured her that we'd meet at the emergency room.

   I didn't get right out of bed. Part of it was weariness, but maybe somewhere inside there was a growing certainty that "next" had teeth. Sharp ones.

   My wife finally broke the silence by asking me, "Are you going to the hospital?"

   "Yeah. I'm going."

   I got up, turned on the coffee, and got dressed.

   I drove over there imagining him on the examination table, arguing with the doctors that they couldn't put a cast on his leg. He had too many things to do and couldn't afford to be slowed by crutches. That was my last thought before the film exploded, then drifted down in a thousand smoldering fragments.

   (While I was on the road, Mom called the house in a panic. Where was I? I needed to get there now. My wife tried to reassure her that I was on the way.)

   When I walked into the emergency room, the police officer came out and asked me to follow him. An Indian doctor led me to a consultation room where Mom was sitting.

   "Your brother sustained multiple injuries. We did all we could. I'm sorry, but he didn't make it."

   He came out and said it so bluntly! His tone was so calm that he almost seemed cruel about it. Maybe this was something he had to do all the time. I turned to Mom, and realized that I'd never seen a real case of shellshock before. The face of that sensible young woman had shattered , revealing a new one beneath it - the face of a woman embarking upon the first moments of being old. It was a face I came to recognize looking at me from the other side of the mirror.

   "I want to see him again," Mom said.

   The doctor led us to an examination room.

   ... and there was my little brother. He had a tube down his throat, one eye was swollen shut, and there was a trickle of blood that had run down his nose to his moustache. His eyes were half-open. Other than a small cut on the back of his head, he looked like he was fine. Like there was still hope.

   But all hope was already gone when they called me.

   Mom handed me her phone and asked me to call Aunt Betty & Dad. Aunt Betty began to cry when I asked her to come and hung up. Dad was already on the way.

   When my aunt walked in and saw Michael on the table, she cried for God to strike her blind - to negate the truth that eyesight was cursing her with. At the sound of her voice, Mom realized that someone else was here and it wasn't a nightmare. She promptly fainted. We didn't get to her fast enough to stop her from hitting the floor, but we did slow her enough to escape needing stitches in her head.

   Soon, all of my aunts and Cody were there. I called Jeffrey, but he broke down by the cemetery in Nairn. I sped off to get him after giving Cody the phone to call my house. That seemed easier. I had no idea what to say.

   We'd stayed until the people from the funeral home had come and gone, then I went to Dad's house. We met Yale and Vicki there. Aunt Peggy had called him on the boat with the news. He brought the boat to the dock blinded by a haze of tears. We sat on the porch and talked all night long.

   When I finally went home, it was nearing 5 am. My mother-in-law and Jane were there. To their queries about my well-being, I responded in a small, thin voice that I was ok.

   After her mother left, my wife took me aside and asked, "Do you hate me now? Do you want to hit me? Because right now I wouldn't blame you or try to stop you."

   "No, I won't hit you, and I could never hate you."

   I had no idea how wrong I was. I don't hate her today. I've made that much peace with it, but the seeds of resentment were planted and growing roots now.

   I decided to go back to Mom's, despite her pleas when we'd parted for me to get some rest. There, I began a week-long diet of coffee and cigarettes. By our estimation, Steve and I smoked 5 packs a day. None of us really slept.

   Mom alternated between despair and anger rapidly. She reserved a large portion of that anger with which to chastise me. She was mad at Jane and my wife, but I was the one sitting across the table from her, so I got flogged in their place. She told me that my wife could go ahead and drop the restraining order now. When I told her that she had meant to drop it that very day, she called me a liar.

   (Yale got it worse than I did. He had a court appearance of his own to make that day. After arguing with his lawyer about not being fit to make an appearance, he was hassled a bit for wearing shorts. He swore at the judge, shouting that he was in no shape to be there at all, much less dress himself. He told him that if he needed more punishment for his grief than he was already getting, then they should go ahead and handcuff him. Then he told them that they were so full of shit that they'd probably issue a bench warrant for his cousin, who was unable to appear in court by reason of death. He was right, too.)

   After someone called to offer Michael a steady job with good benefits, one of my aunts forced Mom to take something that would help her sleep and got her to lie down. Faced with the evils of either drugging her or watching her grieve herself to death that very day, I'd say that the appropriate choice was made. I assured her that I'd get some rest, then went straight back to Dad's. At that moment I was certain I'd never sleep again.

   The people from the deli where Dad worked brought plate lunches. The food they brought; their arms around us; the tears in their eyes - it's overwhelmingly awful that you must endure such hardship to realize just how much people care about you. Hour after hour, I'd been struck with the absolute certainty that a particular moment was the nadir of my life - only to be hit even harder by something else. This was another of those moments. I walked around the house, leaned my head against Michael's truck - more like hung on for dear life - and cried for an hour. My tears didn't stop for weeks.

   When I'd calmed down enough to go back inside, Dad and I went through the backpack Michael kept packed for trips on the boat and divided his things amongst ourselves. We sat his bible aside for my mom. Inside the cover, he'd written his name and birth date. Mom later wrote in the date that bookended his time with us. I kept his travel-sized tube of toothpaste. I never used it, but have it still. Even waded through flood waters to get it at one point. My father kept his shoes, his jeans, and all of his t-shirts. He wore almost nothing else for the better part of the next year.

   The next day, the owner of the wrecker service - a former classmate and friend of Michael's, who'd worked on his stock car - took us to the place where it happened.

   A local man had sustained damage to his roof in the recent storm, and had been doing repairs. He'd seen my brother pass by on the levee several times throughout the day. Just before dark, he heard an engine and looked up to see Michael passing yet again.

   (According to what we've been able to piece together, he'd gone down there to visit a girl. He told her he should be heading home while there was daylight left to spare, stopped at the bar at the front of her street, grabbed a beer for his ride, then hit the levee.)

   They waved at one another, then he reached down to get another nail. When he looked back up, the four-wheeler was rolling down the side of the levee with no one on it. It crashed harmlessly into the back fence of the old Marathon property.

   By the time he descended the ladder, several of his neighbors were running up the levee to offer assistance. Fearing what he might see, he stayed behind to call an ambulance.

   By all accounts, one of the first to arrive was a volunteer firefighter. Michael was lying facedown, but trying to get up. CPR was administered until the rescue unit (which had to approach from the long way around due to the wet post-storm conditions) arrived.

   I don't know how long he remained in that waiting room, between the light and the dark, that terminator. Maybe he only had seconds. It could have been an hour. The only thing that was ever made clear to me was that he had sustained a fracture to his skull (something that I survived when I was but a tyke. What irony...), and the resultant hemorrhaging ended his life.

   We were left with the assurance that he "didn't suffer." He suffered plenty!!! Mom would say when recounting it later.

   Mom, Aunt Betty, and I went to make the arrangements. I picked his casket because no one else wanted to. My only non-hysterical moment of the entire time we were there. We got him a spot close to Uncle Richard so he wouldn't be alone.

   The next day, Jeffrey built a cross, I painted it, and Cody labelled it, complete with his trademark Chevy symbol.

   We rode to the spot on the levee and planted his cross. Cody was with our stepbrother, Steven, and he seemed rather peeved that I was drinking.

  
   When I got home, my wife asked if I was ok. I told her that I was, then slipped into the darkness of the laundry room just as despair rose from the depths to engulf me. She came in right behind me and held me up while I floundered. Crowning this black comedy, the cat that had claimed me as her "daddy" because neither of us were very sociable came in, wrapped her paws around my neck, and wept with me.

   When we left for the visitation, I literally had no idea how I was going to make it through the night. I didn't have long to wonder. We'd only been there a few minutes when Mom volunteered Jeffrey's girlfriend and I to make a montage of photos, and a display of his drawings and the model commercial fishing boats he had handcrafted from scratch. Then during the visitation, my old friend Daniel Parker showed up. He was always one to keep me laughing. His company coupled with Mom's busywork assignment had, like magic, enabled me to keep my cool.

  
   The next day was an entirely different story.

   We all met that morning, and complained of our weariness with condolences. It's true, people. When you hear enough, you grow to hate them. We half-seriously began a list of the ones we hated the most. I'm sure that every one of you that have been there have your own.

   We went all out for Michael. Aunt Debra bought four gold doubloons, meant to represent brotherhood. We carried them in our pockets throughout the services, then left them with him in the end. During the morning visit, people put cigarettes, money, and various other (un)mentionables in his suit pockets. He was inundated with cards and pictures. I put pictures of my children in his hand. I'd made copies of the keys to his Plymouth, so Jane put the originals in his pocket. We planned to restore it for his daughter. A future graduation present.

   I went outside just prior to the benediction. Dad was sitting on the steps alone. I told him how scared I was.

   One of my cousins collared me on the way back in and asked me to be strong for my mom. He said that we could do whatever we needed to do when we got home. I'm sorry, Mom. I guess I didn't do such a good job with that one.

   The minister gave us a textbook sermon about mourning, prayed, then invited friends and family to speak. Aunt Cathy read a poem. My stepdad spoke of him buying an old drivable RV, getting it running, then driving it illegally all over town.

   "I told him he was going to be in trouble if he was caught. He asked me how they were gonna stop him in this."

   Bless Steve's heart. He's always capable of getting a chuckle out of you when one is most needed. I continued with a story about the day he decided to take my children on an adventure called "Let's clear a trail through the woods to Grandma's house with my truck." The ditch proved too steep. One of them got a bruise on their forehead. Dad wound up pulling him out.

   Mom spoke at length about her concerns for his soul; how she'd known she was going to lose him since January; and how although we were all hurting, not one of us could comprehend how wrong it was to have to bury one's own child... to have to say goodbye to someone that they had carried for nine months.

   It was a statement no one felt the urge to follow. We wrapped things up with my aunts singing while Jeffrey played guitar. I was asked to play, but was incapable. It would be years before I felt any passion for music again (or anything else, for that matter).

   I'd had no control over my emotions since we were seated. When the casket was closed, another of those moments occurred - the ones when you realize that the pain is only beginning. I had to put one of Dad's shoes back on his foot, then Jeff and I helped him up. He'd aged 20 years over the past week.

   During the trip to the mauseleum, we talked about how he'd have wanted to be driven to the cemetery in the back of his truck.

   When we got there, the minister instructed us to remove the casket, carry it to the appointed place, lift, and slide it into the open tomb. I tell you now, it was the hardest thing we ever did, the heaviest load we ever had to carry. In our grief, Michael weighed at least a thousand ponds.

   There is no sound on earth like the screech of a casket sliding into a tomb. It will rip your heart into jagged tatters.

   When I let go, my vision blurred and I fell. Someone caught me and held on very tight. I still don't know who it was. I went back to Michael and laid my hand back in the place from which it had fallen. No one else had moved. Dad came over and held on, too. We stayed there until it was time to go.

   Afterward, there was a gathering in the fellowship hall of the church. We attempted to eat, but it proved too difficult a task. Jaci was walking from table to table, and while her vocabulary was limited, she had no trouble with the one word guaranteed to twist the knife a little more. That word was "Daddy." This beautiful little girl would never know her father.

  
   After everyone had eaten a little, we walked back to the mausoleum. The burial crew had already sealed the tomb. Uncle Buddy got everyone's attention, then pulled out a harmonica. He claimed he'd been driving one day, when the urge to stop and buy one came to him. It had seemed a foolhardy notion, because he had a desk drawer full of them at home. He followed his intuition regardless. The harp had called out to him again when it was time to make this trip, so he put it in his pocket. This was Michael's harmonica, and it had a song to play for him. He lifted it to his lips, and out came a blues meant for no other time or place. When he finished, Aunt Peggy asked him to do another one.

   "I'm sorry, but this harmonica has played the song it needed to. I'm afraid it has nothing else to say."

   Back into his pocket it went. The ladies politely picked up the reigns and sang a few more hymns.

   After a brief nap at home, we all went back to the cross.

   Yale and I had sat in Michael's truck for a few hours on the morning after the accident talking about him, and we had decided that we were going to finish the case of beer that they had opened together. It wound up being the only thing the two of us drank that night. Kenneth got very drunk and wanted to go the bar. I took him home instead. My aunt cried with relief when she saw us. She was so worried that one of us might do something to hurt ourselves.

  
   I chose to skip the benefit that was being held at my aunt's bar the next night. I had to nap a little so I could head back offshore in the morning, but wound up going anyway because Jane asked me to come get her. She couldn't handle being there anymore.

   The next day, on a helicopter back into the Gulf, I saw what could have been a vision from the Almighty. That or delirium. The kingdom of Heaven, with it's streets of gold and vast mansions, was there in the clouds . I took it as a sign that Michael's soul was with God, and that everything would be ok.

   I'd love to see him there one day. To know that part is true.

   As for things being ok? They were going to get much worse before they got better, and I was just hours from the first indication of that.

metal insects (part 5)

   I didn't have to go through the daily dress code inspections anymore, but work took up the hours I'd have been in school. I'd show up at 5:00 in the morning, start a pot of coffee, and put on some music at an ear-shattering volume. The fishermen would arrive shortly after my first cup (except for the days that they were all waiting when I arrived. Those became more prevalent as the summer wore on.), then I'd unload and box fish for the next 12 to 16 hours. Added to this was the responsibility of writing sales tickets, making out checks to each captain, and all aspects of shipping - both air and freight.

   Jeffrey got a job working alongside me, which was a relief. Sometimes one of us would have to load a refrigerator truck, or I'd have to drive to empire to buy ice (our icemaker was terribly inadequate for the amount of fish we were buying). He'd allowed his hair to grow out, and due to having inherited Dad's hair, had been dubbed Fro by those who knew him. When he became involved with a girl that talked him into attending Sunday services, Dan capped it off by calling him Brother Fro. The moniker has been with him ever since.

   Did the long hours stop us from playing music? Au contraire! If we got home at 10:00, we'd play 'til one or two in the morning. I don't know how our neighbor in the other half of the duplex put up with it, but he claimed to be enjoying it when we offered an apology. Can you imagine music in the vein of the Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray" rattling the pictures off the walls for hours, and having no complaints? Unlikely, but it happened. Being a commercial fisherman from Florida - and no doubt exhausted when home - I imagined some crazy, redneck Lynyrd Skynyrd fan fashioning nooses to fit each of our necks during his stolen slumber.

   The day my son was born got off to a hell of a start. Our ice machine was on the fritz once again. Just moments after returning from my second desperate trip for ice, a pallet of fish was accidently turned over, in effect blocking the icehouse.

   A few minutes into our mad dash to clean up before the truckload of ice could melt, the phone rang. Dan called me inside to take my call, which instantly set off some alarms. Normally someone would have taken a message.

   "Hello?"

   "You need to come home."

   "Oh, my God! Is it time? Are you sure? How far apart are the contractions?"

   "Yes. It's time. Just come home."

   When I got back outside, everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at me.

   Dan, with that goofy grin that was his alone, asked, "It's time, isn't it?"

   "Yes. I'd better go. Sorry I can't stay to help."

   "That's ok. We'll handle this. Let me bring you home."

   "There's too much going on around here for both of us to leave. I'll walk."

   "No. Get in the truck. You're a little white around the gills."

   Despite my protests that I'd be fine, he finally got me to accept. During the 3 mile trip back to my house, he turned to me and said, "You know what? You're going to do just fine as soon as you realize you're not half the burden you think you are."

   When he dropped me off, he shook my hand and, once again with that grin, wished me luck.

   I burst through the door like the Energizer Bunny on speed.

   "I'm here. Let's go!"

   She calmly said, "No. Go take a shower first."

   "Are you nuts?!? This is an emergency!"

   "The contractions are still 8 minutes apart. We have lots of time. Go on, now. You smell like fish."

   After a shower and some fresh clothes, we headed to the hospital.

   What a whirlwind that day was. My mom was telling her stories about being in labor with us, when the largest contraction yet struck. We'd taken no Lamaze classes, but being the bookworm that I am, I tried to coach her on her breathing. With a demonic glare and a voice to match, she looked up and shouted, "SHUT UP!!!"

   She'd bitten my head off, but had no time to chew it to pieces. The anesthesiologist arrived (saved my bacon, he did!) to inform us that we'd have to step out while the epidural was administered.

   Her aunt had come prepared with a very large joint - to celebrate after the delivery - but had to leave so as not to be late for work. We made the block a few times before wishing her well and returning upstairs. By then the meds were kicking in. We ribbed her for a few minutes about this being the first time we'd ever seen her high.

   Of all the information I'd gleaned about childbirth, one thing had never been brought to my attention - the shape of a newborn's head when they enter the world. I knew that part of the skull remains soft to ease the passage from water to air, and should have been prepared. But regardless, my first thought was, Oh, my God! My son's a Conehead! I guess if I had spoken to a mother about it, they'd have forewarned me. Instead, I had a few moments of the shock that any parent would go through if their child was born with a deformity that hadn't been diagnosed during the pregnancy.

   When I look at our first family picture, it sometimes saddens me. I wish I could tell you that those red, glassy eyes beneath my scrubs were caused by tears of joy. It's ok, though. I'm beyond it.

   We always joked that Faith No More's King for a Day album played over headphones that were placed on her belly the day before had induced labor (she always swore that Mr. Patton had the voice of Satan). Maybe it did. In my son's nursery photo, he's obviously fretting a guitar with his left hand.

    I tried to take an active part in late night feedings and changings. In retrospect, I guess it compounded an already wearisome situation. At work, my help situation was constantly in flux. Sometimes I'd be alone, and when I'd have to make a trip for more ice, the fisherman would be complaining about my incompetence and the sloppiness of the entire operation. Sometimes, Dan would be so exhausted he'd go home to rest, instructing us to unload his boat and finish cleaning his net first. Easily said when you don't have a dozen fishermen and assorted deckhands screaming for your head. Lots of these guys were from Mississippi and Alabama. We'd listen to their misogyny and ethnic jokes day in and day out. We started getting a bit of a redneck complex. Sometimes we'd be so frazzled at night that we'd go home, turn our amps up to 10, and scream about them for hours.

   We began to make bad judgement calls. Trucks were run into the sides of buildings. Sometimes fish would begin to spoil and have to be sold for crab bait instead. Then came the capper.

   One morning, before leaving, Dan instructed me to make several trips for ice before knocking off. He wanted me to fill the ice machine, every spare vat we had, and to have a load in the truck. There were some large air freight orders bound for California, and every fisherman would need lots of ice.

   When we got everything cleaned up that evening, the truck wouldn't start. I'd never owned a car, so I didn't have any mechanical knowledge to speak of. I had no help either. Everyone else had left. I tried to call Dan repeatedly, but to no avail. Hauling nets is hard work. You sleep like the dead.

   Eventually,  I gave up in disgust and went home. At 7:30, Dan called me in a rage. It shocked me. I'd never seen him lose his temper before.

   "Why the fuck didn't you get ice?!!?"

   "The truck wouldn't start. I tried to call you."

   "Get your fucking ass down here and get some ice, now! We're ready to go fishing!"

   The call left me in a temper. I got dressed and put my boots on, swearing loudly all the while. Then, trying not to pay attention to the look of concern on everyone's faces, I took off on foot.

   When I got there 20 minutes later, Dan came out, fiddled with something under the hood a bit, then started the truck.

   "Now,  hurry up!"

   Each truckload I returned with was shoveled directly into the ice boxes of the fishermen. Each was eager to hurry you up and let you know how incompetent you were. With each insult I got a little angrier, but I held my temper until everyone was gone and there was plenty of ice to start the day right.

   Then I lost it... but not in a way that most would.

   I didn't go berserk and destroy a bunch of equipment. I didn't steal a bunch of checks or anything else that would be equally criminal. I simply wrote a letter of resignation. In it, I expressed my displeasure with the way things were there, and the lack of respect I felt I was enduring. I guess that's always been one of my pet peeves. I don't put up with people yelling and cursing me. Maybe there was a little insecurity there, as well. When attacked, I tend to retreat sometimes. With abuse being flung from all sides, is it any wonder that I felt I could no longer stay?

   I went home to let them know I had left. The next day he sent someone over to pick up the keys. I handed them over, then hitchhiked to Venice and began filling out job applications.

   One place, Deep Delta Contractors, agreed to hire me immediately. They had converted an old one screen movie theater into a base of operations.

   The only problem was that there wasn't always a job to send you to. Most people had cars, and could head to a job site when called. I would hitchhike there every morning, then sit quietly in the waiting room until there was either a callout for a contract worker or lunchtime, whatever came first. In the event of no work that day, I'd hitchhike home.

   I experienced a few new things there, like cleaning barges and tanks at Newpark, or going to loading docks to backload supply vessels with drill pipe. I guess I made a good impression. The supervisor of the tank-cleaning crew told me that they were planning on adding me as a member of the crew when one of them left for college in the fall. Said it showed I was dependable showing up every day, regardless of whether there was work for me or not. Sometimes I'd be told to pick up trash and cigarette butts outside, or to go do some grinding for the welders in the shop out back (my first near-disastrous attempt at grinding ripped my shirt to shreds).

   It would have been great to join the crew, I guess. I'd have started working more regularly. Instead, I received a job offer.

   Remember my friend, Andy? He'd gotten an offshore job working for a seismic exploration company, and had thrown my name in the hat when they had some openings. When his supervisor called me, I graciously accepted his offer. I also took him at his word when he said to bring 2 weeks worth of work clothes. I guess I took a statement like that as an affirmation that there were no washing machines out there.

   Not that dropping some of them off when I realized that I could wash clothes made much of a weight difference in my baggage. During the years that I worked in the Gulf of Mexico, I always insisted on bringing enough music and books to last the entire trip. What a difference mp3 players would make years later.

   I had some cool experiences there. Started learning to operate different types of machinery, and I got to handle explosives. I also had some some that probably weren't so hot. Getting high on the fuel barge or on top of the wheelhouse of the jack-up were just a few. At the time, there were a few supervisors that sort of winked at that type of thing. They'd always inform us when a "random" drug screen was about to go down. Sad, I know. But, hey, I was 18 years old. What you gonna do?

   I also bought my first home. It was one of those all-metal mobile homes built in the late '60's, located 10 minutes or so south of Belle Chasse. It's condition was too decrepit for it to be moved, but that was no problem. The land was rented, and the landlords had no grievances about a change in tenant. My father-in-law had heard about it, and convinced me to take a small loan with him as co-signer. In the end, it was as if nothing had changed. Shortly after I made the purchase, he asked if they could stay with us for a little while if he sold his trailer in Sunrise. He'd helped get me there - and was her father - but regardless, I wouldn't have said, "No." I've been one of those bend over backwards kind of guys longer than I can remember.
  
   Unfortunately, that job didn't last, either. We were nearing completion of the project, and were informed that we'd be staying an extra week to finish up. I always rode with Andy, so we were both given leave to re-outfit ourselves for the stay and pay a few bills. We went ahead and handled our business, then returned.

   (I seem to think I might've taken in a Sonic Youth show at the Holwin' Wolf on my night off. Probably explains why I kept dozing off on the way down to work the next morning. I woke up with a cigarette burn in the side of my styrofoam coffee cup from La Caffe Casa in Port Sulphur. Going to shows on my way back offshore a become a frequent pasttime over the years.)

   When the week was up, we were informed that the schedule had been changed to month long tours. The mouth of the twosome (not me!) informed our supervisor that we had been instructed to be prepared for one more week, not a month. We would be going home. He responded by telling us that we could turn in our hardhats and workvests on our way in.

   I spent the better part of December filling out job applications, to no avail. Then my stepfather landed a captain's job on an oyster boat. He needed 3 deckhands to work the tables, so I was in.

   The work wasn't terribly hard (Come on! I'd hauled gill nets). Sometimes the rest of the crew would rib me for bringing books to read during the trips back and forth from the loading dock.

   On one of our nights off, I returned to the Howlin' Wolf, having heard on Tulane College's radio station that Mr. Bungle was playing there that night.

   I've never seen anything like it, before or since. All were masked. One member played guitar and keyboards at the same time. An amplifier overheated and began to burn. I once heard a journalist refer to that tour as a train wreck under strobe lights. He had no idea how right he was. Nor how amazing of a spectatcle it was to be in the middle of. Chatting with them afterwards, one of our friends claimed that our music was complete noise and that we should send them a tape. Trey Spruance, their guitar obliterator, in the midst of telling me how unenjoyable an experience it had been recording with Faith No More, claimed interest and urged me to do so. Maybe if I'd known he was in the process of starting his own independent label, I'd have taken him seriously.

   We were growing quite noisy. I'd enjoyed it when so many indie label bands had gained attention earlier in the decade, but I'd grown sick of the all the Gin Blossoms and Candleboxes that were being groomed for mass consumption. So Bungle's Disco Volante arrived at a perfect time for me. Sure, the first record had been produced by John Zorn, but this one seemed more in that avant jazz/experimental vein. I responded to it quite enthusiastically. It was an escape from corporate rock.

   It began to show on our lo-fi recordings from that period. Alternate tunings were the law. We'd tape electronic noise-making toys to microphones before rolling the tape. Another pasttime was to switch instruments from one song to the next. Nearly all of the recordings were long, free-form improvisations, and mostly instrumental.

   After a few months, orders for oysters became rare, so I took a job at a fast food restaurant. All of my previous jobs had been hectic, so I began to gain praise for being very, very fast. I'd simultaneously work the register and the grill, but that was light work. When no customers were around, I'd be instructed to wipe down a few tables and spot sweep. I'd generally clean all the tables, and sweep and mop the entire dining area before the next rush would start.

   Then my supervisor from the offshore job called me. He informed me that the operation had moved back to Venice. Would I be interested in returning? I didn't have to think about the larger paychecks for long. I agreed. He told me to give notice at the restaurant and await his call. I did so. The managers came right out and told me that I'd made a very good impression, but there was no way they could compete with the pay rate I was accepting.

   When my last day had come and gone with no call, I contacted him to ask when I would be deployed.

   He told me that it showed my eagerness to work, but I'd misunderstood him. He'd simply wanted me to know that he'd be in touch as soon as my services were needed. I couldn't believe it. Had I left my job for this?

  Despite my lack of steady work, I was still making the trek to Buras a few times a week to play music. Even though we lacked interest in doing something commercial, we were still beginning to mesh as a unit. It was of vast importance that we do our best not to lose that.

  But artistic aspirations don't go down so well when there are mouths to feed at home. After a few trips, I was kicked out of my own house.

  My dad, seeing a glimmer of hope in this disaster, decided to take matters into his own hands for us. He approached the owners of Balliviero's Lounge with a proposition. We were an up-and-coming band that could really use the experience playing in front of an audience. He told them that we wouldn't demand pay, just to consider it practice. They agreed to let us come in a few nights a week, and we were set. Sort of.

  Our equipment, while adequate for practice at home, wouldn't be strong enough to project in even the smallest hole in the wall bar.

   (Balliviero's wasn't even close to that. They were the only place DTR that had the size and acoustics to be considered a live music club. Fats Domino had once played there in the late '50's. My grandmother had an autographed picture from the show that she eventually gave to Fro for Christmas.)

   By the first night we took the stage there, the situation had downgraded from inadequate to downright shoddy. That wonderful Peavey amp had suffered a terrible accident while I was offshore. Being halfstack-sized, Fro had decided to place it atop a dresser while playing through our distortion pedals. It fell off, shorted out, and by the time I came in, Michael had removed the 18" speaker to use for his own devices. The shell of that once fine cabinet became a catchall for junk as time went on - discarded string packaging, broken drumsticks, dumped ashtrays, you name it. We wound up using two townhall type PA's: a 35w wired to stereo speakers for the vocals, and a 100w with a car stereo speaker box with two 12's for the bass. Good thing we did. Fro's tiny Peavey practice amp would never have been heard otherwise.

   All 6 of the patrons there looked on in horror as we tore through abrasively discordant versions of "Why Don't We Do It in the Road" and "Helter Skelter." We actually got them to dance and chant, "Tootsie Roll!" during an especially anemic version of  "Chocolate" by the Time. We were plagued by cries of  "We can't hear the bass!" and "Play 'Dock of the Bay' again!" At least it gave us an idea of what sort of material our drunken audience wanted to hear.

   We began to study a few of those fakebooks that teach you the easiest chord variations of a song, and would arrive armed with garage rock versions of songs by the likes of the Beatles andCreecence Clearwater Revival. We'd do Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" and "Me and Bobby McGee" by Janis Joplin. From time to time my Prince fan persona would come out and we would do songs like "The Cross," "Let's Go Crazy," & "Starfish and Coffee" (yes, with kid-sized keyboard for the piano lead). One song, "Bambi," despite our punked out rendition, became a crowd favorite. The first time I saw 75 people dancing to this song, I was completely floored.

   Then Jason Hammond moved in. He'd had some sort of falling out with his parents, and came to crash, bringing along his 5-string Dean and his TKO 60 with him. It lent a meatier groove to our live sound and sometimes gave me the opportunity to take over on lead vocals or harmonica. Despite my previous ability with the higher registers, we stayed a little too drunk for me to be very effective at the microphone. We began to work on arrangements and proper chord progressions. I learned a bit about scales and adding the proper groove to flow with the root notes. We had a few friends drop in with their guitars and amps from time to time, not to mention one very skilled pianist. He was a big guy, and looked somewhat odd hunched over our tiny keyboard. Dustin somehow got hold of his dad's massive PA, complete with board and monitors, and our sound and audience seemed complete. The club, once notoriously empty due to it's reputation as a gay bar (one of the bartenders and a patron were gay. How scandalous!), was shoulder to shoulder with people by the 4th of July. We began to add effects like strobe lights and the old dry ice and water for smoke effect to gain a little more theater. We almost got kicked out once for playing Rage Against The Machine's "Killing in the Name Of'" and nearly destoying the drum set while costumed - a cigarette-burned hospital gown that still had the blood on it for me, and a clown suit on Fro. I won't even mention the rubber duckie taped to the top of his guitar strap. No complaints about "Floyd the Barber" (Nirvana) or "Puttin' It Down" (Beck), though.

    Sounds like lots of fun, doesn't it? The majority of it wasn't. Our heads were just too clouded at the time. For one thing, it was a repititious pattern of club one night, practice at home the next. The loop continued for months. We began to go on the notorious type of drinking binges you would hear of in an AA meeting. It literally got to the point of drinking for 4 days, then going into a coma for 12 hours. Add ice, stir, repeat. Not to mention all the chemicals we were indulging in. The experimentation with pschedelics had never really stopped, but it was always infrequent. We'd moved to peyote (first at home, then at the Lollapalooza festival), before discovering mushrooms (and the hypnotic effect of Beck while on them). Let's not forget the oxccasional street acid, either. Those weren't harmful at all. The bad part was the drugs that others began to bring around. Someone always seemed to show up with cocaine or crystal meth (neither of which I cared for much. When I tried coke, I was playing drums, and it seemed that I couldn't maintain the speed I wanted. I just wasn't that fast. Meth, to me, felt like I'd had 4 or 5 pots of coffee.Why buy that shit when I could brew a pot any time I saw fit?)

   On one momentous occasion, something was slipped in my drink as we finished the night's final set. We'd pledged to stay pretty sober, as drunkenness had hindered some of our earlier performances, all to no avail for me. My third, and last beer was brought to the stage as we wrapped up. As beers from the bar tend to be, it was open. I wasn't in much of a drinking mood. By the time we got home, I'd only managed to drink half of it. We sat at the table to talk, and suddenly, with no blank spot in my memory, it was morning, and I was standing in the kichen alone. My dad walked into the room and said, "There you are. I've been looking for you everywhere." It was time for work. We'd all gone to work for a lawn care outfit, run by my aunt's boyfriend (an alcoholic of epic proportions. No break from the drinking there). He was incredibly pissed with me that day, due to my sluggishness and disorientation. He swore that we wouldn't work for him on mornings after we'd "played in the band."

    I never needled myself, but to be honest, it was probably due to the fact that no IV drugs ever showed up (although I did smoke some pot that had been soaked in opium one fine night. Talk about black and white cartoon city!)

   Two things conspired to get me away before that opportunity could arise. The first was a phone call (finally) to report to the job that I'd been promised months earlier. This job began my path to living a relatively clean life because I lost it really quickly, and due to my vices. After being completely trashed for months, the only way to ensure that job was to buy one of those products that make you appear to give a clean urine sample. I passed this (and the safety courses that were now required, which would help me big time a lot sooner than I knew) with flying colors. Had I been a little more cognizant of the times, I'd have realized that these new safety rules would also be quite a bit stricter on drug policy than previously. Instead, naive youth that I was, I smoked a few joints on my way to the dock. I went offshore and picked up right where I'd left off - until the random drug test only 10 days after my arrival. As you can probably guess, I was sent packing.

   I didn't return to anything good either. A few disastrous gigs in Venice (and who could blame the audiences for hating us, when we had originals that were like the bass line to Blondie's "Rapture" overlaid with guitar leads straight out of the Lee Renaldo songbook. I seem to remember one song being bigtime Melvins influenced. Jason swore we'd be kicked out immediately if we played that one.), and more bad drugs. Each of us began to experince emotional and physical breakdowns of different sorts. Jason had several anemic attacks that scared the Christ out of us.Try reviving someone that has passed out cold in public. I guarantee you it's no fun. My breakdowns were of both sorts. For one, I was roughly 35 pounds lighter than I'd been during my senior year (my FIL accused me of being on crack when he arrived to chastise me one night), and my hair was falling out in clumps. I appeared to have mange (no bald spot today, though. I guess it was just malnutrition).

   The emotional breakdown was bad, but my saving grace arrived in the nick of time.

   I'd had a few suicidal thoughts before. The first was after a break-up with a girl I dated when I was in church. There were a few other occasions in high school, but none that I ever tried to act upon. This time was different. I stumbled upon Michael's shotgun while home alone one day. I got to thinking that nothing had gone right during the short time that I'd been on Earth. All too quickly, I'd ceased having any part in my son's upbringing. I couldn't hold a steady job. My body and my spirit were crushed. I didn't know if God had forsaken me or the reverse, but I decided right then that I was quitting.

   Now I had to find the shells. Michael had fallen in with a bit of a bad crowd, and dad didn't want to see him rushing off in a temper some night with gun in tow, so he took it upon himself to hide the ammo. Good for me. I wouldn't be writing this today otherwise. I began to tear the houses to pieces in my desperate need for darkness. Nearly every drawer and closet in the house was ripped assunder, when, suddenly, there was a knock at the door. I nearly ignored it in favor of my search, but decided to take a peek through the curtains anyway.

   Shit. Andy.

   I relented, and let him in.

   "How's it going, man?"

   "Not too bad. Come on. Let's take a ride."

   Double damn!

   "Where we going?"

   "Come on. Take a ride."

   "OK. Give me a second to get ready."

   (Not that it took me that long. I had no money and very few possessions.)

   Shortly arter hitting the highway, I turned to him and asked, "Are you gonna tell me where we're going now?"

   "Sure. We're going to see your old lady. Maybe y'all can talk. At least you can see your son. You've been up there, what? Two or three times?"

   I freaked a little at first.

   "Why would you do that? She doesn't want to see me. Remember when she tried to pawn our equipment while we were in New Orleans?"

   (I can't blame her either. The shade tree beer breaks on the lawn care job didn't add up to many hours. Nor did the few weeks we worked for Dan again - loadind bull drum straight into refrigerator trucks - or the week and a half I pulled on a tug boat, add up to much money.)

   He assured me that things would be fine. He'd mediate if need be, but fiest we had to stop at his house for something.

   While there, she called his house looking for me. She told me that a drilling company had called to offer me a job. She gave me a number. I dialed and waited to be connected to their personnel department, all the while wondering how they'd gotten my number. One of the personnel managers informed me that they'd like to offer me a position as a roustabout trainee with an entry-level salary of  $7.90 per hour.

   I'd never been paid so much money in my life!

   (I imagine that here in 2011 we're all laughing at such a figure right about now.)

   My spirits somewhat bolstered, we got back on the road in jollier spirits, and headed toward a career that would turn out to be the longest-lasting job I've ever had.

   It took going to their office to remember applying there. They'd called nearly 9 months after I'd applied for a position. They explained the duties I'd be expected to perform, then sent me (along with nearly a dozen other applicants, to a drug-screening facility. I'd made no attempt to be clean over the years, so I resorted to the same method as at my last oilfield job. The way it turned out, that was nearly not enough.When the sample was being labeled, I observed the technician writing, "Sample is clear" under the remarks section. We returned to the personnel office and began our orientation, which consisted of watching several safety films and signing tons of paperwork. Each applicant was outfitted with PPE and then assigned for deployment. At the end, I was in the room by myself

   "OK. Where am I going?" I asked.

   "There seems to have been a problem with your urine sample. It appears to be watered down."

   "I saw that on the results form. That's what happens when you drink tons of coffee and water."

   "We'll just need you to return and retest, then you'll get your assignment."

   "Should I come back here when I'm finished? I don't have a car."

   "No, that's ok. Just go home, and I'll call you when we get your results."

   Thinking that the Good Ship Lollipop was sunk before it's maiden voyage, I thanked her and walked back to the lab. This time, the color had returned to my sample.

   Damn, whatever it is I took has passed it's time of usefulness, I thought.

   I went home and prepared for the worst, but she called me at nearly 5:00 to tell me that my testing had come out fine, and to report for work on Monday. I joined a neighbor for a celebratory joint, during which I came to a decision.

   I'd been taking the risk of having to "study" for drug tests for over a year. Maybe it was time I stop carrying the additional worry, and besides, what was more important? Feeding my family, or getting high? It may have been the first conscious adult decision I made.

   What a whirlwind those days were. I went into the oilfield chasing shackles (assisting the crane operator), then progressed to roughnecking on the drill floor. I had my eye on higher things, though. I eventually made it into the derrick. I'd always enjoyed climbing, and my childhood tendencies toward accidents had fallen by the wayside. In it's place were balance and precision. Another plus was that when not climbing two hundred feet in the air, I was no longer on the drill floor much. Instead I was maintaining pumps and tanks. My energy and metabolism have always been high, so I excelled alone. I was finally getting paid for my solitude. I had to learn many mathematical equations and procedures to maintain well control. At the end, I was being trained by the head mechanic - he had a bee in his bonnet about suggesting me if another mechanic's job became open. Ah, the end. A central part of this tale, but we're going to have to leave that for a bit later, I'm afraid.

   I didn't exactly hold on to my resolve to stay clean. Relatively clean became the refrain before much time had passed. In the beginning, it started with more pot. I would wait until we had a drug screen, then find someone to smoke with when I got home. Then, during a PEC safety class, some blowhard chimed in to the instructor that we should only be tested when returning home from a hitch. What we did while off was our business. She responded by debunking the excuse that everyone uses when they fail one: "I was riding with someone that was smoking." She explained that the drug testing companies were required by law to test for a certain level of intoxicants. Anything under was a pass, so do your dirty work the first or second day that you're home, and you should be ok. I took this bit of wisdom and ran with it. If I bumped into someone that was carrying at the beginning of the week, I was all for it.

   One guy that I rode back and forth to work with had an addiction that my brother once explained: he was addicted to addiction. One week, he'd have a bag of weed, sometimes a little coke. If he had no narcotics, he'd insist we buy coffee and vivarin for the trip. Anything to get you going, I guess.

   Then came a few more acid trips. One at a triple feature the cinema was showing of the original Star Wars trilogy. The things I could tell you about that day. During another, we actually went to a show by the Time and the Flavor Kings.

    Then came news. At my son's second birthday birthday party, I found out that we were expecting again.

   We began telling everyone that we wanted to be surprised this time. The specialist that was doing the ultrasound put the results in an envelope just in case we changed our minds later. When she finally talked me into opening the envelope, I was overjoyed. I'd always wanted a daughter. We discussed names almost until the end, but refused to tell anyone her name until after the delivery. The pregnancy was very hard and draining. We both had terrible stomachs,  but her condition intensified tenfold while expecting. It was determined in the end that a faulty gall bladder was the culprit. She wound up in the hospital several times for dehydration. At the end, it was preumonia. The fever was causing the baby's heart rate to race, and we were a nervous wreck. When she entered the world, my daughter had so much mucus down her throat that the doctor spent a long time cleaning her airway. We didn't breathe for nearly five minutes. When she finally cried, it was an anti-climax. She cried for all of two seconds. We figured maybe she wasn't such a fussy baby (oh, how that perception changed!)

   In the nursery, my mom turned to me and said, "She's beautiful." I don't know what I responded with, but we spent the next 10 minutes crying in each other's arms. What a difference nearly three years will make in a person.

   While her mother got over her pneumonia, I spent every feeding in the nursery. It gave us time to bond.

   Then the opportunity came for us to purchase a brand new mobile home. The only place we could find a lot to put one was back in Port Sulphur. I was a bit peeved at having to move back rather than forward, but went ahead with it anyway. Shortly after the move, we finally got married. Not only had I promised for years that I would, but suddenly the timing seemed right. My wife's medicaid was about to run out, and my children were already covered by my insurance. We figured she could be covered as well. Better safe than sorry.

    Things began to get slightly wonky at this point.

    My wife had always lived a clean life. At the age of 22, she decided that she'd like to begin drinking. It became a weekly thing. They'd barhop the entire weekend away, taking me as designated driver when I was home. I kind of hated it. For one thing, I was in the types of spots that played dance music, and for another, I was the only one sober. Sort of makes you feel like the parent.

   Then came Ecstacy. Everyone would come up to me in the bar, wondering why I wasn't having a good time. Despite my protests, I'd have a dozen drinks lined up at the table in record time. Some nights, it would have been better to let someone that was rolling drive. Then they had a tab left one night, and handed it to me to go on top of the alcohol. When I came back to myself, I realized that everyone had left. I drove to every bar in the parish looking for them (not to mention stopping at home to make another drink). I met one bartender a week or two later, she claims I ran facefirst into the door on my way in. She'd decided not to serve me, but I didn't ask. Just marched straight to the back of the bar, turned around, and marched right back out. Eventually we found each other. When we got home, it was decided that one of her brother's friends was going to hook up with my cousin, so they took a ride to get her. As soon as they were out the door, her brother rolled a blunt, lit it, and held it out to me from what looked like half a mile away. In a voice that sounded like a 78 rpm record slowed down to 33 1/3, he asked, "You want some of this?"

   I have no idea whether I took it or not. The next thing I knew, I woke up to the sound of someone vomiting. My wife had come into the bathroom and found me passed out on the carpet beside the toilet. When she tried to wake me, she noticed the puddle of puke I was lying facefirst in. That sent her over the top. I did good, though. I got up, cleaned the mess, then took a shower before falling unconscious again.

   At this point I gave up. Although I'd been out of church for years, I'd been reading my Bible quite a bit while offshore. Jason hasd started going to church with his parents, so he invited me along. It was a little nervewracking to be in the same church that had left me with such a sour taste in my mouth, but I got over it. Almost no one that had been there before was in attendance, so it almost felt like a new place. Almost. But trying to life the clean life when no one else around you is interested in doing so is no easy task. I finally decided that if you can't beat 'em, you might as well join 'em. I did X a few times, but lots more went on when I was at work. Sometimes they'd even leave me home with the kids. More convenient. I later heard so many things about what she was up to at the time, but everyone that told me had strong reasons for being angry by the point that these revelations were made.

   Working offshore like I was (not to mention always having a side job during my days off), it became a little hard to maintain a band. Playing in small clubs every other night turned into the occasional jam at someone's house. Either my brother would come to my house, or we'd go to my neighbor's at the front of the street. He had a pretty decent PA, and played keyboards. His son happened to be one of the greatest drummers I've ever had the pleasure of playing with. I remember some long raggae jams there. Sometimes I'd go to Dustin's house. He'd become quite the gamer, and challenged me to many hours of Knockout Kings. One night Cody came with me, because he claimed he could take us both out. He was right. We soon left him to challenge the computerized opponent, and jumped on guitar and bass to work out the song that he was currently learning, "Where is My Mind?" by the Pixies. We played it roughly 22 times in a row. I wound up getting the second best complement I've ever received about my playing (the best was my neighbor in Belle Chasse telling us that it sounded like a spaceship was landing in our shed). Dustin wasn't impressed with the tempo I was keeping or the way I was going about my changes. Upon further inspection, he realized that I was dead on. I'd never played it before, but it had been burned into my soul for 10 years. He told me that I should be in a Pixies cover band. I could pull off their sound perfectly. Nice change. He'd always told me before that I needed to buy a metronome.

   The last times I saw any psychedelics, it happened to be 2 mushroom trips that were very close together. The first wasnt much to fuss about. The second, however, was horrifying. I quite literally watched myself decompose. I also got the added treat of feeling every single moment of the process. I swore that night that I'd never do anything again. Drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, etc. Gone. I didn't exactly keep all those promises, but I've been mostly off of illegal drugs since then. I didn't know it yet, but my bout with prescription meds would begin all too soon. I discussed it with Scott, Jason, and another friend at a concert a few weeks later. One of them hypothesized that there is an optimal time for doing those sorts of things. Maybe ours had passed. Then again, maybe the bad trip came from the events that were taking place in our lives.

   That spring, my wife's grandfather passed away. Shortly after that, her uncle died of a heart attack while on a cruise, of all places. Later, we lost two of my uncles to cancer (We laid one of them to rest on my birthday. As you can imagine, it really left me in a celebrating mood). When another of her relatives met their demise on her birthday, she threw up her hands in disgust and said, "I never would have believed that we could lose this many loved ones in such a short time."

   I agreed wholeheartedly. I'd lost both grandparents, both great grandparents, and an aunt in the '80's and early '90's. I'd never seen anything like this. God wouldn't pile more sorrow than this on top of us? Would he?

   I was more wrong than I ever would have known. God had lain sorrow at our door like a bouquet. Now he was going to pull the rug from under our feet. The life we'd grown cozy with was about to be destroyed forever.   


  
  

metal insects part 4: songs of pain

   Two events convinced me that my days in Port Sulphur High School were over.

   The first was eigth grade graduation. During the rehearsals, a classmate tried to start a fight. I backed him down. The vulgarity I used got me kicked out of my own graduation ceremony. Not that I cared. I'd given my class ring to a girlfriend. Didn't even order a senior ring. By then I was working full-time and paying for my own well-being. A ring was the least of my concerns.

   Mom decided that there was no way I was missing my graduation. So we got decked out in our finest and headed to the gymnasium. As soon as I walked in, my teacher ran up to me and said "What are you doing here? You need to go home." Then my mother spotted my adversary from the previous day.

   "It's this fucking idiot's fault. Why don't you step outside with me, Asshole?"

   Said asshole being 6'8"...

   There was no brawl in the parking lot, just my furious mother dragging me to the car after the principal threatened to call the police.

   My mom's whole outlook seemed to be turning darker. Catching my friend from next door making drinks in the kitchen, she'd have taken everything I owned and confined me to my room... in the past.

   Instead, she walked in, sat her purse down and said, "So you're drinking, huh?"

   "Yep," replied Andy. He always was the cocky one.

   Mom just gave us this weary, defeated look.

   "Fuck it, then. Make me one."

   I guess I should have seen the writing on the wall for my  parents' marriage and our living situation right then, but I had so many different forces pulling my mind away. I'll get to them in a timely manner, I assure you.   

   During Freshman year, a lot of the students were getting involved in gangs and the drug trade. One day , I was robbed at gunpoint. Two or three weeks later, Andy was struck between the eyes with a blunt object. His forehead was swollen for a week, but his eyes were black for months. He decided that we should arm ourselves.

   He used a router to cut wooden moulds in the shape of brass knuckles, then melted lead weights -pilfered from dozens of duck decoys- in a cast-iron skillet over his grandfather's propane burner.

   After some trial and error, maybe half a dozen sets, we each took the pair most suited for our hand size. I had some reservations about carrying them, but he assured me that if we were caught, we could claim they were weights that we wore for exercise when walking home from school on the levee. It wasn't a bad idea, either. We began to do just that.

   In English class one Friday afternoon, someone blamed me for a disturbance. Nose buried deep in some book, I came out of the dream-haze wondering what they could possibly be talking about. As it turned out, it was nothing, really. A trumpet-blast of flatulence from the girl beside me. Seriously.

   I was invited to go to the office for the crime of disrupting the classroom, but I'd had enough.

   "No. I won't be punished for the childishness of others anymore."

   One of the guys got up from his desk and walked over to me.

   "Get up! You can't talk to my cousin like that!"

   He had always been friendly before, but I guessed that those days were over.

   I closed my book and stood up. Over half a dozen of his friends followed suit.

   Then something strange happened. A breathtaking sense of calmness filled me.

   "I'm through fighting with you. I've had my fill. This is bullshit. You're all fucking idiots."

   As I sat down and began to read again, the girl that had started this clusterfuck jumped up and ran towards me, swinging. I never looked up. I was already elsewhere. Someone grabbed her and half-dragged/half-carried her to the front of the classroom.

   By now, our English teacher's veins were standing out on her sweaty forehead.

   "Everyone sit down! Mr. Tournear, if you don't go to the principal's office immediately, I'll have to have a sheriff's deputy remove you from the classroom!" she shouted.

   "Then I guess you'll have to call him," I said.

   Ten minutes later, the assistant principal and a police officer entered the classroom.

   "Now, would you like to come with us, or do I have to have you handcuffed and forcibly removed?"

   I decided that now was the time to leave. I rose, grabbed my bag, and left with them. On the way downstairs, he began to scream in a harsh, tobacco-cracked voice.

   "You're suspended for 9 days for causing a disruption, obscenity, and insubordination!"

   I remained silent. As we neared the office, he thanked the deputy and assured him that he could take it from there.

   We entered and sat down to begin my write-up. I dropped my duffel bag a little too hard, and there was a loud, metallic clank as it struck the floor.

   He looked up from his typewriter and asked me if I'd like to show him what was in my bag.

   Knowing I was busted, I began to stammer.

   "It's nothing, really."

   "Then open your bag."

   I fetched a long sigh and pulled the weapons from the bottom of my bag. Wrapping them in a shirt hadn't done enough to muffle the sound.

   "You're carrying brass knuckles. I'll have to write you up for expulsion and turn these over to the sheriff's office."

   "But they're not, sir. They're made of lead, and entirely too heavy to throw a punch with. I use these for weights because I walk home from school as part of my physical fitness regimen."

   He fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

   "I'm afraid that I'll have to confiscate them regardless of your reason for having them. If they were to fall into the wrong hands, they could be used as a weapon."

   And wonder of wonders, I was neither expelled nor criminally charged that day.

   Andy never got caught. Realizing that I would probably be found out, he got the hall pass and stashed his pair at the bottom of a trash can in the janitor's closet.

   During my little vacation, I presented my demands to Mom.

   "I know that there's only a month or so left in the schoolyear, and I'm prepared to deal with that, but I'm going back to Buras next year. I've had it up to here. I can use Grandma's address."

   "I agree that something needs to be done, but it will be hard to bring you back and forth."

   "I can go stay at her house, and come home on weekends."

   "I really don't know if it's a good idea for you to move out."

   "It really won't be like moving out. I've stayed weekends and summers before. I'll only be 15 minutes away."

    Mom agreed to give it some thought. As it turned out, she was both right and wrong.

   I don't want to give the impression that the year was completely without merit. That spring and summer marked the time that playing music stopped being a pipe dream and became a reality.

   Being raised on funk/R n' B and rock from the classic period, during the '80's I didn't pay a lot of attention to modern rock. Then my neighbor began to get into a lot of metal, and naturally, took me along for the ride. I'd already lived through his rap phase, and while I genuinely liked a lot of it, something about music with live instruments was more interesting to me.

   He began with Metallica, who happened to be on top of the world that year, before being led towards death metal by some friends that lived a few miles away.

   I was enthused by the ferocity and speed of it all, but the lyrical content -which always seemed to wind up back at the gates of hell- became boring pretty quickly. Kinda like those old Cypress Hill albums where every song would be about smoking weed. Hurry up and change the subject, already.

   I dug through their tapes every time I came over, and I began to put on a few out of curiosity. Death metal and thrash seemed to be all the rage with them, but a few really peaked my curiosity. One was on a peculiar-looking label I'd never heard of called Sub Pop. According to the copyright, it had been released in 1987, but it didn't sound like any of the glam rock I'd shunned during that time. The name on the cassette was Soundgarden.

   What I found interesting was the fact that it didn't sound like one single genre. It had a little bit of the '70's cock rock feel -especially Black Sabbath- but at the same time embodied some of the sound I'd heard in old grainy footage of punk rock bands. So I dug a little deeper, and came up with The Real Thing, by Faith No More.

   I wasn't very impressed when they were put into heavy rotation with the "Epic" video a year or so earlier, and I'll admit that I was still pretty milquetoast at that point. I found some of the songs to be very cool, while others didn't do anything for me at all. Nevertheless, my friend, who by now had admitted to me that they were his favorite band, began to talk to me every chance he could about their songs, about seeing them live, and how he'd heard through the grapevine that they had a new record on the way. Sooner or later, while still not much of a fan, I found myself eagerly anticipating the release date.

    When the new album, Angel Dust, was released, I didn't really know what to think at first. It would have been one thing, had they sounded like merely a different band than the one that played on the previous album. They sounded unlike anything I'd ever heard.

   By the second listen, I was hooked.

   Within two months, we were at the Superdome watching them do the opening act stint on the ill-fated Metallica/Guns N' Roses tour. Despite their equipment being mixed at an insultingly low volume (couldn't risk having someone upstage the headliners, now, could they?), the fat bastards proved to all in attendance that they really were escapees from a psychiatric ward. Imagine Mike Patton running on stage during the intro to "Land of Sunshine;" doing a u-turn to go puke; then returning just in time to sing; before doing a front-flip onto his back - which is where he finished the song, screaming like all the hounds of hell were after him. And that was just the first song.

   (That wasn't their only strange behavior. At one show, I saw the singer pick up a beer bottle off the stage and throw it backhand behind him, only to strike the drummer in the head, bringing the song and the show to a bloody halt.)

   It went downhill from there. Metallica was - and always will be - a very tight live band, but judging by the content of that album and every one that followed it, I could already sense that they were past their prime. Guns N' Roses really bears no mention. It was such a production that it was like being at an opera. Not what rock n' roll should be - exciting, dammit! I honestly could have taken a nap.

   There have been hundreds of shows and sets by thousands of bands since then, but we better move on before this turns into an epic.

   One band that made an impact - again not right away, but a strong one nonetheless - was Nirvana.

   A buddy of mine named Delbert kept telling me about his new favorite band. I started checking MTV every once in a while until I caught them. Again, I wasn't very impressed. Maybe I'm too harsh a critic.

   A few months later, in January of '92, I caugh them on Hangin' with MTV (which to jog your memory, was one of those afternoon prime time music shows like TRL, only geared towards rock music). They came out and played a blistering version of  "Territorial Pissings." I was completely blown away.

   I clearly remember the woman sitting beside me saying that she could make a million dollars, too, if all that you had to do was scream like that. I came to the conclusion that she was right. You didn't have to wait until you'd  had several years worth of lessons. All you had to do was get up there and play three chords and do a lot of screaming until you found your voice.

   I began to save money for a guitar, but Jeffrey beat me to it. He saved up enough cash to order one of those Harmony beginner's models that have been offered in Sears catalogues since the dawn of time, then urged Mom to order it for him.

   Here we were, at the beginning, both practicing on the same guitar! It really wasn't a hard thing to do, though. Our sleeping and daily roaming habits were like night and day.

   During that initial phase of our musical education, we'd try to puzzle out Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath riffs endlessly, while learning the occasional Cobain and Co. song.

   That summer, my fate was decided. One of the guys from school had a chip on his shoulder over being questioned on a weapons charge, so he decided the time for revenge had come. He lined our driveway with roughly 50 roofing nails (the square-headed ones that will stand straight up), causing my dad to flatten both of his rear tires when he left for work the next morning.

   Dad was pissed, and quite understandably. He brought both tires to a friend's auto shop for repair, and presented the bill to the Sheriff's Office with his report. The police refused to take action, stating that proof would be nearly impossible to find.

   "Do you see now?" I asked him. "Can you register me in Buras this year, or do I have to walk around for three more years waiting for someone to stab me in the back?"

   That's how I wound up graduating from the same school where I began.

   One more thing about Port Sulphur, then I'll leave it alone. It's part in my tale is finished. Andy called me up during my first week in Buras to tell me that one of our classmates had died of a gunshot wound. I was deeply saddened by it (and still I am. He's buried close to some people that are very dear to me.)

   The day I walked back into Buras High School was like night and day compared to the previous year. Most of the students were pleasant and chatty, and I'll be damned if several people didn't make friends with me right away. The jocks and cheerleaders were more likely to belittle others, but they were a crowd I instinctively gravitated away from. It wasn't much of a problem.

   I always seemed to get along better with girls than I did with guys. I guess it was just the fact that most guys were into sports, or hunting and fishing. My interests were always the arts, so I found myself hanging with three groups: the girls, the geeks, and the stoners. Sometimes I think the fact that I was equally accepted by all three was proof beyond positive that I had no clearly defined social identity.

   One by-product of hanging out with the stoners was that I began to experiment with drugs. I'd tried pot the year before, but didn't think much of it. This time was quite a bit different.

   When I first started getting high, the world seemed to be more colorful. I smiled a lot, music sounded better, everything seemed to be funny, and I would get highly motivated. I could literally fly through whatever I was writing at the time, and songs seemed to flow from my imagination endlessly.

   Disagree now if you like, but I never saw any harm come from marijuana usage - at least not in the time I spent with it. Mostly benefits, as medical researchers are finally saying. I don't think it's a gateway drug either. My belief is that some people have a desire to expand their consciousness, while others just have a curiosity about what the high feels like. In the beginning, I had a little bit of both. So naturally, I moved on to the next thing that happened to come my way.

   And that thing turned out to be LSD.

   I'd been reading about people using hallucinogens to access a part of their brain that normally lies dormant. There had even been top secret military experiments with them. And most accounts I'd read claimed that when one reached the point that the visions became too horrific, they could quit with no withdrawal symptoms. They'd come out on the other side smarter and stronger, and most of the random clutter seemed to be washed out of their minds.

   Some like-minded friends (and musicians, too, but let's leave that here for a few minutes) informed me one day that a friend was holding and we could score that evening. If I remember correctly, we met the guy at a baseball field, of all places.

   We got back to the house and dropped at 6:00 pm. Nothing seemed amiss right away. As the last few stragglers arrived, someone cued up a Mr. Bungle CD at track 3, "Squeeze Me Macaroni," and lit a joint. We began to unwind. Little did I know that within minutes, we'd be unravelling.

   As usual, I started digging through a stack of CD's while the rest of the guys purveyed some porno mags. In the middle of taking mental notes about albums I needed to purchase, all 3 of them began to laugh hysterically.

   "Come here! You've got to see this."

   When I took a look, I wondered why this tableau was so funny. It appeared to be a wedding reception made up entirely of women that were 500+ lbs. All were attired in nothing but wedding veils. To tell the truth, it seemed kind of insulting.

   But to my amazement, the longer I looked, the funnier it seemed. Especially when the entire wedding party began to carouse and dance. They poured wine, ate wedding cake, and cackled merrily.

   The party having come to life, we jumped up and began to run around the room, laughing like lunatics all the while.

   The next song, "Carousel," seemed to have been playing for months. I swear that I heard the part with the guy getting sick on a carnival ride at least 5 times.

   During the peak hours, we dangled upside down from the ceiling rafters like bats; one of the guys nearly had a meltdown when I found a poetry book by Jim Morrison and began to recite it; and in one chaotic scene, some jocks that also happened to be tripping showed up pretending to be the police. Our mad dash through the drum room in the dark probably wasn't very kind to the musical equipment. I can't recall whether anything was damaged or not.

   Oh, yeah! I almost forgot - our body temperatures were so high that we drank everything in the house within minutes, then spent the rest of the night drinking directly from the taps.

   An older guy that was dating one of our sisters gave two of us a ride home. He claimed to be tripping, but appeared calm, cool, and collective. I asked him why he wasn't freaking out, and he just responded that he was laid-back. He spent the trip home talking us down and praising the Dr. Hook tape that was blaring on his sound system.

   I thanked him for the ride and went to bed.

   I drifted off sometime after 7 am, still watching serpents and topographical maps leap across the parchment paper of the ceiling. I felt drained, yet peaceful.

   I don't want you to get the wrong idea and mark me as a drug burnout on first impresssion. I didn't do any of the substances that I tried more than a handful of times. Unfortunately, I didn't see the point of getting off of drugs until over a year after I graduated.

   It didn't affect my grades, though. One teacher approached me with my transcripts from Port Sulphur, wanting to know why my marks had been so bad there. I seemed to be doing fine now. I mumbled something about having had a few problems, then hurried off with an excuse.

   Things weren't all bad. I began working nearly full time that year.

   I guess that right here I should begin this part by telling you a little bit about my hometown.

   Plaquemines Parish is a delta that lies at the southernmost part of the state of Louisiana. There is literally one way in and one way out. That's one thing I had to get used to after being forced to relocate due to Hurricane Katrina years later - places with roads to everywhere. The natives call the lower end of the Parish "Down the Road," or DTR (the term came from a local magazine that was published annually). There are no more than 3 or 4 traffic lights in the entire parish. The main industries are seafood and oilfield. In my time, I've had a hand in both.

   A week or two into my sophomore year, I decided to find some work. In Buras, I was closer to more seafood docks, and there were plenty of boats that could potentially be looking for a deckhand. I skipped school one Monday and went to Bondi's seafood dock in Empire. He put me to work on the spot. My job duties were to assist in unloading, weighing, and icing down shrimp in vats of ice. For my backbreaking day of work, I was paid the princely sum of $35.

   Right then and there I was convinced that I'd have to find something that paid better, but seemingly being guaranteed work, I decided to ride it out until a better opportunity presented itself.

   That opportunity turned out to be Dan's Seafood, located directly across from the Lucky Food Mart and a block or so down the highway from the Buras Saloon & Emile's Lounge - the former owned by my aunt and uncle, the latter managed by my grandmother. Grandma's night shift, punctuated by days holed-up in her cave-like bedroom, left me free to roam around and get into things that no 16-year-old should ever be involved in.

   The opportunity to work at Dan's came at the perfect time. I'd hitched a ride back to Empire the next day, only to find that he'd basically given me a day's work because he was short-handed. He wasn't particularly thrilled with the idea of me missing school to come shovel ice and lug vats ofshrimp around with a pallet jack.

   At Dan's this presented no problem. I'd offered to come in bright and early, but he assured me that there was no need to miss school. Someone would be around to buy crabs from the fishermen all day long. My job would be to sort and box the live crabs, then clean and bag the gumbo crabs. All were intended for shipment to the airport in New Orleans.

   During this period, I became. friends with two extraordinary families. The Parkers lived next door to Dan's, and the two siblings closest to my age, James and Daniel, quickly became partners-in-crime/co-workers. We roamed the streets, getting into the kind of extracurricular activities that most teens with partying on the brain wind up in on weekends. On the ther hand, we worked side-by-side, both at fish docks and on commercial fishing boats.

   The other, the Hammonds, were a family of 7. They first came to my attention when one of the elder brothers participated in a televised quiz bowl during my 6th grade year. I was impressed with his bookish knowledge and rapid-fire answers. I'd always been well read, but never felt good enough to share any of that knowledge or take part in such character-building activities. Maybe I should have studied the course on self-esteem that Mom insisted I take in 4H, but I guess that's more water over the dam.

   I met him at the bus stop one day, and commented on his quiz bowl performance. Not that we had enough in common to really talk at that point. We were too far apart in age. The youngest sister, Jessica, I met at a dance I went to in 8th grade. She developed a crush on me and asked me out. That wasn't exactly surprising. Most romantic relationships I've been in, I was either asked to date, or someone set us up. No way would I ever tell them. It turned out to be short-lived , as we've already discussed. Being 12 at the time (two years my junior), can you blame her for quickly deciding that we should just be friends?

   I did meet Jason on one visit to their house. It was one of those houses built on pylons to avoid flood waters (not that it wound up helping when the most destructive storm in U.S. history came to town many years later). There was a downstairs shop that had been converted into an extra bedroom. There I found him, studiously working out the bass line to "Manic Depression." Later, we would become close (or as close as I would ever allow) friends.

   A year and a half later, upon my return to BHS, I was finally able to take Jessica up on her offer of friendship. I became friends with Kristi, who was in the same grade as me. After a Halloween party at their house, I became very close with the family.

   Their parents, while stern, were very fair and loving. Anyone that their children befriended became an honorary member of the family. I spent lots of time with them, especially when I convinced them to let me make dessert one night. They went into raptures of delight over my cakes and brownies. For the longest time, when I'd arrive, they'd inform me what I was baking that night.

   I was welcomed heartily and drawn into their circle of friends.

   It seemed I'd finally found peace and acceptance. I began to outwardly express the principles I'd been studying for four years. It felt so good to have a "Hail, fellow. Well met" for every person that I came across. The parents of all of my friends became accustomed to hugging me upon my arrival and my departure. The same went for my female friends. And violence... there was none. With the guys I would stop fights before they could start.

   Sometimes it was a case of talking sense into people's heads before violence could erupt. On other occasions, the aggressor(s) would decide I looked scary and depart swiftly. Why? I don't know. I didn't approach them in a temper.

   Unfortunately, this happy existence didn't last. Something happened that taught me to never repeat a rumour, no matter how confidential it supposedly is; made me an object of scorn and ridicule for years to come; and drafted the blueprint for the way I would carry out nearly all friendships in the future.

  
   This is how I went from outcast to nearly content and back in the space of less than a year.

   Among all the friends I made, two were a couple. The odd part was that I never saw them together. She went to Buras with me, while he was in Port Sulphur. I made some terrible decisions concerning them.

   One day, sitting in the gymnasium at lunch due to adverse weather conditions, a friend I was sitting with saw her and made the remark that he couldn't believe they were still dating. Not really understanding what he was getting at, I asked what he was talking about. He responded by saying that she had been cheating on him with a friend that was enlisted when he came home on leave. She'd been seen all over town with him.

   "Well, what makes you so sure she was sleeping with him?" I asked.

   "Come on, man. It was obvious. She didn't keep it a secret that she was running around with him."

   I knew as well then as I do now that it was all hearsay, and not worth spreading around. Did I keep my mouth shut?

   Say sorry, Sai, but I didn't.

   Now, don't go off half-cocked by thinking that I'd gotten a taste of popularity and decided to join the rumour mill that high school cliques spin on. I'd made some friends, but I wasn't talking that much.

   What happened was this: I'd met up with some friends to toke, and being late at night, we figured that the best place to adjourn to would be the golf course.

   We were sitting on a bench that was in the vicinity of the 9th hole, when one of the guys began to trumpet his disdain for her.

   "She's got him totally whipped. We can't even get him to hang out anymore. I really don't get what he sees in her. He had a chance to screw another girl recently, and he wound up backing out. Told her, 'I can't do this. I have a girlfriend.' I couldn't believe it. I wonder if she ever cheated on him."

   And here's the first terrible mistake I made:

   "I heard something, but I don't think I should tell it. I don't even know if it's true."

   One of them chimed in with, "Come on, man! You can't leave us hanging like that."

   "Ok, but you have to promise me you won't tell him. I don't know if it's true or not, and I don't want that coming from me."

   A few days later, she approached me in tears, telling me that he'd broken it off with her.

   Distressed, I approached my friends that night.

   "I can't believe you told him! I really didn't know anything."
  
   "No, calm down, dude. We didn't say anything."

   "Well, what happened?"

   "She was cheating on him, and he found out."

   Now I was really panicking. I went to his house to see how he was doing, and to my surprise, his attitude was "to hell with it. I've moved on."

   She was an entirely different story. Every day at school, she would come hang out with me whenever scheduling allowed, and repeatedly ask herself what she had done. Feeling guiltier by the day, I did whatever I could to console her...

   So when the invitation to come to her house arrived, I came without a second thought. Which was fine. I was encouraging when she was down, and walked on eggshells when the mood swung around to anger. Nevertheless, I tried to be a good friend and not consume myself with guilt.

   Everything seemed like it might be ok... until she jumped my bones, and guilt-ridden or not, I did absolutely nothing to resist it .
 
   I know today that it was a bad decision by someone who was on the rebound rollercoaster, but being seduced so aggressively, I submitted in silence. The voices in my head were screaming, "Don't do this! They are going to hate you!!" so loudly that there was absolutely no pleasure involved. How could there be, when I had done something so despicable.

   Had I had the backbone to say no, they would both probably respect me today. This was probably the first major instance of letting my silence cause grief and ruin. Being a kid, I still had many life lessons to learn. I've never repeated another rumour.

   But sadly, not speaking up to influence the situation would rise up to bite me again, and with disastrous circumstances.

   Gradually, I began to come around less. I guess that it was the guilt that kept me away, but I still think that it's the reason she eventually got him to come talk to her. Putting their heads together with what they knew, it was a foregone conclusion that I had orchestrated this whole mess to get in her pants. Would you believe me in this situation? I probably wouldn't.

    I was hanging with the rest of the guys in Port Sulphur when I heard that they were talking. A tight little knot of nerves began to twist nauseously in my guts. We were about to adjourn to one of their father's houses in Empire to play music, but one of them pulled me to the side.

    "I think I had better take you home first."

    I asked him why, and he responded that our friend was pretty upset with me.

    He would say no more, but he really didn't have to. I knew that I was found out.

    I got my first taste of how they would react a few days later. I was at the Hammond's house for a visit, and Kristi asked if she could speak to me in her room. I agreed and we sat on the bed to talk.

    "Mark, you really need to watch what you're doing."

    "What do you mean?" I asked.

    "My dad's been hearing some things, and he's nearly convinced that he doesn't want you around here anymore."

    "What could he possibly have heard about me?

    "That you're selling drugs."

    "That's ridiculous. You know I've tried a few things, but I've never sold any. Who could have told him that?"

    "A friend of his that's a cop. Regardless of whether it's true or not, you're under suspicion. You need to be careful."

    I didn't know what to say. I was speechless.

    "I heard some other things, too. If they're true, I'm afraid I might not be able to continue being your friend."

    I wish I could say that I saw a small fraction of belief in me on her face, but I can't do that. The look was cold. Nothing I said could get her to tell me the rest, but I found out soon enough.

    Between the end of the school year and the start of the new the following year, lots of information made the rounds about me. As you know by now, some of it was true (even if my intentions were misinterpreted), but 98% of the things I found out about myself when I began my junior year in the fall were blatant lies, intended only to slander.

    Especially hurtful were the rumours about Kristi. I finally got someone to tell me, and it seems that I was being labeled a womanizer (And why not? One guy with a whole crowd of girls every morning before homeroom. I'm sure they were trying to figure out whether I was gay or just playing sensitive to get close to them). My affair the previous spring -and my supposed ill intentions- were now public knowledge. And to top all that off, I had been "heard" bragging about having done the same to her. It was really sad. I had made some good friends.

    Those that weren't included in the tales that were flying around didn't have as much reason to be filled with scorn, but chose to file me away in the backs of their minds as untrustworthy.

    I finally heard from my former friend. He called me up one day to let me know that he intended to hurt me very badly when we met again. I was perturbed, but resigned to my fate.

   I'll not go into our meeting, but I did nothing to resist his blows. It was one-part guilt, and the other total sleep deprivation. I was exhausted.

   That year brought some other major upheavals in my life. I hadn't gotten into enough trouble being on my own to cause legal entanglements, but it was enough for Mom to decide I was moving back home.

   Then she moved out. That was when the real trouble started.

   The summer of 1993 went by in a haze of narcotics, alcohol, and trips to the mini-beach at Fort Jackson.

   On one occasion, my dad took a trip to Venice to pick up some friends, leaving Jeff and I alone. We decided it would be great to take the other car for a thrill-ride. We amused ourselves by sliding around the curvy shell road, then returned home.

   "Let's go again!" said Jeffrey.

   Without pausing for thought, I said, "Nah. Let's not. We don't need to be sneaking off in the car too much."

   He agreed, and we walked into the house, which was completely filled with smoke. We began to run from room to room looking for the source. It turned out to be coming from a mattress on the floor between the beds in Michael and Cody's room. Someone had lain it there for guests to sleep on. Now, in the center of it, was a smouldering circle roughly the size of a manhole cover. Apparently, the flame had fallen from someones cigarette on the way out the door.

   As we grabbed it and ran down the hall to the back door, flames began to leap hungrily. We ran through the back yard and threw it over the fence, where it burned in a ditch for over an hour. Had we changed drivers and taken another joyride, the house would have burned to the ground.

   Then came my legal troubles. Some guys that I knew vaguely were arrested for credit card theft and robbery. They'd pumped gas and carried a case of beer to the car. When the card was denied, they fled with it, then came to our house.

   It was a very bad scene. There were a dozen people or more, nearly all of them underage. Two people had passed out at the beach and were brought home laid out in the back of a truck. The guy was placed on the sofa. Some rocket scientist had put the girl, fully clothed, into a bathtub full of cold water.

   I was on the phone with my girlfriend (if you could say that. She had broken up with me, but was calling me constantly in an effort to iron out our differences.) when several voices began to shout, "It's the cops!" I peeked through the blinds, and was astonished to see that nearly a dozen police cars were parked in front of the house.
   
   My girlfriend said, "The police are there, aren't they?"

   "Yes. I gotta go."

   "Okay."

   As I was hanging up, a knock sounded. Thinking as quickly as I could, I knelt over and hid my beer behind a bookshelf. Before I could rise from my position, the head of the detective division and an undercover narcotics officer burst into the room.

    "Freeze! What are you hiding back there?"

    Not wanting to get shot, I quickly stammered, "It's just a beer! Calm down. I'm underage and I didn't want to get in trouble."

    "Oh, you're in trouble, all right. Get it! I want to see what it is."

    When I reached behind the bookshelf, the narcotics officer hit me over the head nearly a dozen times with his flashlight. Luckily, I was very drunk. I didn't feel a thing. The onlookers in the room, on the other hand, were horrified. Why the hell wasn't a juvenile officer called out to deal with teenagers?

    "What the fuck are you doing that for?!?" Michael shouted.

    I got ribbed for a couple weeks - guys calling me the Plaquemines Parish answer to Rodney King, and saying that I should sue the Sheriff's Office.

    The offenders mentioned my name in connection, so I was arrested on an accessory to the fact charge and scheduled for arraignment in juvenile court.

    Before that could happen, I was picked up on another accessory charge. A friend was feuding with a guy from Buras, and one night they agreed to meet and fight later that evening. My friend wanted to meet at a dock on the riverside right away, but the other guy persuaded him to meet at a gas station in Empire at midnight.

    I almost asked to be dropped off, but I said "the hell with it" and went along for the ride. Two of my friends were next door to the gas station, and walked over to see what was going on. Little did we know that the opponent's father, a police officer, had orchestrated the entire setup. They drove up together, and the officer got out alone. He was wearing his utility belt over boxer shorts and a wife-beater t-shirt.

   He levelled a sawed-off shotgun at us, and ordered us all against the building with our hands on the wall. Another unit arrived and we were handcuffed one at a time with the gun shoved rudely into the backs of our heads. The guy that rode with me, a metalhead, told the officers in the front seat, "I wish I was on PCP! I could bust out of these handcuffs, then come up there and rip your heads off."

   Shit! I'm screwed, I thought.

    Upon arriving at the police station, I stood on my right to remain silent until my friends, innocent bystanders who had walked up at the wrong time, were released. Believe it or not, they were actually brought home free of charge without even being questioned.

    My court dates were constantly rescheduled until January of the following year. By the end, I thought they were waiting until my 17th birthday so they could charge me as an adult. That wound up not happening. They mostly wanted to scare me into staying out of trouble, and it worked. I've never had cause to be arrested again.

    I was given 6 months of probation and 80 hours of community service, which I served at the Port Sulphur lock-up. I mostly painted and cleaned out storage sheds. I did see some interesting things there, such as crime scene photos and tear gas grenades. One day, while painting the inside of the cells that housed the trustees, I saw a music video by the most oddball folk musician I'd ever laid eyes on. So I guess you could say that the first time I heard Beck I was in jail.

    Believe it or not, my old youth minister returned. He had called a few times to "see how things were going for me." The bastard was probably sniffing around to see if there was a warrant for his arrest. One evening, he called the house to say that he was in town visiting a few people. Would it be okay to come over? I still had a desire to say that nothing was amiss, so I told him that would be fine.
What he didn't know was that I'd been through just enough that I would no longer be cowed into inaction.
   
   When he arrived, he asked me to take a ride with him. This set off alarm bells (as if they hadn't been ringing all along. Ha!). But I went ahead and agreed. Being such a basket case about things the first time, my judgement had been clouded. Now was my chance to find out exactly what his motivations were. And I'll be damned if I didn't find out real quick.

   During the ride, he began questioning me about what I'd been up to over the last two years. When the subject of my girlfriend came up, he went into a frenzy. He asked if we'd been sexually active.

   "Look, I'm not interested in sharing any of this with you. Or comfortable with it, for that matter."

   He pulled over and looked at me with a lecherous grin.

   "Why not? I bet she gets you hard as a rock. I could put my mouth on it and do the same"

   He began to lean towards my lap. I grabbed his head and slammed it against his window nearly hard enough to shatter the glass. It was the last violent act I would ever commit.

   "You're a fucking psycho! You need to stop thinking about your obsessions, and start thinking about the kids that you've sent running from God."

   He said nothing. All the animation had left his face. He sat there, slack-jawed and quiet.

   "Go back where you came from. If I were you, I'd kill myself when I got there."

   I got out of the car and walked home. I don't know what became of him. I've had no luck with Google.

     Not everything went badly during that period. A second guitar was attained, and we began to learn even more songs. We even ventured to write a few originals - skeletal and noisy in arrangement.

   When I saw that I had become a social pariah once again, I retreated back into solitude. Some people let the previous spring's events go before the year had grown much hair on it's face, while the others were split into two groups: those that took a few years to come around, and those that never spoke to me again. Not a day goes by that I don't regret those events. They were people that I had a lot in common with, and we are forever estranged.

   Some of the new students, either coming into 9th grade from junior high or transplants, took a liking to me. They didn't have history to make them biased yet. I was courteous to them -even went as far to sit with them at lunch- but none of my new mates had any idea how insecure I had grown. I soon garnered a reputation for being extremely quiet. I have had maybe one or two close friends at a time since then, but still kept myself guarded. I'd sidestep questions about myself or quickly change the subject. I even took to telling lies to hide who I was, and not just whoppers. If someone on the phone asked what I was eating, I'd tell them brownies - even if I was having ice cream. How many of you remember me telling you that I valued your friendship, but I'd surely do something to ruin it one day? This is when that sort of behavior began.

   One freshman, Chance Lay, was in the marching band and had a drum kit at his house. We began to go to his house and set up our amps outside of the tiny storage shed he kept it in. We fooled around a little bit with some of the modern rock songs that were big at the time.

   Then everything changed. I purchased a Stratocaster from a thrift store and a Peavey TKO 65 bass amp from a friend. At nearly the same time, Jeffrey bought a bass from Musician's Friend. The first time I picked it up, I realized that I was a bassist. For some reason it came more naturally than guitar ever had. I remember hooking up my new Bigmuff pedal to the bass and playing "Gratitude" by the Beastie Boys like it was yesterday. It was love at first sight. Maybe it had something to do with the years I spent playing tuba and drums in the marching band during junior high. I've excelled more on the bass and drums over the years, but I still play the random song on guitar - usually when I'm the vocalist. For some reason, it's the instrument I find it easiest to play while singing. Chance moved his kit to our larger garage, and we began to record hours of tape using any available format: 4-track, boom box, karaoke machine, handheld microcassette, etc. At this point, there were no gigs, only the occasional drunken party where we'd set up in a corner and bash away.

   Our good friend, Dustin Hayden, would show up from time to time with his guitar and some beer. One night, we moved the coffee pot into the garage and talked him into drinking some. 4 pots and a couple dozen songs later, we smoothly made the transition from casual coffee drinkers to eternal caffeine junkies.

   Another new friend was Odessa Butler, who had recently moved from the Baton Rouge area to live with her mother. Hers is a friendship that I could have handled better.

   The day we met, I quickly noticed that she didn't look or act like the socialites and cheerleaders that sneered at we fearless freaks. Then, in one of my classes, I noticed a graffito she had pencilled on a desk we both used. It was something about music.

   Aha! One of my only interests, I thought.

   In no time we were communicating by daily defacing school property. I took the desk name of Gemini - I was obsessed with split personalities that year - to match her Freebird. Some of my former friends noticed, and began to ridicule me with their own graffiti. We switched to passing notes to rid ourselves of that problem.

   I sometimes wonder if we ever actually spoke out loud. She claims we did, but I'm not certain.

   Before I knew it, I was crushing on her bigtime - she was very nice to me, plus I have a history of being infatuated with redheads. I never let her know that I liked her. How are you gonna do something like that when you don't even talk to people? For another thing, I was off and on with my girlfriend so much that I never knew from one day to the next whether I was available. She'd grown sick of the drugs and drinking, and thought that both my friends and the music I was into were a bad influence. During that last year and a half, she would dump me on an almost weekly basis.

   My crush and my communication were pretty short-lived. One of my friends asked her out, and she came to his house one day when I was there. He was playing Nirvana's cover of "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" on the guitar. He stopped and told her that I sang it much better than he did, then suggested that I do so. I refused by merely shaking my head, lighting a cigarette, and quickly leaving.

   They didn't date long, but I still kept my distance for the last few weeks of school. I didn't want to get in the middle of their relationship. Look how badly that had turned out in the past. I'd lost too many friends already. I was a little sore about it at first. I thought he had done it to stub my toe. Maybe it was just that alpha dog, "I'm the best" attitude he carried himself with. There really was no reason to believe that. It wasn't like I'd told anyone that I liked her, but jealousy is what it is, right?

   I had the summer to get over it, and when I returned to school in the fall I was ready to put it behind me and be a real friend. What I didn't know was that some of her friends had been questioning our friendship, asking her why she was talking to that freak. She told them that she thought I was very cool, and that we were friends. One of them didn't think that was the right answer, so she decided to take matters into her own hands.

   I approached her in the gym and asked if Odessa had stayed home from school that day. She pulled me aside and ripped into me right away.

   "You leave her alone! She has a boyfriend now. She's making a good life for herself here. And to be honest, she thinks you're really strange and she doesn't want to talk to you. Odessa is happy. Don't ruin that, Mark."

   ...And being as low on self-esteem as I was by this point, I believed every word. I didn't try to talk to her at all anymore. Our communication died, and after graduation we didn't see each other again. Somewhere deep inside the vault that I had constructed to wall my emotions in, I lamented the fact that I couldn't keep a friend to save my life.

   Odessa and I did reconnect. Last year she got in touch with me. She, the friends I have made through her,  and the rapidly growing spiderweb of  friends I have made through them, have proven quite motivational. Soon I'll tell you how.

   At this time, I was working on lots of boats, both shrimping and fishing with gill nets. During one of these trips, with Dan Thompson (the owner of Dan's Seafood) and Daniel Parker (one of the few friends that never turned his back on me), I felt the first symptom's of what I first took to be heartburn/indigestion. Half a lifetime later - despite appointments with GI doctors, every over-the-counter med known to man, even a few prescriptions - this condition has worsened considerably. Now,when it flares up it sometimes leads to nausea, vomiting, and constant pain. I can't keep weight on me to save my life.

    Then I met Squid.

    She had just moved from Baton Rouge and was entering her junior year. Her parents were employees of the school system, so I got to hang out at the teacher's apartments a lot. She was more advanced than what our school system had to offer. I don't remember if it was by way of her number of credits or a placement test, but she was advanced and wound up graduating with me at the age of 16.

    The day I met her, she was face-painting for homecoming week. I asked her to paint "I'm a lazy sod" across one cheek (I was listening to a lot of Sex Pistols).

    We bonded over punk rock, New Orleans, and thrift shops. I had quickly noticed the difference between the bands that embodied the indie rock spirit and those that were marketed as such, when they were really arena rock. I weeded out the dreck pretty early, then turned off the radio and began to discover the punk bands these artists would name as influences.

    Squid had one up on me. She had hundreds of punk rock albums, and tons of books and 'zines. I plunged myself into that world and went mad. While every single one of them has been a major influence to me, two bands reigned me in hard: I had heard a few songs by the Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth, and marked them as interesting, but hadn't found the time to hear many records. She introduced me to the Velvet Underground & Nico and much of SY's back catalogue. When I put in Sister for the first time, it was like hearing a sound that had been playing in my head for an eternity.

    Our original recordings from this period began to take on the form of long, dissonant drones - complete with tunings dreamed up out of the ether.

    I will never be able to say enough good things about Squid. She has been there through everything: through smiles, through the tears and lies, even through madness. Squid loves me unconditionally, and I'll never be capable of showing her the level of gratitude she deserves. What level, you might ask? One example should serve.

   She was being tutored in math (might have been trig), and invited me to accompany her to our math teacher's apartment. After going over her lessons, they began to discuss the fact that I was having a little trouble myself. So she began to drill me. For the next few weeks, we'd go to her tutoring sessions, during which our teacher would instruct me. I wound up with an A for the nine weeks and a B for my final grade... which is beside the point. The main point is that years later I found out her mother had paid the instructor to tutor both of us.

   Now I ask you... Is that love?

   I had finally had enough of my rollercoaster relationship. The last time we'd been together, she had flung every glass item within reach and sent me fleeing on the levee. She tried to follow me, but I told her I'd had it. She was obviously crazy. I wouldn't be coming back. A few weeks later, the mystery of her mood swings reared its head.

   She had gotten her sister's boyfriend to get her a pregnancy test, and her suspicions were confirmed. A month or so after my graduation we would be parents.

   As you can imagine, the scene at both of our houses wasn't pretty. My mom actually started smoking that night. I stood my ground. I'd take care of our child, but we could never be together again. I was completely fed up.

   Instead of the occasional deckhand job, I went back to Dan's, this time working full-time. I took no days off. My evenings and weekends were full. My parents had split up for good, and my dad had moved into an apartment behind my aunt's bar. I moved in with him to be close to work.

   A few months before graduation, she persuaded me to come back. She'd cried on the phone to me for months, telling me that she didn't want our son to grow up without both parents. The soft spot in my heart got the better of me, so I moved into her parent's house.

   Just weeks before the ceremony, Dan asked me if I'd like to manage his business so he could fish at night. His previous manager had left to return to shrimping. I accepted the offer with little trepidation.
   This was how I graduated from high school. Between the non-stop activity of finals, managing a business, playing music at night, and the accompanying stress that any expectant parent goes through, my metabolism went on a rocket ride and I dropped 35 pounds in one month. Since then, I have never had any trouble losing weight, even when I clearly didn't need it.

   I had come nearly full circle - lighter in frame and fainter at heart, but with no clear idea about what would come next. I'd made no plans for college. Hadn't even taken the ACT's. I'd planned on being a  professional musician and starving until I made it, for better or worse. My priorities had changed overnight. I was alone no longer. I had more than just myself to look after.

   Here I stood, at a crossroads: school behind me and nearly ten years of hard work, laughter, and sunshine ahead of me. They turned out to be good years, for the most part. I'm now thankful for those years, because  a dark cloud hovered unseen in the distant future.