January 4th, 2011

Staying in is Probably a Good Idea Sometimes

Dad's screaming woke me up. He told me to call the ambulance. Told me to call ma. We couldn't help him. His drinking flushed out a lot of nutrients from his system. Later in life I'd experience the same thing. Too much booze can lower your potassium to dangerous levels. When that happens your muscles start to constrict and ache.

It felt like two burning hands reaching deep into my back and squeezing the shit out of me.

Dad's was worse.

He watched plenty of people die this way so why the fuck did he keep doing it? Did he expect nature to somehow shine on him and let him through with a few scratches?

Ammonia will fuck you up if you drink for too long. Pops used to drink a pint of Everclear everyday. When his liver started to go he couldn't even handle half a can of malt liquor. He would get drunk fast as hell and get all disoriented.

Dad was a full blooded Lakota. He found his connection to our culture through media. He was too much of a drunk to learn the language. Too much of a boozer to go to ceremony. Too far gone to learn how to dance. But he held on to his heritage through movies and art.

There's some bangers out there from the old days. Little Big Man, Thunderheart, Skins. Pops watched Native movies all the time. Skins was a great one. No movie captured rez misery like Skins. My biggest complaint is that the movie glosses over how explicit dying by alcohol is.

Guess you can't really describe the smell through a movie.

When their organs start to shut down you can smell blood and shit everywhere they go, no matter if they're clean or not. It just hangs around in the air.

Skins was good. One of the characters dies quickly. He gets sick one day and his family is with him in the hospital and that's about all it was. But that's not reality. Reality is slow and painful. Dying by alcoholism is a long drawn out process and everyone going through it had plenty of time to stop drinking.

Pops ran into some sundowning towards the end. He got mean. Mean and lost. A hint of dementia at the ripe old age of 50.

I remember when I was just a youngster, pops came into the living room at three in the morning with a dazed look on his face. He opened up a container of skin cream and scooped a big ol' chunk of it out and started to eat it. I had to hop up and help him clean his mouth out.

Dt's happened a lot back home. Withdrawals and hallucinations. Happens enough to get a bit of a roadmap of the experience. I had enough family go through it to know that I never wanted to see it with my own eyes.

You'd see faces peering in at you through every window. You'd get hounded by flies that only you can see. You'd hear laughing and knocks on the door. Dt's was a necessary part of life for many, because sobering up simply wasn’t an option.

There were more esoteric talks about it too. I heard that you can feel the presence of something else when you’re that far gone. Something? Someone? I’m not sure.

I think the old belief in the Wanagi could be tied to this feeling. From what I've been able to hobble together from my book collection, the Wanagi is given to us when we were born, and when we die, it leaves us and returns to the stars. There's talk from NDE experiencers about how we are the combination of both an immortal and mortal being.

Us and the Wanagi.

When you had dt’s you also saw faces in the trees. Always morphing, staring back at you.

My relatives all drank themselves into a real-deal spiritual experience and it was never enough to break that spell.

Can't say I blame them.

Pops went to the ICU quite a bit, almost always for withdrawals. Once while in a coma he saw visions of an eagle and that's about as much as he would tell us.

When he was ready to sober up after his months long binge drinking he'd pass out with the tv on the Christian channel.

I think he knew he needed an authentic spiritual experience but you ain’t gonna get that from liquor or the church.

My uncle died a year before dad.

He was an interesting dude. We used to go hunting with him a lot. When he was younger he was a ranch hand. A lot of that generation had plenty of experience with hunting and what not.

Grandpa was a respected barber. You’d see nice cars parked at grandpa’s house. Those old ranchers barely had any hair left but they still went to chat it up with grandpa. One of them gifted him a cow.

The local homeless folk were mostly just that, homeless drunks, but sometimes they'd sober up and remind you that they weren’t always that way. They liked grandpa a lot and processed the whole cow in a few hours.

My uncle lived in a broken down van outside of grandpa's house for years. There was a brief period where he got his shit together. He met a woman and moved in with her. They'd visit grandpa's house sometimes. I never talked to his stepson but we saw him around.

His stepson’s nickname was "Cheppa". Cheppa means chunky or chubby. He was a few years older than us. Yeah. Cheppa got killed pretty young. Someone stabbed him to death. My uncle went back to drinking after that.

He spent the rest of his life hitchhiking around the reservation. If he wasn't doing that he was living in a camper trailer behind grandpa's house. If he was in town you'd see him hanging out with the other bums in front of condemned buildings, keeping an eye on the local businesses, waiting for familiar faces to show up so they could bum enough to get drunk.

My uncle got skin cancer from all the hitchhiking and the lack of sunscreen. He spent his last few months staying at our aunt's house. He was sober mostly, but eventually he fell off the wagon.

Found his way to Mission, SD, about fifteen miles away. They said he fell down and never woke up. The guys he was drinking with robbed him. Didn't even call the ambulance.

Uncle and dad were just two more dead people. Hell, one of pop's pallbearers got smoked out by a car less than a month after the funeral. The guy was drunk walking home and got got. I don't think they ever found out who killed him either.

On and on.

I think what I'm trying to say is that I should’ve known better.

I should've known better.

I knew what happened to people that drank.

I avoided it.

I dealt with dad's drunk ass on a regular basis and hated it. Hated who all of them became when they drank. Shit. Most of my childhood was spent running interference between mom and pops. They'd get drunk and argue and fight.

Fuck all of that. Why the fuck would I ever drink.

******

Well.

Sometimes shit gets boring.

Really boring.

Extremely boring.

A blizzard hit around Christmas time. The interstate closed. No one was bringing any smoke into town and me and my buddy wanted to get stoned. I called him up. We were gonna find some smoke somewhere. I knew people, he knew people. Someone had to have something.

Smoking was fine to me. Smoking was fun. Music was amazing. I loved a solid couch lock session. Give me some indica and let me forget about everything.

I was gonna be nineteen soon. I was too stupid to get into college. My family's only real ask of me was to get through high school.

Shit, alright what now? They didn't know, I didn't know.

I wasn't particularly smart, but I wasn't stupid.

There were options. Merchant Marines, Conservation Corp, Job Corp, trade school, I'm pretty sure the tribe had apprenticeships in carpentry and plumbing.

There was a lot of shit I should’ve done differently.

I wasn't told how empty this life would be. A few years felt like forever. A directionless thirty years? I had no fucking clue.

There was no path out, culturally. White people had a support system and examples to follow. We ain’t got none of that. Survive and stay at grandma’s if all else fails.

My brother was a stoner. Then at eighteen he found booze and got fired from his job. After that he got into meth and it all went down hill.

Most of my dude-cousins were in and out of jail or begged on the streets.

Same could be said for the uncles who were still alive.

If you do it right you’ll end up raising a family on the reservation because the tribe needs you to keep itself alive. You have a family and they’ll rent a house to you. They’ll even find you a job.

We exist so the tribe can exist, and life-satisfaction means nothing. Fulfillment means nothing. It’s all one biological game of hot potato where we gift trauma and addiction to the next generation.

Having lived in the real world, all these years later?

The reservation ain’t a bad system. I’d take the family route in an affordable tribal house over living in a literal shed during winter.

I’d take having free healthcare and rural beauty over gambling with my health and not knowing whether I’ll have somewhere to live next month.

A career? Owning my own damn house before thirty? Starting a family? Doing something with my life?

Slow your roll, pilgrim.

Eighteen year old me had no idea.

So we drove around town bothering everyone we could think of.

Nothing.

No one had shit.

Then my buddy's coworker calls.

He asks if we can drive him down south. There's a rez community out there. I think yeah why not. He might know where to score some smoke. Fuck it. Lets pick him up.

His shift was over.

"Eee, what's up, Killa Killa?"

"Gonna drink some vod."

My parents used to get hammered down at their friends house. I didn’t have any problems with their kids but I wasn’t really friends with ‘em either. Honestly I hated being down there. One of ‘em was weird, man. Not fun or eccentric. Dangerous. Dude used to threaten us with knives and shit.

He must’ve done it enough without hurting anyone cause his siblings didn’t think it was a big deal. I don’t know man. I’d rather be anywhere else, but our parents couldn’t process the concept of baby sitters.

Scary dude mellowed out a lot over the years though.

Well, at least he wasn’t chasing people around with knives like when we were kids.

Progress.

Buddy’s coworker was gonna drink with scary dude down there.

They used to have some weird stories. Ghost stories. That stretch of highway was notorious. People got smoked out by cars frequently. It was bad enough that it started to become a part of local folklore.

When we were kids one of them said that that we weren’t supposed to look at the headlights on the highway or else someone would die.

I saw my first bodies out on that highway. Guy got hit and exploded via semi-truck. They closed down the road to find all his body parts.

My uncle died on that road. I saw a human shaped white sheet surrounded by cops and an ambulance.

One of our cousins killed his dad out on that highway.

Went to trial and was deemed mentally ill.

He got out after a few years.

He’s just out in the world now.

God. Damn.

The tribe just installed a sidewalk and lights out there after at least twenty-five years.

That’s an empty ass stretch of highway. Just pitch black. Two long miles.

We drop the dude off and as he leaves my buddy says, “Hey man, do you know anyone down here who has any smoke?”

Dude leans over the passenger window and says, “No but you can have this.”

He gave my buddy something.

I backed out and drove towards town.

"Well.

"What's in the bag?"

He looks into it and laughs, "God damn dude."

I look over at him. He’s holding two big ass cans of malt liquor.

The gross shit. Bum shit. The cheap shit. The strong shit.

Fuck.

That ain't weed, man.

Fuck.

We parked at the end of my neighborhood.

"Well. Fuck. Are we drinking today?"

He knew I never drank, but I was the one asking.

"Datura, I'll drink if you want to drink."

Fuck.

"Fuck it."

Fuck it.

Lets drink then.

These things tasted ugly. Fourteen percent ABV. The big cans. Twenty ounces or some such. Sickly sweet and tart at the same time. It's been almost a week since I got stoned and this is all we managed to get.

Apprehensive drinks turned into big shots. We unconsciously set the pace and drank quick. We couldn’t find any smoke and these two cans were all we had so fuck it, drink fast and all at once so you feel something.

I felt something.

I felt something and got caught.

I had to take a piss. I stood up and walked behind the car. Took a piss and my god. I understood. I finally understood. I knew why they were the way they were. It felt like I smiled for the first time ever.

The booze hit me all at once as I walked back to the car.

Those first drunk steps felt amazing. I felt like a jester in full regalia. Walking with his bells bouncing. All smiles and laughs under a bright moon in the middle of winter.

A great sickness has descended on the earth and there ain't no way out but through, young Datura. The next decade is going to be one of hurt and you'll be broken many times over before you finally manage to stand back up.

You'll experience dreams that will shake your understanding of what it is to be human. You'll bury lifelong friends, you'll bury important people, you'll drink more and more and it will hurt.

Tonight you stand above the earth, in your sacred regalia, but it came with a price. Now you sink into the earth. You might as well have stepped into a trapdoor. The trickster god Iktomi is laughing at you now, and you feel good for the first time in your life.

On and on.

*****

Buddy's coworker calls us up after a few hours and asks for a ride back into town.

He asks if we still want to get stoned.

Fuck it, we don't have anything going on.

Buddy's coworker was actually my cousin and we don't talk to him or mention his name anymore.

He invites us into his apartment.

His girlfriend scored some smoke.

He tells her, "get my cousin and my friend stoned. And make sure you put a towel down too."

We were drunk and having fun but it ain't really fun anymore.

It's awkward and gross now.

We're smoking shitty Mexican brick-weed in the bathroom. A hood classic. And my cousin is loud and angry. He keeps banging on the door, telling her to put a towel down to keep the smoke out.

He ain’t just drunk.

He's spraying paint into a bag and huffing.

We can hear him throwing shit around and cussing.

We smoke her weed and get the fuck out.

Out into the freezing cold. Out into the car. Out and away from the bad vibes.

Cousin’s apartment window slides open.

"Cousin!

"I'm sorry.

"I mean it, I'm sorry.

"I'm sorry man, I'm sorry!"

No fucking clue what he was saying sorry about.

If I had to guess it was the huffing and potential domestic violence.

"Yeah man, don't worry about it. No big deal."

I DUI’d my buddy back to his place and headed home.

All the while wondering what all the apologies were for. Maybe the paint huffing helped him see the future.

Huff-stro-damus.

Those two cans of booze weren’t just two cans of booze. That shit was a dimension shifting moment.

Those cans held in them a lot of bullshit that we weren’t aware of. Those two cans had hangovers, car wrecks, funerals, debt, aimlessness, and suicide attempts-those two cans were evil and I had no clue.

*****

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