"ok, mike--ease it out like i showed you, reeeeeeal easy."
my first driving lesson. i'm 14, nervously hunched behind the wheel of bill's spotless '68 impala coupe which was [unfortunately] equipped with a three-on-the-tree.
instead of easing it out, i pop the clutch, the car flies backwards outta the driveway and across the street, bounces over the curb and mows down a grove of tender saplings in the neighbor's yard before coming to a stop. i cringe, await the inevitable.
bill's response: "hmm...maybe i shoulda backed her out for you."
any wonder i loved the guy?
my mother never remarried, but of the two men she dated seriously after my father's death, bill was the first, and by far my favorite. a special agent for the IRS [i.e., the gun-carrying kind], bill was suave, smart, easygoing and funny as hell. oh, and he got me.
for our second driving lesson, bill took me out in the country in his old chevy pickup, drove up to a big tree, popped the clutch and slammed into it, turned to me and said, "see? you can't hurt this one."
great as he might've been in my young eyes, bill was a tortured soul. he'd recently left his bible-banging frigid wife after twenty years of misery but he couldn't get past leaving his kids, and it ate at him.
so he drank.
at first it was innocuous. he'd pull into the driveway in that impala and get out holding a can or a glass--if it was something new, i'd ask for a taste and he'd usually indulge me. the alcohol didn't seem to affect him much; if anything, it enhanced the dry, sardonic aspect of his personality i loved so much.
problem was, bill's problem, as it usually does, got worse.
one sunday shortly after the driving-lesson fiasco, bill, my mother, siblings and i go walking around downtown after a movie and end up at the local pontiac dealership. bill watches in bemusement as we all go apeshit over the grand prix featured on the showroom floor.
the next day, there's a honk in our driveway and we walk out to find the impala's gone and bill's waving out the window of his new car.
any wonder i loved the guy?
of course i probably wouldn't have been nearly as enthusiastic about said new car had i known then that one late night a couple months later he'd use it to attempt to kill my mother and himself by drunkenly and at insanely high speeds running every red light in town when she picked the wrong moment to try and break it off with him.
how did it finally end? with me taking the phone away from my mother one day after school and telling bill's by-then irredeemably drunken ass, "don't call here again--it's time for you to go away and leave us alone."
to his credit, he did just that: took early retirement, crawled off to dallas and drank until he died.
i remember the day--we got the call, my mother broke down and i turned to stone.
* * * * *
there was my uncle huby before him, my uncle don after him, my mother's friend billie and her new husband fred--and, of course, the club. object lessons all to young mike of the pitfalls of alcohol.
and they stuck for a long time--i got drunk exactly once in high school. at college parties, i'd have one or two to be sociable. when in my mid-thirties i finally came out and hit the bars, i'd buy a drink and carry it around all night just to have something in my hand.
why i waited this long to go from basic teetotaler to falling-down-drunk in five short years has already been dealt with in this blog--mostly pseudo-lightheartedly, 'cause god knows i didn't wanna scare my readers.
now that this blog is dead and i no longer have readers, i can of course write whatever the fuck i want.
* * * * *
i miss him every day, and can only hope that's what he really wanted.
* * * * *
invited myself over to kenny's the other night, asked him what was new in his life--it had been awhile. he didn't disappoint. eyes shining, he regaled me with tales of his recent trip to central america volunteering for doctors without borders, among all sorts of other gloriously selfless shit.
when he was done, he asked me what's new in my life, and i told him the truth.
he then tells me what i knew he would, which--fuck the sex, i realize later--is why i'm there.
i protest. i'm not like him--i'm not warm, i don't do groups, i hate people and people hate me, i don't have charisma and i can't hold an audience in the palm of my hand like i've seen him do--i'm not like kenny, i'm not like anybody.
he looks me in the eye, says it again: "90 meetings in 90 days, mike. you do it, i promise you'll come across someone who's story's just like yours, and when it happens it'll change you just like it did me. i wouldn't have the life i have now if i hadn't done it, and you can do it, too."
yeah? i'll have to drink on that one.
_________________
sober update: somebody asked me why my memories of people are always wrapped up with cars. i dunno, they just are.
