Zoloft the Fucking Russian

Every single word written here is an extraordinary exaggeration of events that have played out in my head... based on the stories I have heard from people I have met in jail or while I was dealing with my own stupidity and carelessness, resulting from my own addiction to alcohol and drugs. This is in no way a glamorization of drug use, but a tool to lend some humanity to a subculture that has been demonized and written off as a hopeless and worthless part of our human family. I do not condone or promote any of the behavior or activities herein.

Chapter Seven

              As I have mentioned, Bull’s property was an overwhelmingly baffling, multi-generational collection of junked vehicles from the height of Detroit’s golden age to more modern cars and pickup trucks, farm equipment, school buses, mobile homes, campers, at least a dozen buildings in various states of disrepair, and even an old fire truck.  Once while I was exploring this wonderland of relics I actually found a disassembled, antique covered wagon under a tarp.  When I lifted the tarp and discovered the nearly intact, albeit disassembled and neatly stacked treasure, I threw the tarp corner back so half of the pile of preserved wood, wheels, yolks, and chains was exposed and took three staggering steps in reverse and slapped my hand to my head.  Bull, who was close

enough to witness my shocked reaction to this discovery only laughed and left the disintegrating ruins of a storm damaged tool shed to stand by my side.

            “What do you think of that?” he asked, while pulling the rest of the tarp off of the organized pile.

            “Man, I don’t know what to think of that… Where the hell did you come up with this?” I was now rubbing the stinging spot on my forehead that I had just smacked.

            “It’s always been here.  After I unsuccessfully tried to pass the seventh grade for the third time, my dad pulled me out of school for good, and organizing this pile was the first job he gave me.  I’m pretty sure it was his attempt at homeschooling me.  He kind of used it like a history lesson.”  Bull knelt down by the stacks of antique wagon pieces and found a small wooden box of hardware.  “He told me that it was the wagon that his great-grandfather had brought my great-grandma here with.”

            “No shit…” I stated with astonishment.  This wasn’t a question, as I had no reason to believe that my friend would lie about it.

            “No shit man… He told me that he wanted me to put it back together, so we could start a little museum of our family history here on the property.  You’ll never believe all of the stuff hidden around here like this.”  He placed the box of antique bolts and cotter pins back where he had taken it from and started to pull the tarp back over the wagon.  His demeanor changed when he started talking about his father, and I was beginning to think that it might be a sensitive subject.

            “I’m sorry man, I shouldn’t have been so curious.” I offered quietly.

            “Aw… it ain’t like that.  I’m glad you uncovered it.  I haven’t thought about this thing in a long time, and I should be thinking about it.  I guess I just kind of stopped working on the projects that he and I had started when he up and died years ago... and then I went to prison a couple of times.”

            I knew that Bull’s dad had died a long while before I came into the picture, but it was never a subject of conversation before this moment.  I wasn’t sure how to engage this conversation, so I just remained silent and helped him tuck the tarp under the pile securely.

            “I’ve been too busy trying to keep my greedy sister and my dad’s asshole brothers from looting this place.  All they see when they walk onto this land is dollar signs.  They don’t know the stories about who owned what cars, or how dad came to owning half of this stuff.  If my sister saw what was under this tarp, or failed to see what was under this tarp… chances are it would end up in a burn pile.”  He was talking quietly, but his tone let me know that there was a conflict brewing somewhere within him.

            Fatefully, at the moment I thought I was beginning to see Bull’s eyes get a glossy film… This gruesome, knuckleheaded Russian kid that had been looming around the farm for a couple of weeks dropped down out of a tree near us.  I nearly jumped out of my skin, and had the knife that Bull had made for me unsheathed before I knew I was being drawn into a prone position.  Bull just laughed and raised his arm to my wrist and lowered my knife to my hip.

            “Take it easy, brother…”  He turned to our formerly tree-bound companion and said, “Jesus, Benny… you looking to get your throat slit?  It’s a good thing that I at least knew you were there…”  Bull flashed a wink in my direction, to which I smiled.

            “Yeah, what the fuck douche-bag…?” I added.  “How the fuck you wanna jump out of a tree at a motherfucker who hasn’t slept in a week and think I’m not gonna cut you?”  I sheathed the blade, and covered the wagon pieces with the tarp, cussing the whole time.  My heart was bursting through my ribcage.

            “Maybe it is you who should pay a little attention to your surroundings, asshole.  I’ve been listening to you guys talk about that wagon since you found it… uh… douche bag.”  Benny never sounded quite right when he tried to swear in English.  I always preferred to hear him curse at me in Russian when he mumbled in it.  It sounded a little more intimidating.

            “Whatever Zoloft…”  Now Benny moved in on me quickly, but not quick enough for Bull.  Bull blocked the mangy Russian’s  approach and I also felt his hand force the blade of my knife back into the sheath and button it down with little effort.  Lucky for Benny…

He hated when I called him Zoloft.  I don’t know what his last name really was, but every time I asked, all I could think about when he said the ridiculous name was ‘Zoloft.’  This made a lot of people laugh at his expense which I guess Russian kids don’t take kindly too.  Anyways, he was one of the biggest dope fiends and thieves I had ever met, and I didn’t trust him from the first day I met him.  He was really good with a chainsaw in a tree though, and that made him a valuable asset for awhile the farm.  I hardly tolerated him, and often thought about cutting or disfiguring him on purpose.  I had no idea that my ridiculous, violent, meth-fueled fantasies would play out right in front of me today.

            Zoloft wasn’t fat, but his clothes would never tell you that.  It always appeared to me that he was wearing clothes from grade school.  He had a thick, filthy-sounding accent that always made me think of dark, bearded men driving around school yards in white vans with no windows.  He was always carrying a pint of Jim Beam bourbon, or Captain Morgan’s rum and smelled drunk from the minute you saw him (even if you were 100 yards away).  He rarely showered, so the alcohol not only accumulated on his rancid breath, but floated around him in a toxic cloud that often smelled like body odor bathed in ooze from the bottoms of the garbage cans you might find in an alley outside of a tavern.  It was nothing to say that I didn’t like him.  I’m exaggerating when I say I tolerated him.

            Bull had unbeknownst to me sliced the belt loop that my knife was locked into when he had buttoned the sheath down in his previous maneuver.  He was holding an arm across Benny’s chest to block his approach.  He raised my sheathed knife to show both of us that he had it… as that wicked grin lashed 
across his face as he looked from Benny to me and back to Benny.  Bull’s eyes were glowing an electric blue…

            “Fight fair now, ladies…”

            I was stunned for a moment to realize that my friend was going to finally let me assault this drunk, jacked-up Russian.  I failed to realize that he was coordinating it.  In my moments of reflection, I failed to act and felt the consequence almost immediately as Zoloft lunged forward and grabbed my midsection in a bear-hug and brought me to the ground.  Like I said, he wasn’t fat, but he was bloated.  I feared that my equilibrium had been brought off center enough to give him time and opportunity to land punches that would break some of my bones or bruise my precious face.  It was lucky for me that Zoloft stunk like he had already been through two or three pints today.  He was throwing punches as fast as he could and landing them nowhere important, and running out of energy by about the fourth ribcage shot.  I was more concerned about my face, so I had my arms blocking my head.  I quickly realized that he wasn’t hurting me, and decided to let him wear himself out. 

            I began laughing inside of my arms and hollering at him, “C’mon Zoloft, you Russian pussy… you’re hitting me like a drunk!”  I could hear him wheezing and winding down, and the punches were still coming, but felt more like the playful paws of my dog.  At the last moment he grabbed the hair at the back of my head and brought his knee through my arms and mashed my lips against my teeth.  I was shocked and angry that I didn’t expect this, and spat part of a chipped tooth out of my mouth and into his face as he fell to his overstuffed Russian rump in front of me, trying to catch his breath.  He was heaving hard now, trying to catch his breath.

            “Motherfucker… I hope you fucking got this… he’s all yours now.” Bull was pacing like caged tiger. 

           I was getting to my feet and brushing myself off, “Oh man… I fucking got this… believe the fuck out of me… I fucking got this.  I’m gonna kill this motherfucker.”  I took advantage of Zoloft's pause and connected with the right side of his face with my fist.  I felt a satisfying softening of that side of his face and jaw when my fist connected.
            With that I took my steel-toed Wolverine Boot and punted straight through Zoloft’s wheezing mouth and chin. There was the sound of an awful crunch of teeth, bone and tongue as Bull got sprayed with a mist of blood, snot and spit.

            “Fuck man, let me clear out a minute… FUCK… I hope he ain’t got Hep C.”

            Zoloft was screeching and squirming, but I had straddled his chest and pinned his shoulders and arms with my knees and legs.  I was pissed and far from worn out.  I began alternating punches at his cheeks and eyes, drawing blood after the third punch.  By the time I felt a burning in my arms, Bull was pulling me off of him as I had began screaming obscenities and screeching like a psychotic maniac.

            “Okay, okay, man.  Fuck, don’t kill him… I still got a lesson to teach him.”  Bull was embracing me like a proud boxing coach.  It was the most masculine embrace I have ever felt.  It was all at once meant to show approval and keep me from delivering any more damage to Zoloft’s shattered head.  I was crying and sweating and pissed-off about my tooth.  My knuckles were covered in blood, but I hadn’t broken any of my own skin.  It was a weird sensation to feel somebody else’s blood drying up on my flesh.  I couldn’t wait to wash my hands.

            “Lesson?”  I spit another piece of tooth from my mouth onto Zoloft’s body.  I cleared my throat and spit adrenaline-snot onto his face and he rolled over and moaned.

            “Yeah, man… go get the battery cables from my Jeep and the gas can from the bumper.  It should be full.  I’m gonna get this chatty motherfucker comfortable in the garage.  We need to teach him about running his mouth when he’s drunk.”

           "For real, Boss?"

          "Oh yeah... this is gonna be neat..."  His eyes were glowing almost neon now.

This work is the intellectual property of Jerome J. Panozzo

Dayna's High-Speed-Come-Apart and Defining Faith for the Fatally Flawed

Every single word written here is an extraordinary exaggeration of events that have played out in my head... based on the stories I have heard from people I have met in jail or while I was dealing with my own stupidity and carelessness, resulting from my own addiction to alcohol and drugs. This is in no way a glamorization of drug use, but a tool to lend some humanity to a subculture that has been demonized and written off as a hopeless and worthless part of our human family. I do not condone or promote any of the behavior or activities herein.


Chapter Six

             The unsettling idea that my marriage was in trouble soon took a backseat to other issues at and around the farm.  The first of which was the deteriorating mental state of Bull’s girlfriend, Dayna.  
             Dayna was almost twenty years younger than Bull, and startlingly attractive when she put her mind to it.  She had a singing voice that could rival any of today’s pop princesses and a set of lungs to back it up that could rival Janis Joplin’s.  It was very clear that she had a sheltered and torturous childhood, as discussions about parents, being a parent, knowing somebody who is a parent, or parents-to-be often times deteriorated into an informative, if not offensive discussion about Dayna’s father… a Southern Baptist Minister -- which inevitably and with clockwork reliability for room-clearing prowess-- the horrible way Dayna perceived her childhood upbringing.  
            From what I gathered, Dayna was your stereotypical ‘preacher’s daughter’.  She had a very strict and often times abusive childhood, riddled with a few stories of unsubstantiated --  but emotional enough to be believable -- sexual and physical abuse.  
            When she finally graduated high school, her graduation cap had barely hit the ground after the ceremony and she was living in her own apartment and exploring an entirely new set of morals and values.  My impression was that this did not sit very well with her father and her family; the lifestyle switch quickly became a point of conflict between young, naively rebellious Dayna and a father who still believed humanity was somehow capable of living up to Leviticus standards.  
           The more Dayna rebelled against her strict religious upbringing, the further her family distanced themselves from her.  The more they distanced themselves from her, the lonelier Dayna became -- and thus began a cycle of increasingly destructive behavior.  This was a cruel Catch-22. 

            Dayna had married a man who had gotten her pregnant in the hopes that the appearance of normalcy and a family life would bridge the gap that had been steadily building between her and her family since she was eighteen.  It apparently worked for a couple of years, until her husband and father of her son became increasingly erratic, violent and abusive himself.  According to Dayna, during one argument he cut his pinkie-finger off of his hand to prove that he was more committed to the relationship than she was.  
         The violence spiraled out of control, and Dayna’s family turned their head to the obvious signs of a storm brewing.  Their belief was that a woman weathers any storm in a marriage, and does it quietly.  
          This was not in Dayna’s nature.  
          She began fighting back, and sliding into raging insanity along with her husband.  The last straw was when her husband held a cocked and loaded pistol to her head in front of their two-year-old son, and held her and their son hostage until neighbors called the authorities.  He was promptly arrested on domestic assault and kidnapping charges.  Dayna promptly procured a restraining order, and began a lifestyle of aimless wandering between doomed relationships.  
          Her husband was sentenced to 3 years in the Department of Corrections, and was due out on parole within the next couple of months.  I personally had been taking Dayna back and forth to court to try and secure a divorce from this man before his release.  Just recently she had been granted that divorce she so desperately hoped would free her from the nightmares and memories of the years spent helplessly trapped in a house only two doors down from her equally troubling childhood home.  Her family spent years ignoring the bruises and audibly violent arguments.  As her ex-husbands release date was approaching, Dayna’s drug use increased significantly, and with that her number of resting or sleeping hours diminished to almost nothing.

            Living in a perpetual state of fear, paranoia, and drug-induced hyperactivity -- Dayna began to develop a twitch, heard voices in her head, and often took to acts of physical violence upon herself including breaking a Pyrex baking dish over her head.  She was also a habitual cutter, and in the spring time, I was shocked to see a stack of scars starting at her elbow and working its way up to her

shoulder on both arms.  If she had been without sleep for several days she often took to picking at imaginary blemishes on her face and extremities until she was bleeding freely, and her forearms, legs and face were a mangled mess. 

I usually kept Bull informed when I discovered new information about Dayna’s activities or additional disturbing behaviors she was developing.  Her antics would usually clear the farm of any and all non-residents, one of whom usually had Dayna’s son in tow, to secure his safety and try to keep him from witnessing his mothers deteriorating state.  Bull and I would do our best to try and keep her stable, which often involved large amounts of marijuana, and if there was no pot… Tequila.  It wasn’t long before some of our close companions began openly voicing their distaste for Dayna, and stating that Bull would be better off if he just packed her up and sent her down the road.  This was never considered by the smitten Bull.  The open declarations of opinion were mostly greeted with hostility and often led to broken friendships and lost opportunities.  The visitors to the farm were becoming scarce, and word in other circles like ours was that if Bull didn’t relieve himself of Dayna, that the law or child-protective services would soon be paying him a visit… and nobody wanted to risk being there if and when this was to happen.  Nobody… except for me…

I continued showing up daily and helping Bull with his chores around the farm.  We were still getting high, only it wasn’t very fun at the moment.  It was more like addiction maintenance, while the Dayna situation loomed over our heads like a black rain cloud.  One day, in the morning I arrived to find Bull getting ready to leave in his jeep to go and collect a tank of Anhydrous Ammonia from a source of his whom I didn’t particularly trust or care to spend time with.  Traveling off the farm was always risky for Bull.  I often told him that he must look like a huge piece of delicious chocolate to the local authorities.  It is even riskier for him to travel outside of the farm to retrieve a chemical that was volatile and possession of which could land him in prison for another decade.  He asked if I would stay put while he ran this errand.  I asked what he needed me to look after, at which point we were interrupted when the front door exploded outward and a wild-eyed and savagely sleep-deprived Dayna burst through it raising all kinds of hell about Bull not loving her, and offering a barely intelligible slew of apologies for whatever it is that she perceived he was angry with her for.  Bull tried at several points to alleviate her unjust assumptions with declarations of his love for her, and assuring her he would be back within the hour, but she was so vacant and disconnected that these words seemed to fall on her ears as if they were spoken in an alien language.  She finally declared that he should leave, and she will probably have done herself in by the time he makes it back, if he was actually intending to come back at all, she asserted. 

She disappeared back into the farmhouse, and we could hear things falling and finally a door slam shut.

“Just babysit…” he finally said flatly, pulling himself into his jeep.

“Babysit?  Are you for real?  Dude… I think pulling shenanigans like she is right now with you is similar to an army wife sending a video of her fucking the neighbor kid and his buddy to her husband on the front lines in Afghanistan.  How are you supposed to keep your head in the game if your thinking about whether or not she is gonna cut herself up or something worse?”

“Probably because I know that you’re here watching her, and you wouldn’t let something like that happen while I wasn’t here.” And he smiled fleetingly.

“Man, Boss… that’s putting an awful lot on me… she looks pretty rough today.”

“I’ll make it worthwhile for you.  I’ll be right back.” The jeep started, and he was gone.

I didn’t really know what to do, so I peeked into the house from the porch, and Dayna was nowhere in sight, and there wasn’t a sound coming from inside.

“Hey… D????” I tried to sound jovial… but I’m pretty sure I just sounded scared.  Upon hearing my voice she started audibly crying and talking to herself.  I thought that was alright.  As long as I could hear her crying then I knew she was still drawing breath.  I sat on a rickety old swing bench just off the porch within earshot of the house and lit a cigarette and pulled out my glass pipe and what was left of my personal supply of dope and proceeded to get high, right outside in the yard… in broad daylight… in front of the farmhouse… sitting on the swing bench about fifty feet from the county road that ran past the farm.  I sure as shit didn’t want to be inside if Dayna produced herself from wherever she was hiding, and I definitely didn’t want to get her any higher than she already was.  At least out here I could hear a car coming from either direction and I could also hear Dayna’s movements inside the house with plenty of time to ditch any contraband. 

The hour passed, and then a half-hour passed, and just ten minutes before the two hour mark was about to rear its ugly head I heard Bull’s jeep turn onto the gravel road about a mile down.  I breathed a sigh of relief… and pulled myself up off the swing bench.  Bull took one of the other driveways onto the property, and I followed the sound of his jeep as he was clearly finding every mud puddle and swampy area that he could on his way towards the back acreage.  When I finally caught up with him, he had already stashed what it was that he had left to retrieve, and was wrenching on his dad’s old tow truck, looking puzzled. 

“Everything go okay, boss?” I said in a voice that wouldn’t normally be distinguishable from the distance I was speaking to him from.  I had learned very early on in my relationship with Bull that he heard and processed anything more audible than a passing thought.  It wasn’t necessary to raise my voice while I was anywhere within earshot of the man, and I was quite certain that if I couldn’t see him or wasn’t within normal ranges that he knew most of what I was thinking and saying anyways.

“What’s that?” he asked vacantly.  “Everything go okay?  Shit… I’ve been back here working on my dad’s truck since I left you up at the house, man.  You know better than to ask me if everything went okay.”  The last sentence he more or less grumbled under his breath, meant to alert me to his disapproval of my announcing at any volume that he had gone and done anything -- let alone anything like what he had just done.

Quickly catching my mistake, I played right into our new reality.  “Well, fuck man… I’ve been sitting on that uncomfortable, goddamned swing bench for the last two hours listening to your old lady cry just loud enough so she was sure I would hear her.”

“That’s why I came back here…and hey, motherfucker… my grandpa made that swinging bench.  If you don’t like sitting in it, then find someplace softer to park your candy-ass,” he laughed and continued to ratchet some bolts out of the engine block of the old truck.  “I don’t know what the fuck to do about her anymore, brother.”

“Yeah, she’s gotten a little out of hand, I guess.” I was careful to keep my tone in a questioning, submissive quality.  I didn’t want to sound like I was making any hard statements of my opinion.  To be truthful, I didn’t really have one.  Bull was a dope cook, and as far as women went, dope cooks had their pick of a multitude of girls who would readily slave over their dope cook boyfriend as long as he was bringing home what they wanted.  Dayna, up until later in our relationship was merely a footnote to me.  She was something that had to be tolerated as long as my friend was tolerant.  At this given moment I was sure that her days on the farm were numbered.  I truthfully kind of hoped for it.

“Where the fuck is everybody else at?”  Bull dropped the ratchet onto the engine block and turned around to lean on the grill of the truck.  He finally engaged me with his eyes, and I knew we were about to have a conversation of some significance.

“Well, I guess most of them lost faith, man.” I really had no idea where this was going, but I could feel Bull’s intensity rising as I had sparked his curiosity with my answer.

“Yeah… what the fuck is that?” He knelt on the ground to gather up some sockets and tools that had spilled out of his toolbox.

“What… faith?”  I wasn’t sure whether he was still inquiring about where our acquaintances were, or if he wanted my definition of faith.  I was hoping he was asking about our absentee associates.

“Yeah, what the fuck is faith?” He stopped picking up tools and locked his gaze onto mine.  He stayed knelt down.

“Well, boss… I think faith is a function of the human condition.  It’s necessary for most people’s instinct of self-preservation.  People generally have a hard time functioning without a safety net, and their faith provides them with a sense of being protected.  So they pray to increase their sense of security.  Some people pray to Jesus, some to his mom Mary, others just pray directly to God.  You got those dusty savages in the desert praying to Allah, and Asians pray to Buddha or whatever twelve armed elephant, she-goddess those Indians pray too.  It makes no difference really.  It’s all faith-based living, and most people have some form of it functioning in their life on some level.  Well, maybe not you… but most people.”  I laughed at this little musing I had concluded my answer with only to find Bull knelt in front of me, still locked onto my gaze, more determined than ever to pick around in my head.

“How about you?  What do you have faith in?” He went back to picking up tools and arranging sockets in a box set.

“Well, boss… if I find myself in a crisis or if I feel like my life or liberty is in jeopardy… or even if I don’t think I can handle a personal problem without counsel… I don’t throw myself onto my knees and throw a hopeful, directionless prayer up to God or Jesus or any of the previously mentioned saints, prophets, or deities and hope that a solution will present itself miraculously.  If I find myself in any sort of trouble I get in my vehicle and drive eight minutes down the road and take my problem to Bull-Motherfucking-Gunville and I don’t have to wait in vain for an answer from a God that might never come.  My friend tells me how to solve my problem and that is the action I take.  I have faith in you, Bull.  With you in my corner, I haven’t encountered a situation that has baffled me at all.”  I took a deep breath, as I realized that this sounded almost like I was canonizing him.  I wasn’t sure if he was going to laugh or approve.

He held up his fist and we bumped knuckles, “Right on, Brother.  Just do me a favor, man.  Keep that shit to yourself.  I don’t need people thinking I’m running some kind of fucking cult out here…” He closed and latched his toolbox, got up and slung it onto the front seat of his dad’s truck. “C’mon man, let’s go try to get high.”

“Fuck, I’ve been trying since you left motherfucker.” I laughed and followed him.

“God damn man… I told you, I didn’t fucking leave! ” He shook his head in contempt.

“Oh yeah… I forgot… I was too busy thinking about faith.” I smiled at his back, walking a couple of paces behind him.

“Faith…” he was still shaking his head, “how come I’ve known some of our friends since I was a kid, and I’ve only known you a few months, and you’re the only one who hasn’t lost his…uh, Faith?” The word seemed to trouble him when he said it out loud.

“I don’t know, man.  Maybe they’re more concerned about the dope than they are about their friend.”  I didn’t know if I really thought this or not, but there it was.

“Yeah… I guess so,” He affirmed.  “Fuck ‘em all anyways.  I’m glad I met you.  I’m glad you’re here.”

I didn’t immediately respond to this.  I was glad he was walking a couple of paces ahead of me because what he said nearly split my head in two with the smile it raised.  He noticeably stood up a little straighter while he was walking though… like he had heard the smile almost crack my skull. 

“I am too, boss.”


This work is the intellectual property of Jerome J. Panozzo

Relationship Revelations

Every single word written here is an extraordinary exaggeration of events that have played out in my head... based on the stories I have heard from people I have met in jail or while I was dealing with my own stupidity and carelessness, resulting from my own addiction to alcohol and drugs. This is in no way a glamorization of drug use, but a tool to lend some humanity to a subculture that has been demonized and written off as a hopeless and worthless part of our human family. I do not condone or promote any of the behavior or activities herein.

Chapter Five

             Roxy never came back to the farm that day.  In fact, shortly after she took off in that truck and was out of sight, the thickened, icy, tension in the air lifted like a fog retreating after sunrise. When Bull and I turned around, Dayna had already gone back to whatever she was doing in the farmhouse... in fact, I could her here singing something quietly but happily. Bull looked at me, shrugged, and we walked back to where we had been sitting in front of the pile of junk, and picked up our pointless yet interesting conversation about different random pieces in the pile. It was as if what had just happened was slipping from my memory like some kind of intense dream you wake up from and can't remember much about, and the harder you try to remember, the more it slips away.
             Several days later Bull started to ask me questions about my life at home with my wife.  It was very, very late one particularly quiet evening when he got up from the round table which was currently seating seven comfortably.  All of us were doing a whole lot of nothing productive when he looked over at me from the kitchen while reaching into the refrigerator for something and asked, “So, anyways… how’s your marriage working out, man?”  
            The room which was relatively quiet before the question became deafeningly silent now. 

We all looked up from whatever we were concentrating on, some of the girls were coloring in kids coloring books with expensive pencils and markers, a couple of guys were smoking cigarettes and competing intently to see who could hold the ash on the end of their cigarette longest.  I had learned to cheat a couple weeks back when I unwrapped a twist-tie and inserted the wire through the filter and into the cigarette tobacco without puncturing the paper.  This didn’t make me very popular among the enthusiasts of the game, but Bull thought it was pretty inventive… so I wasn't invited to join in, and I didn’t care if I wasn’t invited to play because I had already learned to win.  

I was actively involved in sharpening a knife that Bull had made me out of an old, heavy paint scraper using his bench grinder. I was particularly proud of this gift, as it was unique -- in that Bull had made it himself -- and that it was a gift to me from him.  Bull really didn’t give many things away.  The knife was interesting in its shape -- it was curvy like an Asian kris -- and the handle was made out of some kind of animal bone (I hoped) that Bull had polished and fastened to the blade.  I cherished the knife more than any of the other miscellaneous trinkets and tools I carried on my person from day to day.  
I along with the rest of the group looked up to see whom Bull was asking this question (although I had a pretty good idea who it was aimed at, as I was the only person within earshot who was married) to find his gaze fixed on my position.

            “What? Mine?” I asked dumbfounded.

            “Anybody else married here?” Bull asked and shot a gaze around the table.  All eyes returned to their respective activities, and the silence continued. “Yeah, yours… I mean you do realize it’s almost four o’clock in the morning right?”

            “Well, yeah man.  What’s the time got to do with the state of my marriage?” I asked, going noticeably on the defense.

            “I guess when I was married the first two times, if I stayed out all hours of the night it meant something was making me unhappy at home.  You’re my friend, so I’m asking you… Is everything okay at home?” He poured a large glass of milk from a cardboard carton, and returned it to the fridge and carried his glass of milk back to his chair at the round table, never taking his eyes from mine. 

            “I don’t know Bull.  I guess everything is okay at home.  She knows where I’m at.  I haven’t turned my cell phone off, so if she needs me at home I guess she’ll call me.  She trusts me I guess.  This is the only place I go to hang out besides my house.  It’s not like I’m running around with some strange broad bringing herpes home to her unannounced or anything.  I’m just hanging out with my friends after she goes to bed.  She’s got two jobs, ya know?”

            He finished his milk and put the glass down and pushed it aside to reach for his pack of cigarettes and a glass pipe.  “So she doesn’t care that just about whenever you want to, you leave after dinner and don’t come home until just before breakfast?  Does she know what we do over here for kicks?” He lit a cigarette, dropped the lighter on the table and reached into the corner, where his

safe was.  He hit several digits on the keypad lock and popped the safe open and brought out another locked metal box where he kept his personal stash.  I began to get the idea that this wasn’t just another conversation to pass the time.

            “Well, I guess she’s never asked me directly.  But she’s not stupid.  She’s done her share of drugs.  She has friends who use meth, works with people who use meth.  I guess it’s just not a problem to her unless it’s a problem to me… Have I overstayed my welcome, boss?”

            “No, dumbass… if you had overstayed your welcome I would just tell you to get on down the road, that your company wasn’t appreciated anymore.  I just never hear you say much about your life at home.  I mean, I know you have a life at home.  I’ve been to your house.  Dayna and I have eaten dinner with your wife and your step-daughter.  They appear to love you like nothing I’ve ever seen from any of my friend’s significant others or their kids.  I’m just wondering why if things are great at home, and it’s a nice fucking house man, why you seem so comfortable sitting in my rundown, turn-of-the-century, half remodeled farmhouse?”  He pulled out a tray with at least a dozen miniature bottles.  Each bottle was better than half full with white powder and rocky crystals.  Symbols had been written on each of the tiny screw-on caps.  He began taking them out one by one and deliberately thinking about each one, deciding where to start this session.

            “Bull, I don’t have a good answer for you.  I mean, my wife loves me more than any person has in my entire life, including the people who conceived me.  I think maybe she’s happy that I’m not drinking anymore, and she doesn’t want to rock that boat.  So she lets me have my friends and do what makes me happy within the confines of that condition.  I don’t just go home and fall out.  I go home and make sure my daughter makes it onto the bus.  I make my wife and her sister their lunches for work that day.  I make sure she has a bottle of tea for the ride to work, and breakfast if she is hungry.  During the day I usually try to nap, clean the house, and do yard work or some other project on my list.  When the bus drops my daughter off I make sure she gets her homework done and we start dinner.  My wife gets home, eats dinner, checks her Facebook stuff and is usually so tired from working that she apologizes to me for being tired and heads off to bed.  I make sure all is well, and then I just… go out to play, I guess.” I leaned back in my chair, satisfied with my quick retort, and waited for Bulls next query.

One of the girls looked up from her coloring book and said, “I don’t know, dude.  Usually relationships get squirrely when dope comes into play.  I mean, either one is on it, and the other one gets fed up or you both are using and things just get complicated.”

“Hey… stay in the lines there Kindertweeker,” Bull interrupted.  “That’s not even my point.” 
He hesitated, having decided on which tiny bottle to load the pipe from.  “Well... I guess that might kind of be my point, man.  Don’t you think she’s gonna get lonely one of these nights and start to pitch a fit?  I mean... we can’t have all that kind of drama around here.  Jilted wives are not conducive to a... ahem... respectable meth operation -- which is you know -- what we’re trying to run around here.”

 This particular comment drew a laugh from nearly everybody at the table including myself.  ‘Respectable meth operation’ was a running joke among the regulars to the farm.  If somebody happened to look disheveled or like they had just woken up when they came in the door -- or if they were being particularly vulgar during a quiet moment -- Bull would always spout off, “Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?  We are trying to run a respectable meth operation here… not some two-bit, nigger crack house...” or something equally absurd.

In response to his not-so-joking-around joke I responded “I just won’t let it come to that Bull.  I know my wife pretty well, and when she starts flaking out on me or something I’m doing, I usually correct the issue with extreme prejudice.”

“Nah man, forget that noise.  It doesn’t have to come to all that.  Like I said, I had just noticed the time, and thought to myself how comfortable everything was and I looked over to see you sitting in your chair, sharpening your knife without the slightest care in our wicked world.  I thought that maybe you could give me some insight into how you’ve seemed to have managed to manipulate what has always been a difficult situation for most people in our particular circle.  Dissolving a marriage over dope is just something I would never want to watch my friend go through... especially when I’m about to break out some of my personal supply.

“I haven’t got any insight into relationship problems, man.  I guess I’m just lucky in that regard.  There are really only two things I refuse to offer any sort of advice on, relationships and abortion.  I can be a good listener about either, but please don’t ask my advice.”

Bull smiled at me and lit his lighter under the glass ball of the pipe.  On his exhale he smiled even bigger and said, “That is some of the best advice anybody has ever given at this table, brother.”  He handed me the pipe and I smiled back at him awkwardly... he had gotten into my head.  He cocked his head sideways a bit and looked at me intuitively.  “Uh-oh, I know that look…”

“What the hell are you talking about?”  I asked, but I knew what he meant.

“I planted the seed of doubt in that overworked, underpaid, healthily paranoid head of yours.  C’mon man, don’t sweat it.  I don't think I meant anything by it.” He furrowed his brow sarcastically and looked off into the corner and tapped his chin with his finger.
We both laughed.

I started the lighter under the pipe and watched the smooth white smoke fill the glass ball.  “I have no idea what doubt you think you planted.  I’m good, man.”

But he was right.  The idea that I was unhappy at home for whatever reason had been brought to my attention, loud and clear.  My brain was already going over mental images of how my wife and I had been interacting over the last couple of months.  One thing I’ve learned about how my brain works is that when I look hard enough for a problem, I will certainly find one, or create one to fill that hole in my ego that denies me the ability to be wrong gracefully.  Another thing I’ve learned is that when I’m high, my brain works double-time.


This work is the intellectual property of Jerome J. Panozzo