autoboigraphy
An over dose of sleeping pills wont kill a large man with insomnia. If five of the fuckers wont get you to sleep it’s idiotic to think thrity will will make you sleep forever. My suicide note was lame anyway. I believe now suicide attempts are for quiters. Walking death is for walkers and death is for those who can’t afford to live. I am happy to be alive, and my wife is a munument to my life. This book is a retelling of what I believe to be a great adventure. I don’t condone or mean to glamorize the stupid things we did. But we did them and I want to tel lyou about them.
I left late at night. The greyhound station in downtown Portland allways teems with with people who have far more interesting stories than me, I just have the idiotic cumpulsion to write. These people read stories and are affected by them, The other half read stories and talk politely about them in college. I had taken a job at the Crater Lake lodge in Southern Oregon. They hired me sight un-seen so I thought I’d show up. I don’t remember the buss ride but I do know the trip took me down the length of Oregon on the Interstate. When I had taken this bus ride before I had shared bottles of whiskey with thin angry girls or small bags of meth with large content men. This time I was trying it al lsober.
That mornign we arived in Medford. I milled about the bus station waiting room with some other new hires of the lodge. There was a young hippie named Pete looking forward to being a bus boy. There was an older man named Martin who was to be a dishwasher and a tal lblond girl who reaked of Jose Quervo.
She stood defensively as she knew she stunk. I had dried up a few days before so her good looks mixed with the aroma of a not so bad booze made her seem like a particularly bad brand of evil. I talked to her.
“Fuck, last night I broke a half gallon in my bag. I stink,” she said, bashfuly smoking.
“There are worse odors,” I said.
Soon a van came and collected us. We stopped at a Wal-Mart to get things we might need in our new homes a top a mountain. We were warned we would have very little and if we didn’t have cars the isolation might make us crazy. In this PC world, a boss warning you against madness is either a red flag or a damn good sign of future comiseration.
We were driven up the mountain. The higher we got the more snow surrounded us. Soon we were taken to a hall where we went through some kind of orientation. In th eback of my mind I feared a drug test as I had bought and stolen several vicodin and oxycontin to get me through my most recent detox. When I yawned or dozed off I could still feel the sleepy warm effects of th epills. I’m sure the smell of my urine alone would sedate any nurse checking it for contraband. All in al lI felt like hell and worrying about my urine as the boss of th eplace talked about an up-beat work atmosphere was making me have to poop.
I drew the faces of my future co-workers.
We were assigned dorm rooms in a long housing complex. THe halls were dark and th ebathrooms were comunal. Imeadiatly people grouped up and spoke rapidly. I had brought with me a bottle of dramine to get me to sleep. My grand plan was to quit drinking. I set it on the table next to my bed. The sound of people exploring each other came into my room from under the door as I fell asleep.
The next moring we had a wine tasting. The grand plan failed again. After the tasting I got my first real look at the lake. A womean named Kat smoked a cigarette and stared at it with me. “Here we are,” she declared. Aparenty a girl was raped that night. I tried to not ask questions. Of our origional twenty some, we were now down two. Kat ended her exposition with the promise to find the best heroin I’d ever had come payday.
The next day we had another orientation were we went around a big circle and talked about ourselves. THe lodge wasn’t open and th ecompany had planed a week of training. What one can learn about working in food service in a week without actualy serving food is useless. It’s sort of like planning escape procedures for an automobile accident. If you’ve ever crashed a car while drunk, you either know how to cover it up or you don’t. A tiny blond woman with focused eyes proclaimed her desire to work up from busser to server. If you think that is a petty desire, you are a fool, as I was when I heard her say that. Kat bragged about her years of expirience in New Orleans. Oh yeah? What the fuck was she doing here? When it was my turn to say something about myself, I said, “I’m here to meet chicks,” which was bull shit as I hadn’t had a sexual thought or errection in months. People laughed, but my laugh was more private.
During a break a I asked the girl with focused eyes for a ride down the mountain the next day. She agreed to take me in her red truck. She nervusly smoked, smoking seemed a burdon to her as she had several pounds of jade and silver jewelry on. The lack of customers in the lodge seemed to frustrait her. An empty dining room made us all look bad. Her name was Lauren.
That afternoon I hiked up a near by ridge. I am no hiker and at an altitude of 7000 feet I quickly became a drooling stagering fool. Sobriety seemed more idiotic than ever..
It was a sunny drive down to Medford. Walmart was a buzz with angry familial combatative shopping. I wandered the isles for a time then went back to the entrance to meet my ride. Lauren met me and I noticed something wrong. I could smell her sweat. It wasnt from heat as Wal-mart is allways quite nice and cool. Apparently she had overdrawn her bank account and didn’t have enough money for more cigarettes. She blushed and stared off into the distance to hide her agravation and discomfort. I remembered I had a Walm-Mart gift card in my wallet with about six dollars credit left on it. I gave it to her and she bought a pack.
In the car she looked somewhat devistated. It was decided we would get drunk and try not to focus on her finacial problems. So we drove to near by Ashland where I knew there was a liqour store. With my last cash I bought us a fifth of Evan Williams and for me a small bottle of Wild Turkey.
Lithia Park in Ashland meanders along the banks of a gurgling stream. Walking in this park one forgets there is starvation, war andethnic diversity in the world. For all we knew this park of pranceing lab dogs and bouncing joggers went on for ever. We found a creek side bench and drank our whiskey.
“I know this dumb ass Chriss with a brother named Nathen,” she began a story.
“Really? I know this mad man with an asshole brother named Chriss,” I interupted. If global warming isn’t proof enough of it being a small world, this cioncidence ought be. She knew my best friend in the world.
Soon we were drunk. Stagering flatulent drunk. I’m sure we l;ooked like transients in that damn perfect park. We came to a place where the stream was damed forming a pool. Lauren stripped to her underware and waded in. The blur of white skin through a whiskey haze on a fine day is amazing. As ugly as I consider my own body to be, hers was beautiful. I pretended not to stare as she plodded around and smoked. She was unaware of the heavily foot travel on the near by road, but I didn’t warn her.
We drove the long way back up the mountain blarring the Beastie Boys on her stereo and sipping whiskey from a coffee cup.
My job on the mountain was as a pit bartender. The bar was in the kitchen in a locked cage. There was an opening big enough for me to hand the servers their drinks. Through the bars I could see the whole disfuncitonal kitchen, mixed with Jameson was quite entertaining. Directly in front of me was the prep station. The prep cook wiped the residue of cakes he cut from his knife by putting th eknife between his knees and squeezing. One one particular occasion I saw a fun drama play out as if it were a silent film. He had an order for a piece of cake, which he took from the fridge behind him. He accidently dropped the cake while trying to kick the fridge door closed. Distraught, he looked for another cake to cut, but found none. He called the chef over and they both looked at the cake on the ground. The chef picked up the cake and brushed it off and put it on a cake. The server came by to get her desser. For a time all three leaned over the cake picking little pieces off it. Soon all three were satisfied and the server left with it. The Chef patted the pastry cheff on th eback and walked off. With a deep sence of relief, the pastry cheff wipped off his knofe between his leggs.
There was a lovely server from the midwest named Emily whose accent was almost incomprehensible. The more Seagrams I gave her, the sillyier and more garbled her speach became. I followed her to a bable to present a bottle of wine just in time to hear her describe the special as a “Denver cunt,” instead of a “Denver cut.”
The senior bartender at the lodge was a Jersey native named Rod. He had the easy going nature of a recovering alcoholic; the big trageties of life he laughed off but it was obvious the next time he dropped a glass or stubbed his toe he’d say, “Fuck it, gimmie a drink.”
Kat would drink sparingly during her shift, but when it was over she became a flopping liability befriending any man in the dining room. After one shift in the cage I came out to find her posed and still in a big leather chair next to the fire place. Her eyes were unfocused and if one didn’t know beter one would think she were tired or lost in thought. The truth was she was barely concious. I tried to walk her back to her dorm room, but she collpased a few feet from the chair. I carried her out of the building in my arms. Out side in the snow I put her on my back. She pissed like a race horse. It was a long heavy walk to the dorm. She promised me the best herion I’d ever had come payday before falling asleep and nearling slipping off me.
Lauren watched me carry Kat rhough the dorm with those big brown focused eyes of hers.
A Dodge Probe arived on the mountain and Miles stepped out. He sighed deeply and took his mandolin from the back seat.
“Hey man, do you play the Mando?” one of the assholes of the mountain asked him. He was sitting with his leggs wide open while smoking. It was a question made lewder by it’s unintended undertone.
Miles looked down at the mandolin in his hands, “Oh, this. No.” He sighed deeply asumed an akward pose. “I have to get it fixed.”
Women imeadiatly hated Miles from Oklahoma City. Miles wasn’t gay but he often forgot he wasn’t a women. In a room full of women he would use words like ‘bitch’ and ‘cunt,’ freely unbekownst to the rising anti Miles sentiment growing. It was a strange power that’s hard to relate in the writen word. One great asset Miles had was the willingness to drive anywhere, anytime no matter how drunk he was. Thus the Probe became our Probe. We probed much of the mountain.
There was a particulalry idiotic server on the mountain named Dove. Kat had dicovered she was on a heavy dose of tranquilizers for reocuring seizures. It was Kats way of courting me by stealing this medication and giving my large handfuls. This behaviour reminded me too much of my mother, but I accpeted thepills anyhow.
One morning began with miles at my door looking distraught. “I need to go to Blockbuster, or Hollywood Video, Maybe a Wal-Mart.” I understood this deep carnal need.
“I’ll come with you, let me get ready.” As I sleep fully dressed and often with my shoes on, I rolled out of bed, took some seizure medication, drank a beer and shot my self with colone. “I’m ready.”
On the way to the car we picked up a few more passengers. An actual gay man named Ryan and a cynical cook covered in angry tatoos named Jeff. A weird floppy feeling came over me as we decended the mountain. Miles piloted the Probe admiraly, often staying between the lines.
Our destination was Klamath Falls. A once ecologicaly diverse marsh, it had been drained for irrigation. A strange suburban town poped up for no reason. Miles looked at the used DVDs at every rental place in town. It was a discouraging selection made up mostly of Keanu Reves and cuputer generated monsters. I stood behind Miles as he looked, swaying wildly. I fit in perfectly. A few pills and beers later we at Wal-mart. I staggered up to the gun counter and as I recal said, “Give me your cheapest most inacurate firearm.” They let me hold and point several of the heavy cold devils. It’s a fantastic feeling to hold a gun in an enclosed space surrounded by people. All the suicidal fantasys turn to homicidal fantasies. I think that’s why so many people don’t shoot themselves. The agony of self pitty turns to playful murder when they hold a gun. Someday I hope to shoot myself, but many many years from now when it’s my time.
I was disapointed to find out I’d have to wait a week to buy a real gun, so I bought a realistic looking B.B. Gun. The faces at the Klamath Fall Wal-Mart looked distorted and deformed. I fit right in.
A hunger fell on all of us and we drove the streets looking for food. Miles sadly shook his head as we passed Mexican restaraunts, BBQ stands, Dannys, Taco Bell, Burger King. Eventualy he pulled into a Korean Cafe. My admiration for Miles grew.
Inside the menue was glued to the wall and hits from the Fifties and Sixties were lovingly recreated on a cheap synthesizer played on the PA. We sat at a table and drank cheap Vietnemesse beer called ‘33.’ I ordered an aray of octopus and Salmon. Miles had a bowl of Pho Van. This seemed to depress him. He was probably remembereing some perfect night years ago eating Pho Van with a beautiful girl he had angered by accidently calling her a cunt. Either that or my garbled behavior was ruining his afternoon. Either way I recall this meal fondly. The cooks and servers eyed us with suspicion.
I can’t describe in a self indulgent autobiogtaphy the cirsumstances of how quickly and hard I fell for Lauren. Maybe it was years of putting myself down and destroying myself with drugs ending sudenly and meeting some one who actualy found some value in me. It’s a horrible, cruel and artless world where friends and lovers feed on eachother inorder to make it through the day, but Lauren was independant, strong and fond of me and this destroyed everything I felt about my future. I knew quickly the trick would be not showing her how insanly in love I was with her so I wouldn;t scare her off.
The actual act of falling in love is a quiet thing. Though humans surrounded me in a room, I knew she was special and nothing else was very important. She had a boyfriend coming to visit her soon on the mountain. Thus began a bender, a fantastic walking bender only achievable by using the last of my youthful stamina. It took a shot of whiskey every half hour, every hour of the day and a Dodge Probe to get me around.
The day before, of and after Laurens boyfriend visiting her on the mountain I had the outward appearance of a collected dude, but my big Irish meaty frame was seething pure murder. When I met the guy, he called me, ‘Bro.’
Miles took Kat, Jeff and me down the mountain in his Probe. We drank in a cemetary. Kat promised me pure heroin when she got paid and flopped about. Miles rambled about Oklahoma City. Jeff shat in the woods and returned with no socks. It was epic.
In the Great Hall of the lodge back on the mountain, Miles sipped his Scotch. “You know,” he began, “when a girl is drinking scotch it means she wants to fuck.”
“You’ll go far in life, young man,” I told him.
Kat gave me four vicodin and sent me home to sleep.
Working for Xanterra, the company that manages the Crater Lake lodge, is just what people like Kat, Jeff, Miles and me deserved. They put the same amount of effort in treating us as humans as we did. Our bosses were all probably recently fired from Olive Gardens who did nothing at all ever under any circumstances to aid in the serving of food, the managing of our schedules or mediating our many just complaints with our shorted pay checks.
Kevin wandered abou tthe restaurunt with a clip board. I stopped him and said, “So, Kevin, when I was hired they said there would be employee kitchens to use, Internet and planned employee outings. But there are no planned employee outings, we have no kitchen and we have employee meals deducted from our checks despite the fact we don’t eat them and we have no employee kitchen.” This complaint was to broad in scope, so Kevin walked off. I made myself another drink continued to throw crutons at the prep cook through the little opening in my cage. He picked them up off the filthy floor and put them on salads.
Kat came to pick up her drinks. “You know,” she said, “when I get paid I can get us the best china white you’ve ever had.” She winked and left with a full tray.
Miles came to my bar to fil land order for seven hot choclates. By the time he had put whipped cream on the last hot choclate, the cream he had put on the first and melted into the drink. “Fuck,” he said and stared at them. He decided to take the whipped cream whith him. It fall off the tray. “Fuck,” he said. Miles used the word, “fuck” like a Smurf used the word “Smurf.”
For a time I helped out the dishwasher. He was a giant stooped man in his sixties named Raul. His hands shook like mine as he retold a boxing match in Korea. “I didn’t know the guy. He was Korean. His gloved were home made and he bounced like he wanted to kick, but he knew the rules and wouldn’t. He took punch after punch but kept bouncing. Blood was pouring out of his eye brow. He couldn’t see. He kept bouncing and taking punches for fourteen rounds. I couldn’t believe it.”
“So did the reffere call the match?” I asked.
“There was no refferee, no score cards. Boxing in the service was decided by a knock out or by giving up,” he said. “Someone was going to die that night. You could tell. It had gone too far.”
“Did the other guy kill the Korean?” I asked.
“I don’t know if I killed him and I don’t remember the end of the match. I had a bad concusion. I never saw him again and the guys streated me like a bad mother fucker afterwards. I wonder if I killed him. Everyday.”
We had both survived the visit from the boyfriend. Lauren had told me she hadn’t slept with him, though she hadn’t broken up with him. I began to refer to her as, ‘The Maried Woman,’ when I spoke of her. The drama in the dorms was begining to become more unbareable. The hotel at the lodge had double booked a room and had to put up a young family in the dorms where we lived. Aparently they had to suffer through the sounds of a violent endless orgy. Management began to crack down. The manager of our dorms took more ritilin and slept less to heighten his paranoia and trolled the dark halls with what we all knew was an empty clipboard. Empty as it was, it still was an emblem of terrifying authority. Lauren and I began to spend every moment we could off the mountain.
The drive off the mountain was always exhilerating. As there is no oxygen at seven thousand feet, decending caused a kind of head rush. We found a bar in near by Prospect Oregon called The Trophy Room. Over a greasy breakfast of bloody marrys and heaps of food to stare at we both came to the realization we had to escape Crater Lake. It was an unspoken thought and mine brought with it the terror of us leaving seperately.
The Bloody Mary is a fetish. The worst are crafted in kitchens by cheffs who drink Busch Beer all day and think the drink is a culinary thing. Hear this, it is not. A Bloody Mary is Tomato Juice, Worchstershire and Vodka with celery salt, peper and a spicey garnish. Anything more is boutique breakfast drink for weekend drinkers. A good Bloody Mary comes in a rocks glass and is set before you by a server with steady hands and a ‘been there done that attitude.’ The Bloody Mary calms the bodily detox, eases the apetite and prolongs the prior nights buz. The Bloody Marrys we had gave me the vuage desire to cry.
Moving into the bar of the Trophy Room, we descovered it’s name sake. Fantastic ancient stuffed cougars and deer adorned the walls. As we walked in, a man threatened to not pay his tab and said, “What would you, what could you do about it if I jjust left?”
I said, “I’m standing between you and the door,” a simple statement of fact, only a threat when the man who says it is in love with a woman and a pure buz. The man payed his tab and the bartender offered me a job. My wife ordered us Wild Turkey shots and we felt at home in the silence that followed.
Any woman who can drink Wild Turkey shot for shot in a dive bar with a large dying Irishman is a monument. But you also have to consider that Lauren is a few inches taller than five feet. She is and was a monument to a life well lived.
Thurally wrecked we drove back up the mountain and worked our nine hour shifts in the dining room.
Maters got complicated by an E-mail from an old friend. A film I had happened to have writen was debuting in Philadelphia. I had to break it to Lauren I was half man, half fruity artist. I had to go back out East for the premier some time soon. I also had to trick her into some kind of comited relationship. One night in bed I asked her if she’d go to the showing with me.
“Take me anywhere I haven’t been,” she said. The tone was set.
The seasoned bartender from NewJersey had been taking bets on when I was going to freak out, kill some one and quit. The next day at work I was going to tell him of my desire to quit and take Lauren with me but he interupted me.
“I’ve got to get off this fucking mountain,” he said.
“Ok,” I said. I’ll get miles.
We loaded Ron into Mile’s Probe. Aparently Ron had been drinking vodka with his diet coke and relapsed into a horrible reality. Down the mountain we drove.
“Fuck this place,” Ron said with a timeless tone.
“Fuck,” Miles said.
Ron got a hotel room in Medford while waiting for a flight far away. I ordered a shot of Wild Turkey in the bar. The novice bartender poured me something like a tripple. Miles surveyed the size of the shot and said, “Fuck.” I drank it in one swallow, smiled and walked away. Out of site of anyone I vomited in the hall way leeding to the bathroom. I returned to the bar and ordered another, this time with a beer back.
In his hotel room, Ron divided his posetions. He gave to Miles a guitar. I uttered a sigh of disapointment as I envied this guitar. Ron then took the guitar from Miles and handed it to me.
“Fuck,” Miles said.
Part of my courtship with Lauren was balencing the unreality of drinking and driving around Southern Oregon and the the vuage absurd idea of, ‘the future.’ She was suposed to meet her family for a weekend in Sun River near Bend Oregon for a few nights in a vacation rental. It had been made clear to me I was definetly not invited. I was solemly resigned to this fact. The day of her departure I was walking to work in my uniform. She pulled up next to me in her red truck and told me to get in. I was going after all with only the clothes on my back.
We stopped for Wild Turckey on the way there.
Her family was all similalry sized, none taller than my sholder. They regarded me with suspicion and circled me like velociraptors. Wendy had brought one of her children, a five year old eigth year old who spoke in heavy baby talk. Laurens Father shared my first name and twisted politics. He wore leathers after getting off his bike, a trait I liked. It ment he was ready to bail if he had to. Laurens mother Aura was a strange gigling creature who offered me countless drinks. I think it was her way of seeing the dark part of my personality, which is luckily my sober side which is seldom seen.
Her sister who had recently returned from Iraq carried with her a masive Hoocka and a quiet husband. Her name was laurie. His name was Kyle. Kylse snickered at only the most horrible and layered jokes. These were good people, all of them.
I spent the three days there with them in my one uniform, bathing in the hot tub and being brought drinks by midgets. ‘The future,’ seemed obtainable if this is what ‘family,’ was these days. They too were aware of their Irish metabolisms and proclivity to tragety. I didn’t realize how horrible a tragety until later and in another part of Oregon.
I recall vuagely Miles in womens lingere sitting in the corner of my bosses room. He made some kind of obsesne gesture to Lauren and I picked him up and threw him. Or so I was told the next morning. I had a hollow feeling working in the dining room the next moring. A server in the dining room said Miles had better watch it being gay on the mountain. I thretened to kill the server as publicly as I could and went down to the employee dining room. The cook there was a giant of a woman, a prison styled lesbian named Hank. Usualy she swore at everyone and had a powerful tone. I noticed she was crying. Her hand was broken and ridiculously swolen. She had been smoking pot with one of the female managers she had been having an ongoing romance with and to show her rage at Xanterra, punched a box of frozen meat and broken her hand. The manager not wanting to be drug tested advised her to conceal her injury. Thus love, Xanterra, and bad food and caused an epicly strong woman to weep.
I had broken my hand several times and the last time had tried to conceal it leeding to it’s needing to be rebroken and reset, a procedure performed with out anesethia due to my obvious intoxication. It was hell. I advized Hank to to not fuck around and go to the hospital. She agreed. I decided to quit and go to the dining room to work out my last shift.
Meanwhile Kevin, the other manager had wrapped Hanks injured hand and advised her also to keep working and ignore her injury as well. I saw her weeping again in a cooridor.
Emily was clearing a table in the dining room.
“Think I quit, Emily,” I said.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Is Lauren going with you?” she asked.
“I hope to trick her into marrying me,” I said.
I went to Kevins dorm room. I tore the door off it’s hinges. Luckily he wan’t there. I found Lauren and we began to pack. We were concious of the possibility of living in the truck so we were careful to keep an open area in the back to sleep in. By the time we were ready to leave it was late. We drove just off the mountain and parked by the side of the road near Diamond Lake, just North of Crater Lake. The mosquitos slapped the windows all night and our little nest seemed just fine.
We had a vuage plan of going to Astoria Oregon. I had a friend there named Nathen. Nathen was the star of everything I had writen. During our adolecance together he taught me everything I knew about film making as he and his father worked at the now defunct Will Vinton Studios. Nathen and I often had burned out and moved to Astoria Oregon.
We drove a mountain road to Roseburg. Along the way I swear I saw a turkey.
Nathen is a huge man with a larger heart and even more enormus health probblems. Ailing from everything from sleep apnia to manic bi-polar disorder he is a cross between a concouring viking and a weeping baby left on the side of the road. I met Nathen fifteen years before in Frankfurt Germany. He had been cut off from a bar, a truely epic acomplishment in that country. He was laying on his side in the street, his white tshirt stained with vomit. He gave me some Deutche Marks to buy him and myself a drink. This was an event we reenact as often as we can before one of us dies. We have a carefuly planed wakes in the event of one of us exceding the other in life span. Mine involves a Keg and a mime. Should he die first I am to spring load his coffin so he rises from the dead with a toy pistol that shoots a flag with the word, ‘bang,’ on it. It will have to be a mighty spring.
I pulled into the parking lot of the KOA with a great big cigar lit. Nathen was looking worried and smoking a generic cigarette. He was suprised to see me, and suprised to see me driving. The last he had heard of me I was a coke making movie head, or some such combination of those words. Nathen produced two putting irons and we went into the park to play minature golf.
I left late at night. The greyhound station in downtown Portland allways teems with with people who have far more interesting stories than me, I just have the idiotic cumpulsion to write. These people read stories and are affected by them, The other half read stories and talk politely about them in college. I had taken a job at the Crater Lake lodge in Southern Oregon. They hired me sight un-seen so I thought I’d show up. I don’t remember the buss ride but I do know the trip took me down the length of Oregon on the Interstate. When I had taken this bus ride before I had shared bottles of whiskey with thin angry girls or small bags of meth with large content men. This time I was trying it al lsober.
That mornign we arived in Medford. I milled about the bus station waiting room with some other new hires of the lodge. There was a young hippie named Pete looking forward to being a bus boy. There was an older man named Martin who was to be a dishwasher and a tal lblond girl who reaked of Jose Quervo.
She stood defensively as she knew she stunk. I had dried up a few days before so her good looks mixed with the aroma of a not so bad booze made her seem like a particularly bad brand of evil. I talked to her.
“Fuck, last night I broke a half gallon in my bag. I stink,” she said, bashfuly smoking.
“There are worse odors,” I said.
Soon a van came and collected us. We stopped at a Wal-Mart to get things we might need in our new homes a top a mountain. We were warned we would have very little and if we didn’t have cars the isolation might make us crazy. In this PC world, a boss warning you against madness is either a red flag or a damn good sign of future comiseration.
We were driven up the mountain. The higher we got the more snow surrounded us. Soon we were taken to a hall where we went through some kind of orientation. In th eback of my mind I feared a drug test as I had bought and stolen several vicodin and oxycontin to get me through my most recent detox. When I yawned or dozed off I could still feel the sleepy warm effects of th epills. I’m sure the smell of my urine alone would sedate any nurse checking it for contraband. All in al lI felt like hell and worrying about my urine as the boss of th eplace talked about an up-beat work atmosphere was making me have to poop.
I drew the faces of my future co-workers.
We were assigned dorm rooms in a long housing complex. THe halls were dark and th ebathrooms were comunal. Imeadiatly people grouped up and spoke rapidly. I had brought with me a bottle of dramine to get me to sleep. My grand plan was to quit drinking. I set it on the table next to my bed. The sound of people exploring each other came into my room from under the door as I fell asleep.
The next moring we had a wine tasting. The grand plan failed again. After the tasting I got my first real look at the lake. A womean named Kat smoked a cigarette and stared at it with me. “Here we are,” she declared. Aparenty a girl was raped that night. I tried to not ask questions. Of our origional twenty some, we were now down two. Kat ended her exposition with the promise to find the best heroin I’d ever had come payday.
The next day we had another orientation were we went around a big circle and talked about ourselves. THe lodge wasn’t open and th ecompany had planed a week of training. What one can learn about working in food service in a week without actualy serving food is useless. It’s sort of like planning escape procedures for an automobile accident. If you’ve ever crashed a car while drunk, you either know how to cover it up or you don’t. A tiny blond woman with focused eyes proclaimed her desire to work up from busser to server. If you think that is a petty desire, you are a fool, as I was when I heard her say that. Kat bragged about her years of expirience in New Orleans. Oh yeah? What the fuck was she doing here? When it was my turn to say something about myself, I said, “I’m here to meet chicks,” which was bull shit as I hadn’t had a sexual thought or errection in months. People laughed, but my laugh was more private.
During a break a I asked the girl with focused eyes for a ride down the mountain the next day. She agreed to take me in her red truck. She nervusly smoked, smoking seemed a burdon to her as she had several pounds of jade and silver jewelry on. The lack of customers in the lodge seemed to frustrait her. An empty dining room made us all look bad. Her name was Lauren.
That afternoon I hiked up a near by ridge. I am no hiker and at an altitude of 7000 feet I quickly became a drooling stagering fool. Sobriety seemed more idiotic than ever..
It was a sunny drive down to Medford. Walmart was a buzz with angry familial combatative shopping. I wandered the isles for a time then went back to the entrance to meet my ride. Lauren met me and I noticed something wrong. I could smell her sweat. It wasnt from heat as Wal-mart is allways quite nice and cool. Apparently she had overdrawn her bank account and didn’t have enough money for more cigarettes. She blushed and stared off into the distance to hide her agravation and discomfort. I remembered I had a Walm-Mart gift card in my wallet with about six dollars credit left on it. I gave it to her and she bought a pack.
In the car she looked somewhat devistated. It was decided we would get drunk and try not to focus on her finacial problems. So we drove to near by Ashland where I knew there was a liqour store. With my last cash I bought us a fifth of Evan Williams and for me a small bottle of Wild Turkey.
Lithia Park in Ashland meanders along the banks of a gurgling stream. Walking in this park one forgets there is starvation, war andethnic diversity in the world. For all we knew this park of pranceing lab dogs and bouncing joggers went on for ever. We found a creek side bench and drank our whiskey.
“I know this dumb ass Chriss with a brother named Nathen,” she began a story.
“Really? I know this mad man with an asshole brother named Chriss,” I interupted. If global warming isn’t proof enough of it being a small world, this cioncidence ought be. She knew my best friend in the world.
Soon we were drunk. Stagering flatulent drunk. I’m sure we l;ooked like transients in that damn perfect park. We came to a place where the stream was damed forming a pool. Lauren stripped to her underware and waded in. The blur of white skin through a whiskey haze on a fine day is amazing. As ugly as I consider my own body to be, hers was beautiful. I pretended not to stare as she plodded around and smoked. She was unaware of the heavily foot travel on the near by road, but I didn’t warn her.
We drove the long way back up the mountain blarring the Beastie Boys on her stereo and sipping whiskey from a coffee cup.
My job on the mountain was as a pit bartender. The bar was in the kitchen in a locked cage. There was an opening big enough for me to hand the servers their drinks. Through the bars I could see the whole disfuncitonal kitchen, mixed with Jameson was quite entertaining. Directly in front of me was the prep station. The prep cook wiped the residue of cakes he cut from his knife by putting th eknife between his knees and squeezing. One one particular occasion I saw a fun drama play out as if it were a silent film. He had an order for a piece of cake, which he took from the fridge behind him. He accidently dropped the cake while trying to kick the fridge door closed. Distraught, he looked for another cake to cut, but found none. He called the chef over and they both looked at the cake on the ground. The chef picked up the cake and brushed it off and put it on a cake. The server came by to get her desser. For a time all three leaned over the cake picking little pieces off it. Soon all three were satisfied and the server left with it. The Chef patted the pastry cheff on th eback and walked off. With a deep sence of relief, the pastry cheff wipped off his knofe between his leggs.
There was a lovely server from the midwest named Emily whose accent was almost incomprehensible. The more Seagrams I gave her, the sillyier and more garbled her speach became. I followed her to a bable to present a bottle of wine just in time to hear her describe the special as a “Denver cunt,” instead of a “Denver cut.”
The senior bartender at the lodge was a Jersey native named Rod. He had the easy going nature of a recovering alcoholic; the big trageties of life he laughed off but it was obvious the next time he dropped a glass or stubbed his toe he’d say, “Fuck it, gimmie a drink.”
Kat would drink sparingly during her shift, but when it was over she became a flopping liability befriending any man in the dining room. After one shift in the cage I came out to find her posed and still in a big leather chair next to the fire place. Her eyes were unfocused and if one didn’t know beter one would think she were tired or lost in thought. The truth was she was barely concious. I tried to walk her back to her dorm room, but she collpased a few feet from the chair. I carried her out of the building in my arms. Out side in the snow I put her on my back. She pissed like a race horse. It was a long heavy walk to the dorm. She promised me the best herion I’d ever had come payday before falling asleep and nearling slipping off me.
Lauren watched me carry Kat rhough the dorm with those big brown focused eyes of hers.
A Dodge Probe arived on the mountain and Miles stepped out. He sighed deeply and took his mandolin from the back seat.
“Hey man, do you play the Mando?” one of the assholes of the mountain asked him. He was sitting with his leggs wide open while smoking. It was a question made lewder by it’s unintended undertone.
Miles looked down at the mandolin in his hands, “Oh, this. No.” He sighed deeply asumed an akward pose. “I have to get it fixed.”
Women imeadiatly hated Miles from Oklahoma City. Miles wasn’t gay but he often forgot he wasn’t a women. In a room full of women he would use words like ‘bitch’ and ‘cunt,’ freely unbekownst to the rising anti Miles sentiment growing. It was a strange power that’s hard to relate in the writen word. One great asset Miles had was the willingness to drive anywhere, anytime no matter how drunk he was. Thus the Probe became our Probe. We probed much of the mountain.
There was a particulalry idiotic server on the mountain named Dove. Kat had dicovered she was on a heavy dose of tranquilizers for reocuring seizures. It was Kats way of courting me by stealing this medication and giving my large handfuls. This behaviour reminded me too much of my mother, but I accpeted thepills anyhow.
One morning began with miles at my door looking distraught. “I need to go to Blockbuster, or Hollywood Video, Maybe a Wal-Mart.” I understood this deep carnal need.
“I’ll come with you, let me get ready.” As I sleep fully dressed and often with my shoes on, I rolled out of bed, took some seizure medication, drank a beer and shot my self with colone. “I’m ready.”
On the way to the car we picked up a few more passengers. An actual gay man named Ryan and a cynical cook covered in angry tatoos named Jeff. A weird floppy feeling came over me as we decended the mountain. Miles piloted the Probe admiraly, often staying between the lines.
Our destination was Klamath Falls. A once ecologicaly diverse marsh, it had been drained for irrigation. A strange suburban town poped up for no reason. Miles looked at the used DVDs at every rental place in town. It was a discouraging selection made up mostly of Keanu Reves and cuputer generated monsters. I stood behind Miles as he looked, swaying wildly. I fit in perfectly. A few pills and beers later we at Wal-mart. I staggered up to the gun counter and as I recal said, “Give me your cheapest most inacurate firearm.” They let me hold and point several of the heavy cold devils. It’s a fantastic feeling to hold a gun in an enclosed space surrounded by people. All the suicidal fantasys turn to homicidal fantasies. I think that’s why so many people don’t shoot themselves. The agony of self pitty turns to playful murder when they hold a gun. Someday I hope to shoot myself, but many many years from now when it’s my time.
I was disapointed to find out I’d have to wait a week to buy a real gun, so I bought a realistic looking B.B. Gun. The faces at the Klamath Fall Wal-Mart looked distorted and deformed. I fit right in.
A hunger fell on all of us and we drove the streets looking for food. Miles sadly shook his head as we passed Mexican restaraunts, BBQ stands, Dannys, Taco Bell, Burger King. Eventualy he pulled into a Korean Cafe. My admiration for Miles grew.
Inside the menue was glued to the wall and hits from the Fifties and Sixties were lovingly recreated on a cheap synthesizer played on the PA. We sat at a table and drank cheap Vietnemesse beer called ‘33.’ I ordered an aray of octopus and Salmon. Miles had a bowl of Pho Van. This seemed to depress him. He was probably remembereing some perfect night years ago eating Pho Van with a beautiful girl he had angered by accidently calling her a cunt. Either that or my garbled behavior was ruining his afternoon. Either way I recall this meal fondly. The cooks and servers eyed us with suspicion.
I can’t describe in a self indulgent autobiogtaphy the cirsumstances of how quickly and hard I fell for Lauren. Maybe it was years of putting myself down and destroying myself with drugs ending sudenly and meeting some one who actualy found some value in me. It’s a horrible, cruel and artless world where friends and lovers feed on eachother inorder to make it through the day, but Lauren was independant, strong and fond of me and this destroyed everything I felt about my future. I knew quickly the trick would be not showing her how insanly in love I was with her so I wouldn;t scare her off.
The actual act of falling in love is a quiet thing. Though humans surrounded me in a room, I knew she was special and nothing else was very important. She had a boyfriend coming to visit her soon on the mountain. Thus began a bender, a fantastic walking bender only achievable by using the last of my youthful stamina. It took a shot of whiskey every half hour, every hour of the day and a Dodge Probe to get me around.
The day before, of and after Laurens boyfriend visiting her on the mountain I had the outward appearance of a collected dude, but my big Irish meaty frame was seething pure murder. When I met the guy, he called me, ‘Bro.’
Miles took Kat, Jeff and me down the mountain in his Probe. We drank in a cemetary. Kat promised me pure heroin when she got paid and flopped about. Miles rambled about Oklahoma City. Jeff shat in the woods and returned with no socks. It was epic.
In the Great Hall of the lodge back on the mountain, Miles sipped his Scotch. “You know,” he began, “when a girl is drinking scotch it means she wants to fuck.”
“You’ll go far in life, young man,” I told him.
Kat gave me four vicodin and sent me home to sleep.
Working for Xanterra, the company that manages the Crater Lake lodge, is just what people like Kat, Jeff, Miles and me deserved. They put the same amount of effort in treating us as humans as we did. Our bosses were all probably recently fired from Olive Gardens who did nothing at all ever under any circumstances to aid in the serving of food, the managing of our schedules or mediating our many just complaints with our shorted pay checks.
Kevin wandered abou tthe restaurunt with a clip board. I stopped him and said, “So, Kevin, when I was hired they said there would be employee kitchens to use, Internet and planned employee outings. But there are no planned employee outings, we have no kitchen and we have employee meals deducted from our checks despite the fact we don’t eat them and we have no employee kitchen.” This complaint was to broad in scope, so Kevin walked off. I made myself another drink continued to throw crutons at the prep cook through the little opening in my cage. He picked them up off the filthy floor and put them on salads.
Kat came to pick up her drinks. “You know,” she said, “when I get paid I can get us the best china white you’ve ever had.” She winked and left with a full tray.
Miles came to my bar to fil land order for seven hot choclates. By the time he had put whipped cream on the last hot choclate, the cream he had put on the first and melted into the drink. “Fuck,” he said and stared at them. He decided to take the whipped cream whith him. It fall off the tray. “Fuck,” he said. Miles used the word, “fuck” like a Smurf used the word “Smurf.”
For a time I helped out the dishwasher. He was a giant stooped man in his sixties named Raul. His hands shook like mine as he retold a boxing match in Korea. “I didn’t know the guy. He was Korean. His gloved were home made and he bounced like he wanted to kick, but he knew the rules and wouldn’t. He took punch after punch but kept bouncing. Blood was pouring out of his eye brow. He couldn’t see. He kept bouncing and taking punches for fourteen rounds. I couldn’t believe it.”
“So did the reffere call the match?” I asked.
“There was no refferee, no score cards. Boxing in the service was decided by a knock out or by giving up,” he said. “Someone was going to die that night. You could tell. It had gone too far.”
“Did the other guy kill the Korean?” I asked.
“I don’t know if I killed him and I don’t remember the end of the match. I had a bad concusion. I never saw him again and the guys streated me like a bad mother fucker afterwards. I wonder if I killed him. Everyday.”
We had both survived the visit from the boyfriend. Lauren had told me she hadn’t slept with him, though she hadn’t broken up with him. I began to refer to her as, ‘The Maried Woman,’ when I spoke of her. The drama in the dorms was begining to become more unbareable. The hotel at the lodge had double booked a room and had to put up a young family in the dorms where we lived. Aparently they had to suffer through the sounds of a violent endless orgy. Management began to crack down. The manager of our dorms took more ritilin and slept less to heighten his paranoia and trolled the dark halls with what we all knew was an empty clipboard. Empty as it was, it still was an emblem of terrifying authority. Lauren and I began to spend every moment we could off the mountain.
The drive off the mountain was always exhilerating. As there is no oxygen at seven thousand feet, decending caused a kind of head rush. We found a bar in near by Prospect Oregon called The Trophy Room. Over a greasy breakfast of bloody marrys and heaps of food to stare at we both came to the realization we had to escape Crater Lake. It was an unspoken thought and mine brought with it the terror of us leaving seperately.
The Bloody Mary is a fetish. The worst are crafted in kitchens by cheffs who drink Busch Beer all day and think the drink is a culinary thing. Hear this, it is not. A Bloody Mary is Tomato Juice, Worchstershire and Vodka with celery salt, peper and a spicey garnish. Anything more is boutique breakfast drink for weekend drinkers. A good Bloody Mary comes in a rocks glass and is set before you by a server with steady hands and a ‘been there done that attitude.’ The Bloody Mary calms the bodily detox, eases the apetite and prolongs the prior nights buz. The Bloody Marrys we had gave me the vuage desire to cry.
Moving into the bar of the Trophy Room, we descovered it’s name sake. Fantastic ancient stuffed cougars and deer adorned the walls. As we walked in, a man threatened to not pay his tab and said, “What would you, what could you do about it if I jjust left?”
I said, “I’m standing between you and the door,” a simple statement of fact, only a threat when the man who says it is in love with a woman and a pure buz. The man payed his tab and the bartender offered me a job. My wife ordered us Wild Turkey shots and we felt at home in the silence that followed.
Any woman who can drink Wild Turkey shot for shot in a dive bar with a large dying Irishman is a monument. But you also have to consider that Lauren is a few inches taller than five feet. She is and was a monument to a life well lived.
Thurally wrecked we drove back up the mountain and worked our nine hour shifts in the dining room.
Maters got complicated by an E-mail from an old friend. A film I had happened to have writen was debuting in Philadelphia. I had to break it to Lauren I was half man, half fruity artist. I had to go back out East for the premier some time soon. I also had to trick her into some kind of comited relationship. One night in bed I asked her if she’d go to the showing with me.
“Take me anywhere I haven’t been,” she said. The tone was set.
The seasoned bartender from NewJersey had been taking bets on when I was going to freak out, kill some one and quit. The next day at work I was going to tell him of my desire to quit and take Lauren with me but he interupted me.
“I’ve got to get off this fucking mountain,” he said.
“Ok,” I said. I’ll get miles.
We loaded Ron into Mile’s Probe. Aparently Ron had been drinking vodka with his diet coke and relapsed into a horrible reality. Down the mountain we drove.
“Fuck this place,” Ron said with a timeless tone.
“Fuck,” Miles said.
Ron got a hotel room in Medford while waiting for a flight far away. I ordered a shot of Wild Turkey in the bar. The novice bartender poured me something like a tripple. Miles surveyed the size of the shot and said, “Fuck.” I drank it in one swallow, smiled and walked away. Out of site of anyone I vomited in the hall way leeding to the bathroom. I returned to the bar and ordered another, this time with a beer back.
In his hotel room, Ron divided his posetions. He gave to Miles a guitar. I uttered a sigh of disapointment as I envied this guitar. Ron then took the guitar from Miles and handed it to me.
“Fuck,” Miles said.
Part of my courtship with Lauren was balencing the unreality of drinking and driving around Southern Oregon and the the vuage absurd idea of, ‘the future.’ She was suposed to meet her family for a weekend in Sun River near Bend Oregon for a few nights in a vacation rental. It had been made clear to me I was definetly not invited. I was solemly resigned to this fact. The day of her departure I was walking to work in my uniform. She pulled up next to me in her red truck and told me to get in. I was going after all with only the clothes on my back.
We stopped for Wild Turckey on the way there.
Her family was all similalry sized, none taller than my sholder. They regarded me with suspicion and circled me like velociraptors. Wendy had brought one of her children, a five year old eigth year old who spoke in heavy baby talk. Laurens Father shared my first name and twisted politics. He wore leathers after getting off his bike, a trait I liked. It ment he was ready to bail if he had to. Laurens mother Aura was a strange gigling creature who offered me countless drinks. I think it was her way of seeing the dark part of my personality, which is luckily my sober side which is seldom seen.
Her sister who had recently returned from Iraq carried with her a masive Hoocka and a quiet husband. Her name was laurie. His name was Kyle. Kylse snickered at only the most horrible and layered jokes. These were good people, all of them.
I spent the three days there with them in my one uniform, bathing in the hot tub and being brought drinks by midgets. ‘The future,’ seemed obtainable if this is what ‘family,’ was these days. They too were aware of their Irish metabolisms and proclivity to tragety. I didn’t realize how horrible a tragety until later and in another part of Oregon.
I recall vuagely Miles in womens lingere sitting in the corner of my bosses room. He made some kind of obsesne gesture to Lauren and I picked him up and threw him. Or so I was told the next morning. I had a hollow feeling working in the dining room the next moring. A server in the dining room said Miles had better watch it being gay on the mountain. I thretened to kill the server as publicly as I could and went down to the employee dining room. The cook there was a giant of a woman, a prison styled lesbian named Hank. Usualy she swore at everyone and had a powerful tone. I noticed she was crying. Her hand was broken and ridiculously swolen. She had been smoking pot with one of the female managers she had been having an ongoing romance with and to show her rage at Xanterra, punched a box of frozen meat and broken her hand. The manager not wanting to be drug tested advised her to conceal her injury. Thus love, Xanterra, and bad food and caused an epicly strong woman to weep.
I had broken my hand several times and the last time had tried to conceal it leeding to it’s needing to be rebroken and reset, a procedure performed with out anesethia due to my obvious intoxication. It was hell. I advized Hank to to not fuck around and go to the hospital. She agreed. I decided to quit and go to the dining room to work out my last shift.
Meanwhile Kevin, the other manager had wrapped Hanks injured hand and advised her also to keep working and ignore her injury as well. I saw her weeping again in a cooridor.
Emily was clearing a table in the dining room.
“Think I quit, Emily,” I said.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Is Lauren going with you?” she asked.
“I hope to trick her into marrying me,” I said.
I went to Kevins dorm room. I tore the door off it’s hinges. Luckily he wan’t there. I found Lauren and we began to pack. We were concious of the possibility of living in the truck so we were careful to keep an open area in the back to sleep in. By the time we were ready to leave it was late. We drove just off the mountain and parked by the side of the road near Diamond Lake, just North of Crater Lake. The mosquitos slapped the windows all night and our little nest seemed just fine.
We had a vuage plan of going to Astoria Oregon. I had a friend there named Nathen. Nathen was the star of everything I had writen. During our adolecance together he taught me everything I knew about film making as he and his father worked at the now defunct Will Vinton Studios. Nathen and I often had burned out and moved to Astoria Oregon.
We drove a mountain road to Roseburg. Along the way I swear I saw a turkey.
Nathen is a huge man with a larger heart and even more enormus health probblems. Ailing from everything from sleep apnia to manic bi-polar disorder he is a cross between a concouring viking and a weeping baby left on the side of the road. I met Nathen fifteen years before in Frankfurt Germany. He had been cut off from a bar, a truely epic acomplishment in that country. He was laying on his side in the street, his white tshirt stained with vomit. He gave me some Deutche Marks to buy him and myself a drink. This was an event we reenact as often as we can before one of us dies. We have a carefuly planed wakes in the event of one of us exceding the other in life span. Mine involves a Keg and a mime. Should he die first I am to spring load his coffin so he rises from the dead with a toy pistol that shoots a flag with the word, ‘bang,’ on it. It will have to be a mighty spring.
I pulled into the parking lot of the KOA with a great big cigar lit. Nathen was looking worried and smoking a generic cigarette. He was suprised to see me, and suprised to see me driving. The last he had heard of me I was a coke making movie head, or some such combination of those words. Nathen produced two putting irons and we went into the park to play minature golf.
posted by Bloodnock at 10:22 PM
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