Charlie Brown, the Stoner; A Military Takeover; An Emergency Landing; A Panic Attack; And It Wasn’t Even Christmas Eve Yet.
a holiday hard launch.
For the purposes of this piece, I looked up the suicide rate for the holidays. Turns out, it’s an urban legend that there is a spike in suicides in December, at least according to some write-up from a few years back. A lot has happened since the write up, I wonder what the score is.
Here’s how my holidays have been going so far, okay?
a flight from Atlanta back to the place i first busted onto this living scene some time ago, Los Angeles; but first, the airport...
back home, for everything.
Nothing From Nothing by Billy Preston blasts in my headphones.
i always get sentimental traveling for the holidays.
nothing to do about it but let the tears roll,
and let life do what it does.
roll on and on.
Ophelia by The Band now.
a goodbye with S. at the airport this time,
right at the terminal,
we were on separate flights.
it’s always sentimental,
the goodbyes.
painfully so,
the goodbyes never feel happy.
same rules apply here.
nothing to do about it but let the tears roll,
and life roll too,
amen.
Vienna by Billy Joel,
a bit precious,
i know,
but maybe that’s okay today.
earlier,
check in,
security,
the whole fuckin’ nine,
you know how it is.
countless Army personnel,
men and women in uniform,
line up in the various lines alongside the sorry rest of us.
i eavesdrop on their conversations,
i can’t fuckin’ help myself is all.
there must be a convention in town,
i chuckle stupidly to myself.
toughness,
or,
the posturing and signaling of it,
is happening to my left.
some private little-brothering another private.
to my right,
a young man talks about his momma he flies home to.
i’m flying home to my momma too,
i know there are many of the uniformed that fly home to their mommas,
and there are many around me,
in and out of uniform,
that fly home to no momma at all.
tears roll on.
some of them, (the uniformed), seem so tightly wound.
you can tell,
always,
by how a person talks.
their words come,
breathless,
without thought.
they talk like they’re rushing to get to a point that never ends up coming.
i talk that way too sometimes.
worse,
i write that way far too often.
Forever Young – Slow Version by Bob Dylan now.
i pencil this as we’ve just taken off.
a yawn overtakes me.
brutal.
seven years ago today (i think),
i wrote a piece in a black notebook just like this one called CRAWL HOME
i was tired then,
and i’m more tired now,
been tired all this time, i think.
still crawling.
this time,
i go back home,
for everything.
a chance of it at least.
i fly home to shill my shit for some money,
my shit being a movie,
i work in the muck of the movies.
anyway,
another go at making one.
here goes everything i’ve got.
good night,
good morning,
Merry Christmas,
i’m dozing off.
this really happened less than an hour later.
emergency landing.
jerked awake by a sense of terror and hushed panic,
i turned my head to see one of the army green uniforms seizing up.
his eyes were rolled to the back of his head,
foaming at the mouth.
a fellow uniform next to him with fear in his eyes was giving all the info he could about his coworker to the
Southwest Airlines stewardess,
she was calm.
grace and class beyond measure.
and then,
i watched her make her way to the front of the plane,
and then,
a robbery:
IS THERE ANYONE WITH ANY MEDICAL EXPERIENCE ON BOARD?
I SAY AGAIN, IS THERE ANYONE WITH ANY MEDICAL EXPERIENCE ON BOARD?
this was a robbery,
because all my life,
i expected to hear that beautiful,
dramatic,
question,
so full of pageantry,
IS THERE A DOCTOR ON BOARD?!
damn,
i think to myself in this critical moment,
this would make great material for writing if she said IS THERE A DOCTOR ON BOARD?
oh well,
maybe next time.
a woman,
presumably a person with medical experience that was on board,
popped up and went to her good work.
there was this sense of helplessness all around me.
these scared faces,
there were other faces too.
faces which feigned stoicism.
their eyes darted back and forth and sold their true feelings to those who were looking.
my eyes kept moving back to the flight attendants.
the calm in the face of all this,
more powerful than any feigning courageous face.
half-cogent,
they got the seizing guy’s birth date out of him.
he mumbled it,
out of control.
i heard them repeating back to the guy to make sure they got it right.
the guy...
the kid.
2006.
the kid,
who had seemingly had a seizure,
and nearly bit his own tongue off,
was just 18.
guppy.
i stopped feigning stoicism,
felt fear,
and sadness for this kid,
and reached across the aisle to help grab his bags from the overhead when the angels in stewardess outfits asked for
help.
shortly after an announcement from the pilot,
we had completed an emergency landing in Mississippi.
the uniformed kid was hauled off by paramedics.
i heard them asking the still half-cogent kid if he knew his parent’s phone number.
he mumbled some digits.
another uniformed kid a few rows further back told that angel,
the stewardess,
that they had just come out of basic.
they all must have just started leave,
or whatever,
Uncle Sam gives them ‘round this time of year.
now,
this kid,
six days before Christmas,
was being hauled off on a stretcher,
lost and confused.
worst of all,
he was stuck in Jackson, Mississippi.
we were bound for San Antonio, Texas,
then to Los Angeles, California.
human ugliness reared its head.
i heard a guy ask about the connecting flight he had to make.
these are the things,
in moments like this,
you wait a beat to ask.
courageous asshole.
i was thinking about it too.
it was warm in LA,
my LA,
and i loved a warm Christmas.
i caught a sound in the midst of all this.
a snore.
the fella right behind me was dead fuckin’ asleep,
god’s honest.
this son-of-a-bitch had slept through the whole ordeal.
i thought i was tired.
i pen this all while hoping the kid is okay.
i hope the kid’s parents can find him somewhere in the backwoods of Jackson, Mississippi,
at least before Christmas Eve.
i pray that,
on my connecting flight to LA,
that i nearly missed.
amen.
a few days now in Los Angeles.
curled up on the cold floor in mom and dad’s bathroom.
it is the day before Christmas Eve,
December 23,
i hear it is the last day of work for some,
joy around the corner.
Christmas joy fills the air,
it permeates through all,
like the smell of fresh shit,
in the pool bar bathroom
after happy hour,
with the hot wing special.
i hear the music,
coming from the living room
i am here for the holidays,
and Mom insists on bopping Bublé right next to where i eat an eleven o’clock breakfast.
Have yourself a merry little Christmas---
something snaps,
maybe my brain is swelling,
i rush to the bathroom,
breathless,
get on the floor,
it’s cold on the floor.
tears come freely,
generous of them this holiday,
i cannot breathe,
i cannot breathe,
i just cannot fuckin’ breathe,
and all this might really kill me this time.
pull it together,
pull your head out of your ass,
or at least pull yourself out of this panic attack.
i get up,
after some tears,
and the feeling of a shotgun blast to my chest,
finally pass.
wash your face.
cold water to prevent the swelling.
smile,
it’s Christmas.
back to finish my breakfast.
Mom makes the best bacon.
it is eleven-twenty.
she must have wanted to hear it again.
Here we are as in olden days, happy golden days of yore---
Thanks, Bublé
now, the nights leading up to Santa and his regular breaking and entering...
untitled. holiday edition.
I.
it is the night before the day before Christmas,
and all through the house,
not a creature was stirring,
but you can hear my pops snore from down the hall,
and inside my brain,
it is fingers in blenders turned on puree.
it is bones and flesh,
it is reminiscent of Ellison,
no mouth,
must scream.
and so,
i write,
so as to not go mad this Christmas.
II.
i wish the kid me knew how much impossible strength the grownups around him possessed.
especially around this time of year.
to carry all that joy,
singing,
reciting lines from Christmas movies,
and the like,
with all this grownup psychosis to deal with...
if only i knew,
maybe i wouldn’t have been such a shit while growing up.
III.
i’m Grinch,
if he was a recovering addict.
a narcissistic,
anger-fueled,
dead broke,
seasonally depressed,
motherfucking,
asshole.
IV.
my holiday tragedy,
is having all this internal dialogue,
droves of it,
sweating with all the sex and dirty fucking intellect,
and not having the words to put it all down properly,
at least not right now.
the whole thing is festering in me,
rotten wound,
internal infection,
holly,
jolly,
fuckin’ tragedy.
why,
just why,
do the right words fail to arrive tonight?
this holiday tragedy,
well,
it is a lump of coal between my ears.
V.
my mother got a tree.
a fern really,
the thing sits at a foot-and-a-half tall.
no lights,
not one ornament.
the only stockings in the house are in my mother’s drawers.
Christmas doesn’t feel right,
and it hasn’t in a long while.
all through the house,
my mother has placed the Christmas flower,
the poinsettia.
bright red,
shining,
reminding me that the death of youth is really just as simple as swapping a big tree for a small one,
and,
a bunch of over-priced plants scattered all through the house.
tragedy,
heartbreak,
and all the fucking aside,
amen.
and finally,
this one goes out to the hyper-commercialization of characters created by Charles Schulz,
i hope to rub some dirt in Apple’s eyes one day,
i say,
as i type this finally on a mac laptop.
Charlie Brown and I.
Charlie Brown,
you silly fuck,
with your limpy tree...
i think we’d have been friends had we’d gone to the same school,
especially around this time of year,
you and i would have surely searched for the meaning of Christmas together,
but where you found The Nativity scene,
i’d have surely found Mommy pegging Santa Claus,
undoubtedly solidifying a deep distrust for authority,
grownups,
people in uniforms (red suit),
and,
most importantly,
corporate figureheads conceived to be tools for selling cans of soda.
Charlie Brown,
twenty-two years after meeting,
i’m sure we’d be sharing a joint,
wishing for the good old days,
talking about how crazy it is that Marcie got hot out of nowhere,
and how much of a shame it is about all the things that happened to Schroeder.
fentanyl is a plague,
i’d say.
we’d shake hands or dap it up at the end of our reunion, Chuck.
thankful for the good times,
and hopeful,
against all odds,
for the future,
and all the Christmas visits to come.
see you in the new year.
hello again world,
TCB
