Deleted Scenes

1994: “Fifty five cents?”

I’m standing by the vending machines at Stevenson High in Jericho, IL, USA.

“Fifty five cents?”  Begging for change for a Mr. Pibb doesn’t go over well.  I live in a theoretically nice house; my pleas for soda money mostly get me ignored, which I’m used to.

“Fifty five cents?”  It’s the first, but not the last time I’ll suck mayonnaise out of packets for a vague bit of sustenance and some flavor.

My mom gives me ten bucks a week for lunch at school.  I spend most of it in the vending machine at the hotel that’s walking distance from home, a machine that exclusively dispenses cigarettes.  I like Marlboros.  The machine is in the laundry room, which is near the gift shop where my friends and I used to shoplift candy.

The hotel’s stairwells had been a source of thrill for Eric and me.  On the first floor they have doors that open to the outside of the hotel.  We’d take turns firing rocks at passing cars on IL. Rt. 22 with my Marksmen slingshot.

*

2003: “Hey Mike…Mike.”

Moulin is a 16 year old kid from India and my coworker at Subway.

“Hey Mike,” and then he whispers, “…Osama bin Laden is my father!”

He’s a funny motherfucker.  Initially I didn’t like him; he was rude and arrogant, a large kid at six feet-something and maybe 240 pounds.  Plus the owner, Iqbal, instead of increasing my hours from 30 per week as he’s sworn to do since I started the job, gave Moulin a full time position.  Now I like the kid.  We talk about girls and watched Bend It Like Beckham on his laptop in the back.  He claims he was a prince in India; I call bullshit.  Still we have many laughs, and he’s taught me about a dozen Gujarati phrases that I employ at work and at other businesses run by Indians.

I just started getting strong-armed by panic attacks.  It began one morning, right after I came in, while I was making a sandwich for an old woman.  I left shortly after, thinking I was having a heart attack.

I won’t be on medication for months.  I ride the Pace bus to work on the day Bush announced Shock and Awe was going to drop on Iraq.  I have a mild panic attack, knowing it’s imminent.

Umair is my other younger coworker, a cool Pakistani dude of 17 who speaks English well and, I’m convinced, smokes pot.  Between nine and ten that night, the last hour of business when we knock out all the store closing tasks, the store’s default radio station, which plays lite rock, broadcasts Bush’s declaration of military attack.  Umair and I have talked about the coming war.  We listen to the address and say little.  At ten fifteen we lock up, light cigarettes, walk to the stoplight and say good night, then stand on opposite sides of Touhy Avenue, waiting for our bus rides home.

*

2000: It’s Chili Night in Rogers Park.  My social anxiety is overwhelming; I’m most ill at ease among people I really admire and find kinship in, until after some time I grow comfortable with them.  Or, myself.

It’s the usual band of misfits and cheap beer to go with the traditionally vegetarian chili.  Emily oversees the pot for awhile and Joey is hanging around her, making suggestions and such.  Emily seems to be irritated with him.  He’s my best friend, but he can be fucking irritating, like scabies or socialites.

Liam gives me some Mini-Thins which I swallow with beer.  I tend to get hammered at these gatherings, so I can summon the boozy gall to get into conversations with those I consider good people.

Later, Emily and I are out back on the deck overlooking the alley.  She majored in English at the University of Chicago and intimidates the hell out of me.

“So what do you do, besides write for Underdog?” she asks me.

“Not much; just writing, and trying to read more.”

“You don’t work or anything?”

“Not right now.  How about you?”

She wants to write a book.  We talk about zines and the like, but she’s more passionate about books.  I understand the beauty of a pretty published work.  She wants to write a book herself, but her stories never end.

“I just write and I don’t know if or where a story should stop at all.  I just keep going.”

I tell her I like that.  It’s genuinely inspiring.  Then after awhile I wonder how the hell I’m holding a decent conversation, since I’m not that drunk.

Oh, right: the Mini-Thins.

*

2005: I’ve got my bags packed, and Ozzy is taking me to Kerry’s crapshack apartment before he drops me at the hospital.

I’m going to commit myself.  I got into some stupid shit with some stupid girl and spent several straight hours, sober, on a Saturday morning, sobbing uncontrollably.  The Effexor clearly ain’t working.

Kerry home cooks a corned beef and we eat and get stoned in her living room, where I’m almost always comfortable.  Her shitty brown couch is one of those that’s like a home away from home.  At one point I decide not to go to the psych ward.  We drink whiskey, watch TV, listen to music loud and laugh.  All I need is some good Irish and Mexican company.

In the morning I walk around Irving Park, get cafe con leche from a store, find some unsentimental joy in Mexican kids playing in the Saturday morning street, and then back at Kerry’s write a poem.  It’s good by 2005 standards for myself.

The only way I’ll ever go to a mental hospital is involuntarily.  And that won’t happen for two and a half years.