White Dwarf | 11. Predators
Shafto had three stepdaughters with his ex-wife, one of whom, Natalie, was my age. She had the reputation around school of being somewhat of a slut. I doubted there was any truth to that rumor, but there was another rumor, the veracity of which I didn’t question. Natalie’s mother had divorced Shafto upon discovering that he had drilled a hole through the wall into the bathroom and caught him watching one of Natalie’s sisters taking a shower. I never talked with Natalie about Shafto—or anything else for that matter. She was popular and pretty while I was a rebellious loser known for never living up to my potential and committing acts so notoriously subversive that I was revered throughout the entire school district by the disaffected. However, I did hear her one day proudly telling a friend that she had finally been adopted by her new stepfather and would no longer have to bear Shafto’s last name. Once word got around that my mother had married Shafto, rather than giving me her usual look of disdain when we passed in the hallways, something in her attitude toward me softened and her expression took on a note of sympathy.
I didn’t have much contact with Shafto’s family. I had only met his mother a handful of times. Once at the wedding and then the few times she came over to our house. I never participated in any of his family events or holiday gatherings. As far as I knew, the only members of Shafto’s family who were even aware of my existence were the niece and nephew with whom I went to school, his daughter, who came over to stay on some weekends and his mother who had the rare opportunity to spot me outside my room a few times and who dumped her disturbingly ugly dog on us whenever she left town for extended periods.
Read the rest of this entry »White Dwarf | 12. Nylons and Blood
Travis was quiet as we headed south to the quarry. I could smell his old underwear and socks even with the window rolled down and his heavy splashing of Brut 33. I chewed up and swallowed the two hits of blotter that had been under my tongue. I knew it would be creeping over me at any moment and wanted to go into it with just about anything on my mind other than Travis’ body odor.
“So, I guess Piper and Whitney are gonna be there tonight and probably a bunch of their hot friends.”
“Yeah. They’ll all be doing acid, probably.”
“Yeah. Does that bother you?”
Travis shrugged, “What’s it like?”
I pondered a moment, “I can’t really explain it. It’s something you have to see for yourself.”
“You got any?”
Whatever sensibilities I had left told me to say “no.” I had no idea how Travis, with his Tourette’s Syndrome and the medication he was taking for it, would react to acid. Considering his strength, it wasn’t something I really wanted to play around with. Still, unlike most, I could see past the pure brutishness of his exterior. Travis had shared some of his deepest dreams with me. I knew he was basically a good person.
Read the rest of this entry »White Dwarf | 13. Betrayal
I nestled into the green vinyl of Willie’s couch, my head gently tilting into the back-rest. My awareness was caught in a wave of morphine and it slowly ebbed away from my surroundings, withdrawing to some unknown part of my mind, leaving my subconscious to deal with the messy world. A fog of intertwined pot and tobacco smoke dissolved into billowing clouds aflame in the orange light of sunset. The drab white walls melted into a sky blanketed in yellow gradually blending into orange then red then purple and finally a sliver of blue midnight peeking over the horizon.
It was a fragment of a memory long since broken like cheap glass by time, drugs, stepfathers and cops. It was my twelfth summer, nothing special. A brief moment of reprieve with my grandparents after watching my mom take a beating from her second husband. I lounged in the quiet of my grandparents’ yard that day, reading “A Wrinkle in Time” and drinking grape juice until the sun set behind the brick buildings rising above the trees on the other side of the river. The moment awoke an unfamiliar feeling somewhere in my chest. Those clouds, those colors—they called me like a voice from some unknowable place. There was something wonderful and magical out there in the world, if I could only find it. As the sun slowly sank behind the distant trees, I was left feeling at once joyful and melancholic. That feeling yanked me back into the ratty den of Willie’s home.
Read the rest of this entry »White Dwarf | 14. Courting Disaster
The hallway was filled with well-dressed, nervous people. I peered through a slim sheet of glass embedded in the heavy wooden door that led into the courtroom—there was nobody inside. I scanned the hall for my lawyer, but there were too many people: fellow alleged criminals, their families, friends, and legal representation. I was alone.
After a thousand dollars and several months, the only advice my lawyer had given me was to dress nicely for the hearing. Evidently, everyone else’s lawyer had given them the same advice. I found the suggestion somewhat troubling. I thought judges were supposed to be impartial to that sort of thing. Maybe I was supposed to be showing my respect for the court, in which case I was lying—I had none.
Read the rest of this entry »White Dwarf | 15. Cavities and Crazies
The morning air was dead and stagnant. It reminded me of the stasis of my mind—a numbness inside my skull. I had been working with Toad on the day shift for a few months and never managed to be less than an hour late. Every morning was the same: The spine-chilling electric throb of the alarm would bore into my head at six o’clock. I had the alarm on the other side of the room so I would be forced to stand up and walk over to it, thinking that would get my circulation going enough to keep me awake. I don’t know who I was trying to fool. I would shut the alarm off and virtually collapse back into bed only to be awakened one to two hours later by a phone call from Toad.
Toad’s wakeup calls were usually just enough of an adrenaline rush to help me overcome my narcotics hangover. I popped some painkillers, pulled on some clothes and groggily drove to work—I never remembered so much as a second of the fifteen minute journey. I was rarely ever certain whether I was awake or asleep.
Read the rest of this entry »White Dwarf | 16. Gas Station Philosophy
I guess my empty opiate stare betrayed some inner unrest. The Metro Baptist Church minister, whose name I never could remember, was hell-bent on bringing me into the fold. I resented his advances deeply. It was an insult that he concentrated so intently on my soul and none of my coworkers’. I cringed when I saw his blue four-door pulling into my island. Standing outside baking in the hundred degree heat, I could barely breathe the thick, moist air. I watched with dead eyes as the car slowed to a quiet halt next to the premium unleaded pump. The minister energetically opened his door, releasing a brief, refreshing blast of air-conditioned relief over me. It was almost as if God had farted on me.
“Hello Darren! How are you today?!”
That sparkling Christian Glow sickened me. I wanted to kick him in the nuts. As sedated as I was, I doubt I could have lifted my foot that high.
Read the rest of this entry »White Dwarf | 17. Angels and Amphibians
If heaven was twice as good as the Metro Baptist guy claimed it was, then it was still only half as good as an opiate high. It should have been no surprise, then, that opiate withdrawal was far worse than any hell I ever imagined.
I told Toad I wouldn’t be able to work the entire weekend and probably Monday. I knew the horror would last longer than that, but the first three days would be the worst and I planned to spend those three days at home locked in my room.
The first day without opiates wasn’t too bad. Brains have a habit of trying every trick in the book to coerce your body into obtaining more opiates. I guess I still had enough in my system to fool my brain into thinking it wasn’t quite dying yet.
Read the rest of this entry »White Dwarf | 18. Conversations with Toad
There was something bittersweet about my last day with Toad. Despite his crazy paranoia, political rantings and sausage-filled cavities, he did have his charming side. Toad was in an especially good mood that day—it was his way of letting me know that he wasn’t upset that I was leaving for school and going back to the night shift He was letting me know he didn’t take it personally. I was my usual hour late and brought out the trash cans, squeegee buckets and air hose as fast as I could, without even stopping to chit-chat with the guys next door at Amoco. They had taken a special interest in me since my overdose in their air-conditioned waiting area. They had been especially impressed by my guzzling of three or four bottles of Gatorade—I ’d lost count in my delirium.
I unlocked the pumps and awaited the first customer of the day while Toad reported the tank levels to Lee. It was a long wait. The station opened absurdly early and hardly anyone was out driving at that hour. Toad turned on his favorite radio station—KY-102, which had a morning program that one could loosely describe as a comedy show. Toad laughed uproariously at the crazy antics of the deejays while I buried my head in a futile attempt to hide from the annoying blather. Occasionally, they would play a compact disc for those who happened to like bad ‘70s music. Invariably the disc would skip, sending Toad on an hour-long rant about how compact discs were inferior to vinyl.
Read the rest of this entry »White Dwarf | 19. Twilight
I couldn’t bear another day working with Toad. Waking up that early in the morning was utterly inhuman. And if that wasn’t bad enough, I had was subjected to hours of his inane “comedy” radio shows. His psychotic rants about the moderation in drug use, all the while guzzling gallons of vodka and Mountain Dew. Things turned even worse when the Gulf War started. We had two types of customers who came in and sprinkled their two cents worth on the war.
The first set were enraged they had to pay more than a dollar fifty for gas. I was never really certain whether Toad actually believed a single word he said or if he just liked to argue with people, no matter how insane the position. Those who complained about the price of gas were usually greeted with the utmost hostility. They were first reminded that people in Europe have long been paying exorbitant prices for fuel and that we should consider ourselves lucky. In fact, Toad argued, Americans have been paying far too little for gasoline. That would usually end the discussion, unless it was an old man—as the day shift customers often were. Especially old men who had fought in World War II or Vietnam. They would argue with Toad for hours without paying a care in the world to the fact that I was handling every other customer that decided to swamp the place whenever Toad was on his soap-box.
Read the rest of this entry »White Dwarf | 20. The Art Institute
It was a warm Saturday morning. Roy and I had offered to take over the entire Saturday shift so we could spend the day drinking beer and getting high. I brought a half ounce of weed to work and Roy supplied a case of beer, which we kept in the ice machine—a big white metallic refrigerator appropriately marked on the side with the word “ICE” in frosted red lettering. The ice machine was used more by us employees than customers, since people rarely bought ice from us. Instead, we used it to store beer and food and sometimes took turns sitting in it during those humid, 100 degree Missouri days.
I was looking forward to the day—I knew it would be one for the history books. Not that that would have taken much at that point in my life. I had spent the past several months—practically all summer—being tortured by that atrocity of a job. That period of time was a waste, getting up at the ass-crack of dawn, sitting in that chair all day suffocating in the heat while Toad blathered on about things I couldn’t even begin to explain to any rational person. Once my shift was over, I would go home, too exhausted and stoned to do anything but lie on the couch in my shorts and watch television with Sung nestled between my bent leg. Usually, she would lick my bare knee until it was almost bleeding. It probably would have hurt if I hadn’t had enough morphine in me to kill several whales a thousand times over.
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