Basement Rising

I like to think that I’ve dealt well with all the stress in my life because, regardless of the blood on my hands and the screaming horrors surrounding me, I sleep well.  I sleep through the night, I never wake up, I don’t have nightmares, I don’t grind my teeth, and I wake up refreshed.

 Maybe a restful night’s sleep is a sure sign that I really am a sociopath.  And thank god of that!

While we were listening to weird Tori Amos b-sides, my old friend James leaned back on the worn basement couch I had dragged through much of my life and congratulated me on my odd ability to maintain my cool while also existing in a constant state of emotional meltdown.

“Needy detachment,” he said, “You’re a paradox.”

The couch had begun life with mid century glory before being forgotten in a pest-ridden corner of the basement.  It now sat in the sun, a lifetime later, centerpiece. 

I remembered the basement of my parent’s house.  Family homestead, four bed, four and a half bath, top of the hill, glaring in haunted mansion glory at passersby with a red maple canopy planted by some dead relative.  Suburban dream, a bike ride away from big bad DC – slow down, neighborhood watch, keep your dog off the lawn, money in and money out, blank windows and family horror in the closet. 

When it all stopped working, when it all fell apart, it was just mom and me.  Launched into food stamp poverty, her parents throwing themselves into the fray to keep everything floating, to preserve an ill-advised, desperate island in the storm that took us all unawares when dad left.  He walked, we fell.  Mom never returned from that terrible moment, she never woke up again.  Her life drifted through utter despair, fueled by booze and drugs and anger.  A brilliant mind trapped in simple, broken emotions.  Mom had a quirk that had been handed down through the family tree, the unpredictable insanity that seemed to stop development at age 14.  A little girl in a hateful world.  Everything she did was an attempt to escape, a crazed run for some sort of relief from her self-misery.  She didn’t figure out the best way to do it until I was 26.  By then, in a squalid apartment, she smoked her last joint, popped her last pills, downed her last beer, cleaned the kitchen, and organized all of the important documents on the kitchen table.  Then she drove to visit a childhood memory in the hills of Virginia before driving herself into a tree at top speed.  Purified by fire. 

I visited the spot a few weeks later.  The car had blown up movie style, the tree was blackened, a hole blasted through the branches towards the clear summer sky, the grass UFO landing chic.  Mom always knew how to put on a show.  It was that little girl in her, I think.  Drama queen glory whore. 

Someone still puts flowers on her grave.  She lies next to her grandfather, the great patriarch, the West Virginia mafia man. 

A childhood in that broken home, curtains drawn, smoke hovering in the air, shadows following every light step, pushed me into corners, behind closed doors, into haunted basements.  Keep your back to the wall, keep your head down, please be careful if you visit.

The basement, finished and beautiful two generations before me, was meant for parties, pool tables, a maid in residence, stylish flare and inset bookshelves, room for a waltz and dozens of drinkers, begging for a bar.  In my time, it was a basement full of ghosts.  Boxes and trash, wall to wall, hip-deep.  Remnants of a past frozen in the present, nothing thrown away.  Nothing touched.  Decorations and books and papers and furniture.  A sea of rotting cardboard boxes and puddles of unknown liquid, old clothes and forgotten appliances.  On the old couch, sitting silently, there was nothing but angry fear in the air.  A big, bad ‘Get Out!’  Go back up those filthy carpeted stairs – powder blue – through that door with the big fuck-off deadbolt.  Lock it tight.  You’ll hear sounds in your sleep, even then.  You’ll hear groans, chains, moans.  The house settling.  Death.

The broken family back and back – Alzheimer’s, strokes, slow deaths.  Decay and bitterness. Loneliness and betrayal.  Walk away.  Bring it all down and walk away. 

I’m the only one who did it right.  I’m the only one who walked away like a human being. 

There, the couch.  That worn basement couch in the sun, recovered furniture from forgotten storage sheds and my grandparent’s sad collection.  Their own basement stuffed with a century of memories.  Their own basement a strange sea of trash.  You can’t take it with you, they say, while they clutch it to them until the end. 

My eyes flicked to my own trash, in boxes and ready to move.  From a single car load to multiple trips to a rented van.  I paused.  My drink smelled of rum.  I closed my eyes.

“The noble paradox,” I replied.

James grunted.  We stared at the wall for a moment.  At a picture drawn by an ex-girlfriend.  She had talent.  My life and times with artistic women flashed, novel-like, through my mind.  A dozen faces, voices, crystalline laughs, long fingers, gentle mouths, supple flesh, warm cunts, and tight embraces.  I smiled for each one, turned my head slightly, took in the painting, the handmade frame, a hundred fine details not brought into sharp enough focus by my prescription.  Story of my life.  That faraway stuff always a blur.

“We need to save ourselves,” James said, “Before this turns into a Sunday.”

“I’m open to your suggestions.”

“We should drink!”

“We are.”

James shook his head, “More, more, more.  I mean – drink.  Not sit here like queers and drink cocktails.”

“You’re drinking a glass of warm vodka.”

 “What I’m saying is clear to you?”  He put a finger to his lips, then to his ear.

“What you are saying is clear to me.”  I replied automatically.

“Put down your four quarters Dr. Pepper and dash of Rum and get to the mix, Mix.”

Tight kitchens, borrowed spoons, stolen glasses, dead woman’s wok.  James had moved to the computer chair.  He rolled across the floor, my neighbors below no doubt snapping to attention, and slammed into the wall outside the kitchen. 

“Flashback!” he shouted at me, “You’re in the mood.”  He fluttered his hands in front of his face, held them up mystic-style.  On the right he held up his first two fingers, thumb extended, palm out Shaolin style.  The left hand the same, palm inward.  I assumed significance in the pose.  I remained quiet for enlightenment, rum over shaved ice, soda on rum, the high life of bachelorhood.  A long silence passed between us, James holding the pose, a stupid grin on his face.

I swerved first: “How do you mean?” 

“Waves of self pity,” he drew out the word ‘pity’ with a growl low in his throat, “and I’m tired of it.  So cathartic flashback.  Where do you begin?”

I smiled and shook my head.  Handing him the drink, which he put on the table next to his glass of vodka, I took a sip of my own beefed up rum and Dr. Pepper, then returned to the couch, letting the cushions take me, watching the ex’s picture for movement, the blank wall around it for change, and took a slow, easy breath.  There was a tingle in my sinuses, cherry blossoms outside the window, the sound of traffic somewhere out there, three contrails in the perfect blue, a hole in the armrest, James behind me in a darker silence than before.