Last Night I Sang to the Monster (6 page)

The thing about being at this place is that I am supposed to engage in healthy behaviors. Going to meals is a healthy behavior. Not that I was ever hungry. And not that I talked to anyone. I sort of just listened. Look, I’m consistent. This is not a bad thing. I mean, they
do
tell us that we need to be consistent. And the thing about meals is that there’s a lot of drama.
I do not like drama.
Someone is crying or someone is saying something snarky or someone is complaining that this place sucks or someone is offering an opinion about one of the therapists or someone is telling their life story or someone is getting into it with someone else about shit that just doesn’t matter—and it all makes me fucking crazy. Adam says that I need to engage in behaviors that are good for my sobriety. In my opinion, the meals here are extremely bad for my sobriety. Not the food, the people. And, another thing, I am not exactly nuts about being sober.

After meals, if I wasn’t on clean-up duty, I’d just go to my cabin and read. Not such a bad life really, when you think about it. I was supposed to be doing homework, but I didn’t feel like doing it. You know, the therapists were always trying to get you to talk about yourself. Like I really wanted to do that. And I’d always get an assignment. What does your addiction look like? Draw a picture of your home life. Write a letter to your mother. My addiction looks sad. My home life was sad. My mother was sad. Next assignment please. Let’s keep moving. Shit.

I was pretty much doing okay living in Cabin 9 all by myself. It was okay. I was fine. Fine. Every time I said that word, Adam repeated it. Like, yeah, sure,
fine.

Then Rafael came along. He’d been in another cabin and I knew him because he was in my group and I liked him okay. Not that I was all that present in group. Look, the guy didn’t bother me. But that didn’t mean I wanted to have him as a roommate. I don’t know whose bright idea it was to have him move in with me,
but I was not happy.
I got this idea into my head
that Adam was behind the whole thing and I told Adam I didn’t think it was a good idea that Rafael roomed with me.

“Why not?”

“He’s old,” I said.

“We don’t put people together based on age.”

“His hair is turning gray.”

Adam was giving me this look. “And?”

“He needs a haircut.”

“So do you.”

“I’m growing my hair long.”

“So is he.”

“Can’t he stay where he was?”

“What?” he said. “Does this interfere with all that isolation?” I wanted to pop the guy. I knew it wasn’t going to do any good if I told Adam that Rafael seemed too sad and kinda broken and maybe it wasn’t good for me to have a sad and kinda broken older gentleman as a roommate. I wanted to say, “Maybe he’ll be bad for my sobriety.”

Look, I was stuck with the guy. When he moved in, he shook my hand, and I don’t know, I guess I thought the guy wasn’t going to be so bad. His smile
was
kind of sad but it was real and I liked that. And the best thing was that he didn’t take up a lot of space and he was friendly and respectful and all of that. The guy had manners and so maybe I thought it was a good thing that he was my roommate because I knew other guys would be arriving because people arrived all the time and I figured it was better to have Rafael for a roommate than some ill-mannered, screwed-up jerk.

After Rafael moved in, we talked a little bit, but I could tell right away he didn’t want to get inside my head, which was really cool, because I really wigged out when people tried to get inside my head. And Rafael, well, he seemed, well, I hate to say this, kinda normal. A lot more normal than me, anyway. He knew how to talk to people. And I felt bad for having gone to Adam to complain about the guy when really I didn’t know shit about him.

The thing that really tore me up about Rafael was that when he smiled he almost looked like a boy. But, you know, well, there was that sadness thing about him. I could see it in his dark eyes. I mean, the guy was seriously
sad. He was almost as sad as my mom, but somehow he seemed to be more connected to the world. Not that being connected to the world was all that great a thing. Not the way I saw it. What did being connected to the world get you? It got you sadder.
Look, the world is not sane.
If you stay connected to an insane world, well, you just go crazy. This is not a complicated theory. It’s just simple logic.

And then Sharkey came along.

He was all smiles and talk and bullshit. But I liked him. See Rafael didn’t take up a lot of space, but Sharkey, the guy took up space. I mean, he just about took over Cabin 9. And the guy had stuff. Three suitcases. Not small suitcases either. I’m serious. He had different kinds of sneakers and all kinds of pairs of shoes and clothes and clothes and more clothes. How long was the guy planning on staying? And sunglasses. Man, the guy was all about sunglasses. I got a big kick out of watching Steve go through Sharkey’s things. Steve, he’s on staff. They do that here, they go through your things. You know, make sure you don’t have any sharpies to hurt yourself with and most especially they want to make sure you’re not sneaking in any drugs. They don’t trust you here. Not that any of us are worth trusting.

But man, did I get a kick out of seeing the look on Steve’s face—especially when he got to Sharkey’s underwear. I mean Sharkey had a stack of designer underwear still in the boxes. Designer underwear, it comes in a box. The dude had money. Maybe he was a dealer. That’s what I was thinking.

When Sharkey walked into the cabin, Rafael was reading a book. And me, that’s exactly what I was doing. He looked at both of us and said, “Well, you guys are gonna be a barrel of fucking laughs.”

Rafael and I looked at each other and smiled. The good thing was that Sharkey made Rafael laugh. I mean, Rafael had a sense of humor. In some ways, he seemed younger than a guy in his fifties. It wasn’t so much the way he looked, it was the way he existed in the world. See, I have this theory:
some people exist in the world in an old way and some people exist in the world in a young way. My dad, he existed in an old way. Rafael, he existed in a young way. Adam, he existed in a young way too. See, some guys, they’ll always be like boys in some ways. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I haven’t decided yet.

But see, I liked the young thing about Rafael.

And Rafael, he put up with Sharkey’s bullshit. I mean, Sharkey was the kind of guy who always told you what he thought. Like we wanted to know. But see, guys like that, they don’t always believe that everything is a two-way street. They tell you what they think. That’s cool. But when you look guys like Sharkey straight in the eye and tell them what
you
think, well, that’s not always so cool.

When Rafael first arrived, me and him would talk a little. Not much. I didn’t like to talk and he was sad and we both liked to read. So it was a good match. The cabin was nice and quiet. But with Sharkey on the loose, the whole cabin changed. His first night, he started asking a lot of questions. “What are you in for?” He looked straight at Rafael. It wasn’t hardly a question.

Rafael gave him a crooked smile. “I’m an alcoholic,” he said.

“Is that all?”

Rafael shook his head. “There’s more to it than that.”

“Well, I got nothing but time. I’m stuck here for thirty days.”

Rafael laughed. “You can leave any time you want. This isn’t a prison. We’re not doing time.”

“The fuck we’re not.”

“Have you ever actually done time?”

“Fuck yes. And I’m not going back. That’s why I’m here.”

“So you have yourself some legal consequences?”

Sharkey laughed. “You could say that. Look, I’m not coppin’ to shit. But, see, I figure the judge is gonna smile at someone’s who’s trying to get his act together by coming to a place like this. See, I’ll spend thirty days here, get my therapist to write a nice letter and, you know, the judge will see that I’m ready to join the earth people. Not that I want to be an earth person. But there’s no harm in pretending to be one if it’ll keep me out of the fucking slammer.”

Rafael smiled. I mean, I could tell Rafael was getting a kick out of the guy. “What were you into?”

“This a fucking interview?”

Rafael shot him a smile. “Yes. If Zach and I don’t like you, they’ll move your ass to another cabin.”

“Bullshit.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Then Rafael just broke out laughing. Then Sharkey went at it too. And me too. So we were all there in Cabin 9, laughing our asses off.

Then the room got real quiet.

“Look,” Sharkey said. “I guess I was pretty much into everything. Cocaine, heroin, alcohol—you name it, I did it.” He seemed pretty proud of himself. He looked at Rafael. I mean the guy had no remorse in his voice. I know remorse when I hear it. Rafael, he had remorse coming out his ears. Sharkey, he had zero remorse. “And you, dude, what was your drink of choice?”

“Wine.”

“Wine? Shit, that’s lame.”

“It did the job.”

And then he looked across the room at me. “What about you, Zachy?” The guy already had a nickname for me.

“Bourbon,” I said.

“Just bourbon?”

“Well, coke. I liked that too.”

“Now we’re talking.”

He got this look on his face. Euphoric memory. That’s what Adam called it. “Some of you guys even get high remembering.” That Adam, he had a name for everything. But that was exactly the look Sharkey had on his face. Euphoria. The guy was a disaster. But I liked him. He wasn’t normal. If you were normal, he called you an earth person. He didn’t care for them. No way. I think that’s what I liked about him.

I wanted to ask him what he did to get himself into legal trouble, but I figured I’d find out soon enough. I figured I wouldn’t even have to ask. After a few days, I’d know more about the guy than God did. That was my thinking.

Sharkey got quiet for a little while and looked around the room. But soon enough he started in again. “What is this bullshit of going through your stuff? It’s such bullshit. And what’s with this sex contract that we have to sign that we won’t have sexual contact with anyone while we’re here. What’s that about?”

Rafael was trying like hell to read. He looked up from his book. “It’s a no-touch facility.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

Rafael kinda shook his head. “You know what it means, Sharkey. And I think you know why.”

That seemed to quiet down Sharkey’s complaints. Not that Sharkey was happy about the whole thing. See, I was already getting it into my head that Sharkey just liked to complain. “You know,” he said, “there’s probably not any girl here I’d want to have sex with anyway.”

Rafael looked up from his book and smirked. Rafael, that guy could smirk. “What makes you so sure there’s a girl in here that would want to have sex with
you,
buddy?”

That pissed Sharkey off. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

See, I knew what Rafael was doing. Sharkey was a really handsome guy. You know, the kind of guy who thought everyone was in love with him because, well, a face like that went a long way—especially with girls. Guys like Sharkey thought they owned the world. Rafael, he didn’t go in for that.

Rafael didn’t say anything. He just kept reading his book.

“Look,” Sharkey said, “any girl would be lucky to have me.”

“Maybe,” Rafael said, “but if I had a daughter, I wouldn’t let you past the front porch.”

“Look, dude, you don’t know me. Maybe I’m a really nice guy.”

“Yeah. You probably
are
a nice guy. Tell me something, how many girls have you been with?”

“Is this still a part of that interview?” Sharkey sort of laughed, but I could tell Rafael was making him nervous.

“I have a guess.” Rafael peered over his book.

“I’m game, dude.”

“How old are you? Twenty-seven? Twenty-eight?” Rafael, he was good with ages.

“Twenty-seven.”

Rafael nodded. “I’d say you’ve been with, let me see, more than fifty girls—more than fifty but under a hundred.”

Sharkey smiled. “So what?”

“See what I mean about not letting you past the front porch?”

Sharkey laughed. He didn’t say anything for a while, but I knew he was thinking of something else to say. Finally, he looked at Rafael. “What is it with you and that book?”

Rafael laughed. “We have a personal relationship.”

That made Sharkey laugh. But then he said, “Doesn’t seem like you need to be in place like this.”

“Trust me, I need to be here.”

“Not me.”

Rafael smiled. “Maybe not. Well, there is that thing about your legal consequences.”

“Consequences? What’s up with you and that word, dude?”

“What about that word don’t you like?”

“What are you, a counselor? You’re not supposed to play therapist. It says so right in the rules.”

“If you want to get technical, the rules don’t actually say that. And anyway, I’m not much interested in playing therapist. I’m a garden-variety drunk. Nothing special about that.”

I hated to hear Rafael say that. I don’t know why. I just didn’t like to hear him talk about himself that way.