More Joe Bowles

 

My father and grandmother sifted through the porno mags and used rigs and trash and tried to put the house in order so it could be rented once again. There weren't many dirty dishes to deal with. I had already thrown most of them away after they had spent weeks in the sink fusing together into a solid mass of filth-covered metal and plastic. I don't know how but my grandmother was always able to turn a blind eye to such things and still give me a sincere smile. Many of the women in my family are like that. The only condition of their love is that I depend on them. So ended my second major speed run, which was but a faint echo of the first. It had also brought Joe Bowles back into my life as a fixture for a while.

My first association with Joe ended with my enrollment in an institution for the treatment of chemical dependency and enrichment of counseling majors. I spent about two and a half months in that system and was summarily discharged for having an unauthorized conjugal visit with one of the female clients who also resided there at the time.

I ran into Joe some months later when I happened to be in the old neighborhood showing off my newfound temperance. Joe had been making an attempt at clean living himself and was happy to have me as his rock to lean on during this most difficult of times. I felt it my Christian duty at the very least to show compassion to my former comrade in arms and help him take up his cross. I knew the ropes of the recovery circuit fairly well even back then and could generally convince myself that it was worth the effort even when I knew I was making a futile gesture. I could hold forth among those who were laying a solid foundation and convince them and myself that I was the authentic article. I spoke with conviction and authority, and yet gave the distinct impression that I was following that Still, Small Voice that governs the lives of the Faithful.

I returned to Irving, Texas where I had grown up and where my family had several rental properties in the south of town. Rent was cheap; my father allowed as how it wouldn't hurt for me to move into one of his vacant houses. Joe was not far behind. My father liked Joe, and Joe adored my dad. The stage seemed set for an idyllic scene of convivial domesticity between two like-minded men of a spiritual and contemplative bent.

I was back at work at Electrocom in the Spares department boxing and shipping spare parts that would never be used for the automated mail-sorting machines we assembled there. Joe had found employment with the City of Carrollton as a garbage man on a side-loader.

We frequently burst into a verse or two of "Swing Low, Sweet Side-Loader" about the house or in various dining establishments about town:

Swing low, sweet side-loadah

A comin' for to carrae me hoooome!

Swing low, sweet side-loadah

A comin' fo to carrae me hoooome.

Oh, I looked down de allae'n what'd Ah see,

A comin' fo to carrae me hoooome

Was a sweet loada scrap goods a comin afta me-e

A comin' fo to carrae me-e hoooome.

(always take yer cap off and gaze heavenward when ya sing, "home", for the last time.)

We added new, more creative verses to it from time to time. Our muse had always rested within the confines of a bottle of cheap whiskey or some more sinister form of alchemy wherein our base matter would be forged into something more than it had been. In lieu of such extracurricular help from the local hoodoo-outfit apothecary, our rantings about the house were mere echoes of what they had once been – hints at some remnant of a shared secret that was just a little shameful.

Joe was an inveterate scrapper. He had an eye for discarded articles that showed promise. He would redeem items from the piles of refuse alongside Carrollton alleyways and bring them to the house to adorn his living space. I drew the line when he came in with a mattress. Looking back, I think I was a bit hard on Joe, but I had had a sheltered life. And there was something a bit unseemly to me at the time about living amid the detritus of anonymous others culled from their refuse piles, and something worse yet about discarded bedding.

Joe was not much to look at. He was of medium height and slightly stocky build with dirty brown hair and a beard. He had delicate hands and feet for someone of his experience. He was not sinewy by any stretch, but any true fat on him was purely incidental and not the result of an indolent nature or a ruinous appetite. His skin was fair with a slightly jaundiced pallor that made him seem vulnerable. But it was the expression in his eyes that made him memorable. He had an eternal pout about him that was endearing. Life was his chronic infirmity, but he bore his suffering stoically and functioned rather well for someone who injected poison into his veins with regularity. In spite of all he had seen and done, Joe was truly puer eternis. It seemed that simply being alive hurt Joe in some spot he couldn't get at. At the same time, I could picture him in another age charging into a face full of grapeshot on some southern slope. I always thought that his was a life out of time. You could put him down in any century, and he would dissolve into the faceless mass and serve with innocuous distinction. He was also an angel among us, and I was the only one who knew that secret. I've never said anything until now.

I'm not sure at this remove how we ended up returning to battle in the Chemical War. The process did not take long, and the stages were imperceptible to us. Though I believe had we stepped back and been capable of any sort of honest self-appraisal, we would have been forced to admit that we were headed in that direction and might as well jump in with both feet. Still, I do not think I could point to any event or time and say, "That is when the choice became irrevocable."

Joe and I were returning from some sort of City Hall type business of his one afternoon when our talk turned to a jug of Mo. A jug of Mo would in a perfect world be a bottle of Tom Moore 101 whiskey – not the top shelf stuff by any stretch. In most cases it was just whatever was handy and could be as bad as KD in the plastic jug, the way it was in the old days. A jug of Mo was a Platonic Ideal towards which all affordable liquid panaceas evolved but never quite reached. We held forth to each other at great length on the evils of strong drink and the slippery path to perdition down which it leads the unsuspecting righteous man when he relaxes his vigilance. My imagination was stoking the fires of oratory and the old language of our past was creeping ever more strongly into our speech. The language Joe and I employed was akin to that used in the Old Testament with some East Dallas Hoodoo thrown in for good measure. I don't know if it can be classified in any strict sense. And I don't know if it can be accurately reproduced in print without the author of this little vignette ingesting the necessary measure of medicinal powders to acquire the spirit of tongues once so easily bestowed upon him by like circumstance and a healthy dose of sleep deprivation.

"Mugtoe?" Joe would say.

"Yessum?"

"I abjure ye, Mug. Cleave not upon the GoodStar, but follow me in paths of righteousness. The Widda approacheth, and we bees needin some a dat hateful mixture - for the medicinal purposes only, to be sure, but the need is strident and all-encompassin‘. Gird son, gird. There is a burnin‘ in my bosom that defies all restraint, is a bar against all thoughts of indolence and hedonistic pleasure, and rises imperious to accomplish our needed task." (Joe didn't really say ALL of that, but if I want to remember it that way, sue me.)

"Yessum, Joseph, I reckon we do need to cease all this lollygaggin‘ and idle patter. We been girdin our loins with that hoodoo outfit a hateful Kat's long ‘nuff. I say we cast em from us into utter darkness. You know what the book say, Joseph. If thy fiend offend thee. Utter darkness, son. Weepin and g-nashin. Ain't no other way. No other way, boy."

There would be a warm silence of agreement that would follow, then Joe would give the word, "Let us hold truck with the Widda then, Mugtoe. We've trafficked with narry a respectable fiend lo, these many days, and we've paid a terrible price for our derelictions in this matter. Let us commence upon a new path of righteousness. We'll lead our peoples out some day. You know that, donchew?"

"Yessum"

And so it would go. Aquinas said his Summa was as straw before the vision of Truth he beheld towards the end. I understand. There are some things that the written word can simply not approximate.

Suffice to say the spirit was upon us that afternoon, and the Gift of Tongues descended upon that old green pickup and led us unto that oasis which is Industrial Blvd just outside of downtown Dallas by the levee of the Trinity River. Thereupon, I entered one of the hundreds of package stores and acquired, by happenstance, a fifth of Tom Moore 101 and sealed our fates for the next couple of months.

I hate the idea of recreational IV drug use and would rather be in it with a sense of purpose. I should be able to say that it makes no difference how you administer your poisons if you are putting them into your body at all. But that would be ridiculous. There is a difference. Shooting speed is like inviting evil spirits into my life in a very real sense. I don't wonder that so many crystal freaks see angels and devils and have what would appear to be hallucinations with biblical themes. There is something in the cultural subconscious that is released by the poison or the sleep-deprivation that ensues from its use. I have never been privy to the more dramatic sights and sounds, but I have always been surrounded by those that are. Joe was more like me in this sense. He was in another, more beatific level that I cannot soil with explanation. We had a little too much Big Picture awareness. That is not to say we hadn't had our moments alone or collectively. We just never quite went over the Edge in that regard. However, I must say that I always have an almost delicious sense of putting myself outside the Grace of God when I inject crystal meth, and the feeling that I am entering a world of warring spirits is almost tangible.

Joe and I seemed to acquire people in much the same way he acquired his bedding. They were simply accretions to the household. The first was Star. We called her the GoodStar due to her girth and the ponderous quality and velocity of her movements being somewhat akin to a lighter-than-air craft. We tried to cajole her into getting food stamps for the house, but she was too inept to carry through on the process. The best we got from her was some government surplus cheese. I don't remember what became of the GoodStar. But the memory of her was more dynamic than her actual presence ever was to us. She was one of those great human non-events that people the world to fill out the scenery without ever doing more than taking up space and adding their share to the volume of sewage in our cities.

Most of the people I acquired about the house outside of Joe and the GoodStar were those towards whom I felt physically attracted but unable or unwilling to make the necessary advances to accomplish my purpose upon our initial encounters for whatever reason. I have constructed entire friendships based on little else when my only real interest was physical. I often wonder how less encumbered my life might have been had I simply acquired those moments of pleasure and tired of them in due time or made my play and been rebuffed at an earlier period in those relationships. I have always believe that my Intelligence Quotient would rise about fifty points were I to have my libido surgically eliminated.

The first of these intimates to enter the stage was Terry. He was beautiful, absolutely beautiful, and lousy in bed. We actually had some degree of intimacy, but it was so lacking in energy or appeal that I don't know why I kept him around. It was either in hopes of the action improving, or perhaps it was just because he looked so good and was the best ornament I could acquire on my limited resources. He was from Winnipeg and had very long brown hair and the brown calf-eyes that melted me. He was fairly tall and well formed. He was a metal head and got me to take him to a Metallica show in ‘88 where I looked rather ridiculous on the fifth row amongst all the teenagers. He had hustled in Hollywood and knew the ropes, but he gave some of the lousiest head I've ever had to endure short of being toothsome about it. He ended up moving in with a crystal dealer in Irving once my money ran out and my mood soured.

Jeff was a kid from across the street who came about the same time Terry did, and they enjoyed each other's company. I assured him from the get-go that I had no dishonorable intentions towards him, and then I had to grin and bear it when he would sleep in my bed draped all over me like a blanket – for after all, I didn't want to appear base or hypocritical. Jeff actually remained with me after all the others had gone. This was my karmic punishment for dishonesty and not honoring my own base motives in all things, or at least not owning them out in the open. I had little interest in Jeff as a friend, though I felt a certain proprietary interest in all the guys who came under my roof for one reason or another. I was just raised that way I guess. I never wanted to admit to him or anybody else that I would find it necessary to hide a lower motive under a higher one. It was not the idea of objectifying him that I was bothered about. It was the fact that in a moment of weakness I had stated that I had no interest in him other than those that flow from the milk of human kindness in my burning bosom. I now had to live up to that lie and make it the truth, even if it killed me. I have forever sacrificed myself in such trivial ways for the sake of my ego. I should have just fucked him and sent him running home crying to his grandma.

This episode began before all the other actors arrived on the scene in a way similar to that in which the previous run had ended. Joe and I had a bottle of whiskey and some speed he had acquired from a friend in Irving whose family owned a junkyard in the river bottoms. It was a truly hateful mixture that I found most pleasing. We spent a few days sitting around the house with the dope being delivered to us and me sitting in front of the big picture window dry-firing my pistol against my skull. Joe eventually got the bright idea of hanging a blanket over the window and depriving the neighbors of a spectacle. I could amuse myself for hours in this way. I loved my gun, and I would rub the stainless steel while watching television and cocking the hammer back and firing it off against my temple. I just liked the way it felt and sounded. I had no intentions of shooting myself. It wouldn't have occurred to me to do so even at the worst times in my life. Something about this self-deprecating sense of humor I've got that always makes me laugh at myself even when I'm groaning to God from my innermost childish, wild-eyed and wailin' spot about the vagaries of my prodigal life. What a burden I've had to bear all these years.

I got the wanderlust after a few days and left Joe to see what was going on at the Eighth Day over in east Dallas. That's where I drug Terry back from. Terry was more than happy to accompany me home when I told him I had a roof and some dope and a little liquor. He was a simple man to satisfy, and I respected that. He had been hanging out with Julio, the resident expatriate-Cuban coke dealer at the bar, and I suppose he was looking for something of a more familiar cultural territory. I did not give off the air of having a life-size bleeding statue of a saint in my living room, so I was a wholesome prospect for a host-organism by comparison to what had turned up on this tiny littoral of Fitzhugh Avenue.

As more and more people accrued to our little nest, Joe became more and more absent. Finally, he told me one day that he'd be quitting for environs more unsullied by such unruly children as I was in the habit of accumulating on my nights out prowling.

"None a them fiendish outfits is older'n twenny-five, Mugtoe. What're you thinkin of, you heathen bastard?"

I shrugged and looked down the street. What could I say? Except that I felt honor-bound to stick to my word once having offered shelter to all and sundry critters who happened to cross my path when I was under the tyranny of an impulse. My house was beginning to look like a Rumanian orphanage. I didn't blame Joe a bit, but I wish I had not gotten myself into this situation where I was forced to surrender the only link to a more honorable kind of drug world of our collective imagination where my amorous proclivities were not a factor. This was not to be at this point. I could tell that Joe wanted me to turn all of them out, back into the wilderness from which they sprouted. To cast them off our backs, so that he and I could continue upon our solitary sojourn through the shrouds of mystery that falls over such travels as we were subject to take in those most densely compact of times enhanced by the honey-shot and blood-splattered walls.

I wished him well and told him to keep in touch. I felt like commenting on how nicely the band kept playing while the ship tilted so steeply.

The GoodStar was gone, and so was Joe. Soon Jeff, Terry, and I were joined by Mark and Kim, also of Eighth Day repute. Mark was a fugitive from Canadian justice, and Kim was his ersatz girlfriend from Georgia. Mark was a likeable sort and was popular due to the immense member he carried with him. It was truly impressive, but those things are less than important to me. Key to me was the fact that in Mark's company I was invited to all sorts of intimate, coke-filled, smoky gatherings that otherwise I might have missed out on. A gigantic penis can open doors in most social circles, so long as it is attached to something remotely presentable. Mark could be a charmer when the mood struck.

The most important development of this period was that Joe had left. There had been a mutiny, and I, the captain of this ship, felt ashamed. I began what was to be a relatively short-term debauch of liliputian scope compared to previous runs, but I was destitute of spirit. The effect was that there was no romance to my rush. No poetry in my wire. Only ugly people doing bad things. I couldn't see the redeeming quality in folks anymore without the filter of Joe's humanity on my perceptions. People came and went in a short time. I went through whatever money I had and quit my job to bum around for a few months at family expense. That last act managed to disengage some of the more tenacious barnacles in the crowd. Once the tit dries up, some of em keep a suckin it til it bleeds.

I went off to lick my wounds and devise a new means of approaching cruel destiny for my sop. I decided at this point to become a Baptist preacher. It was a new formula in that spiritual calculus which I have spent my life devising. That is a whole different story, however.