It’s
dark when we leave — it’s almost always dark when we leave because I have an
evening class and am not available for giving rides until at least seven p.m. John[i]
doesn’t mind, because I’m his only ride, and he’s not going to complain when
I’m taking two hours out of my day to help him out. He always offers to pay for
the gas, and I’m a broke college student so I can never refuse.
In
the winter, we have to sit in the parking lot defrosting the windows for ten
minutes before easing onto 99W. I’ve only known John since September, but we’ve
gone to parties together, have been on high late night Wal-Mart runs for
munchies, and I’ve patched him up after various accidents, and he’s an easy guy
to like, and he’s been a better friend in three months than some of my high
school buddies were in four years.
Every
drive starts out the same. The music is cranked for the first ten minutes or so
before John strikes up a conversation, sometimes about classes, more often
about Amy, his pregnant on/off girlfriend, and his unborn son. It’s a fun drive
on a curvy road with good music and good company, and even though two hours is
a big chunk of time lost on driving someone I barely know, it was two hours we
could put the world on hold.
I
met Amy a few times; she seemed pleasant. I was willing to reserve any
judgment, because she was pregnant, and no woman is herself when that many
hormones are raging. I thought it was admirable John was sticking with her,
despite (and I am just learning this now) her being horrible to him.
“She’s
probably not the best person for me to be with, but it’s not about what’s best
for me, it’s about what’s best for my son.”
* * *
His
wife doesn’t like me or his past very
much, and barring a suitable coffee shop, we have to settle for my dormitory
apartment.
“Wow, it’s really messy.”
“. . . . yeaaaaaaaaaaaah that’d be
my roommate’s.”
The place is kind of — no, it’s really disgusting: papers scattered everywhere from
the living room to the kitchen island, sweaters in heaps on various chairs,
shoes in the middle of the hall. The carpets haven’t been vacuumed since we
moved in, the floor hasn’t been swept or mopped in weeks, there are dirty
dishes in the sink and on every counter, and DVD and videogame cases are ranged
around the TV like birdseed. I’d much rather interview him somewhere else, but
I don’t think a guy who last year stumbled into my room at 3 a.m. cross-faded
and guffawing to sleep next to the mini fridge,
minds all that much. He drops onto the couch and I perch fold into an armchair.
He’s got large scabs on his hands and knee.
“Were you longboarding?”
He laughs. “Uh, yeah.”
This is probably the fourth or fifth
longboarding accident I’ve heard of in the last two years. Last time, he got a
concussion and road rash on his back and the top of his ass (which I, owning
gauze and Neosporin, was obligated to treat). He broke his glasses that time,
but not the brand new glass pipe he had bought earlier that day. Another time
he came to me before class with a gouged finger, “It literally just stopped bleeding a minute ago,” that looked like it
could benefit from superglue but he had shit to do and I just packed it with
gauze and told him not to abuse it.
His hands are still swollen and
bruised. “I had to change a tire with these a few days ago.”
“Ow.”
“Yeah, and my spare was flat too.”
John is an honest person, and when I
ask him to just give me a little background about himself he launches straight
into some pretty deep shit.
“My parents were great people — are
great people. My dad always raised me saying ‘I want you to have it better than
I did’ or ‘I want you to be a better man than I was’ and I try to do that every
day.”
John hails from the general area of
Salem, Oregon. He’s twenty, has a twin, and has been with his wife, Amy, since
high school, but they are only recently married.
“Her dad hated me. He didn’t respect
me. Never let me come over.” He hit Amy for the smallest mistakes; one time,
she spent all her phone minutes, and her dad kicked her enough that he almost
broke her ribs. If he heard Amy had talked to John, he would hit her as hard as
he could.
“I think I was the best thing for
her at the time. I would do anything for her. Anything. I would run or bike to her house in the middle of the
night. At one point I was running or biking thirty to fifty miles a week for her.”
But Amy never did anything like that
for him.
“She threatened to leave me all the
time.”
He got her pregnant senior year of
high school. He helped her hide it from her dad, and drove her to Portland for
a two-step abortion.
“It was a few weeks past what they
could do in Salem. I had to drive her to Portland one day for them to insert
these seaweed stalks into her cervix, to make it dilate. Then I had to drive
her back the next day, and they used this thing,” he cups his hands into a
semi-circle, “kind of like an ice cream scoop, to take the rest out.”
He took her to CVS to fill her
prescription. “She was in a lot of pain — it was a really painful procedure,
and she didn’t handle the pain well.” She vomited in the parking lot. She bled
a lot.
“I stayed with her through it all,
and she broke my heart.”
He pauses. I remember last year him
saying Amy had been pregnant before, but it had been implied she miscarried.
John is not a quiet person. He
laughs and talks a lot, and he speaks with confidence. But he’s quiet now and
staring at a spot on the floor. Maybe I should have structured the interview
better to avoid him having to talk about this. I was curious about his drug
use, not the difficulties he’s had with Amy.
“What are you most proud of?”
He answers without hesitation.
“Being a good drug dealer. My friends said I was the best drug dealer they ever
had.” He gave them good prices, could always smoke them out.
“Drugs — love them. Think they’re a
great thing — but not the hard stuff like heroin, meth, E.” He rattles off
something about analogs and psychedelics, “peyote” and “hallucinogens” the only
parts I understand.
John is also proud of being
well-liked guy with a good reputation. “Not many people dislike me, and those
that do don’t have good reasons to.”
One of those people is sitting in
her room right behind us. “Most every person in this world is good, even if not
everything they do is legal. I think it’s stupid and judgmental to dislike
someone because they’ve done something illegal.”
“Oh hell yes.” It’s hard to dislike John
— he’s got a grin like an idiot, squints his eyes like he’s stoned all the
time, laughs frequently. He’s short and a bit of a nerd and one of the kindest,
most open and honest people I’ve met.
“I’m proud of my friends. I’m proud
that I know a lot about a lot of things. I learn easily. I try to be the best
at whatever I’m doing. I worked for my grandpa at his company one summer, and
the manager always said I was one of the best workers.” And not because John
was his boss’s son, but because John did his work faster and more efficiently
than some of the adults on staff.
“What else are you proud of?”
“My son.” Finally I get a smile from
him. “I try to do what’s best for my son. I don’t smoke as much. Amy doesn’t
mind if I smoke, as long as she knows who I’m with and what I’ll be doing.”
“Do you have any regrets?”
“Oh fuck yes, I have regrets.”
“What do you regret the most?”
“I wish I had walked away from Amy
in high school. But I gave in to her begging. She was afraid to lose me. She
kept saying how we’d be together when we were older, preferably after we both
had bachelor’s degrees. I wish that was how it had gone.” Her dad wanted her to
be a surgeon, put a lot of pressure on her to pursue a career in medicine. But
that would take a lot of time — a lot of school, and it would be a long time
before they could be together if she did that.
“I feel stuck with Amy.” He scoffs
and leans back on the couch. “It’s hard to be with someone who broke your heart
while she was pregnant with your son. But I wouldn’t change it now, because of
him. I have to give him a good life.” He smiles again and it’s that goofy smile
that makes him look high out of his mind. “Alex is such a happy kid. Smiles all
the time, laughs all the time. And god, is he smart. So smart. He looks at
things, and you can tell he’s trying to figure them out. You know what his
favorite toys are? This one particular set of Tupperware, and the caps from
milk jugs. He freaking loves those,
can spend hours playing with them. He also has his Snuggly, this blanket with a
monkey in the middle and arms on the sides. Won’t go to sleep without it.”
Is it worth staying with Amy? Yes,
for his son.
“She almost left. We almost got
divorced two months ago. Amy . . . she can’t set her emotions aside the way I
can, can’t look at things analytically.” But they discussed it and are still
together.
*
* *
There
was a point last year he smoked every day, sometimes several times a day. “That
was when Amy broke my heart and slept with someone else and lied to my face
about it. I . . . I had nothing left to live for. I didn’t care about anything.
And I made some stupid decisions.”
“When you’re hurt, you don’t care
who you rebound to — and I rebounded to the worst person possible.”
She had a hard drug problem. He
hints at heroin and is vague on the rest, but there is one thing he is very
explicit about.
“She had a staph infection that
turned septic. I had to drag her out of bed and force her to the hospital — and
if I had brought her in a day later, she would have been dead. There would have
been nothing they could do for her. See, people don’t understand that you
should not pop staph pimples. If you
get a pimple somewhere you normally don’t get them, heat pack it, don’t pop it.
If it’s staph and you pop it, the infection can get into your blood and you will die. So always heat pack.”
John starts laughing as he tells the
next story. “There’s actually a funny story. Once while she and I were going at
it, I pocket dialed a friend of mine who has the same first name, and he kept
hearing his name and being like hello? what’s wrong? and he was kind of drunk
at the time so he ended up listening for almost three minutes, and he kind of
enjoyed it. He said he jerked it because it was kind of like having a
personalized porno, but I hope he was lying about that part.”
“That’s actually kind of hilarious.”
“I know right?”
“Well, I probably shouldn’t keep you
from your wife much longer.”
“Naw, it’s alright. Nice to hang
out, get a break.”
John is a full-time student, works
twenty five to thirty hours a week at a part-time job. “I’m a working parent
going to school. My grades are mediocre but I do my best.” He figures that,
after all the work he has to do for everything in his hectic life, he has maybe fifteen hours of spare time, not
counting sleep. “And when I do sleep,
it’s not good.”
“Anything else you’d like to say?”
He thinks for a moment. “Everything
in life is a treasure and a horror at the same time.”
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