RUDIMENTS, pt. 637
(left for dead on the mantle)
Never knowing why, it always
seemed that people confided in
me, started telling me stuff I
didn't need to know, almost in
confessional ways. I could
never figure it out, and never
knew why - nor what they ever
expected I should do about some
of the things they told me. It
was charming, don't get me wrong.
But sometimes it put me in funny
situations - like in Elmira one
time we had these two friends,
real interesting people, arty, lots
of nice finesse, etc. On the surface
of things it always seemed ideal;
they were fun, we got along, he
was an art-teacher, if not an artist;
(I never felt one could be both, but
I never pressed the point). It was
his premise that he was - both, I got
close with the wife in this family,
from work connections. We each
had a 6 or 7 year old boy, and lo and
behold, as in so many other times,
this wife starts telling me all these
things - she's sleeping around with
a boyfriend, he's (her husband)
had a succession of girlfriends of
his own, their home life has become
bizarre, he's high all the time, etc.
It was enough to make me just
never want to hear from her again
- all this little missionary context
seemed to me as if her pores
were crying out for help. Trouble
was, it was all nothing I cared
about at all. I wasn't born to help
others like that. All too confusing.
So I tried just keeping out of it;
he'd drop her off each morning
in a cool '65 Pontiac Tempest or
something that they had, and he
always seemed OK - but once I
got to know their 'inside' story, I
could never view them the same.
There was nothing in it for me
anyway. The factor and ease of the
way such s sham premise could
be presented and function as if
representative used to amaze me.
-
However, the stigma that went
with it was that I was the go-to
guy (and equally the outsider)
to spin troubles on or off of when
they needed airing. Nothing against
that, it was OK, but what could I
do? Nothing worse than such a
powerlessness to begin eating
away, in turn, at one's own
self-confidence. It all piles up
and you begin wondering about
many things from many different
angles - to the point of being
uncomfortable. A part of me has
always wished for, and wanted,
to have ALL solutions, to all things,
everywhere. I was a God-given
saint, but with no brain or power.
for that realm at all.
-
Previous to that, in New York, my
one friend actually was a counselor
of sorts, on his way to some ordinary
psychological degree or something.
I hated that stuff, and we used to
argue over its utility. I used to get
angry at his presumption that all
problems were aberrational and that
everyone should find or be brought to
their owns means of being normal -
fitting the mold, as it were. I'd accuse
him of killing creativity, destroying
creative minds, claiming that the
aberrational was the normal, at
all time and no matter. Made me
almost puke, And to top it off his
highest aspiration - as with so
many of these sorts - was to get
some cushy government-structured
job whereby he'd get paid for
violators and others whose legal
sentences demanded enforced
counseling. It was some form of
new racket getting building up,
at that time, late 60's, with all
that Great Society and LBJ crap
- medical instances of and of those
government-induced 'salvations',
and massive payrolls too - shrinks
and counselors and life-guides, etc,
paid for by the referential payments
of the US tax-funded mental health
brigades. It was absolutely crazy,
and to have it used as an end-goal
for careerism, to me, was maddening.
That was aberrational, not the sick mind.
-
New York City, in so many ways,
was a huge, welfare-state. I'd imagine
it is now too, only much worse.
There was hardly anything you could
do that didn't have an agency, fund,
alliance or assigned field-worker
to it. They had legions of criminal
and medical workers, case workers,
home-health aids, family counseling
set-ups, and the rest, for what was
essentially a failed mini-society
and an entire under-structure of
goons, agencies, and programs
consuming lethal amounts of money,
by the tons, for nothing really.
There were still families bereft
and broken beat-up wives and
children, crime-ridden tenements,
ways of life, have-baked schemes
of lethal money-making, disease,
peeling paint, retarded kids, poorly
education, broken-family homes,
murders, suicides, addictions, sex
crimes, prostitution, and the rest.
There were legions of medical
personnel, doctors, clinicians,
and all that, living off the dole,
on fat salaries, paid by taxes but
never called welfare, for these
people, as long as they lifted now
and then a pencil, a clipboard,
turned in a report, or showed
up for hearings. Everything was
padded with dollars, and billing
procedures were bullshit - an
absolute chaos of falsely inflated
treatment hours, procedures of
medicines, all reimbursable and
kept alive, in turn, by another
ocean of people acting as the
bureaucrats who 'reviewed' all
this crap and made sure the
paperworks kept moving along
the money pipeline. The process
was more important than the
procedures. Your paperwork
could be 80% bogus, yes, but
as long as the dots on the 'i'
were in place, all the slots
filled in correctly, and the
proper signatures in place,
you'd be on the gravy train of
'Normalcy.' You'd make the
grade. As for the rest of the
aberrants 'out there' - the
writers and artists, and weird
ones, they simply hadn't yet
been reached. 'But we'll get
them all,' was the working
motto. And, yes, I always felt
the knife was out there, just
coming to get us - the creative
one - as a group, one single
individual picked off after
another. Cured! (Now they
have wine and paint nights
where they encourage people
to pretend to be THAT stupid!).
-
All this ever did to me was
fortify me. I was a laborious
warrior at work for my cause.
There wasn't going to be any
way of stopping me. I'd walk
over to the White Horse, just
to feel the fuss. That's where
a lot of the hard-core drinkers
who weren't artists taught the
artists who weren't drinkers to
be both. At the least. I knew a
guy who lived across from it,
'catty corner' as it was called,
and he had is regular corner
bar-seat there, always at the
ready. An Irishman, now already
long dead - he'd been at one
point a dock-worker, then some
sort of loader and packer, and
then some union guy over across
the 59th street bridge at Long
Island City. He was tough as nails,
but, in these later years, a sot
as well. It wasn't extraordinary
to just see him flopped or slumped
over by 5pm, as near to dead drunk
as a man could be. And they took
care of him; they knew just what
to give him for refills to keep him
at the right spot, they had the bar
tab always allotted and kept, and
he had all his friends. In the White
Horse, by that time of day, entering
evening the noise level would rise,
murmers, shouts, and the music,
and the need for his seat took over
the friendliness, as someone would
somehow get him back home and up
to his apartment. Right where old
Jack eventually died. Anyhow, that's
that story, and no one cured him;
just left him for dead on the mantle.
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