Rivethead - Ben Hamper [15]
I went to the guidance counselor's office and stared at the floor. He rummaged through a thick file cabinet bursting with worthless, lunatic occupational data while I sat there and daydreamed about Darlene Ranzik's breasts. The lime green halter was the best. You got a good sideview of the complete works. They were as round as cantaloupes and easily twice the size. Some lucky fucker was gonna tie his nuts around a wedding band and be nursin’ on those miracles for the rest of his life. It wouldn't be me. I didn't have a game plan in order.
The guidance counselor pulled file after file. Time dragged on and on and I sensed that he was growing increasingly edgy with my indifference to latching on to a viable vocational goal. I felt sorta sorry for him. There just wasn't anything in there for me. This seemed to upset him far more than it did me.
I began writing love poems again. For the first time, I had a specific reason why. Her name was Joanie, a hippie maiden with beautiful red hair. We had attended Catholic school together ever since St. Luke's though we had never really spoken. We were attracted to each other, but shy. The arrival of drugs seemed to knock that barrier down. Before long, we were inseparable—skipping classes, making love in my station wagon, dropping LSD at football games, trompin’ off to every rotten rock ‘n’ roll concert within the Saginaw valley.
I enjoyed spending time at Joanie's house. It was like a replica of what I wished mine could be. Her father was a wonderful man—always fair, always friendly, always available. Not an easy trick considering Joanie's folks had eleven kids. You would think her father would be the ragin’ alcoholic nomad. Not so. They all got along just fine and it seemed I would concoct any excuse just to visit there.
By the middle of my senior year things at home were at least beginning to settle into a tolerable routine. With the old man gone there were no more early morning tantrums. No more stolen paperboy loot. No more idiot IOU's wadded up in sock drawers where our allowance money used to hide. No more intimidation and lies and confusion and guilt and surrenders to snockered lunacy. Joanie would come by and together we would cook dinner for the troop. We'd play with my brothers and sisters and once they were put in bed, we'd lie down and make love in the middle of the living room floor. It all seemed to be healing over. Even my stinkin’ love poems were improving vastly.
Nothing lasts forever. One Friday night in March, while we were all huddled around wrestling and watching The Brady Bunch, my old man reappeared. He had been AWOL for a total of six months. And, as always, he acted like he had merely stepped out to buy a loaf of bread or get a haircut. He was wearing this ugly Hawaiian shirt and reeked of alcohol. “Hi, son,” he said. I didn't respond. Within ten minutes, he was snorin’ like a bulldozer on the sofa.
The old man was back and as full of shit as ever. The flooze down in Florida had tired of his mooching and sent him packing northward. Everything returned to its horrible norm. What little faith I had in anything soon evaporated. I retreated deep into my own little universe of chemicals and inhalants. The higher I got, the less it hurt. This arrangement didn't preclude me from making a major ass out of myself on a regular basis.
There was the time I flipped out in Journalism class. My job was to provide headlines for all the articles that went into the school newspaper. My fellow classmates started clamoring around me for witty scrawls to peg above their precious columns. I was totally gone. I politely told everyone to fuck off and ran outside to my car. I started it up, drove ten feet and hopped back out. It felt as though I was driving on the rims. I circled the car several times, kicking each tire. They appeared just fine. I got back in the car and goosed it. Unfortunately, during my little stoned escapade to check the tires out, I hadn't noticed that the entire Powers High marching band had paraded out to the parking lot.