The Skin Behind the Eyes

A lot of people are interested.

A lot are interested as to HOW I got onto the street. A person with so much promise, so much going for him. I had it all at one time. I really did, and I wish I had started this blog then, so that all of it would be fresh, even to me. But now, I have only the eyes of retrospection to fall back on.

I need not talk about the boozing and the smoking and the shit I was doing at the time. I was working a fine job. I worked the night shift, so I did not have to deal with co-workers, just fine friends. I was drinking so heavily, my brother and I, that I was blind to the destruction that was coming. Like a hurricane, it rolled across the Earth, destroying a swath of land a mile wide and racing towards me. There was no altering the course that I had set for myself. There's no need to go into all of that. The specific details are troublesome.

The fact is that when I was fired, I was incon- solable. I was stunned. I was bewildered. So, what do I do when I'm in such a confused situation? I went out and partied all day and night. I got so stoned that I didn't know my asshole from my elbow. Then I went home to my brother and continued to drink some more. I drank so heavily that I didn't care. I drank away my fears, my doubts. I cared little about anything, especially my future.

The law was on my case around this time. They had arrested me not long ago for DWI and because I skipped a court date, they found me in the town's main street walking home with my brother and boxed me in with squadcars, cuffed me in public and carted me off to jail like a fucking terrorist. To get out I had to make bail with my rent money, which wasn't going to go well. You see, I was already behind in my rent, and it would only be a matter of time before the County Sheriff would be coming around to lock me out of my own apartment. But I didn't let this bother me.

They had cut off the power in the apartment as well as the phones and the gas. My brother and I sat in the dark with candles and played cards and drank more. I could have started looking for another job, but I was going to do two things, which were part of my plan: 1) get on unemployment, and 2) get the fuck out of fucking New Jersey.

New Jersey never did love me, and barely tolerated me. It chewed me up and left me alone when I needed it the most. My brother fared better there than I did. He had made friends in the neighborhood, had found a job there. He was in good with the town...I was not.

I'm not angry about that though. I had merited being alone. I was a fuck, a shit and alcohol didn't make me any more lovable. I alienated my friends and family and made a hard life harder. I refused responsibility, love, care and attention. The only thing I loved was the bottle, and it loved me back. Fuck the world, fuck the planet and everything crawling on its surface.

You see? I deserved to be all alone. The only person that did stay with me in New Jersey was my brother. No matter what I did, he always found it in his heart to forgive me. But everyone else in New Jersey had no more patience for my behavior, so they weren't there for me as I began my decent into Hell.

The first thing that I did was get a moving company to come and take all of my shit and put it into storage. My entire life, a substantial collection of a life's journey, boxed, catalogued and stowed away like so much junk.

And all this time, I did not care to look for a job, I did not call my parents. I had it lined up to move into an apartment in the Bronx as soon as my unemployment kicked in. But as for New Jersey...it was time to leave. I put some immediate things into the trunk of my car, put some things in an overnight bag, dusted off the dirt from under my shoes, locked the front door to the apartment and slipped the keys through the mailbox opening.

Not once did I care. I was afraid, yes. I was afraid as to how was I going to survive in the streets. My brother was the calming force there. He had lived on the streets before, and knew all of the ins and outs. He knew how to survive in the harsh environment of New York. For me, until the unemployment checks began to roll in, this would only be a brief thing. A short duration. No longer than a couple of days. Maybe a few weeks or a month. I would call unemployment at the end of the week and have them mail my checks to me somewhere, and then I'll get on my feet from there.

Oh! My divorce from New Jersey. I forgot about that! It all ended in the town that it all started in. New Milford, New Jersey. I went into the courthouse, drunk as shit and faced the judge without a lawyer concerning my DWI. I was faced with considerable fines, a third conviction and if I didn't pay up, three months of jail time. The judge threw the book at me, and instructed me what to do or else. I then told him that I had no money, no home, no job and no means to do anything but go to debtors prison. I told him that all I had was bus fare to the city, and once there, I was going to take up residence in Port Authority.

He thought about it for a moment, and then kicked me out of the town, never to return under threat of serving that jail time. He was even going to give me a police escort to New York, but I told him that I had to collect some things from my apartment before I left the town for good. He was understanding.

But the story doesn't stop there, just the telling of it does.

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