Can I Get Chocolate Milk?
What I remember most about the Pitcairn Hotel is that everything was dark.
The entrance was dark. The hallway leading to the stairs was pitch black. The stairway was dark enough that I couldn’t walk up a stair without kicking my foot out to feel for the next step, and walking was tough enough since I was drunk all the time.
At the end of the stairway was another pitch black hallway. When I reached the door to the apartment – mostly by feeling my way down the wall until I got to the first door on the left – I felt for the keyhole, shoved in the key, unlocked and opened the door ….
Of course it was black inside the apartment, too. It’s not like we had a lamp.
The ceiling light didn’t turn on with the switch on the wall and the bathroom light never worked, either. Everyone showered – when we showered – in the dark. The tiny window wasn’t far from the bathroom, so in daylight we could see well enough to locate the toilet paper rolling around on the floor – when we had toilet paper.
At least the kitchen had a ceiling light that worked. When the dim light blinked on, illuminating all the dead bugs inside, one could almost see the roaches scatter. But the kitchen was Danny’s bedroom, so we didn’t spend much time in there.
Mostly we spent our time at Barry’s Bar.
I was only there on weekends anyway, at least until holiday breaks rolled around, so I didn’t really need to do anything except drink.
Our new apartment, though, had one huge bonus over our former apartment: the Pitcairn Hotel had a restaurant.
If I would get out of bed before noon – and Larry often insisted that I do just that – he would take me to breakfast at the restaurant. We’d walk out of our dark apartment and into the dark hallway, down the dark stairs and into the next dark hallway … and there, right in our very own building, was a tiny little diner with people inside smoking cigarettes and someone behind a little counter making eggs, bacon and toast.
There were three stools at that counter, where I always wanted to sit. They reminded me of my youth, the days when Daddy would take me to breakfast at the Twin Kiss and let me get whatever I wanted for breakfast.
Since breakfast with Daddy was a special occasion, I was allowed to get chocolate milk.
So when Larry took me to that diner, and I sat on one of those stools right there in our very own dingy, disgusting, roach-infested building, I asked Larry: “Can I get chocolate milk?”
“Sure you can, Baby!” he said, dropping his cigarette into the tin ashtray on the counter. He called to the bedraggled cook/waitress: “Gimme a cup of coffee and a chocolate milk!”
She stared at him for a moment, then went over to the fridge, got out some milk and chocolate syrup, and made me a cup of chocolate milk.
I was genuinely amazed. I could hardly wait to have chocolate milk every day for the rest of my life.
But as a full-blown alcoholic, drinking chocolate milk from the Pitcairn Hotel after a night of downing a dozen beers wasn’t a great idea. It made me sick to my stomach and I wasn’t yet smart enough to vomit up the toxins in my system.
So I drank it every, single time I went to that little diner – a vain attempt to reclaim my childhood while continuing on my adult path of destruction.
