I Felt Deprived.
I can’t stress how incredibly alone I felt during the depths of my alcoholism. “Lonely” doesn’t begin to describe it. I was vacant, my body uninhabited, void of all joy. There was nothing left for me. I was empty.
My few “friends” were at work or lived in another state. And while I was somewhat safe in spite of my behavior, we were very poor and couldn’t always afford the excesses I wanted, most notably: cocaine. Larry bought a lot of marijuana and I smoked it, but it wasn’t mellowing me out the way he’d hoped. Smoking pot made my head fuzzy and that made me want cocaine to snap out of it. And since we rarely had cocaine, I drank more beer instead.
I wanted to find the perfect cocktail of drugs to put into my system to make me feel normal.
This was, of course, an impossible task. So I just kept drinking. And Larry just kept feeding me.
Larry was never truly mean to me. I knew he liked me, maybe even loved me as much as he knew how. He only hit me those two times, and they came from a place deep down in his upbringing that had nothing to do with me.
But as fall approached, and Larry started to feel caged in by the weather, and I started to lean into my friends at work for real conversation and disappear as often as possible to bars while Larry stayed home … things shifted a bit. We weren’t just rolling around on the floor or sitting around smoking pot or playing guitar and singing together anymore. Larry shifted out of the role of lover and more into the role of fatherly figure at some point late in 1987.
For my part, I didn’t just feel increasingly alone; I felt deprived. I felt deprived of companionship, of intellectual stimulation, of intimacy, of meaning. So as life went along, I went along with it, just trying to find good stuff, to feel happy.
One day, I was sitting on the back of Larry’s bike at a red light, smoking a cigarette and waiting for the light to change, when I saw something I hadn’t seen before.
It was a gorgeous sports car, white and shiny, sitting just across the intersection, revving its engine and waiting for its own green light. I loved that car.
Excitedly, I tapped Larry on the shoulder with my non-cigarette hand. “What’s that?” I asked, pointing.
“What?”
“That car!” I said. “I love it!”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes!” I said. It was adorable and sporty in just the right way for me. “What is it?”
Larry turned his head to go full throttle on me: “GET OFF THE FUCKIN’ BIKE!” he roared.
“What? Why?”
“THAT’S A PIECE OF JAP SHIT!” he said. “FUCKIN’ JAP SHIT!”
I was stunned. We’d been having such a lovely day. The light changed, but Larry didn’t move. “GET OFF THE FUCKIN’ BIKE!” he said again. “YOU CAN WALK HOME!”
As I realized he was serious and climbed off the Harley, Larry was still muttering about “Jap shit” under the roar of the engine. He peeled off so fast, his front tire flew up in the air for a second.
I stood there, wondering how long it would take to walk home from the next town over. And I realized: I wasn’t just deprived of friends, intimacy, intellect and sufficient drugs to kill myself. I was also deprived of the right to have my own opinion.
It was a long, long walk home.