Beat

CDTM:

After 3 months of working as a day laborer I was beginning to lose my mind. Ten to twelve hours a day out in the hot South Carolina sun digging ditches, running leaf blowers, weed-whackers, pulling weeds, picking up trash. I'd walk home to my parents' house, take a shower, get something to eat and call one of my friends to come rescue me. We'd drive out somewhere desolate, a local water tower was a favorite spot. We'd drink beer, smoke weed, talk about all kinds of crazy things. Things we wanted to do, see, touch, taste, hear. It was a visceral and electric time. I had no idea how I would get out of this place but I wanted out. And I wanted out yesterday. In addition to the drinking and drugs I lost myself in reading. It was a great escape. I'd been an avid reader since I first learned how. When I was a boy I read the typical boy stuff, Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, Kidnapped!, Sherlock Holmes, those kinds of things. In my English classes in school we were assigned some fantastic books to read. I'd skip ahead. I couldn't stop. I couldn't stay on the one chapter we were studying. I had to know what was going to happen next. I wanted it all. I remember reading The Count of Monte Cristo, Brave New World, All Quiet on the Western Front, Canterbury Tales, The Mayor of Casterbridge and many others. At this point though I was reading titles that I had selected, volumes recommended by like-minded friends. It was a whirlwind of literature. J.D. Salinger was one of the first authors who took me by storm. I read all of his published work in no time. Then I read them again, then again. I was reading Jack Kerouac too. On the Road blew my mind into a million little pieces and then put the pieces back together again but in a different order, an entirely different makeup and operating system. I'd never be the same. I'd use the Kerouacian ideal as my life's template for years to come. I nailed the drinking and kicks, got the travelling down pretty good too. The actual writing though? That would have to wait. I had too much living to do.

Although Kerouac cast a large shadow in my reading life I read countless others, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, suffered though Joyce and Proust, read Wolfe only because Kerouac liked him then quickly realized I probably had a lot more in common with Wolfe than I did with Kerouac. Didn't matter though. I liked Kerouac's style better. I liked the spontaneity of it, the passion, the thirst, the enthusiasm, the easily disregarded and ridiculed grandiosity. I read and I read and I read. I tried to spend most of my time out of my parents house but when I was there I was in my bedroom with the door shut reading. I was long gone. My parents, god bless them, they didn't know what to do with me. We had some fantastic fights. Some real doozies. My Dad would say stuff like "Those damn books aren't going to pay your bills!" We would laugh about it later. Much later though. Like years and years and years later. At the time it was deadly serious. It was no laughing matter. Their son was throwing his life away and didn't seem to even give a fuck.

One night it got especially bad and our argument got physical. Dad grabbed my scrawny ass by the front of my shirt and jacked me up against the wall, screamed in my face, "You better get your shit together, son! Can't you see what you're doing to your mother and I?? What the fuck is wrong with you??" I didn't fight back although I wanted to. He tossed me around a bit and then let me go. I thought it was over but he went into my bedroom, started grabbing my stuff and throwing it out the front door into the yard. "You wanna be all independent and free? There! Go get it, boy! Be free! Get the fuck out of my house!" Christ it was humiliating and frightening. I managed to get a friend on the phone to come pick me up. I didn't even have my own car. I'd like to say that was the end of it. That we made a clean break from there but that is far from what happened. We'd make up, both apologize. Then we'd lock horns again. It was crazy.