Dionysus’ Charge for Admission

All the stuff these fucks stole, why the frozen ribs too? This house is almost as wrecked as my body. So thirsty. Hungry too, but so much stomach pain I don’t know if eating anything heavy will work. I’ve had horrible hangovers before but this is on a whole new plane of existence. I’ve never gotten random pins and needles feelings from hangovers before. Oranges on the counter, maybe that’ll work? Fruit is healthy, oranges are wet, this might be just what I need. Fuck, it’s hard to even peel this thing with my trebling hands. The citrus smell is turning my stomach but it’s been turning since I woke up, and I gotta try something. Oooooooohhhhhhh, the juices filling my mouth in this first bite feel like life. Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuggggggggghhhhhh, my stomach feels like it’s being torn apart from swallowing this. No more. What’s in the fucking frige? Cold pizza? This usually helps me with hangovers. Hhhhhhuuuuuuggggkkhh, bad idea.

I threw up right on that slice of pizza, and then resumed crying. This is how I began one of the most stressful weeks of my life. May 2006, junior year of high school. I was a mess of a human being. Grew up in an abusive household with a crazy stepdad and a very loving but misguided mom, had undiagnosed ADD (I’m diagnosed now so miss me with the faking or self-diagnosis accusations), semi-incel mindset, and a virgin OBSESSED with sex and getting wasted. Severe porn addiction and alcoholism are a terrible combo with puberty and young man stupidity. This in combination with constant exhaustion from school, working with stepdad, and way too many chores are all the components needed to form the worst decisions. In an all boys high school as someone with social anxiety and no hobbies that would lead to interaction with women my age, I felt like I was sinking deeper and deeper into an inescapable quagmire of depression and loneliness. I was convinced that bangin was the only thing that would instill any amount of self worth and confidence in me. Booze and weed would work temporarily but only when I would get really fucked up, and most of every day for me was sober. And I was working as a mechanic’s helper. Maybe this isn’t true everywhere, but in my Brooklyn-based but city wide (and a bit into other cities and states) experience in the field I have found most mechanics to be old school salt of the earth miserable pieces of shit. Large majority of the people I worked with and around fit the textbook definition of toxic masculinity. Bunch of resentful, overworked, underpaid, broken men catcalling and eyefucking every woman that passed by, comparing sex stories and body counts, complaining that everyone is turning into pussies nowadays, and giving me worthless advice for how to get laid.

I say all of this as a pathetic attempt to explain the mindset that led to one of the dumbest series of decisions I’ve ever made. Definitely not THE dumbest, many others have gone far beyond the level of foolishness present here. But probably in the top 10 somewhere. My parents were taking a weeklong vacation to Mexico. What was I gonna do with my new freedom? I didn’t want this whole week to end just like all my other short blocks of free time while the parents were away, a booze-sweat drenched, cum glazed pile of self loathing lumped on the couch. I was gonna use this opportunity to throw a party so I can finally get some saxxx, which of course would cure my anxiety and give me mental clarity. It works every time in movies, all the dudes from American Pie got it in. I told my more druggy friends in school, and the machinations began. Fuckin A, I was gonna get a keg from my neighbors and invite all my friends and acquaintances at school who would in turn bring the ladies. Plus I would charge at the door so I could make some money off this thing. All upsides. I’ve been to other house parties already, nothing catastrophic happened I don’t think. Should be fine. I ignored all the people who told me it was a terrible idea. The fuck did they know? Most of em were squares.

Parents were leaving Friday so I could do it Saturday. I was really cool with my lil bro’s babysitter, she was like an older sister to me. She told me she would take the lil man for a sleepover somewhere. Got the keg with the neighbors. Don’t remember if I went with em or if I just gave em the money. I don’t remember quite a bit from that day. My druggy friends showed up early along with my bestie and a bottle of (I think) Jack. We started drinking right away. I was going way too hard way too early so I could drown my overwhelming nerves. This is where the memory blackouts begin for me. The party was gonna be in the backyard and the basement, so we put anything of value in my parents’ room upstairs and locked the door. Then we went downstairs and propped a folding table up to block the staircase. People started rolling in and I had a friend that I would switch off with working the door with to collect the admission fee. I didn’t want randos at first but I did want their money so when they showed up I just let em in. Pretty quickly my house was filled with a bunch of wasted strangers, blaring music, more cigarette and weed smoke than air. I remember brief flashes:

A stranger trying to talk me into letting him in for free.

Greeting a bunch of people I barely knew or have only seen from the neighborhood.

My bestie telling me he had to go.

Someone telling me people are going upstairs, me going up there and telling them to go back down.

Someone asking me where my dad’s guns were, me pointing to the locked wooden gun cabinet.

Me in the upstairs bathroom again, clutching my stomach and writhing on the floor for a while in pain.

My big bro’s bestie from younger childhood coming up and telling me things are getting out of hand downstairs, me telling him nah it’s all good.

Someone telling me a neighbor called the cops, me going around to the other apartments in my building and to my neighbors places to ask them if this was true, all of them telling me it wasn’t.

Me getting a phone call, picking it up thinking it was prob my bestie for some reason. Instead it’s my aunt hearing the party in the background and telling me I have to go to her house right away.

Me panicking, finding one of my druggie friends to ask them to take care of the house while I go deal with my relatives, them telling me no problem.

Me going there, mumbling incoherent nonsense to my fam and spending the rest of the night rolling on the floor puking all over myself, occasionally falling asleep for a little while before waking back up and puking.

******************************************************

The next morning I woke up still on the floor, dizzy, head throbbing, stomach churning, pouring sweat, still a bit drunk but way moreso sick. I set off on a panicked stumble the 4 blocks back to my place. I forgot most of that night, but I was pretty sure I was walking into a mess. When I got there at least the door was locked, my friends didn’t leave it wide open. But I had no keys so I had to build a makeshift staircase out of coolers and yard furniture to climb in from the backyard through the window. I got lucky that my parents’ bedroom window was unlocked, I heaved myself inside and immediately felt worse. The booze stench was so thick in the air that I tasted it, which made me start burping up bile again and increased my dizzy nausea. I surveyed the damage, trying to ascertain how badly I screwed myself here while coming up with a plan to clean all this quick before my lil bro was brought back home sometime that day. Everything was a complete wreck. For starters I found that they got past the essentially pointless doorknob lock (like this would only keep out small children) on my parents’ bedroom door and stole a bunch of shit, including the party money I stashed in there. I left their room and walked through the first floor hallway which had a bunch of the wall decor broken on the floor. Spills everywhere, marks on the walls, my lil bro’s bed was in disarray as though someone used it for some nasty business. Fucking assholes, banging on a kid’s bed. Impossibly my stomach kept churning even worse as I went downstairs.

This was an epic mess, half filled cups and bottles everywhere, so much broken glass on the floor, cigarette stench and butts strewn all over the place. Furniture disorganized, puke-filled tub, walls fucked up here too, even a shoe print on the fucking ceiling. Guess some jerks were doing keg stands. Same hurricane aftermath situation in the backyard. Then I noticed the gun cabinet. It looked like a typical wooden cabinet, maybe 7 ft. tall with a larger set of doors at torso height where all the rifles and shotguns were and 2 smaller doors below where the ammo was along with a smaller old handgun. Looked like a gun from the 1940s. The small door containing that was hanging open and had a broken shovel next to it, I guess they tried to pry it open. Gun was still there seeminrgly untouched, thank fuck. It was under the rifle and shotgun ammo in an unassuming box so they prob just didn’t find it. This could’ve gone MUCH worse than it even already had. Fuck, I needed to start dealing with this immediately.

I started looking around to take stock of what was broken and stolen. Bestie called me to check up on my situation, asked if I needed help. He said he was coming over with his bro. I made a list of what was missing:

The money made last night

Some unknown amount of jewelry

My GameCube with a bunch of games

A bunch of pricey bottles of booze

My dad’s bong

My dad’s porn stash

My lil bro’s Spider-Man lunch box

A pack of frozen ribs from the freezer

Some of it was pretty scary. I had no idea how expensive bongs were, and not a clue about how much jewelry was gone. The lunchbox and ribs were just insulting. The torrential clusterfuck of emotions running train on my soul at the moment did not help my recovery and cleaning efforts. My mind raced in all directions at once. Should I run away? Maybe I could get my friends to beat the shit out of me so I could play this off as a break-in. Do I have anything of value I could sell quickly to compensate for the stolen stuff? Who do I tell? Would I be able to figure out who did the thieving? Should I just Cobain it? The wretched odor of day old booze of several varieties mixing with spray cleaner inconceivably made me feel even more shitty. I dry retched a bunch. My hands trembled and my body yearned for death as I tried to clean as quickly as humanly possible before my lil bro was brought home. I failed at this, the babysitter brought him back after I was at it for a couple hours. Not nearly enough time, I managed to deal with the broken glass and bagged up the garbage but it was still a wreck. Babysitter looked shocked as I explained what happened. She was an illegal immigrant with a kid, losing this job would be a real problem for her. She really thought I was just gonna have a few friends over, for good reason as I wasn’t a popular kid. Only had a few friends that she met, there was no reason to believe this was gonna reach rave basement levels of debauchery. She started to help me with the cleanup. My house was 3 houses away from the corner, and she told me she smelled the lingering weed and booze stench from that far away. Ugh.

The friend who was helping me “work the door” came through to get his stuff. I had his and my besties’ bags in my room, the one place left untouched by the party. He was pretty shocked and gave me a hand too. Bestie and his bro showed up soon after. They apparently were on the phone with their parents last night and were told to come home, obviously because they heard all the ruckus in the background. Today they lied to their parents, saying they were going for a run so they could come check on me and pick up their bags that they left. They were cracking up at the ridiculous situation I created and the irredeemably dumb decisions I made. So was I; from an outside perspective it was hysterical. But inside I was still dying and freaking out. They joined me and babysitter in the cleaning efforts. I pitched them the idea of staging the break-in but they wanted no part of that. Understandable. My parents then called to check up on things. Stepdad told me that he was gonna have a friend check up on the house that Saturday before they left, and by stuff he said on this call I figured he had somehow caught wind of my plans before leaving and tried to scare me out of it. I decided I wasn’t gonna tell them about it while they were still away, half because I hoped by some miracle I could sort this out and half because my mom had a pretty stressful life and I didn’t want to mess up one of her few opportunities to unwind for a while. Nah, not exactly right math there, fear also played a big part in that. Stepdad was a big, strong asshole with anger issues. And his punishments were long-lasting, miserable affairs. For reference, I had been grounded once before for over a year. No TV or video games was part of that, although I snuck that stuff in when he was gone. So I played it like everything was cool, so did the babysitter, parents sounded jovial, and that was how it went every time they called while away.

Thus began my hell week. My memories of this week are as scattered as my blackout memories from the night of. At school everyone was laughing and giving me shit about it. I was participating in this myself, as I’ve always been one for self deprecating humor. But inside I was a complete wreck. I’m pretty sure even a bunch of teachers knew about it. So did a lot of family members and other people from the neighborhood. I slowly gathered details about what happened from various sources. I found out that my druggy friends made a public Myspace event page about it, complete with a picture of my house. One of them was the one that did the nasty on my lil bro’s bed. Apparently there was some coke use. A bunch of really sketchy gangish people there who first spread the rumor that the cops were coming to get everyone out of there, I assume to facilitate the stealing. I thought I knew who they were because I hazily remembered seeing a lot of my really skeezy former friends from elementary and middle school days there. These are dudes that we formed “crews” with to fight other “crews” from nearby neighborhoods. Stupid kid nonsense, and we weren’t even from a rough part of Brooklyn. We were working class kids in a relatively pricey area, trying to be cool and badass. And from what people in my class were saying I figured it was those kids. I started trying to reach out to people I knew to see if they would help me go fuck these guys up and try to get back my stuff. I guess the suspects caught wind of this because somewhere in that week I got a visit from one of them, trying to assure me that they didn’t steal the stuff. The dude made the case that it was some strangers that nobody knew, and I remembered these strangers so at that point I gave up trying to identify the true culprits. The dude who came to tell me this could’ve been lying, my friends could’ve been lying, there was absolutely no way to narrow down the suspect list because it was the word of some wasted teens vs. some other wasted teens. I had no way of finding out who they were, short of some Liam Neeson in Taken type efforts.

On top of all this, due to the combo of the brutal hangover and stress from the aftermath I felt sick the entire week. I couldn’t relax at all, continuously focused on my impending doom. Even if I had the mental capacity to put it out of my thoughts, it would not have worked. Both in school and just walking around in my neighborhood, passers by would yell at me the MySpace event page name, which I’m not giving to keep this anonymous. The only stuff I had that could maybe sell were a couple guitars, but they were cheap ones anyway and they were gifts from friends so when I asked them how much I could probably get for it they seemed upset that I wanted to sell em. Fast forward to the Sunday night before my parents’ return, my aunt told me to come stay at their place so I could at least give my parents a few moments for processing. That night was very weird. I was washed over by an odd monk-like state of nirvana. It was a sort of acceptance that whatever would happen tomorrow was out of my hands entirely, and a relief that the wait was nearly over. First time that whole week that thoughts of running away or suicide subsided completely. I stayed alone in my grandparents’ room veggin out to a lot of TV. I rocked out to some Headbanger’s Ball, watched a bunch of cartoons and eventually fell into a dreamless slumber.

Next morning my aunt shook me awake with a worried look on her face and handed me the phone.

“GET THE FUCK HOME RIGHT NOW!!!!!” blasted through my eardrum.

“I’m coming,” I whimpered, and hung up. Panic surged through my whole being immediately. I left right away and power walked until I got to my block. It was a strange mix of fear and excitement at being close to the end of uncertainty as to what would come next for me. I saw that fat fuck from the far corner of the block, already screaming at me even though I’m obviously too far to hear him. He was furiously waving at me to come quicker, so I broke into a jog which turned into a half-run.

“WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO?!?!?!?!?! DO YOU HAVE ANY FUCKING IDEA WHAT YOU DID?!?!?!?!”

His huge beefy paws snatched me by the front collar of my shirt as he barked this at me. Not waiting for an answer he switched grip to the back of the collar and yanked me towards the front door bellowing “GET THE FUCK INSIDE!!!!!” I stumbled forward and hurried in through the hallway into our apartment. Mom was in there crying and looking terrified.

“WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?!?!?!?!”

I couldn’t bring myself to speak. No matter how many times I’ve been in this spot before, with him yelling a few inches away from my face, feeling his hot heavy breath flood into my inhales, his spit spraying onto my face with every consonant he speaks, his thick muscular fingers jabbing me hard in the shoulder and chest, it never gets any easier. Especially this time when I know I fucked up real bad. My throat tightens and dries, eyes swell with tears, and muscles turn to jello and spasm in and out of tension. I can only whimper and stammer, no words are coming out.

“YOU THINK I DIDN’T KNOW YOU WERE GONNA THROW A PARTY?!?!?! I fucking knew before it happened!!!!! But you let a bunch of strangers in?!?!?! And then lost complete control?!?!???! AND THEN HID IT FROM US FOR A FULL WEEK?!?!?! WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING?!?!?!?!”

This somehow got us into lil bro’s room, I don’t know how we got here. Mom is walking back and forth sobbing and yelling at him to calm down and remember the most important thing is that nobody got hurt.

“Do you know how close you fucking came to getting us arrested?!?!?! What if they found the handgun in the cabinet door they pried open and shot someone?!?!?! We would go to fucking jail for someone getting shot in our house!!!!! You wanna send me and your mother to jail?!?!?!?!”

He seemed a bit different this time from usual. Less sure of himself, moving and looking around in a disorganized manner. Almost like he’s feeling anxious. Did this actually scare him? “No, uh, I’m really sorry,” I sobbed out. This snapped him back to attention a little bit, still sort of off kilter though.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do with sorry?!?!?! Is it gonna get my shit back?!?!?! Do you even know what was stolen?!?!?! So much jewelry!!! They got my dead father’s watch. That was the last thing I had of his.” His voice cracked as he said that. My stomach dropped pretty much out of my body. Holy fuck, I had no clue. This was much worse than I thought. Fear had been dominating my emotions up to now, but hearing him say this with that break in his voice powered up the guilt to surpass it. He slapped me across the face which turned my body, then he kicked my ass making me trip into the wall, breaking through the Sheetrock. I felt none of those impacts, all I felt was guilt pummeling my mind. Usually his blows had much more force behind them, powerful but controlled. These felt weak, with no will behind them. That increased the guilt as it showed me I broke him a bit inside. I didn’t even think he liked his dad, his dad was a more brutal unhinged version of him. His childhood was even worse than mine, and yet he seemed to feel more love for his dad than I feel for him. Maybe the difference is the lack of blood connection? What a mindfuck.

“Stop it!!! He can’t answer when you’re doing this!!!” mom stammered at him. I stayed out sunk into the wall and looked up at him. Now he was sobbing too, breathing erratically with trembling lips and looking down. Then he looked at me and reached out, enveloping my shoulders, pulling me in for a hug.

“I will never hit you again,” he said slowly with his broken voice. Then he started crying. My stomach was now deep underground. Any shred of presence of mind that remained tenuously attached to me was torn apart. This man cried at my mom’s miscarriage, he cried on 9/11, and not one other time before now. Fuck.

***************************

Over the next few days I learned that much more was stolen than I thought before. They had about $1,000 in cash they were saving to put towards a trip to Italy for my big bro. In combination with all the jewelry that I didn’t even know about before my parents estimated that the worth of all the stolen goods was worth about $10,000 in total. There was no real punishment for me though. Maybe a few weeks of grounding but I’ve had far worse punishments for far less offense. That summer he said I had to work for him full time until I could pay him back, but he changed his mind and let me keep all the money. I never knew why, maybe he sort of blamed himself for being a shit parent. My feelings for him had always been a simultaneous confused love and seething hatred, but now it had another layer of understanding. I knew of his horrible childhood but now I understood a little bit more his modeling of parental style after his tormentor. The unpredictable, relentless abuse he went through did not change the fact that his blood ties to his dad preserved the love. I had a version of this but his was much different. And his abusiveness was watered down a bit from what he went through. Did this lesson learned help me get my shit together? Not even a little bit. I was still dumb as fuck, and made the wrong decision in almost every situation. As a full grown adult, what did I glean from all this? This invaluable lesson: DO. NOT. HAVE. KIDS. They suck and you suck. They are dumb as shit, you are dumber as shitter. And don’t fully trust anyone ever, you useless sap.