The First One's Free

For the longest time I thought I was supposed to buy my father neckties. Socks. I thought fathers wanted to watch football, King of the Hill. I thought fathers loved to barbecue. But my dad has worn just one tie since his wedding day and I have never seen him with spatula in hand. My father is not like those in commercials unless of course the commercial is for Nicorette or the next Indiana Jones movie. My father is different, he is mine. He taught me to love joy and melancholy in equal measure, to love travel, knowledge, curiosity and quiet. He taught me to love words and throughout my life I have always known that above all he loves me most (you know, along with my brother and mother). So without further ado, here is my father:

My name is Edgar. I am an alcoholic and addict. Take my word for it. I don’t lie. Well, …. I only lie when I have to …. and that’s almost the truth.

I have dropped acid on the ice flows of the Artic while Polar bears cruised the cracks looking for lunch. I hopped, slipped and skipped from one creaking, groaning electric green slab of ice to the next. Some the size of The Taj Mahal, fierce frozen blue …. In fact, one of them WAS The Taj Mahal … I think it was, maybe, not totally certain.

With my little brother, a cocaine shooter, I have gobbled gobs of peyote buttons in The Painted Desert of the Navajo. And years later, clean and sober for one sad day, I scattered my little brother’s ashes from a cliff in that desert.

Pills? …. Hardly ever met a pill I didn’t like, ‘though I am more partial to the speedy pop over the soporific. I smoked marijuana every day for 30 years. Enough to support one Jamaican growing season, a purely spiritual inquiry into the void of nowhere and inertia.

Of course, I snuffled white powders, contents unknown. Not my thing really. I preferred yellowish powders of contents more certain. Speeeeeed! M-E-T-H-A-N-P-H-E-T-A-M-I-N-E!!! I could type, type, type, all night rushing past dawn into A Legend in my own mind as synaptic connections snapped and neurons popped like kernels of corn on a hot skillet and IQ points fluttered to the ground like confetti at a wedding that never should have happened.

My alcoholic pedigree is impeccable. Mother, father, brother, two uncles and one step father died of the “disease” or related causes. At about the age of 12, I nicked into a drop or two of demon rum and never looked back …. or ahead …. into full tilt, wild-in-the-streets and gutters drinking from the age of 16 through college and beyond.

Later, in the early years with a young family to support, my drinking and drugging slowed to steady-on cruise with occasional spikes of aberrant gluttony, a major contribution to the wreckage of my 25 year marriage. The damage to my children, I can only imagine. I was there for them …. That is, I wanted to be but wasn’t. That they have grown into wonderful, seemingly happy human beings of astounding grace and accomplishment is nothing short of a modern day miracle.

Three years ago, clean and sober for 13 years, I crossed the Turkish border into Northern Iraq with a small film crew. We were greeted by our mysterious fixer, four hundred Germanic pounds of sweating Big Ziggy sporting a gray goatee and two Gloch pistols tucked in his belt surrounded by a Kurdish covey of machinegun-toting Pesh Merga militia.

Before we could even offer up the customary “Salaama Aleukum,” we stood, jaws dropping and watched as Big Ziggy yanked a cranked-out Ratso Rizzo cabbie and small-time smuggler from his cab. With another hard yank, Big Zig bounced Ratso off his chest. A puppet without strings, Ratso settled down after that.

I rode with Rafik, a rock-tough Kurd, husband to two wives and take-a-bullet-for-you body guard in a black Mercedes sedan leading our high speed caravan of Toyota Land Cruisers across spring green waves of wheat fields down an empty black road, 300 hundred miles to Sulamanya. The Syrian border of guard towers and concertina wire flicked by off my right shoulder as I slumped in the passenger’s seat nodding off with sleep deprivation.

Over a rise, Rafik slowed. Something on the road up ahead. Two cars blocking the road. A breakdown? Traffic accident? Or, ….? At fifty yards, Rafik was leaning on the horn and yelling out the window …. Nothing. …. No response …. No action from the stalled vehicles …. Twenty five yards away, Rafik stopped. Grabbing the slick black machinegun at my feet, he leapt from the Mercedes. Walking quickly toward the roadblock, he shouldered the weapon, tensed ready and set to spray a whole bunch of bullets per second at the offending vehicles …. Very quickly, the offending vehicles parted and rolled off the road into a ditch.

No-big-deal-cool Rafik climbed back into the Mercedes as if he had just stopped off at a 7-11 for a pack of cigarettes. Matter of fact, back on the road, he pulled out a pack of Parliaments and offered me one. I hadn’t smoked in years. I had been a runner for years. …. I smoked the Parliament.

Six weeks later, I boarded my flight from Istanbul to San Francisco wearing a nicotine patch. The strongest patch sold in the States is 21 mg. I wore a Turkish model delivering 52mg. of sweet nicotine. In spite of three Excedrin PM, one valium and a solid shot of Nightime Nyquil for blessed sleep, I rode the long hours to San Francisco behind my sleep mask, eyes as wide open as Zoey on a happy day, pressed against my seat pulling 10 Gs, stiff as an astronaut on take-off.

Today and once again, I sport dueling nicotine patches, two # 2s, a 14 mg. infusion of sweet nicotine on each upper arm. I want to kick this son of a bitch addiction and breath again. I do not want to die just yet. For awhile longer, I want to be there, really there, for my grown children. For awhile longer, I want to be there, here and now for my granddaughter, Zoey, our Petunia Faced Girl.