All the Wild Children (31 page)

If you want to contact us we would prefer emails, we do not want to discuss him over the phone in his presence, and we’re finding phone calls disruptive right now.

              I love you all; I hope to see you soon.

Erika

“He is frightened and confused by his own actions...”  Live with that mother fucker.  Man up to that statement.  I hate God.  Any son of a bitch that would do this to my boy better watch their back.  That’s right God, vest up cause I’m coming for you.

And then things are relatively calm.  And then they are not.  The rage returns.

THE DIAGNOSIS.

Schizoaffective disorder - what the fuck does that mean. 
I
Google
.
  I coldly research the meaning of the IED that took out my lovely boy. 

“Schizoaffective disorder is a psychiatric diagnosis. It describes an illness that is defined by recurring episodes of mood disorder and psychosis. The disorder usually begins in early adulthood and is rarely diagnosed in childhood (prior to age 13). Despite the greater variety of symptoms, the illnesse's course is more episodic and has an overall more favorable outcome (prognosis) than schizophrenia.”

I am 46.  I have my son Dylan pinned down.

I am 50 and I wonder how we survived those early nights before we accepted it as our new normal.  How did we arrive in that bedroom, my wife, my son and me.  That room in my brother’s house in Houston.  What signs led to that Thanksgiving, that night, that pain, that love.  I pull at the thread and try and unwind it.  Untangle myth from fact, feeling from source.  I rail at a God I have come to believe in, but not trust.  I look back with the hope that seeing the path might tell me where to step next in the mind minefield of my life.  I look back for a sense of order I have yet to discover.  A pattern in the footprints in the dust.  Anything.

Next person that tells me Dylan’s mental illness is God’s way of teaching me to live life on life's terms better be able to outrun the slug from .357.  “It is all God’s plan?”  Yeah?  Really?  Any plan that leaves Dylan scared of his own mind sucks donkey dick.

This book began as an exploration into my son’s madness.  How we learned to adjust to increasingly odd new normals.  Pain is caused, and Buddha will back me up on this one, by struggling against the new normals life takes us into.  I used to believe in karma and divine plans.  Now I believe in random chaos.  Physicists postulate that if you pull far enough back you can see the order in everything, even chaos.  Me, I don’t buy it.  “And how does that make you feel?” my shrink asks.

“How?  How the fuck do you think?  Makes me pissed-the-fuck-off.” 

Erika and I are in Culver City at a low rider car show
.
  We look up and realize we are standing in the shadow of Brotman Hospital where Dylan was born.  “It has been a wild ride.”  I say.

“It has been a lot of things,”  she tosses out.  And floors me.  It sure as fuck has been a lot of things.  It has been joyous and terrible and funny and painful and unendurable and it all went by in the blink of an eye.  I am in the hospital holding my wet new son.  I am standing in the shadow of that hospital twenty-six years later in a blink.  And not a blink.  You see, it has been a lot of things.

CAUTION BAND-AID CLEARING

Rip it or slow tug, I always say rip.  That is just who I am.  But I wonder what it would be like to be the slow pull type.  That is a lie, behind closed doors, when it is just me and the band-aid I am a slow tugger.  I soak it in water.  I pick around the edges.  Peel it back a millimeter at a time.  I am the same way with relationships.  If asked what is best I would say, end it fast and with the least amount of pain for all parties.  In truth I drag them out slowly picking at them, peeling back discomforts and mistakes made about who I thought the person was.  I build a case, I assemble a team of detectives in my head and commission them to find all the dirt on the suspect.  I am certain it is less painful for all parties my way.  Drag it out, make them into an asshole. 

This applies to lovers and friends alike.  But you can go deeper.  Look beyond these simple, he-she-he relationships.  It applies to father and son.  I am so attached to who Jared is, smart funny amazing kid.  How do I let go of who he is and let him become who he must?  How do I break up with the thirteen year old lad so that I can meet the fifteen year old lad?  Do I do it slowly or fast?

It is late in the night.  He is 13.  We are on a midnight run up Highway 5, headed for Palo Alto to spend the weekend with Tad.  Tad loves my sons.  Tad is a fierce ally.  Highway 5 is an almost straight 370 miles of flat boredom.  People don’t have accidents on the 5, they commit suicide out of the sheer drudgery of the drive.  So I’m in there with Jared.  He slips Rancid into the CD player and cranks it.  Slashing guitar driven by relentless back beat slams from the speakers.  The singer starts to scream.  Jared’s eyes dart over at me, at thirteen he still cares what I think.  He still wants me to like his music.  We are at the edge of a cliff neither of us can see.  Rancid sounds like early 80’s English punk.  Just my rude cup o tea.  The track ends and I pull out the CD and slip in
Give ‘Em Enough Rope
.  I look over at Jared, hoping he doesn’t hate it, think I’m an uncool old fart. 

“Who is it?”  He is smiling and bouncing to the beat.

“The Clash, arguably the greatest band ever.”

“Oh yeah, check this out... hit track 6... that’s it... crank it.”

Blasting down the highway ears at near bleed, we bond over a shared love of a certain school of punk music.

I take his No Doubt and raise him the English Beat.  I stack the mad mad sound of Madness against Sublime, we go note for note searching for similarities.  We discover how deep our connection lies. 

He is of my flesh. 

He is of my soul. 

He is thirteen and we are speeding along a dark ribbon of asphalt.

I am 50 and I find the memory loose, slippery, a kaleidoscope of happy moments with Jared.  Piccadilly Circus we stomp about looking at the garish brightly colored shops.  I think he is looking for a pair of creepers.  In Copenhagen we ride bicycles with Jochum and his youngest daughter.  We ride through Christiana a lovely village by the lake.  It was taken over by hippies as an anti-war statement.  Now it is a tourist attraction.  It has an open air pot market, I’m sober and Jared is fifteen so we look but don’t touch.  We ride bikes, we walk, we enjoy each other.  Me, my boy and his godfather.  It is so simple.  I am aware as he rests his head on my shoulder on the flight home that this time is coming to an end.  The walls around his personal space will shoot up, blocking all but a glimpse of his life.

Jared is 6, Public Enemy is filling the car as I drive him to school “Polly-wanna-craka, Polly don’t wanna be a cracker.”  He is singing along.  I am a bad father.  But I counter balance it with Bob Marley, I sing him “Pajamas pajamas I wanna pajama with you.”

“Who invented electricity Jared?”

“BB King did daddy.”

“That’s right son.  BB King electrified the blues.”

If Dylan was raised on Bowie and Jonathan Richmond, for Jared I added some soul.  I doubt it was intentional it was just where I was at musically at the time, so I took my younger son with me.  Punk is one music I kept from him, it was the music he found all on his own.

He and his best friend Cardo started playing music when they were 10, well they started earlier than that, but I’m not sure if playing recorder and cello at the Waldorf school counts, I’m sure it doesn’t to him.  He calls them fairy Nazis, the Waldorf teachers.  By thirteen they formed Brigands, and started practicing.  They played a few parties then they had a battle of the bands they needed a ride to.  I agreed, up to this point I hadn’t heard them.  They didn’t want me to hang around and blow their rock vibe.  I went and got a cup of coffee, I came back just in time to hear their last two songs.  Jared was screaming, spittle flying from his mouth.  Brigands were young, wild and angry.  Pure punk.  Harder than I listened to, more Pistols than Clash.

“What are you so angry about son?”  He didn’t answer.  “No really, straight out of Eagle Rock, what has you so pissed off?”  He and Cardo looked away from me, and were silent the rest of the ride home. 

One more time it was proven to me, just because you think it doesn’t mean you should say it.  Who was I to judge their anger?  It was theirs and it was real. 

I remember telling my mother I hated my brother, “No you don’t, you’re just upset.”

“Actually Mom, I do hate him at this moment.”  I should have said, but six year olds can be slow on the up take.

So do you rip or tug off the band-aid that holds you to your children?

Truth?

You don’t get to choose.  They do.  If it had been left to me Jared would have always been six and screaming out the car’s window “Polly-wanna-craka?  Polly don’t wanna be a craka!”

Throughout Jared’s teen years Brigands would come together, play the East L.A. back yard Punk scene then break up only to reform with a new drummer or some other player. 

I look across a sea of olive skinned kids, on a makeshift stage my son leaps in the air, his guitar held so low his elbows are unbent as he powers out raw chords.  Sweat pours off his face.  He unzips his hoody.

“Take it off!”  She is fifteen and cute and wild, “Take it all off!”  He is fifteen and living punk hard.  I’m his father and proud as hell.  I am also acutely aware I am on the outside looking in on his life.

After high school Brigands made a run at fame and fortune.  They had a song played on the radio.  They came spitting close to a record deal.  They recorded on the same stage that Iggy Pop used to rehearse on.  The last time I saw them play was in a club on the Sunset Strip.  Erika and I invited Charlie Huston to come, the three of us watched the punk train wreck.  Jared was late and too high to keep it together even for a punk band.  I wondered if Sid’s dad ever came to see him play.  We watched, we clapped, we pretended it wasn’t as fucking sad as it was.  Junkie guitar players are punk, they are romantic, they are rock and roll personified, unless they are your son.

Jared is 4, we are headed to Travel Town to play on the trains.  As we exit the freeway he sees a man holding a cardboard sign.  Jared asks me what the guy is doing.

“He’s broke, hoping for some help.”  I roll down the window and hand the guy a couple of bucks.  Jared watches, taking it in.

“When I grow up I’m going to have that job, it looks easy.”

“Don’t say that son, for a man to beg others for money is the hardest job he’ll ever do.”

“OK.  Can I drive the train when we get there?”

“Sure you can.”  I don’t explain that you don’t drive a train, the tracks take it where they will, all the engineer controls is the speed.  No need to argue semantics with that smiling expectant kid.

Jared is 16.  He has discovered crystal.  He crashed my SUV, “It was parked in front of Maral’s, I swear, it was hit and run, I came out and it was wrecked.”  I bought it.  Eight years later in a blackout drunk he destroyed his Hyundai.  He abandoned it in the middle of the road.

“I came out and some one had hit me.”  I don’t believe him this time, but I’m too worn down to fight it out.  I have AAA tow it into our driveway and it sits there a constant reminder. 

“I didn’t take any money from your wallet, I swear.  Maybe it fell out in your car, want me to help you look for it?”

“I wouldn’t take Mom’s money.  This home, living here is the only thing I have going for me, I wouldn’t jeopardize that, I swear.”

“I just don’t care any more.”  Erika says.  His mother is wore out, she’s done.  When a mother stops caring it is like a cold switch has been flipped.  Not sure it can ever be flipped back on.

Four months before Jared’s twenty-sixth birthday the river of lies crest, breaking a levee deep in my heart.  It has gone on too long.  His lying and stealing.  It has gone on way too long.  It is time I stepped up, he is driving my wife nuts, she is also his mother, but for now I need to see her as my wife.

Jared is out in the barn, he has been ducking me.  I open the door and he starts to go out the window.  “Get back in here, now.”

“I wasn’t going anywhere.”  Sheepish.  Climbs back in the room.  I caught him half out the window and he says he wasn’t going anywhere. 

“It has to end son.  I love you.  But it has to end.  You were supposed to be out two months ago.”

“I know I’m looking for a place.”

“It doesn’t matter.  You just can’t be here.”  My guts are wrenching.  My heart is breaking.

“Can I have ‘til Saturday?”

“Yes, but by sundown you have to be gone.”  I tell him I love him.  I mean it.  He tells me he loves me too.  He means it.  As I walk away from my son I fight for breath.  I’m drowning in this moment.  This is the hardest job a man will ever do.