By Mather Schneider
When I was 30 years old, my grandfather died and left me 6,000 dollars. Never having had more than 500 dollars at one time, I went a little nuts. I quit my job at the collection agency and broke up with my girlfriend, telling her “I just want to stay home and write, that’s all I want to do.” Which wasn’t true. I also wanted to drink and smoke pot and get call girls to come over.
In 3 months, the money was almost gone and I was miserable and eating beans and eggs and wondering what I was going to do. I’d written a few crappy stories, got an std, blew the engine out in my car and developed a case of the alcoholic shakes. I needed to drink a 12 pack before I could even leave the house. My right eye was completely red from blood vessels that had ruptured while vomiting.
I regretted having left my girlfriend, and tried to reconcile with her. I made a fool of myself in email after email and phone call after phone call. One day she told me, If you really wanted me back, you would come to my house and try to convince me. She told me if I really wanted her back I needed to “act like a boy scout”. She was dead serious. I had very little pride, but one thing I did have pride in, without knowing why, was that I’d never be a boy scout.
Before I got the 6,000 dollars, I was already thinking about leaving her. 5 years earlier, we had moved to Tucson together from Bellingham, Washington, where we’d met. Her parents lived in Phoenix and she wanted to be closer to them. As long as we don’t see them too often, I told her. Oh, no, she said. Once-in-a-while maybe. 2 months after we moved to Tucson, as if unplanned, her parents moved to Tucson. They were good people. Irish upper middle class. A comfortable, sober, loving, normal family, the kind of family that I never quite understood and felt I could never be a part of. They gave me the heebie-jeebies. After that, every single weekend was spent with my girlfriend’s parents. Before I broke up with her, her parents were planning a trip to Disneyland. For all of us. The thought of this trip to Disneyland haunted me for weeks. It terrified me, kept me up at night. I could not imagine myself going to Disneyland.
Then a week before we were to go, I got that 6,000 dollars. I never did find out how their trip to Disneyland went.
After the last email to my ex, I decided I never should have come to Tucson and wanted to go back to Bellingham. I wanted to wander, to run away, to escape. I threw all my belongings into the yard of the tiny apartment I rented and had a yard sale. I didn’t sell much and the next day I left it all laying out there. I put a sign that said FREE and got on a Greyhound bus heading to Bellingham. I still knew some people in Bellingham but I didn’t tell anyone I was coming. I made a sack full of bean burritos. I had a backpack with some clothes and a notebook, a pouch of rolling tobacco and 100 dollars. I cried as the bus left town. Stupid, self-pitying tears.
It had been 5 years since I’d left the rainy northwest for the desert and when I stepped off the bus the greenery, high trees, low skies, humidity and gentrification made me immediately claustrophobic. I thought, this is not right. Another mistake. The place had changed. I walked down to one of my old bars. It had been called The Beaver Inn but they had changed the name to “The Uptown.” The same bartender was there but he didn’t recognize me. He looked the same but I had aged a lot. You couldn’t smoke inside anymore. I ordered their famous fried chicken which had soothed me through many hangovers in the years past. The chicken now cost twice as much as before and was half as big. A side of ranch dressing was now an extra 50 cents. I got wasted sitting there for hours, feeling isolated and alone with my backpack on the floor at my feet. Eventually, the bartender asked me to leave.
I woke up in a nearby park in the early morning and vomited. I was suddenly ravenous again. One of the things I missed about Bellingham was the food. The fish and chips at The Waterfront Tavern, the French Dip at The Alley Bar, the bagels at the Bagelry, the pizza at Mario’s. I checked my funds. I had 50 dollars left.
A guy on the bus had told me of a bank scam. Some banks will let you overdraw your account, he said. I went down to the bank and opened a bank account with my 50 dollars. I still had my old driver’s license from when I lived there and used that for credentials. I waited a few hours and went to an ATM and tried to withdraw 500. It worked!
Before I’d arrived in Bellingham I had looked forward to seeing some of my old friends. Now, I didn’t want to see anyone I knew. As I walked around I was paranoid I would see an old acquaintance. The park where I had passed out was near an old friend’s place but I didn’t knock on the door. I walked down to the nearest store and bought a bottle of whiskey.
I spent the day wandering around. The town was all cleaned up. The China Delight Bar was now an ice cream shop. All the Indian bars were gone. Some hippies and grunge rockers were still around but they were better dressed than I remembered, certainly better dressed than me. It was all extremely fashionable, like an outdoor mall. Business was booming. People were working, living their lives, hobnobbing. Nothing out of place. Everyone seemed to belong. It felt good to have that money in my pocket but I still felt like a stranger and had a bad feeling about everything.
At 11 a.m., right when they opened, I went into The Alley Bar and ordered French Dip. The place looked the same and smelled the same. They roasted their own meat and the sandwich was just as wonderful as I had remembered, though more expensive. I began to feel some hope.
“Well if it isn’t Matt Glasford!”
I turned in my barstool and it was my old friend Dave Longstreet. He sat down.
“What’s going on Dave?”
“Haven’t seen you in a long time! Shit, you’re getting kind of fat and gray aren’t you? I hardly recognized you.”
Dave was 10 years older than me but he still had that cherub face and rich black hair.
“Yeah, I guess I am.”
“Where you been?”
“Arizona.”
“Arizona? You don’t look very tan.”
“I had an indoor job.”
He caught me up on a lot of people I hadn’t thought about and didn’t care about.
“Hey, Dave, you wouldn’t be able to loan me a few bucks?”
“I’m kind of strapped right now, man.You gonna be in town long?”
“Not real sure.”
“All right, well take care of yourself.”
“You too.”
Before he left he bought me a beer. I drank that and had a few more but I couldn’t stay in there all day and spend all my money. I walked out into the cloudy, misty afternoon. I walked up the hill through the university to the library. It wasn’t planned that way, I just ended up there. It was summer, did I mention that? Summer vacation, but the library was still open. It was open 24 hours, in fact. There was hardly anybody in there and I thought it was about the nicest place I’d ever been. I fancied myself a writer but I really wasn’t much of a writer. I wasn’t much of anything. Still, I had read a great deal of books. But I had never stepped foot in a University library.
When I lived in Bellingham I hung out at the public library and a couple of bookstores that let you lounge around. And in Tucson I had done the same. Something always scared me about a college campus.
I went up to the 4th floor where the “literature” was. I was the only one on the whole floor. I guess there weren’t any literature majors going to summer school. They were probably all working on their novels. I was so sick of books and reading by that point. So few books really touched me, really talked to me. It all seemed like a pastime, reading novels and writing novels and talking about novels, being that way. Still, I didn’t know where else to go. The fourth floor was absolutely silent and surreal and peaceful. I found a big soft chair and plopped my backpack on the floor and sat looking out the giant windows. I sipped from my bottle of whiskey. It started to rain against the glass and I watched the drops run down. Below on the brick plaza a few students walked around.
I fell asleep and when I woke up it was early evening, not quite dark. I was still the only one around. I got up and went to the bathroom. I looked terrible in the mirror. I hardly recognized myself. I had dark circles under my eyes and I was bloated and sad looking. I had bug bites all over me. My hair was a rat’s nest and more than half gray. My teeth were yellow. I looked at least 50.
As down as I had been, I never really considered killing myself. Until that moment. I thought of Hemingway and how he’d done it. I thought of Hunter S. Thompson and how he always said that suicide was a comforting thought for him. He said that just knowing he could end his life at any time made it easier. Thompson had a lot of guns, but I didn’t. If I was going to kill myself, how? Jumping from a building didn’t seem very appealing, nor did drowning in the ocean. I didn’t have any pills or know how to find any. I could slit my wrists, but that never seemed to work. Someone would always find you and call an ambulance. It seems silly now, looking back. But not then. I thought about a guy I knew who lay down on the train tracks in Tucson.
I scanned the shelves as I walked back towards my chair by the window. I smirked, looking at all those books. Thousands of them! It seemed like a joke, a maze, a nightmare. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, except maybe a way out. I had some favorite authors but I’d read them all and didn’t feel like reading them again. And then, I swear to you, I saw a book sticking halfway out from the shelf. This sounds made-up but it’s not. I’ve never been able to make shit up, never had much imagination. I pulled the book out and it was Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. I knew of Miller but had never read him. I’m not sure how I missed him all those years.
I took Tropic of Cancer to my chair and read the whole thing well into the night. Nobody came to bother me. The lights stayed on. Almost every word I read seemed written just for me at that moment. The fact that a human being like this had existed, had written these words, was a revelation. His poverty he somehow made hysterical, his travails seemed predestined and purposeful, his energy contagious, his optimism like a balm. In the following days I only left the library to smoke and to buy food and bottles of whiskey. Henry Miller talked about food a lot and it made me hungry. After going days without eating, he would find some rich guy to treat him to a great meal. He was always hungry. And how he would describe those meals! And the wine! Never get bored, never take anything for granted. People say words like this all the time, but somehow Henry Miller made me feel it. He meant it. He knew it and lived it.
I gathered all the Henry Miller books they had. I read one after the other. Was it possible that this man was born in 1891? Was it possible that he had abandoned his family, quit his job and traveled across the ocean to a strange city where he knew no one, where he did not even know the language? Was it possible he arrived with 10 dollars and survived? And not only survived, but wrote these miraculous books? Was it possible he met all these crazy, brilliant people? Was it possible he traveled around the states and wrote The Air Conditioned Nightmare? Was it possible he lived in Big Sur and dragged his mail up the hill to his house wearing nothing but a jock strap?
Why does everyone have to work? he said. Yes, yes, yes! I thought. Why? No hope, no despair, he said. I had known that Miller had the reputation of being a smut writer, but the sex was hardly 10 percent of it. His zest for life, in such ridiculous conditions, blew my mind. And here I was, depressed! Why in the fuck was I depressed? I was sick and Henry Miller was the medicine.
He seemed like a free man. His writing was certainly freer than anyone I had ever read before, his attitude also. He seemed above shame, above pettiness. He seemed wise. But also fun, and no dope. He was a man who had had all his values smashed, and he embraced it, he rejoiced in it. He said, yes. Maybe he was a lunatic. If he was a lunatic he was the sanist lunatic I had ever encountered.
I read every one of his books in the library. When I got done with those I found the old tape room down in the basement and I listened to old audio recordings and even watched some videotapes. There he was! The grinning swordsman! In one interview he was talking about a book called Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. I immediately found that book in the library and read it. I suddenly understood what Miller meant when he said, “There’s two Buddhas, see? Two Buddhas!” One was the classic Buddha, the archetype, the godhead. And the other was Siddhartha, the one searching. Which was to say, the Buddha that is in everyone. The Buddha that is you. The Buddha that is me.
He claimed to never worry about anything. He was beyond good and evil. And man I wanted to be there too.
I stayed in that library for 3 weeks. It rained every day. I read several books that Miller had mentioned, and some were good, but none measured up to what I had found in him, so I decided it was time to move on. When I left, I knew I had to go back to Tucson. I thought about going to another country, like Miller, but I didn’t have the guts or any boat to hitch a ride on. I was still drinking heavily, but I felt a change in myself. It was a sense of life opening up. The idea of killing myself suddenly seemed absurd.
I barely had enough money for the bus ticket back to Tucson. I arrived in the middle of the night and slept in a park. The desert air was intoxicating. In the morning the sprinklers were on me. I called my ex-girlfriend on a payphone. I was ecstatic, but I still needed money. I asked her for 100 dollars, and she said no. She made 69 thousand dollars a year at the insurance job her brother had got her, but she wouldn’t give me 100 dollars. I understood. I even laughed. I understood that she was still hurt, that she didn’t owe me anything. But I also understood that she had never missed a wink of sleep or a meal in her life. I went to the economic security office and got a food stamp card which provided me with 50 dollars of food every week. I spent the next few weeks buying cheap food and hanging out in the park. I had no money for beer or whiskey. Those were some of the best days I’ve ever had and I will always look back fondly on them.
One day I was walking down the sidewalk and I saw a HELP WANTED sign on the door of a photo lab. This was before all the cell phone photos, when film had to be developed. I went inside and filled out an application. I wrote “writer” on the job history part. The manager was there, and he read it, and it turned out he was also a “writer.” He asked who my favorite writer was and without hesitation I said, Henry Miller. His eyes lit up. Henry Miller was his favorite writer, too! I am not lying about any of this. His name was Jeremy. He hired me and we remained friends for years.
With my first 2 paychecks I found the smallest, cheapest apartment studio available. 200 dollars a month. I had no computer, no typewriter. The cheapest typewriter I could find was 100 dollars at Office Depot, but I didn’t have enough.
I hadn’t been to a bar or had a drink in weeks. One day I passed an old dive bar, The Buffet Tavern. I had spent many days and nights in there. There was no buffet in the Buffet Tavern. It was a buffet of people, they said. The only food they had were hot dogs boiled in a crock pot. The most mouth-watering hot dogs you ever tasted! They opened at 6 a.m. and had a small crowd even at that hour. I had a few bucks in my pocket and I stepped up to the door. It was mid-afternoon. Before I could open the door, I saw something on the ground, blown by the wind up against the old concrete block wall. It was a 100-dollar bill. I took that money and held it up to the sun. I looked around for a minute. Then I walked over to OFFICE DEPOT and bought the last typewriter they had in stock, a Smith Corona.
I got back to my apartment and plugged it in. I had no typing paper so I put in some yellow lined notebook paper and sat looking at it. I must have written 12,000 words that night. All bad, all lost, but I didn’t care. It didn’t matter.
When I got tired sometime in the early morning, I made myself a quesadilla. A quesadilla with yellow cheese, sour cream and tomato salsa. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten such a satisfying meal. I kept thinking about Henry Miller. Every once in a great while an author comes around like that, if you’re lucky. If you don’t believe in it, I’m here to tell you. It seemed there were Buddhas all about me, and they were all laughing with delight.
END
Mather Schneider’s poetry and prose have been published in many places since 1995. He has several books of poetry, one book of stories and his first novel, The Bacanora Notebooks, was recently released by Anxiety Press. He lives in Tucson and works as an exterminator.