Chapter 4. A Vacaville Vacancy

I had an art studio just down the street and a block away from the old abandoned Carnegie Library in downtown Vacaville. The library was like thousands of other Carnegie Libraries scattered across the landscape of a dying Norman Rockwell America, except that this one had a bar in the basement. Its portico’s Ionic columns still held up a decaying dignity but it was bereft of books; all transplanted across town on the other side of I-80 to a newer library. The main floor, where once occupied rows of stacks filled with books, was empty but for the checkout counter. The hardwood floors were perfect for weekends and live music. On these occasions the checkout counter was used as a bar.  I loved the library and thought it was a good metaphor for an America that was no more; an America where a Carnegie Library was the center of enlightenment for a town that once had a center and that center was now a place to forget his sorrow, if only for a night. I could hold on to the past there.

Celeste had taken the car, and Ariel, along with the dogs, back to Santa Barbara and I was left with a bicycle. I’d moved into a one-bedroom apartment on Holly Lane next to a small playground and park. I had very little furniture but I did have the work table and an aluminum chaise lounge that opened up for a cot on which I rolled out a sleeping bag.

I also had a studio downtown on Main Street. It was in a high ceiling old building in bad repair but made for a cheap place to work outside of prison. I stenciled Main Line Studio above the door. It was closer to work and just down the street from The Library.

As Willie Nelson sang, “Ridin’ and hidin’ the pain,” I rode to and from work on my bicycle. I didn’t mind that so much because I was in good shape and enjoyed it as a release. I’d cry and shout all I wanted as I sped down the street after work to have a few drinks at the Library and then went to the empty apartment or to the Main Line Studio.

I fell off my bike dead drunk on Main Street after one of those nights at the Library. I couldn’t figure out how to keep from tipping over as I put one foot on the peddle and pushed. Two officers were watching the comedy of it from their squad car. After I showed my California Department of Corrections I.D. they gave me a ride to the Seasons (aka Sambo’s) restaurant in lieu of a DUI. Yes, you can get a DUI riding drunk on a bicycle. I should have gotten a clue that I was at the end of my protection.

What was going on in the lower levels of the Heavens was an argument with Angelo and the Imp. Lucky objected, “You said you were leaving him to me!”

Angelo dropped his hands to his side and apologized, “I’m sorry Lucky, I couldn’t pull out the stops yet. Besides, going to jail on a DUI seemed too petty. He could handle that… even if he lost his job over it. You gotta do better than that.”

Lucky demanded, “Okay, but I get to slam him the next time, don’t I?”

“Like I said before, have at him, but wait for his consent.” Angelo was embarrassed that he was caught not keeping his word. Angels honor integrity above all else. They aren’t supposed to be able to prevaricate, i.e., lie.

As I was riding on my way to work in the morning, I remember thinking, “What if I have a serious accident? One serious enough to take me out for a while. I need a break… a rest.” A good friend in the future, when I told her about this thought, said, “Be careful what you think, Max, thoughts have density.” I felt this to be true in a very real sense and recall that I shuddered at the notion. I longed to rest in a hospital bed... but, Naw.

However, the thought was out there with an astonishing density and it couldn’t be undone. Undone, it hovered over my spirit like a shaman’s curse. We often think our personal calamities are arbitrary and most of them are. But there are ones that come from another place and need our consent. That is what this dense thought was… consent.

During this period, I’d befriended the bartender at The Library who played bass guitar ala the Ramones. I told Ralph that one of our dogs, Sheena, was named after a Ramones song and we got to be good friends. Ralph had also broken up with a girlfriend, and was looking for a place so I offered my empty living room to him. Ralph moved in with

a king sized bed, a card table, speakers stacked on amps, and a TV, into the previously empty apartment. The kitchenette was almost a part of the living room off to the side to the left of the door to the bedroom. You had to go through my bedroom to get to the toilet and shower. It was okay most of the time. I had the lawn chair and work table with several of my sculptures on it and boxes that served as a barrier of sorts between the path-way through there. The space was cramped but a small park with barbeque pits abutted the property and made for some good evenings in the summer after it cooled enough to go outside.

Vacaville is halfway between Sacramento and the Bay area on I-80… it gets hot… humid hot… the thermometer rises above one-hundred a lot of the time and never dips below 90 degrees from mid-May to after Labor Day. Being a devoted Ramonite, Ralph wore his black leather jacket all summer. I could hardly handle the heat wearing shirts and shorts. Ralph said it was his Mexican heritage... (of barbecues, loving the heat) and could wear that heavy biker’s jacket over his black jeans and black tee even when the temp was 113 degrees.

After a few drinks at the Library, Ralph was working at the bar and saw me assessing one of the regulars at the other end of it. She was a dark haired woman with a face as sensuous as a young New Wave Sophia Loren (this was the eighties). He passed a beer over the counter and winked, “Max, she drinks White Russians, you want to meet her?”

“Sure, send one down to her, what’s her name?”

“Megan.” He was already pouring it.

“What’s the other one drinking?”

“The same.”

“Then, shit Ralph, I gotta be polite. Send two of ‘em down.”

She got up from her stool, came up and sat next to me. I thought, this divorce business ain’t so bad after all.

“I’m Megan… and that’s my friend, Janice. Come over and sit with us.”

“Sure,” my libido was... well, I felt I ought to have disguised my intentions a bit. “Sorry, Megan. I hope you’re not bothered. I couldn’t help it… my staring at you.”

“It kinda made me nervous but Ralph says you’re okay.”

“I don’t know how you’d feel about it but I’d sure like to do your portrait. I do some painting and I have a studio down the street.”

“Maybe, are you good at doing it?”

Gauging how she might feel about my real intentions, “What? Painting?”

Janice laughed, “Oh, they all say they’re good at it,”

“I’d like it if you are good at it, I mean,” Megan said in that irresistible come-and-get-it-if-you-can tone, emphasizing, Good at it. I don’t remember much else I was saying but was buying drinks for all on my tab. Megan stayed and Janice left.

I nuzzled up to her, offering, “Let’s go to my place.”

She didn’t resist. She gave me a nice… very nice, kiss on the lips before she asked, “Do you have any coke?”

“No but I can get some. Do you know Damon?”

“Everybody in this town knows Damon.”

“Yeh, he doesn’t know me. Can you call him for an eight-ball?”

“Really, you can afford an eight-ball?” She smiled like she'd just struck gold.

An old man in the corner at the table with the Pac Man built into it had been watching the action and bought a round of drinks for us.

Ralph delivered the drinks to their table, “This one is on Lucky over there. Hey, where is he? He paid already anyway.”

“Speaking of paying, I better pay my tab now, Ralph.” I reached into my pocket only to discover it was down to a buck or two, “Ralph. I’m short. I gotta hit the ATM.”

“Better hurry, we only gots an hour before I close up.”

Megan laughing added, “Yeh, Max, we close in an hour.”

Man, so excited about the new prospect… the idea that I might get Megan up to the studio… I was jammin’! Get some cash!

Some events replay in memory exactly as they happened because they do so in slo-mo. I was barreling back to the Library from the ATM when the chain slipped off the sprocket of the bike… I reached down to jimmy it back… the front wheel hit a pothole cranking the handlebars ninety degrees… I sailed head-long over the handlebars… no helmet. I knew I was in trouble.

Drifting in that space between spaces that the Tibetan High Sheriffs of enlightenment call a Bardo… it was vivid dreaming to me. I’d been flying.  Then, frightened, I plunged back into a bag of skin or something I recognized as Max. My head ached… no, it throbbed with pain. I could feel my pulse against the inside of my skull. I wanted to go back to where there was no pain. A doctor and a couple of nurses stood by.

Thud, it was over… in an instant life had changed… it had changed and I became Job at the city dump. Seizures… skull cracked ear-to-ear… memory loss… a near-quack huckster for a doctor… old friends slipped away… new friends enabled… disability insurance… not enough for child support and rent… choices… self-medication… cocaine… alcohol… a miasma of suffering… anger… rage. I couldn’t imagine it…. It had to change… maybe a cause of some sort.

One of the nurses shook me, “Wake up. It’s time to wake up!”

Annoyed, my eyes opened. I thought I saw a custodian that looked like that old guy, Lucky. He was pushing a cart in the hallway outside the door off the hospital room while the doctor was talking about an X-ray, Basal Fracture. Hydrocephalus.

“What! Leave me alone.”

The doctor hovered over me with a pen-light checking my eyes. He spoke, the nurse scribbled on a clip board, “Papilledema.”

Then to me, “Can you tell me your name?”

“McGee. Uhhh…,” I had to think, “Max. Why?” I was getting more annoyed. The light was like a needle in my eyes, “Get that god-damned light away!”

The Doc held three fingers in front of my face and asked, “How many fingers do you see?”

I held three fingers in the Doc’s face, “How many do you see, Doc?”

“That’s good.” The Doc checked my ears with the flashlight and then said to the nurse who was taking notes on a clip board, “Blood in the ears. Concussion. Order a CAT scan. Monitor CSFs.”

“What the fuck are CSFs? Talk human language, Doc.”

“Simply said, they are brain fluids. Once they start it is hard to control them without dramatic measures.”

Confused, I don’t remember much of what had happened. Confusion bred annoyance as the Doc continued his probe, “What’s the date today.”

“Is this a joke? May…?” shit, I thought. What is the date? “No, June 15th?”

“Year?”

“Eighty…. Uh… eighty-four… no, five... no, four?”

“Amnesia,” the Doc droned no surprise. He continued with me, “Who is the President?”

I thought for a minute. “What the fuck? I’ll screw around with this guy. Of course I know who the President…” I drew a blank, “was it Carter? And, and, shit. Who came in after that? Yeh, it’s Reagan. Ronald Reagan. My head hurts, Doc. You got something for pain?”

To the nurse, “An IV, Demerol. CT scan. We’ll monitor CSf.” He said and went out the door.

I remembered the eight-ball. “I gotta get back to the bar. I owe my tab.”

The nurse taking notes on a chart put a hand on my forehead, “You’ve had a serious concussion, Max. Relax.

I didn’t realize anything was seriously wrong with me until after I got back to the studio from the hospital a week later and started writing checks to pay some bills. I only had a few of them; gas, electricity, phone and rents on the studio and apartment. I added up the amounts to balance the checkbook and got stuck subtracting simple numbers… very simple numbers, like eight minus three. I had to stop and count on my fingers. I’d get the figures I was looking for and then forget what they were before I could write them down.

Getting frustrated at my mathematical ineptness, I laughed at myself. At first it was a little chuckle. I’d try again to add the figures. The chuckle turned into a guffaw. The guffaw rippled into hysterical, knee slapping har-dee-hars. I still didn’t take it seriously. I eventually finished the checkbook task and went downstairs to the mailbox, posted the bills, and walked a block down the street to have a bite for breakfast at the corner café.

I read the newspaper but felt a very slight nausea while waiting for my order. It was then that I first felt a strange electrical buzzing surge throughout my body accompanied by a very brief but intense, vertigo. It didn’t quite feel as though I was going to feint or pass out but it was an alarming sensation completely foreign to me. I realized that I was still seated on the stool at the counter and that there was no sense of any kind of imminent danger. I hadn’t lost balance but felt like I might have if the sensation lasted longer.

Breakfast arrived and I began to eat but had to stop because the nausea recurred and refused the food. It was something I’d been feeling off and on since leaving the hospital. I paid the check after a few bites and decided I’d better get home before I embarrassed myself by puking on the counter.

Ralph was out at the time I got home. I felt that odd surge coming over me again and went straight to the chaise lounge cot. Nausea churned in my gut so I rushed into the bathroom to kneel before the toilet. After vomiting I started to feel strange and laid down on the cot. That surging feeling began a sweep over my body in waves that coursed from head to toe. I panicked until I realized that there was nothing I could do but to ride it out as my body convulsed with fantastic waves… rushing ... rushing… rushing… rising and driving the way a tsunami comes… relentless.

“Ahhh… so, this is what a seizure is like.” I tried to tell the walls.

I never lost consciousness. In fact, I was extra-conscious of everything. Intensely aware of my body wildly flopping about with those wonderful surges, I was impressed with how pleasant it felt and the clarity of mind that came with it: similar to, but with wholly more vivid hallucinations than anything I’d ever experienced on acid or peyote. Objects had auras and sometimes took on forms only implied by their form; i.e., a pile of clothes might assume the appearance of a Gothic gargoyle. Patterns… everything, the walls, the dying philodendron in the corner of the room, they all resonated, were connected with geometric patterns…. florescent halos like the colors in an oil slick… they all connected. I had no idea where the patterns came from but it made the world an expanded unity… not a realization... not a thought… but it was a unity I could see, hear, feel and taste. Thoughts flooded in with the whole meaning intact… the same geometric precision; “That corner vice I’d borrowed from my brother in-law … I must return that tool on my next trip to Santa Barbara.” Or, “I’d better water that philodendron…” I’d think of a lie told to Celeste that ought to be asked forgiveness for and so on. I’d make a mental note of them as dozens of these crystalline pure gems of thoughts coursed through my consciousness: The nature of the universe, past behaviors, the glory of it all, God, the taste of turnips or the way the curve of a certain woman’s neck leads to sensual lips mounted on a divine face of a Russian Icon in the corner of the room.  I loved Celeste… I adored the spider weaving a web on the ceiling above. I wanted to turn on the tape recorder on the floor next to the cot and get some of these thoughts recorded but, not only couldn’t get my hand to go to the tape deck less than an arm’s length from where I was flopping about, but I couldn’t speak. As the seizures subsided I almost regretted it and hoped I would have another one so that I could turn the recorder on ahead of time. I lay there exhausted and overwhelmed by a euphoria and peace.

Ahhh, I thought; so this is why the poets of antiquity, saints, and even the Caesars… all of them claimed to have seizures as though they were divine assets.

Once I got over the novelty of the experience, there was a complete absence of fear that I found incredulous. I rested a short while and got up full of energy, but, as soon as I began doing anything, that head-buzz and nausea came on again. I rushed to the toilet once more and returned quickly to the cot making sure that I turned on the tape recorder before settling back down. I got only as far as describing the first buzzing sensation and, as the waves moved down my body, I lost the ability to speak. My tongue and larynx would not cooperate. I had no vocal control and the best that I could manage was a series of dumb grunts and groans. Shit! All of these cosmic observations would have to go unrecorded!

I rode out two, maybe three or four, of these seizures before Ralph came home.

“You ain’t lookin’ so good, amigo.” Ralph said, looking back over his shoulder as he loaded a twelve pack of beer into the fridge.

“Yeh, I’ve been havin’ seizures.”

“Uh?” Ralph was busy preparing to have some friends over. “Anything serious?”

“I feel one coming on now."                                                                                                                                                                         

I dismissed myself and did what was becoming routine … a trip to the toilet to vomit and then a beeline to the cot.

Ralph’s guests arrived at that time: a young couple and one other guy. He just shut the door to my room and proceeded to crack some beers and fired up his bong.

Since it was a one-bedroom apartment with the toilet in back, everyone had to pass through it to get there. It was pretty tight fit considering how many people used to come over at all hours of the day and night to play cards, drink, do some lines, and smoke dope. I had what was left of all of the crap Celeste didn’t want that wasn’t in the studio, stacked up around my cot tucked into a dark corner. It created a little privacy from those who passed through this clutter to use the can.

After I finished with the seizure, I joined the rest in the living room. Although Ralph might have had some inkling of what was happening with me, he hadn’t let his guests know. They had no clue as to why I wasn’t my usual self, drinking beer or hitting on the bong, with them. I held a beer in hand but had no desire to do anything but sip the foam until I had to excuse myself as the next bout announced itself with nausea and that familiar buzz. The seizures were now coming about every fifteen to twenty minutes and the novelty of them had begun to wear thin.

One of the girls, Dawn, used the bathroom. She saw what was happening and called out in a panic, “Hey, this guy is having a seizure!”

“He’s okay...” Ralph reassured her.

“No, really… He’s floppin’ around like a fish!”

I couldn’t speak to tell her it was nothing to get all worked up over but she had gone into the automatic nursing mode… “Someone get a stick or something. Keep him from swallowing his tongue!”

Oh, Gawd… I was more afraid of what she might try to do to help me than anything that the seizure might inflict. Luckily, I came out of it enough to speak before any damage was done.

“Ngaugh! Ngaugh! No… leave me… the fuck… lone!” I couldn’t force much more out of a confused tongue, and larynx, before I came completely out of it.

That seizure was over and I was able to join the rest of the gang in the front room to explain what was going on; what they could, or should not, do to be helpful. More beers were cracked and nobody but Dawn seemed the least concerned about what was happening. They all knew I had just gotten out of the hospital from the bike accident but they’d all figured I was okay now that I was home. The next seizure began to come on so I put my can of beer down on the card table and dismissed myself once more to ride the wild horse. Dawn was still in the maternal nursing mode so she followed me to my cot. It was nice to have her there and I appreciated her presence, knowing at least one person cared. We were able to talk about the seizures some more and then the next bout took over. She busied herself with mopping my brow while I flipped and flopped about.

Her boyfriend suspected that I might be hitting on his girl in lieu of the bong. He busted into the room, “Hey, Dawn! What are you two up to?” then grabbed her by the shoulder as she was mopping my forehead.

“Let go of me you jerk!”

“Hey, dude, I don’t like your game… I’m gonna kick your ass if you don’t back off from my girl!” he demanded further.

It had to be a hilariously dangerous situation but I couldn’t express my delight, nor fear, at the display this character was making.

Ralph and his buddy came into the room.

Dawn told Romeo, “Shut up the fuck up!”

Romeo demanded that she get out of the bedroom while Ralph and his friend helped to push Romeo out the door. When I was finally able to speak, Dawn talked me into calling the Doc.

I called Doc Coxcomb and tried to explain what had been going on since I left the hospital.

“So, don’t you think I ought to be readmitted?”

Doc answered, “These events don’t sound like seizures. You didn’t lose consciousness?”

“Doc, I was flopping about like a fish out of water.”

Doc refused to recognize that these were seizures. I was too confused to see any incompetence or other motives in his denial but was confused by the Doc’s reluctance to readmit me into the hospital.

Dawn saw that I was getting nowhere and grabbed the phone, “Look, asshole. I have watched this guy during his seizure and you’d better do something about it. He is having one every fifteen minutes!”

Dr. Coxcomb didn’t budge. Dawn got pissed, “Look, you son of a bitch! If this guy isn’t having a seizure, then you’d better figure out what it is that he is having or we’re getting another fucking doctor to see him.”

The possibility of a second opinion got his attention. Dr. Coxcomb readmitted me to the hospital. I had another CT scan administered. Two scans had to be done because the first scan was interrupted during a seizure. The Doc then prescribed some Dilantin and the seizures stopped. I stayed in the hospital another week under observation.

I puzzled at Dr. Coxcomb’s reluctance to call these seizures anything but events. Events was the word he preferred to use. When asked about that, the good Doc’s face changed into a, liar’s-poker-faced-used-car-salesman’s, grin, “If I was to call them seizures the State of California would have to yank your driver’s license.”

He then quickly changed the subject and asked, “Have you ever used LSD or smoked pot?”

“Uh, sure,” still naïve, I should have wondered what the Doc was getting at, “but it's been well over a decade since I did anything like acid.”

“That explains it. You were having a flashback.”

“Now, Doc… that’s absurd. I never heard of an acid flashback that's anything like a seizure.” It gave me a headache to argue so I let go of it when Doc changed the subject.

Doc took advantage of my obvious confusion, waving the shiny object of ambition by coming from way out in left field. Hell, he was out behind the bleachers in left field, “As an artist, do you know of any new talent in the arts that would be a good buy? I’m thinking of investing in art. You know, someone like you who might make it big someday?”

My Gawd, I thought, is this creep trying to buy me off? The shiny object of ambition never had any effect on me. I was the antithesis of the Andy Warhol proposition that art was about making money. I considered the act of painting, sculpting, writing, to be an act of love… of making love… copulating... fucking the muse.

To get back to the subject, I asked the Doc something more relevant, “How long does it usually take to recover from an injury like this… you know, memory and such?”

“That is a hard question to answer. It really depends on the individual: six weeks or six months. Truthfully? You’re the only patient I’ve had that’s survived a basal fracture of that magnitude.”

He was looking at the x-rays, “These injuries usually come with massive brain damage from a blow severe enough to cause one. You were lucky and only suffered a mild concussion. I see nothing wrong going on in the x-rays. It shouldn’t be long before things normalize.”

Years went by before I figured out why Dr. Coxcomb was so reluctant to admit that I was having seizures. I happened upon a Physicians Desk Reference and looked up Demerol. Under warnings: Demerol should be administered cautiously to those suffering from head injuries and that it is known to cause seizures in people who don’t normally suffer them.

The fucker gave me a Demerol drip from day-one in the hospital. He was covering his ass for malpractice suits! Then his questions about drugs. He was attempting to set me up as a drug abuser so that any court, judge or jury, might consider anything brought up by me to be questionable. What a Bastard!

Once I understood this, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a story on Dr. Coxcomb on the TV… 60 Minutes or something… and that his diploma came from a mail-order mill. Water under the bridge, I thought.

There is nothing that compares to real clinical depression. I held to all of the common assumptions about depression before this concussion business. The fact that it happened while my marriage was breaking up and that I was approaching middle age caused me to consider depression as a passing thing and, therefore, not to be taken very seriously. It didn't occur to me that I was suffering from it at the time and it is only in retrospect that I could see all of the symptoms. I assumed that, after a short period of recuperation, I’d go back to work and resume life as before.

Some of the things that happened in the weeks following hospitalization certainly added to my problems and I don't know how these things could have been prevented. I supposed it hinged directly on the competence, or incompetence, of the medical personnel involved but I wasn’t sure that I showed the signs clearly enough for anyone but the most qualified professional specialists to take any notice of, or apply, the appropriate therapy…. There goes more water under the bridge.

I began missing child support payments. Celeste wasn’t happy at all about that. I was pissed that she couldn’t grasp that I’d been in the goddamned hospital. Then I missed another payment and then another.

I wasn’t working and my insurance, which I had been paying out my ass for, didn’t cover me but for a short, very short, while. Then I received a letter from Celeste: “Dirk and I are now married and we are making as best we can a nuclear family. Dirk is now Ariel’s father and she no longer considers you as such. It is best this way, Max. My hope is that you can back-off and allow her the stability we are trying to provide. If you care at all for her, please let go. Let her start anew.”

Anger arose first. Anger because I felt completely abandoned by Celeste, God and humankind. Dirk had been fucking her for a couple of years that I knew of. We’d worked it out and it was supposed to be over… a fling… she’d said. The amicable part of our agreement was severed. I made several spiteful calls in the middle of the night after that letter. The bile of hatred obsessed me. I knew enough to back-off, however, as Celeste demanded or I might screw up any chance of redemption.

I couldn’t sleep from that time on but never wanted to leave my bed. When going about the most mundane and trivial tasks I lost concentration and focus so easily that I’d simply go back to bed. My next-door neighbor had a waterbed that she needed to get rid of so I took it. Man, I could stay in that bed for days at a time. All I had to do was to pay bills and to keep up on paper work sent to me by the insurance company. But I barely managed to do that. I tried to go back to work for a few days but, just entering the prison through the sally port, was so confusing and disorientating that I feared going back again and resigned from the best job I’d ever had. I couldn’t keep up the rent on my studio and moved my paintings, sculpture and books into the already crowded bedroom. It was all piled up in heaps around the waterbed with only the narrowest and precarious passage to the bathroom and the door to Ralph’s domain. 

Celeste was rightfully upset that child-support payments had stopped and soon told me I could forget about ever seeing Ariel again. This was a modern version of Job’s wife’s admonition to “Curse God and die!” It was all crumbling down on me and had no inertia to do anything about it. So, I did what I liked doing best at the time… I drank... and I fought that demon by fighting everything and everyone. I fought everything and everyone in the guise of what I thought of as a revolutionary fervor… a dropout from society… any society.