A Can of Worms

(excerpt from MEMORIA NERA)

by John Palcewski

Park Avenue, mid-town Manhattan. The fifth floor of a green-tinted-glass and chrome-trimmed building between 57th and 58th streets. My office has a credenza and shelves full of books and a big window with a view of moving north and southbound traffic. I always keep the door open, to show everyone I have nothing to hide.

My daily afternoon ritual: I open the bottom right drawer of my desk, and carefully unscrew the metal cap of my pint bottle of Smirnoff Blue Label. I prefer the Blue because it's 100 proof, as compared to the anemic 75 proof of the Red. I fill my mug halfway, then top it off with grapefruit juice I got in the morning at Gristedes around the corner. I always put the cup and the grapefruit juice bottle right on my desk where everybody can see it. Vodka has no odor. None at all! Nobody will ever guess what I'm doing.

At five one evening I do not rush out and head for the Oak Room of the Plaza Hotel, as is my custom. Rather I sit there at my desk, surrounded by a warm humid haze. No sense going out there on the street. It's a long walk along Central Park South to the subway station at Columbus Circle. Too many people at rush hour, and I hate being crowded and jostled. The subway is fucking murder at this time of day. It's hot, humid, and it stinks. "Step lively! Watch the closing doors!" So I just sit there at my desk and pretend to edit an article I am trying to write about mass-producing chickens on big commercial farms in Maryland.

I look up as Joe Merkin walks past my open door and turns toward the hallway leading to the elevators. But then suddenly he reappears, which startles me. He puts on a grin that is not at all friendly. 

"Don't get too drunk, Johnny!" he says. And then he winks. 

"Don't worry about it, OKAY?" I hear myself shouting too loudly.

The warm haze turns into an awful buzzing in my ears. My face burns. Jesus. If Merkin knows, everyone knows. And what will happen now to my corporate magazine career?

I can't deal with this shit. To hell with it. I just want to check out, now. I finish what's left in my cup. Tonight I'm going to get drunk, and I mean really drunk. Because I can't take this anymore. I never realized how much Merkin hates me. His hatred is there, all right. Contempt, too. Just oozing out of him. Mr. Straight Arrow doesn't drink or smoke because he's not man enough for it. Fucking wimp asshole.

* * *

At the Oak Room I order a vodka on the rocks with a twist, please. And then in a few minutes another, if you don't mind, Bill. Then to the 7th Avenue uptown express for a long, hot, rattling ride. I walk to Gaughan's Bar & Grill, on West 83rd and Amsterdam. Over the hours a soft blur. Glass after glass of draft beer. Then out on the street I take swigs from a brown-paper-bagged pint of Gallo Port.

At four in the morning I am sitting in a doorway of a brownstone with a Latino pimp and drug dealer, smoking a joint. We talk earnestly. I want him to understand that I love all people, of any color or nationality or occupation. I'm not here to judge anyone, you know? I'm not like the other white men he despises, I mean for good reason. I'm different. That should be obvious. See? I don't mind sitting on the top step with a drug dealer and pimp at four-thirty in the morning, looking out at the dim street, and at those evil assholes lurking in the shadows on the other side.

Hey! What are YOU lookin' at, motherfuckah?

* * *

Women. Always women. The red-haired, blue-eyed Irish lass. Under the stained sheet at ten in the morning, I fuck her for the fourth time. I come hard. She smiles. What's funny? I ask. She replies that when she leaves she will go to confession at St. Matthews, and instead of telling the priest that she sinned three times today, she'll have to say four.

"Why must you confess?" I ask.

"Because what we're doing is a sin."

"No, it can't be."

"Oh, yes, my dear innocent little boy, it is. And I'm a sinner."

* * *

When Barbara goes to Texas with our daughter I'm a free man and I do whatever I please. The first night I bring to our apartment Mabel, the Black part-time bartender at Gaughan's. We fuck and drink and laugh at the cable TV all night. Rough and raunchy sex. I can't get enough. At dawn Mabel says, "Do me one more time before I go, honey. You so sweet!" 

I slide into her darkness, savoring the sensual intensity that drives all pain out of my consciousness. I get lost in her tight slipperiness, her willingness, her full acceptance of me, exactly as I am right now, and I try to prolong the delicious sensations. But Mabel wants me to cum, now. Right away, because she's ready. "Do it, honey. Do it. Now." And I cum. But then in just a few minutes it all comes flooding right back into my head. Shame. Loathing. Regret.

* * *

Peace comes only with Smirnoff's blue label, or glasses of beer from the tap, or gallon jugs of Italian Swiss Colony sherry. Or a woman's cunt. Or mouth. Certainly not Barbara's, because I'm sick of her. The sight of her struggling to pull the spandex over her mottled fatty flesh makes me want to puke. Only when I'm drunk or fucking some other woman do I feel I have a right to live. The rest of the time I furiously struggle to pass myself off as a normal New Yorker, whoever the fuck that is. 

But I know I am a fraud. I am the most loathsome man in the world, even more loathsome than my father, who nauseated me with his violence and perpetual anger. But underneath all that he was just a fragile skinny little wimp. The slightest thing blew him away. He couldn't take it because he was just a pussy. He didn't have the balls to get revenge on my mother, because he knew she'd laugh at him. So he took it out on me, a helpless little boy whose mother turned away from her own flesh and blood.

Oh, poor little Johnny! Poor little Johnny!

* * *

I put up a big map on the wall in the living room and stuck in pushpins to indicate every state I'd visited in my decade-long corporate magazine career. Each of the continental US states had at least one pin, and others--like California, Florida and Texas--had had dozens. Barbara told me one day she knew those pins represented all the whores I'd fucked. All my bar maid conquests. My infidelities, my betrayals. My serial adultery. I shook my head. "You flatter me, dear," I said. "There were a lot, yes, but not THAT many!"

* * *

Of course I'm deep into the writing of revisionist history, almost like one of those whacked-out Holocaust deniers. My memory of the early days of my marriage to Barbara is permanently distorted by the pain of the revenge she later laid upon me for the crime of walking out on her. A month after I moved to a small apartment six blocks from our house, she secretly took our two kids and moved them permanently to near her home town in West Texas. She said, sweetly, that I could come visit any time I wanted. 

Then she turned Lara and Stephen against me. She deprived me of the important experiences of my daughter's graduation from high school, and my son's completion of US Marine Boot Camp. I can't believe I ever loved that horridly spiteful woman. In those early days we wrote each other lots of letters, and if I ever get around to re-reading them I'll see that I repeatedly professed love. Told her over and over again that we were destined to be together forever. A regular romance with all the appropriate words.

But if I had truly been in love with that woman, how do I explain my serial adultery? I was determined to fuck as many other women as I could. This was an obsession that kicked in the very first weeks of our marriage, and continued for two decades, until I finally left. My behavior proved I could NOT have been in love with her. I married her because she was a toxic codependent who eagerly enabled every single addiction I ever practiced. I was precisely the right man for her because--big surprise!--she often said I reminded her of her alcoholic, philandering father.

* * *

But let's get back to Merkin. I was exactly right in concluding that if he was aware of my daily on-the-job drinking, then everyone in the New York operation knew. Including my editor, Walt. So I wasn't exactly surprised when one afternoon he came into my office with a grim look on his face. I knew something bad was about to happen. He looked at my coffee mug, which at the moment was full of vodka with a splash of grapefruit juice. Then he looked up at the ceiling and sniffed. And sniffed again. He was making a big show of it.

"What's that funny smell?" Walt said.

"Maybe there's a problem with the air conditioning," I said.

"No, I think the problem is in that cup on your desk."

Well, it finally happened. I was busted. Unbelievable. Unreal! But Walt made it short and sweet. Because of his deep personal concern for what I was doing, which was clearly a violation of company rules as well as awfully self-destructive, he'd made an appointment for me to see one of the company's shrinks, Dr. Lewis, up at corporate headquarters in Stamford, Conn. 

"He'll see you on Monday at 1 PM," Walt said.

Then he walked out. He was wooden and awkward, but then I could see he was just a little proud of himself for being so...so decisive! Most of the time he trembled and chewed his fingernails and gnawed his knuckles. Especially when the Executive Vice President for Corporate Communications entered his office. Oh, my. Did Uncle Walt know how to fall on his knees and drive his nose up his superior's fat ass.

I had the whole weekend to prepare for the solemn and holy inquisition. To clear my head I drank no alcohol, not even beer. I went to Gucci's and bought a pale blue shirt, and a dark blue silk paisley tie to go with it. Also new pair of wingtips. Got a haircut, and a manicure.

A silent slender secretary escorted me down a carpeted hallway to Dr. Lewis's office. He didn't rise to greet me but remained sitting behind a massive oak desk with a glass top. In the corner were strange looking potted trees with narrow trunks and big, dark, waxy-looking green leaves. I put my chrome-trimmed Samsonite attaché case next to the chair and sat down.

I said nothing, and he said nothing, for about two minutes.

Finally: "Why are you here, John?"

"My editor ordered me to come."

"So you are not here by choice."

"No, I am not."

I glanced up at the wall to his left. Framed diploma from NYU medical school. Other engraved certificates. But he didn't intimidate me in the slightest. I'd immediately sized him up as a sell-out, a fraud, a corporate shill. What in hell was an alleged "healer" doing in a tight three piece suit, sitting behind a huge desk in a plush high-backed leather chair? Where was his white lab coat, his stethoscope? His friendly bedside manner?

"Walter tells me he's deeply concerned about your drinking problem."

"What leads him to believe that it's a problem?" I said.

"Well, he found half a dozen empty vodka bottles in your desk drawer."

Dr. Lewis's tone was that of a prosecutor laying out irrefutable evidence in a criminal case. I perceived in him not a particle of compassion, empathy, or concern. This intensified my contempt, and I became emboldened.

"You know, doc, there's a curious thing about diagnosing alcoholism," I said calmly. "Just grab any guy off the street. Tell him you know he's an alcoholic. If he admits to it, bingo, you're right. If he says no, you're crazy, I'm NOT, well, bingo, you're right still again. Because denial is one of the major symptoms."

Dr. Lewis's smile was just a touch weak. 

"Furthermore," I said, "you must know you're opening up a can of worms here. If you insist I have a problem, then you're obliged to define it. So tell me: If I drink am I suffering from a disease? Or a mental illness? Or is it a garden variety moral failure? Or just bad judgment?"

"You tell me," Dr. Lewis said.

"You can't possibly say I have a disease."

"Why not?"

I smiled because the stupid fuck had just swallowed the bait whole.

"You know full well, doc, that corporate policy does not recognize alcoholism as a disease," I said. "The simple fact is that like the general population, between ten and twenty percent of this corporation's employees are drunks. If it's a disease, then the company is obliged to treat them. But given the numbers, doing so would quickly bankrupt the medical plan."

"Nevertheless," Dr. Lewis said, "you must admit your drinking is a problem."

I reached down, clicked open my attaché case. I tossed six past issues of the corporate magazine on Dr. Lewis's desk.

"Has Walt told you that just four weeks ago I was promoted from assistant editor to associate editor, along with a substantial salary increase? Has he mentioned that my articles and photographs are among the best that have ever appeared in the publication? My superior performance is indisputable. And my performance is the only issue you may legitimately or legally bring up. What I do on my own time is none of your business. Or Walt's."

Dr. Lewis shook his head. He scribbled something on his little white tablet. "Despite your sophistry, John, I believe your alcoholism is chronic and that you ought to deal with it."

I rose. "Thanks," I said.

"Why are you thanking me? I haven't done a damned thing for you."

I walked out. And on the train ride back to Manhattan I made myself a solemn promise. To stop drinking? Oh, hell no! I would never stop drinking because it did so much for me. No, I'd just make absolutely sure that no simpering son of a bitch would ever catch me at it again. That meant, of course, no more drinking on the job. I knew I could do that. Piece of cake.

And, of course, I was also determined to exact revenge on that sniveling pathetic knuckle gnawing cocksucker Walt. Which, by the way, I succeeded in doing, and I mean big time, about two weeks after that Stamford fiasco. My payback was amazingly effective, very close to a stroke of genius. I may have been an arrogant sick twisted and vengeful drunk, but I wasn't stupid.

At around noon one day I closed my office door. I dialed Walt's extension, and at the same time punched the play button on my Sony tape recorder. Out came the noises of a crowded bar, with the clink of glasses and the blaring of a juke box, which I'd recorded the night before. 

"Walt here," he answered.

"Lisssen, Walt," I said, raising my voice above the bar chatter. "I know it's gonna pisssss you off, but I have to take the ressss of the day off..."

"What?"

"I'm sssssso sorry, Walt..."

"Don't bother coming back," he said. "You're fired!"

I put the receiver down. Then picked up a long article for the magazine I'd just completed, headed quickly for Walt's office. When he saw me at his doorway his mouth opened. He stared at me, motionless, paralyzed with disbelief.

"Here's the piece on the Maryland chicken farms," I said calmly. And I put it on his desk. Walt kept staring at me, unable to speak.

"Is there anything wrong, Walt?" I asked.

He blinked. And blinked again. "No. Nothing's wrong."

* * *

   Forio d' Ischia, marzo 2006

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