Self-pity/Brightness/Gone

For a few months I seemed to be bound and determined to have my name written in the Book of Departed Souls. After leaving New Orleans I made a beeline for skid row Los Angeles and wallowed in self pity and wine/beer/liquor and any kind of drug I could score, which wasn't much because of my financial state. The city of Los Angeles welcomed yet one more tarnished soul into its odorous jungle of the pitiful and the lost amid the stench of skid row and all that implies. Days and weeks and months went by unnoticed by me as I tried desperately to commit suicide by wallowing in the depths of hell that was Fifth and Loos Angeles Streets in downtown. The bars, huge cancerous, sad places had my kind of people sitting on broken, cockeyed bar stools and at small little tables alone and lonely and full of remorse and hate because of whatever had sent them to this purgatory on earth. My kind of people. My kind of world. A world of desperate men and women bunched together in the bedlam of the moment. Every day there would be a soul freed from his or her misery when they were found dead in alleyways. Free! Great God Almighty! Free At Last!!

At least that was how I was beginning to view the living, just hanging around until death released you from all the agony that being alive entails. Among some fleeting lucid moments as I was on my knees in the slime and poverty of Fifth and Los Angeles Streets Nanette and my beautiful little daughter, Patricia found their way into my thoughts. It was much to horrible to consider and even think about and I sought out drink or pills, preferably both as an antidote. Before I could get to that most powerful antidote I could see how weak and stupid I was and that Nanette and Patricia were paying a far, far worse price than was I because of that weakness. But soon the wine obliterated their beautiful images and I was safe again, locked inside my cocoon of self pity and anguish.

Somehow, I came out of it and through an old friends help, Richard who I was sharing an apartment with when I met Nanette, I managed to climb out of the gutter and find work. After I found work self esteem slipped into my psyche and the thoughts of my family back in New York came to possess me. I called. Nanette agreed and I sent her plane fare and we were going to try it again. Through all of my problems over the years, it was the booze which amplified and made it much worse and I wasn't planning on quitting anytime soon. It was whiskey which caused the fight Nanette and I had after everything had been going along so damn good. I never could even remember what the fight was about, but knowing myself and knowing Nanette, the fight was probably all on me. Whatever it was, whatever I said, it scared her enough that she left the next day while I was at work. That really devastated me, because I couldn't remember what the hell I had done to cause it. I knew we had a fight, I remembered the yelling, me yelling at least, and I can only guess that whatever I said to her scared her enough that she took Patricia and went back to New York.

That was the last time I would see Nanette.

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742