Several weeks later, having tired of being sober and having returned to my alcoholic womb, I was spiffed on 100o and wandering Ponce and ran into a tovarich who told me John Lewis was speaking that afternoon at the Open Door. I had grown tired of the new way, of “trudging the road of happy destiny,” had grown impatient and since I was sleeping rough, in the side area of the library, and was generally consumed in that most dangerous place, the company of my own self-appointed thoughts. My perusal of Merton notwithstanding, I decided to drop the “big one,” nuke the orderliness and reasonable predicatability, one last time again. To gig things and break up the predictable. Drop the big one of drunken chaos and confused amusement and see what happens. See if there was still something to see.
I diverted from my customary 12-Step meeting to a stoop concealed near the liquor store. Drained some bracing 100o straight from the bottle, as was my wont. Quickest avenue to the buzz -- depleted uranium-tipped bunker buster. What was the last thing you'd feel as the bomb hit and your mind raced? That's what I felt. Blood pressure stratospheric, night air cool, stars gleaming overhead. Hum of removed traffic. Alone and unbothered. No mixer, no chaser. Nearer my god to thee.
Several days later, a Saturday, I met a guy who was out on the road driving around the country, checking things out. He didn't have to say as much, but he was clearly getting away from something that had him swamped. To his credit or wisdom (or courage to change), he didn't drink the booze I offered but he did tolerate me. Seemed non-judgmental, a tovarich. We had a good time chatting and walking, though I can remember practically none of it.
When we got to Open Door, there were still a few seats and John Lewis hadn't begun. He began shortly after we arrived, walking to the front with Murphy Davis and Ed Loring.
Both were young progressive Presbyterian clerics. With several others like themselves they'd rented a large house on Ponce De Leon and set to serving the homeless. When they started up, they were alone in providing beds for the homeless in Atlanta and a soup kitchen 6 days of the week. A vegan soup, though at the time I didn't know vegan from Begin, except that I enjoyed the company of the one, and consumed it enthusiastically- though with the 100o, my system flushed it like spurge seeds through a duck- and I hated the militarism and cold-bloodedness of the other. Menachem.
Of the thousand white steeples piercing the sky over Atlanta, not a one surrendered space to the homeless. And thanks to Reagan's revolution and the gutting of HUD money (and the corruption of Pierce's people at HUD) and gentrification and the mustering army of displaced workers looking for construction work in the Big Peach where commercial office towers were rising even higher than the steeples, there were estimated to be over five thousand homeless, camping all over town and especially along the perimeter, under bridges, in bushes and weed patches, down around the Chattahoochee and occupying anonymous slots close to the major arteries on the outskirts, trying to survive and stay out of sight of the cops. Some succeeded. Others were spirited to the city prison farm out Key Road. Others went into rehab at the Fulton County Alcohol Treatment Center, a fixture of kin to that great facility in “Lost Weekend.” It was in that sour-smelling place I met Oberlin Lynne, about whom I've written.
John Lewis was not yet a Congressman. He was merely a minister to the oppressed, something he remains. He preached about the abomination of homelessness and the need for enlistment in the Beloved Community. His words penetrated the booze haze and gave me a momentary charge and to hear his history out of his own mouth is a good memory, is a good thing to remember as I get this rant down.
Across from us, after Lewis was finished and we were talking, I discovered that I was seated opposite Colonel and Mrs. Callaway. Their son had gone to my school back in Norfolk. He'd recently retired. His last post was as commandant at Fort Benning, just north. He was a totally unassuming, unpretentious man who would help me several times with glasses, a place to stay, whatever he knew might guide me out of the alcoholic morass I was in. Nonjudgmental. A Job's comforter. He had dealt with it before. All he knew was to just be there for the person. These days I think of Benning, I think of SOA (or WHISC) but the Colonel was a fine man.
Terrible the good people recruited to do the Empire's will. All in the name of Duty or Honor. The expectation of how they were raised, if from my generation. Or our fathers'.
As it turned out, the new companion was himself a recently discharged marine colonel, young, same age as a friend from my school, who had been a good wrestler, who'd gone to Vietnam, then left as a major and couldn't assimilate. He was like a number of others I ran into and occasionally wound up hanging out with for a while, met in shelters on the road or under bridges or in alleyways if, unlike my new companion, they were lost in drugs and booze and flashbacks and all that stuff they weren't being helped with by the VA. Just like now, just like now. Only worse now. Always worse wars, never tamer, never only theoretic. Except for the rich entitled who set them off. The rich have their video games too. And the people returning from the Middleast bear it away.
Chloracne from exposure to dioxin was the least of it for the consumer/survivors of war.
