and passing out. He has to be up for work in less than two hours.
Growing up in southern California in the late seventies and early
eighties, he learned at a young age how to drink and use drugs. He learned
from the neighborhood kids, from his schoolmates, but mostly from his
parents. His first memory involves his father, a joint, and a can of beer. His
first taste of alcohol was at age four with a six-year-old cousin at a family
reunion. They each snuck a can of Milwaukee’s Best from the cooler and
slipped behind a giant oak tree to drink like the men. He can still remember
the bitter coldness of the beer, how sick it made them both. The cans of
beer empty, the two cousins lay under the oak tree, passed out. When their
drunken mothers found them, they were each beaten with a belt by their
drunken, stoned fathers. He was disciplined a second time when he vomited
on his mother’s shoe. Four years old and he had already experienced his first
blackout.
At nineteen, he joined the Army. His need for acceptance, discipline,
and friendship far outweighed his need for alcohol and he was tired of bearing
the brunt of his father’s rage. Growing up the only boy and the oldest of three
children, he often took the beatings so his two sisters didn’t have to. The scars
on his face represent whippings he took on nights his father returned home
from the bar, drunk and high, angry with the world. His left eyebrow was
split, much like a faulted rock, with one side of the eyebrow growing higher
than the other. The night that happened, he should have been taken to the
hospital for stitches; instead, his father passed out on the front lawn and his
mother was too drunk to drive him to the emergency room. He mimicked the
cutmen he had watched during televised boxing matches, first pres sing ice to
the gash to stop the bleeding followed up by a glob of Vaseline. Only later did
he learn that Vaseline was only applied by cutmen as a way to minimize the
visual damage seen by the referees in fights and provided no healing element to
the wound itself. At fourteen, he had no way of knowing this.
At 4:00 AM, his alarm startles him awake. Turning off the ringing
bell, he rises and walks to the bathroom with little recollection of the
five doubles he drank less than two hours earlier. His thinking is a touch
fuzzy, his tongue thick and dry. In the bathroom, he undresses and gets
in the shower. A quick rinse and he is out again, towel slung low around
11