It was a nice Saturday afternoon when I woke up, only to hear my dear wife closing the door. I got dressed and walked out onto the balcony to watch her run across the street to the Husky station and walk up to the payphone. Although I could not hear a word she was saying because of the distance and all the highway noise, and despite not being able to read her lips as her face was hidden by the booth, i KNEW exact-the-fucking-ly what was going on.
A minute later I heard the door open so slowly, and her step so sneakily into the apartment, it only confirmed my suspicions. Oh yeah, I knew that my nice saturday afternoon was already spent , flushed down the toilet just as the life was being sucked out of my marrow.
“You are using again, aren’t you” I demanded/
“no, no, of course not”
But I was already livid and searching. I started with the utility room, looking for pipes, and it seemed in every nook and crany I found one. Crack pipes of every shape and form, all homemade out of everything from pop bottles to air pressure gauges to various tools, bulbs, etc, etc. She was nothing if not creative.
“How fucking long has this been going on” I screamed, “how long”, not that I expected, or got, an answer, but I already knew it had been awhile. I just then realized that the signs had been everywhere, I had been in purposeful denial all along. All the times she had spent a hundred bucks or more at the grocery store only to come home with 15 dollars worth of food. All the times she had needed to use the car during the week, all the nights I had gone to bed early, these were all her trademarks deceptions. I had tried to ignore it for so long and now she had to fuck up and confront me head on with the issue.
“You stupid fucking cunt, how the fuck did you rationalalize this to yourself, I am working day and night, on the phone every day with a different collection agency, our car is uninsured, I am going hungry, can’t even afford smokes, even though I make 100 000 a year. This is total bullshit Di…” I roared.
BOOOM BOOOM My fists went through the living room wall and emerged in the study, through both layers of drywall at once.
SMASH A beer bottle took flight and embedded itself in the dining room wall.
I must have had a crazed look on my face, because she just cowered in her chair, but I could still see the jonesing in her body language, the crack craving dance of all four limbs flying all akimbo as bullshit streamed out her mouth “just this one time, this is it, the last time, oh please just once”.
I just hoped and prayed that I could endure this without giving in myself. I don’t even remember if I did or not, this happened to often.
July 4 2010