Not Dead & Not For Sale Read Free

lived for the summertime. Summertime meant California and my dad, Kent, and his wife, Martha. Summertime meant watching them cultivate their pot plants in the backyard and throwing their parties with Emmylou Harris and Stones records and margaritas and shots of Cuervo Gold. Summertime meant pals like Billy, a cool dude who already had long hair, Levi’s super-bell cords, and Vans slip-ons. Billy was the first guy I met who played guitar. He taught himself Zeppelin and taught me about a beer buzz. Billy, my stepbrother, Craig, and Jonathan, the son of Martha’s best friend, snuck beers out of Dad’s fridge. While the grown-up party was building its own buzz, we chugged down the brews, and then another, and another, and walked out into the backyard, the secret inside our heads. I liked the feeling of entering an alternate energy field. I liked the psychological and chemical rearrangement brought on by the alcohol.

    Other times we invaded Dad’s liquor cabinets: times when Billy, Craig, Jonathan, and I got sick, times when we pushed the envelope and smoked weed, which hit me like acid. I tripped on the sunlight streaming through a trellis fence. The pattern of shade became a three-dimensional revelation, a maze containing the very mystery of life, a key connecting all feelings to all forms.
    Back in Cleveland for the seventh grade, the California sunshine was replaced with the Ohio snow. My Ohio friends weren’t as cool as Billy. My Ohio extracurricular activities centered on sports. Breaking tackles. Wrestling and fishing. Getting up at six a.m. in the dark for swimming practice and going at it again after school.
    One day I came home from school and walked over to my friend Mark’s house. His parents, who worked late, had a killer liquor cabinet. Over ice, I filled a tumbler with Black Velvet, gin, and vodka, took it to the woods, sat against a tree, and drank it down. The moment was pivotal precisely because it was solitary. I got blasted all alone. The isolation did something to me—removed me from life and reality—that I experienced as strangely wonderful.
    The winter was long. I studied the calendar, watching the months slowly pass until fall gave way to winter, winter to spring, and spring to summertime back in California, where I learned to surf. I wasn’t a champ, but I could do it. While surfing I felt free from time, suspended in space, thoughtless and alive.
    HAVING TWO DADS AND NO DAD WAS CONFUSING . I wanted my biological dad but he seemed to want me only during the summers. He was the one listening to Hank Williams. My stepdad was telling me to do my homework. Meanwhile, the teachers told my stepdad that I was smart but hyper. I was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. Psychologists suggested that I go on Ritalin. Mom wouldn’t allow it. But she would allow me to visit her ex-husband at the end of the school year. So I was off to California to visit Dad and Martha and Martha’s son, Craig, who was my age. Craig was a great guy and one of my closest friends, but I couldn’t help but be a little jealous of him. He had my dad’s attention all the time. Craig had become my replacement. Then two years later, Craig was dead.

    Me hugging Craig
    I REMEMBER SITTING IN MR. BURKE’S creative-writing class. Mr. Burke was my favorite teacher. The school year was almost over. I was still in shock. I still couldn’t process the news. Mr. Burke knew what happened back in California. He told me to write about it. He said writing would help. I remembered then—and still remember now—every moment, every conversation that took place between me and Craig. Our encounters were etched into my psyche.
    I wrote this:
    “Yesterday was rainy. The sky was crying rain. I was standing at the end of our driveway when I heard my mother’s voice. She said, ‘Hurry, Scott, there’s a call for you.’ I ran in the house. My heart was beating like crazy. I knew something was wrong. My father’s voice sounded different.