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The Massacre.

March 31, 2015 by Exangel

by Alan Semrow.

 

The day I got here, I met with the head counselor, Ursula, and she told me that I was about to dive head first into the hardest thing I will ever have to do in my life. She said, “This is a community and we are here for you, Marshall. You just need to accept us. You need to let me in. You need to let everyone in.”

I replied, “Ok.” And I did so, because it was the only thing I could really say. I was stoned out of my mind on heroin.

It all started when my girlfriend, Diane, and I started using when we were eighteen. It began as innocently as using heroin could. We would smoke it on a piece of tin foil, using a little plastic straw. It wasn’t too much and it wasn’t too little. It was always perfect and it made me feel like nothing was wrong, like nothing had happened and nothing could happen. Diane always assured me we’d be alright, as long as we stuck together and were smart. We agreed never to shoot it.

Within a year, we were shooting and, two weeks ago, a day after Diane left me, I came very close to overdosing, parked right off Sunset Boulevard, staring into the sun, waiting for God or whoever to take me. Some passerby found me. I remember being ready, but they found me, which I think is strange because L.A. is full of assholes.

I checked myself into rehab after the hospital released me. After my initial consultation with Ursula, she showed me my room. It looked like a hotel room. A nice hotel room. A nice hotel room, within a nice hotel. They really did it up. Tan everything. Palm tree this, palm tree that. Marble. Lots of marble and cherry wood furniture.

In my room, I had nothing. My bags were in the midst of being checked for contraband. They told me I couldn’t bring my compact make-up or my mini mirrors or my nail files.

It took a while to adjust, but Ursula was right about this being a community of people ready to help each other. My goal for this month is to begin to open up like a flower.

I’m sitting in the middle of group right now. Wendy is telling us about her crystal meth days. How she used to drive while using, how she used to hide bags up her asshole. I’m hardly listening, though. I’m only scratching and thinking about how badly I want Diane. How badly I want to shoot up.

Ursula looks around the circle and asks if anyone else would like to share. She looks at me. I look back, thinking about how wonderful it used to feel and how awful everything feels right now.

She asks me if I’d like to go, to share my story. My entire body is shaking. I need my fucking fix. I need some fucking methadone. A lobotomy!

“Marshall?” she asks.

I gasp for air. I say, “Fine.”

Ursula puts her hands in her lap and gazes at me, waiting.

I breathe in and then breathe out, just as the meditation specialist had taught me last week. “I was twelve years old and I was walking along the railroad with my best friend, Scotty. He was so smart. We were both so smart. He was talking about fucking Ulysses by James Joyce. I hadn’t read it, but fucking Scotty of course had. At the fucking age of twelve. I had only read Portrait of an Artist, but I loved and it spoke to me and I wanted to speak to Scotty about it, but he just wouldn’t stop fucking talking about Ulysses. And I just kept listening. And there was no one around. And he was telling me about different parts in the novel and about all the gratuitous sex that got it banned and I was laughing with him, because we both had a very haphazard understanding of sex at the time. I mean, you know, I was twelve. So, anyways, he was my best friend. We spent all the time in the world together, sneaking R-rated movies from our parents’ shelves and watching them, discussing them. He talked to me about Buddhism and how he was very interested in getting involved in it once he had a car and a license. And I just imagined the two of us, friends forever, going off and doing all these new things and living together, just maintaining this brotherhood. We talked about it all the time and he agreed with me and told me that all he needed in his life was me. And, anyways, Scotty stopped talking about Ulysses eventually and we kind of just walked in silence. We started heading for home, because it was starting to get dark. We were planning on having a sleep over. We ended up taking this shortcut through the woods and it was so quiet and Scotty kept saying how beautiful it was, how beautiful a night, a day it was. And, you know, I didn’t hear it at first. Or maybe I did, I just couldn’t comprehend it. Or it didn’t register or something, but it was hunting season. And someone shot at something. And, like I said, it was starting to get dark. And the bullet hit Scotty right in the fucking head. It didn’t kill him instantly, but it happened really quickly. And I bent down on my knees and I held him so tight, just holding him and holding him and screaming. And he looked at me and Scotty said, ‘Don’t worry about me.’ And I held him and I cried into him and he just died there in the middle of the woods. And I lifted my head and I screamed and then I bent down and I kissed him on the lips. And I said, ‘I’m not worried, buddy.’”

I open my eyes and look out at the group and they’re all crying and I’m crying and we’re all crying. And I think they understand why maybe I started using in the first place. I think maybe they get why I’m here right now.

Filed Under: EAP: The Magazine, Spring 2015: The Devil You Know., Winter 2015: Firsts.

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In This Issue.

  • Who Was Dorothy?
  • Those Evil Spirits.
  • The Screaming Baboon.
  • Her.
  • A Tale of Persistence.
  • A Conversation with Steve Hugh Westenra.
  • Person Number Twelve.
  • Dream Shapes.
  • Cannon Beach.
  • The Muse.
  • Spring.
  • The Greatness that was Greece.
  • 1966, NYC; nothing like it.
  • Sun Shower.
  • The Withering Weight of Being Perceived.
  • Broken Clock.
  • Confession.
  • Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse.
  • Sometimes you die, I mean that people do.
  • True (from “My Life with Dogs”).
  • Fragmentary musings on birds and bees.
  • 12 Baking Essentials to Always Have in Your Poetry.
  • Broad Street.
  • A Death in Alexandria.
  • My Forked Tongue.
  • Swan Lake.
  • Long Division.
  • Singing against the muses.
  • Aphorisms from “What Remains to Be Said”.

In The News.

That cult classic pirate/sci fi mash up GREENBEARD, by Richard James Bentley, is now a rollicking audiobook, available from Audible.com. Narrated and acted by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio, you’ll be overwhelmed by the riches and hilarity within.

“Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges is your typical seventeenth-century Cambridge-educated lawyer turned Caribbean pirate, as comfortable debating the virtues of William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, and compound interest as he is wielding a cutlass, needling archrival Henry Morgan, and parsing rum-soaked gossip for his next target. When a pepper monger’s loose tongue lets out a rumor about a fleet loaded with silver, the Captain sets sail only to find himself in a close encounter of a very different kind.

After escaping with his sanity barely intact and his beard transformed an alarming bright green, Greybagges rallies The Ark de Triomphe crew for a revenge-fueled, thrill-a-minute adventure to the ends of the earth and beyond.

This frolicsome tale of skullduggery, jiggery-pokery, and chicanery upon Ye High Seas is brimming with hilarious puns, masterful historical allusions, and nonstop literary hijinks. Including sly references to Thomas Pynchon, Treasure Island, 1940s cinema, and notable historical figures, this mélange of delights will captivate readers with its rollicking adventure, rich descriptions of food and fashion, and learned asides into scientific, philosophical, and colonial history.”

THE SUPERGIRLS is back, revised and updated!

supergirls-take-1

In The News.

Newport Public Library hosted a three part Zoom series on Visionary Fiction, led by Tod.  

And we love them for it, too.

The first discussion was a lively blast. You can watch it here. The second, Looking Back to Look Forward can be seen here.

The third was the best of all. Visions of the Future, with a cast of characters including poets, audiobook artists, historians, Starhawk, and Mary Shelley. Among others. Link is here.

In the News.

SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY is now an audiobook, narrated by Last Word Audio’s mellifluous Colby Elliott. It launched May 10th, but for a limited time, you can listen for free with an Audible trial membership. So what are you waiting for? Start listening to the wonders of how Arcadia was born from the worst section of the worst neighborhood in the worst empire of all the worlds since the universe began.

In The News.

If you love audio books, don’t miss the new release of REPORT TO MEGALOPOLIS, by Tod Davies, narrated by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio. The tortured Aspern Grayling tries to rise above the truth of his own story, fighting with reality every step of the way, and Colby’s voice is the perfect match for our modern day Dr. Frankenstein.

In The News.

Mike Madrid dishes on Miss Fury to the BBC . . .

Tod on the Importance of Visionary Fiction

Check out this video of “Beyond Utopia: The Importance of Fantasy,” Tod’s recent talk at the tenth World-Ecology Research Network Conference, June 2019, in San Francisco. She covers everything from Wind in the Willows to the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, with a look at The History of Arcadia along the way. As usual, she’s going on about how visionary fiction has an important place in the formation of a world we want and need to have.

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