Coholic #2: We Are All Broken
I stare out the attic window, watching the sunrise reflect off the church on the Blvd.
The heat seeps through the thin walls in the summer, and the cold cuts through in the winter. The rattling windows are strangely comforting, even as the wind slips through their gaps. I can see the church bells ringing, watching as their bronze faces flash gold and catch fire as they swing through the sunlight.
My eyes drift down to the small backyard below, and for a moment I'm four again, my tiny hands wrapped around the green watering can that's almost too heavy for me. Grandma's fingers cover mine, helping me tip it just right so the water doesn't splash too hard on her marigolds. I watch their bright colors dancing under the gentle stream and the bees moving from flower to flower. Everything is so alive and I feel happy in this narrow space behind the house. It feels like the whole world, and I'm at the center of it. “My little helper,” she says, and everything feels safe.
I blink, and it's gone.
Just a small square of dead soil no longer useful for a garden and the barren fence line where the marigolds once ran bright before they withered away and died with nothing beautiful to take their place: only my innocence lost after my grandparents moved away, horrified and unsure of what I’ve done to deserve this. I can feel the soap stinging my eyes and the freezing cold water as my stepfather sprays me with the hose. I can see the neighbors walking by through my tears, peering past the car in the driveway, ignoring my eyes that pleaded for help while I desperately tried to hide my small naked body, which I couldn't do when told to wash.
Oxymoron's Concrete Jungle begins pounding in my ears as I slip on my headphones, drowning out the calls for salvation from the bell tower and the unanswered prayers of a child.
I grab my skateboard and head out the front door and make my way to Jasper Bridge. The others are already there.
I balance on the rails, arms outstretched, listening to the meaningless conversations around me and smiling. The bass isn't just music, it's control. It's the first time I've felt in sync with anything in my life. The first real thing I can hold. This is the start of something more, something bigger.
“What are you laughing about?” Drug asks me.
“My English teacher overheard me talking about the band and lost his shit, called us the greatest bunch of losers the school's ever seen.”
Tommy laughs. “That's pretty awesome.”
We stop under a bridge, and Al digs out the spray paint from his backpack, passing the cans around.
“Fuck yeah, dude,” Tommy yells, snatching one out of the air and shaking it. He crouches down in the broken glass and used needles scattered at his feet as Al & the Coholics emerges on the wall.
We continue down the tracks, passing a dead snake. Tommy, trailing behind us, blurts out, “Dude! Snakes die?”
“What?!” Drug practically doubles over laughing.
That’s it. We’re gone. Even Dylan, who usually acts too cool for our bullshit, is grinning. I stumble off the rail clutching my ribs from laughing too hard.
“Yeah, man,” Al gasps between wheezes. “Everything dies.”
“Well, shit, man, I don’t know. I thought they lived forever or some shit,” Tommy says.
“You’re an idiot,” Dylan yells, “but you’re our idiot.”
A train comes rolling in, slow enough for us to jump on. Without thinking, we sprint toward it. Drug grabs the rung first, followed by me, then Al and Dylan. Tommy’s behind us, trying to keep up.
“I can't!”
Tommy's too slow. His hand reaches for the rungs but misses. Without saying a word, we all jump off. We don't care. It wasn't about the train anyway. It's about us.
“Let's go,” says Al. “We got to meet Rubella.”
By dusk we find ourselves under the Eagle Avenue bridge.
This is it, the Temple of Lost Love. The place feels different than the other spots we've tagged. Sacred, almost.
“What colors do we have left?” I ask Dylan, watching him work the stencil against the concrete.
“Red, white and blue,” Tommy answers.
I laugh and throw Dylan the red. He shakes it, sprays. When he pulls the stencil back, FUCK appears in perfect block letters. Another color. POLICE appears next to it. Tommy positions the stencil for the next row. Dylan keeps going, rotating colors, until eight rows of FUCK POLICE are written in patriotic irony across the concrete.
Al already has a fire going, illuminating the graffiti-covered walls. A guitar body spins from a rope catching the firelight as it turns, casting wild shadows over Rubella who stands in front of an old organ that someone dragged down here. His tongue is stuck out, eyes crazy, digging into the keys, listening to the phantom music it once made. I imagine a sort of Danse Macabre with devils licking their lips, waiting to collect our souls.
I like sitting with my back against the pillar that faces the Cleveland skyline and watch how the Terminal Tower reflects off the river. Down here in the Temple, we're invisible. The walls are covered in layers of graffiti:some artistic, some just rage scrawled in spray paint, and now Dylan and Tommy's fresh addition in red, white, and blue.
The joint comes my way. I take a hit, hold it, let the smoke mix with the damp air that hangs around the river. I smile, reading graffiti that says This river was on Fire. I laugh because it's true.
Someone's written “We are all broken” on the wall behind Tommy, and below it, in different handwriting, “That's what lets the light in.”
Al's quiet for a minute, just smoking, watching the fire. A siren wails in the distance, but down here it sounds like it's coming from another world.
“I was thinking about something today that made me laugh.” he says finally.
“What’s that?” I ask.
He laughs, but there's no humor in it.
“My family wanted better for me. So they sent me to a private school for a while,” Al says, sitting back down on his concrete block. “High school out in the suburbs. But it was obvious I didn't fit in. Some preppy assholes thought they could bully me. So, me and my cousin beat the shit out of three of them who thought poverty was funny. After that, I was bused to Hay.”
Al grins. “I was one of five white kids at Hay. Five. School was fucked for me in ways I didn't even understand yet. I thought I knew what fighting was, but I was fighting for my life there. I woke up in the hallway after being jumped and knocked out. So, I went to the principal's office like, 'Hey, I just got jumped,' but I got suspended for not being in class.”
“You're kidding me.” I say.
“Nope. The guys who jumped me were probably outside somewhere, but that didn't matter. They gave me a bus ticket and sent my 14-year-old ass to catch the rapid from Little Italy back to the west side.”
“Shit,” Tommy mutters, temporarily forgetting to argue with Dylan.
Dylan shakes his head. “That's fucked.”
A police siren echoes from somewhere nearby. Down here in the Temple, you learn not to pay attention unless it's getting closer. The flames are getting lower; we need to feed it more wood soon, but nobody wants to move.
The joint's making its way back around. When it gets to Al, he takes a long hit before continuing, and the smoke drifts up past the graffiti.
“I remember sitting in the cafeteria, maybe seventy-five kids eating lunch, when a gang rolled in. They went after one dude, just one, and held both doors shut while they beat the absolute fuck out of him in front of everyone. Security guards were trapped on the other side, just watching through the glass. All seventy-five of us? We just stood there.”
The bottle comes to me again. I take a swig and pass it along.
“Eventually I reached a point I just didn't care anymore. Some kid puts a gun in my face, wants a cigarette. I told him to fuck off. He cracked me in the skull with it. Would've put a bullet in me too if a security guard hadn't come running. A week later that kid shot a cop in the neck. Fuck it. I was done.”
Al sits back down, picks up the bottle.
“That's how I ended up here,” he says simply. “Under this bridge, drinking scotch with you assholes.”
We all laugh.
Tommy looks at Dylan, and for once they're not about to hit each other. “Anyone got more wood for the fire?”
But nobody moves. We just sit there in the dying light, surrounded by all the words and pictures that other lost souls have left behind in this Temple. Across the river, the city keeps moving, but over here, we're suspended in time, bound together by stories that hurt too much to tell anywhere else.
Drug breaks the silence, his voice quiet but clear. “Frank Green was right about this place.”
“Who?” I ask.
“Guy who started all this. Said people could do whatever they wanted here.” Drug gestures at the walls covered in layer after layer of art and words. “Leave a part of their pain behind. We did.”
[GALLERY]
Coholic is an attempt to make sense of trauma, identity, and what remains when everything else burns away.
This miniseries pulls excerpts from the full-length novel.
