The beast in me, too
Demons are real.
A couple of years ago, an unhinged crack-smoking associate tackled me on the street just a block from my house. He pinned my neck with his forearm until I started to lose consciousness.
I awoke to ambulance attendants, cops everywhere and my assailant, still screaming, in the back of a police cruiser.
The hurt from that day resonated for a long time. When he got out of jail, even with a restraining order in place, he found ways to terrorize me, and most painfully, my partner.
She had no idea that I used to smoke crack with him. Indeed, I treated him to many nights of drug-smoking abandon. That’s another reason why it hurt — I felt like I had paid him every kindness. In fact, you might even say I chose him because he didn’t seem like the kind of guy who had a lot of friends.
Violent schizophrenia, I later learned, will do that.
For months afterward, I’d sweat in bed, jaw clenched tight, playing that scene in my mind over and over again.
But I was a scrawny, malnourished junkie, wasting away by the day, and certainly in no condition to exact vengeance.
When my family finally figured out I was a mess and left me alone, it soon became clear that I hadn’t learned any lessons. I still tried to be an exceptional crack smoker — inviting people into my life, treating them to a feast of drugs and ultimately, spending every last dollar in pursuit of pleasing strangers.
When I became poor, one of those old friends offered to break my jaw. Another said I owed him money. And another commandeered my car and amassed thousands in tickets — all sent to my mom’s house.
A few months into recovery, someone in the program asked me if I’d like to do some work for him. He was renovating a building in downtown St. Catharines.
I didn’t care so much about the money. I was drawn by the promise of a new experience — tearing down walls and hammering and operating all kinds of magical machines.
“I’m building housing for homeless people,” my acquaintance — an ex-addict we'll call Shawn — crowed.
So, for a couple of hot summer weeks, I spent my days in a rotting downtown tenement, hammering and drilling and sawing.
Even Shawn was impressed by my work ethic. I was going to see this job through — and keep building rooms in this quasi-condemned building so that he could collect the welfare checks of the people he so graciously housed.
I didn’t pay much thought to the increasingly erratic payment schedule. The work environment proved troublesome though. Errant crack pipes kept getting crunched underfoot. Some of the new residents puffed away, oblivious to my presence.
Shawn was hardly there. He might occasionally show up with a fraction of the money he owed me. But he was solid. In fact, he was a pillar of the recovery community. He had founded a support group for opiate addiction. He was even working on a podcast. There's always a kind of kinship among ex-addicts. Shawn wouldn't let me down.
“How long have you been clean?” he asked, over a cigarette.
“Four months,” I replied.
“Good. Because you know, if you mess up you can’t work for me any more.”
Shawn was strict about that sort of thing. The building’s denizens would hastily stash their dope when they heard his muscle car revving out front.
One day, he showed up with a girl, who seemed to have been plucked directly from a tent. They sat quietly at the ruined bar downstairs, while I passed through regularly to haul sheet after sheet of drywall to the top floor.
On one of those trips, I found the bar door locked. When I knocked, Shawn poked his head out.
“Give us some privacy,” he said.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
“Just sweep or something.”
After about an hour, I figured I’d try the bar again. I really wanted to get that drywall up. I was addicted to making rooms — turning the leaky, burnt out husk of a building into a kind of rabbit’s warren.
The door downstairs was unlocked.
The bar stunk of crack. The clouds still lingered. And way at the back of the space, in a tiny room, I could just make out Shawn and his new friend.
He was getting a blow job.
Early the next morning, while I was in the shower, my phone must have rang 100 times. Until I finally jumped out, soaking wet and picked up.
It was Shawn.
“Where the fuck are the tools?” he barked.
“What tools?”
“The drills and all the gear you were using.”
“I put them in the back room, where I always leave them.”
“Well, they’re not fucking here!” he blared, raging.
The thing is, I was starting to get a feeling this whole thing was a charade.
“You’re not trying to get out of paying me, are you?” I asked.
“What? Are you fucking disrespecting me? I’m going to punch you in the fucking head when I see you. Motherfucker!”
It was awkward for me, because my mom was standing beside me. She could sense violent intentions seeping through the phone.
I decided not to go back to work.
And once again, I found myself gritting my teeth at night. How sinister, I thought, to repay kindness with violence.
The other day, after leaving my favorite coffee shop, I heard him barking from across the street. He was leaning against his dumb car, casually throwing contempt my way. He must have felt pretty good about having a building full of addicts — and much of the work done by someone he didn’t have to pay.
I couldn’t resist. It was automatic. I gave him the finger.
And he roared.
“You shoot me the bird in front of my fucking kid?”
Like a sputtering old bull, he started to cross the street.
I didn’t retreat.
He stopped short of me, braying and bellowing.
I think I was growling, a little too.
I saw him as the final figure in a succession of people who had done me spiritual harm — violently changing the way I wanted so badly to see the world. Everything that was about to burst from me in that moment was an answer to lifelong grievances.
I saw that guy who threatened to break my jaw, and the one who pretended I owed money to. And I saw the man who tackled me in the street — tormenting my family for months afterward. I saw a world that repaid kindness with cruelty. And, in that moment, I chose to repay that currency in kind.
For all those past grievances, this tattoo-faced troll was going to foot the bill.
Amid the downtown traffic and gawking onlookers, we circled each other.
Shawn was taken aback by all that gnashing of teeth. He didn’t think I had it in me.
He backed down.
“I always treated you good,” he mewled. “I found out who stole the tools. It wasn’t you. Come see me tomorrow. I’ll give you a couple of bucks.”
“I don’t want your money.”
What I wanted wasn’t something any child should witness. And Shawn really did have his kid in tow. The boy was maybe 10. I played with him sometimes when his dad dragged him to the building. He had a yellow radio-controlled truck.
Now, the boy was hurling trash at me from the backseat of the car and screaming, “My dad’s going to kill you.”
But, in fact, his dad had already retreated to the car.
Shawn revved his engine and stared me down from behind the wheel. Then he put it in gear — and floored it. The car slid all over the road, as it careened toward me — stopping just short of where I stood.
I approached the window.
Then he hit the gas again and rumbled down the street. The boy’s tiny hand jutted out the back window — to flick me a parting finger.
I used to be that boy. I had a little yellow truck too. And, many years ago, I had a dad a lot like Shawn. He was also a slumlord. He would drag me to his crummy buildings, where he knocked on doors and skulls. He was really good at it.
I was probably around the same age as Shawn’s kid.
My dad wasn’t a crackhead. Dementia ended up giving him a tidy lobotomy — turning him into a child and tucking him into a retirement home.
His kid, on the other hand, which way would he break?
The only difference in our respective fathers was that, in his entire history of violence, my dad always “kicked the shit” out of everyone who dared defy him. No exceptions.
But today, I stood on that street corner, immovable. Shawn’s kid got to see his dad try to be a bully. Then he witnessed his dad try to run someone over. And still, I didn’t budge. And then he got to see his dad — a coward in wolf’s clothing — peel off.
Along the way, though, I may have become my dad. And, as the rage finally subsided, it was replaced by shame.
In the end, Shawn turned out to be a lot like my dad too. The sum of his fears. Maybe he’ll also get a tidy lobotomy someday. Or, maybe he’ll die by the same sword he so recklessly brandishes.
That day, I was also my father, eager to air my grievances with this unfair world.
But I don’t want to die by that sword. If I’m going to wield anything, let it be a cutlass of kindness — even if, from time to time, it wounds me.
Later, when I told my mother the story, she was horrified.
“Your windows are sparkling clean,” she said. “And then you go and dirty them all up. You take on negative forces.
“It’s almost like demons,” she added. “They stick to your beautiful soul.”
This is a woman who exposed her own sparkling windows to my dad for six miserable years.
She knows her demons.