Dave

I had a good dream about plumbing last night.

WHY was it a good dream if I was working on plumbing?  Because I was with my friend Dave M., also known as "Moon-sweat".  It was a delicate operation, and a lot more than changing a washer.  More like disassembling an inline pump of some sort.  It seemed like a cross between a carburetor and an automatic transmission the way it was put together, and was taking a long time to work on, especially in dream-time, but we had a cool old workshop with lots of cubby-holes and drawers and old gadgets, out of which, by trial and error (it was the customer's house) Dave managed to fetch all the right things and manage me while I dutifully assembled them under his sarcastic and watchful eye.

Dave was equipped to do almost unbelievable, or at least very surprising, numbers of things that he had learned from "a guy".  Dave worked a lot of jobs over the years and had a mind like a sponge and would always come home (in other words, to my place, to party) from whatever job he was working, with new knowledge and new lingo he had learned from Chuck or Frank or Wally, but to me they were always "a guy".

I might get up to leave a room.

"You gonna fake down a hawser?" he would ask.

"Um... What?!"

He would just laugh.  Took me a long time to figure out that that was real nautical jargon for stowing aboard a thick tow-line, that he was using as slang for... taking a crap, I think.  Heh.

"You know what a "white-glove" is?" He asked one night at two a.m., after his shift at the horse-track, stopping by my window to throw rocks so we could drink vodka shots and make another stab at finishing our current set of Nintendo games.

"Uhh, do I wanna know?..." No, I didn't, it turns out.

And later, when he was a carpenter, "How's the old hammer hangin'?"  he would ask, by way of greeting me.

Dave taught me how to hang drywall and mud it, and to "do it right, not shitty."

When we were younger, he introduced me to live Grateful Dead (first with Live/Dead), when I was fourteen, and after reading "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" a year later, we tripped together listening to "The Other One" (the one that was supposed to be, or could have been on the record but wasn't) and "Dark Star", etc. from the cassette he made me, which I played on my quadrophonic stereo, speakers at each corner of the room--years before theater systems, and sounded, er, live, and exciting, and magical, perfect.

He had my back at school, at parties, at concerts, at bars, and I watched out for him, too.  "Keep it cool." was often the order of the day, but we both had hot Irish blood in us (him, more than me) and tempers.  Back to back, though, we rarely aimed them at each other.

We met by sharing a cigarette in the boys' bathroom at middle school.  I was ten or eleven, he was eleven or twelve.  He already had a fearsome reputation as a crazy dude.  I thought, "What?  Crazier than me?  Let's just see about...  Holy shit!"  He pulled his smokes out from above a tile in the ceiling and lit one.  He was impressed that I wasn't faking my inhale.

In the end we both talked each other out of many hare-brained schemes (and into many more beautiful and profitable ones)--many--but not always.  No not always. Some I can't talk about for, ah, legal reasons, but... nothing too bad.  Stupid, mainly.  Also, there were some typical school-boy grudges that we planned revenge fights around.  In the end one of us would invariably turn to the other and ask, "Do you feel like going to jail tonight?"

"Not really, no."

"Just put 'em on the 'dick list' then."

Dave had a mental list of people who had screwed him over, or had screwed his friends over, and he tended to "make amends" with most of those people. I should know, I managed to accidentally get on it a couple of times!  People knew when they were on Dave's "dick list".  Word would get around.

"Yo, man!  You gotta talk to Dave for me!" someone would say to me.

"Why, what DID you DO?" I'd ask them, mildly.  Usually I would already know.

"[Insert alleged misunderstanding here]"

"Well, I don't know, man.  That DOES sounds pretty shitty!"

"Yeah, I know, man, but: [insert sorry excuse here]"

"Wellll, I'll tell him, but, you know..."

"Know? What?"

"How he, um, IS, right?"

"Oh!  Oh yeah, I sure do, but... but you'll tell him, right?  It would mean a lot."

"Ok, I'll tell him."

And I WOULD relay messages.  Good cop, bad cop, I guess!  After a couple, three, or four weeks of that, depending on the infraction, and who it was, Dave would either pretend to forget, or he'd tell the guy to his face, "DON'T do that again," and then get him high, and the guy wouldn't.  Wouldn't forget being on Dave's "dick list" or waiting to get jumped for a few weeks either.

Rumour had it Dave was supposed to have gone to reform school.  He didn't.  He went to a behavioural special ed school because his parents didn't know what else to do with him.  He (we) kept getting into trouble. In Jr. High we ditched class every chance we got, and smoked up the bathroom between every class we did go to.  We were depressed, we were angry, and we were oppressed second class citizens so we acted out.

I recently heard a term for what we had.  In the U.S. at that time we may have been considered "mentally ill", which is a blanket term for everything from schizophrenia to moodiness, to mass-murder.  I may have been slicing up my arm into bloody shreds with a razor blade, and Dave may have been raiding his dad's liquor cabinet,and scoring the best herb, but in Asia, these days, kids are said to suffer from "societal logical despair".  That's a GREAT term, because that's exactly what it was that was irritating us: any number of society's logic errors, which, compounded onto us from all directions, made it impossible for intelligent men like Dave and me to maintain strong moral and directional logic because we were boxed in, hemmed in, penned in, by and into behaviours that we found repulsive and nonsensical because they were obviously based on faulty logic.  Marijuana and psychedelics laws were high on the list of things that were bullshit.  There was, and remains no logical basis to treat either those particular drugs, or the human beings using them to expand their consciousness and perspectives beyond that which most adults EVER reach, as a scourge on humankind.  They were a spiritual wonderment and incited many a brave journey of exploration. And when I say brave, I mean we plumbed the very depths of the human psyche FAR, FAR out past the signposts which read: "HERE THERE BE DRAGONS!"  We did that together.

Not only did we learn about ourselves, and our place within the world, but we gained the knowledge that a night's perceptual fun-house also exposed.  We exposed every-day reality for what it is: a collection of mass-produced and reinforced perceptual feed-back loops specific to small groups of humans but not to other creatures, and which consistently begin to wear thin and unravel logically, the farther one expands consciousness to include larger and larger cycles of existence.  One doesn't have to travel far from one's home base to begin to find things that are absolutely childish and detrimental to the modern adult world, and yet there they are, smiling, like drunken pixies, which disappear when one reaches for them in the light of day, only to reappear with some document stamped "Official Lunacy By Order of the Royal Office of We Told You So, So It Must Be True!" with slews of people surrounding them, desperately trying to justify them because that's what THEY learned was real in their little home base.

Things that we take for granted as truth every day are nothing like it. They're propaganda.

"The oldest propaganda technique is to repeat a lie emphatically and often until it is taken for the truth."  --James Rickards

Are they wrong?  Not as such, taken individually.  Right and wrong are theoretical and debatable, despite what we like to believe for structure's sake, but all the parts certainly don't align.  They certainly don't make a cohesive and admirable world, a whole earth, even for humans, never-mind all of the other creatures.  Our little perceptual bases are not "truth" because they are certainly filled with ignorance and oppression based on even the most arbitrary things: skin colour, hair-style, brand of shoes, parents' profession, the car we drive, religion, shampoo we use, whether or not we've seen a popular movie, or what we study in school, our career path.  All of these were of THE UTMOST IMPORTANCE! in the nineteen eighties, or perhaps just in anyone's teen years, where cliques are even tinier than family units sometimes, and can divorce themselves as easily from reality as the hardest of hard core drug-user.  The difference is that a drug user will come back to "baseline agreed upon reality" with the knowledge that most of it is bullshit.  This is NOT a fault of the drugs.  This is a fault of human perception, just the way it is, that it doesn't recognise its own faults or want to admit to them and so perpetuates them both unknowingly and on purpose.  But under rigorous examination to understand it, through philosophy, science, or expanded consciousness, is "reality" SANE?  Laughably, failingly, devastatingly, NOT.  Sorry.

Confronted with these unfounded and specious attacks on OUR reasoning, by people in various fields waving various flags marked "Reality" at us, Dave and I would look at each other and go, in unison, "Frickin' morons!" and act out some more, just to keep ourselves limber and not-bored, and it was not just us by any means.

I've been to several psychologists, counselors, and psychiatrists, people who I didn't think were morons, (except for one--he almost got a suicide next to his name because, at fourteen, I had already had JUST ABOUT HAD IT with smug, ill-informed, condescending nit-wits getting paid thousands upon thousands, upon thousands of dollars to remain smug, ill-informed nit-wits) just to check on myself, and on the status of psychiatry as a whole, I go and I talk to people.  Nobody's perfect, I do have issues dealing with what passes for civilization.  Sooner or later, after we've gotten to know each other, I always make this statement: "I'm pretty sure it's not me that's crazy, but society," and to a man, or woman, they have ALL agreed.

Dave had a heart of gold in spite of what anyone thought, or the persona he cultivated.  He had an internal sense of honesty and duty that was perfectly logical and faultless when one understood it. If he liked you, he would do unexpected things out of the kindness of his heart.  If he lied, it was generally to adults, because, let's face it, if WE wanted to act like adults, i.e. go where we wanted, stay out late, work deals, and work at jobs and feed ourselves like adult people, it was often essential that adults DIDN'T know exactly where we were or what we were doing.  Therefore, by the time we WERE adults, we were already adults, and then our parents and teachers got to brag about what a fine job they had done with us.  Which SOME of them had.

Dave was an extremely bright guy, and could have gone to University if he had had the patience.  Even I had BARELY enough patience for college bureaucracy, which often seemed squarely aimed at teaching us non-important lessons about said pointless bureaucracy, and I had twice as much patience as he did--most days.  We did manage to play on an intramural softball team together, though, with some of our other friends--because he lied and said he was a student there!  Why not?  He was there on campus with us sometimes; he was learning what it was like to be a student; he would read a paragraph or two out of my textbooks from time to time; he'd show up for games.  Student, right?

He did go to trade school for Carpentry.  He did apprentice and become a journeyman.  I don't think he became a Master, but Dave died young.

One of the things Dave liked about me is that I could go deep into philosophy with him, which he didn't get most places, unless a bunch of us were all just sitting around and rapping with one another (some of my favourite times on planet Earth), but alone, one on one, I was often his go to guy for depressive missives or joyful daydreaming.  He knew I wasn't going to make [much] fun of him either way, and that went both ways.  The other thing he liked is that I am always curious, and I listened to him, and more to the point, I understood what he was talking about, both through smarts and long familiarity with him as a person.  It was a rare moment when I didn't understand Dave.

"Should I ask her out?"  He asked one day.

"Who?"

"L."

The young lady in question was someone I had a crush on, but through convoluted, one might say poor, relationship planning, I had ended up with her sister.  Not entirely sorry, mind you, but with a sharp pang, I said, "If you really like her, then yeah, Dave, you should."  He walked the two and a half miles to her house to ask her, and they were together for a few years from then.  We were a happy double couple.  Mostly.

"What album should I get her for her birthday?"

"This one."

"Hey, she loved it!"

"Cool."

After some of that initial self-doubt he did fine on his own and rarely needed my advice, although I sometimes still gave it to him, if things were taking a bad turn.

He still hadn't completely rid himself of self-doubt when he called me, years later, drunk, but searching.

"How do you do it?" he asked me.

"What?"

"NOT drink?" he said.

"Aw, Dave, it's not that hard."

"Bullshit!"  He knew me too well.

"Well, what I mean is, after the first few days it gets easier."

"It does?  It just goes away?"

"Yeah!  Sort of."

"What do you mean, 'Sort of?'" He was still suspicious.

"Well, I mean, yes, it gets easier, but no, the urge never truly goes away completely."

"You think I could do that?"

"Dave, I know you can.  If I can quit?  If Scott can quit?  You can, too.  Nobody drank harder than you, me, and Scott."

"Yeah," he said, "How did you start? I mean...ssstart to stop?"

This is maybe where I screwed up: "You can go somewhere and they'll help you.  That's what Scott and I did.  You should be in a hospital for the first part, at least.  We'll help you find a place."  I SHOULD have said, "I'LL help you," Because I remembered very well how frightening it seemed to me, going among strangers to have your head rearranged.  After all, we had watched One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest TOGETHER.  It was one of our favourite movies.  I found out, though, when I got to rehab, that the counselors were all cool, like Dave, like Scott, like me, like so many others, they were former drug users (cocaine, methamphetamine, amphetamines, sedatives, heroin--all the really addictive ones) and alcohol.  Dave and I had done all of those things, except I had drawn a line at heroin.  I should have said, "I'LL help you Dave, my friend, I will,"  He would have trusted that, because instead he soon started saying, "Naaah.  I couldn't do it.  I'm not like you guys."

"How so?"

"I'm just... I can't...  I'm never gonna be..." not despair in his voice, but sadness.

"Yes you can, Dave, trust me, please."

"Nah, it's ok.  I was just wondering.  I'll be ok.  I'll let you know when I'm ready.  Hey we should get together!  I'm into RC boats!"

"Hah, ha!  Ok, that sounds like fun!"

A few months later Dave's older sister found him in his basement, his favourite retreat, where we used to watch movies--Uncommon Valor, Platoon, and played all the video games we didn't play at my house; where we would eat ribs slow cooked on the grill, or a slow cooked minute steak.  Dave was the only person I ever knew who could slow cook minute steaks for forty-five minutes, "To absorb the flavor of the soy sauce and garlic (served on a toasted bun with mayo and lettuce)!"  Barbara found him with a bottle of Jack Daniels' and some heroin on the table in front of him.  He was cold.

In the dream we had gone to help volunteer at a Boy Scout yard sale for some reason.

I know partly it was because I had reminded a friend earlier in the day that I had been a Boy Scout when I convinced her to bring a rain jacket in order to "Be Prepared" on our hike.  We missed, through joint decision making, a wild summer lightning and wind and rain storm by only minutes!

It was a winter yard sale. There was scant snow on the ground and the grass was frozen and crunchy under our boots.  We were helping pull items out of the garage and peoples' cars, and to set them up with what people set as prices, and were joking around with the scouts when whatever happened to the water system happened.  The host, the scoutmaster, I suppose, a rather mousy, bespectacled guy with brown, but receding short hair, was upset because his wife needed water for hot drinks but he couldn't fix it himself because he had to watch the kids, and should he just call a plumber or would that disrupt business, and man, they hadn't even sold anything yet!

"WE'LL take a look at it," said Dave, with his normal air of confidence.  I glanced at him.  I'd never seen Dave do plumbing before.  That was our friend Tom who was the plumber.  He nodded though.  For all I knew he sat looking over plumbers' shoulders when they came to his house, just to see how it was done--or Tom's.  Hell, I did too, sometimes.

I nodded, too, "Yes, sir, we'll see what's going on and if it can be fixed, and we'll let you know.  You go on up and help with the sale.  Most of the heavy lifting's done.  If you have milk, you can still make hot chocolate!"

"You boys... I don't know what I would have done today!"

And so we tested and took things apart until we found the problem in the pump and started working on it. I filled jugs directly from the pipe for Mrs. Scoutmaster to use for washing or for drinks. Dave searched happily through drawers for parts and tools, periodically exclaiming, "Damn, look at this!  You know what this is?"

"No, Dave."

"They don't make shit like this anymore!"

By the time I woke up, I was crouched over the pump, still attached to easily manageable lengths of pipe, laying in a long, multi-chambered gasket, and screwing in float valves and impellers around it, when Dave said, looking over my shoulder, "Do it right, not shitty!"

"You got it, man."

"How's that hammer hangin'?"

"Needs adjustment,"

"Haha!  Yer on your own, then!"

--J. Shidler  2015-07-10/11