"I don't have a drinking problem: I drink, I fall down - no problem."
Ralph
by Rewired
12/31/97
It's raining tonight. It's good that it's raining - I like the rain, the way it
taps on the windows of cars at four o'clock in the morning, the way it beats
down onto your forehead as you lift your face the sky to scream as loud as you
can, only to have your voice drowned out in the growling of the storm. I like
the rain, how it washes away the blood. Indeed, I like how the rain makes
everything so wet, how it washes away the old and brings with it the new - a
new hope, a new emotion, a new age, a new birth. Like this monster inside my
head. I call him Ralph. He speaks to me sometimes, and out of sheer disgust I
will yell at him to keep his yapping down. Selfish turd, he wants everything in
life to be his. Can't I live my own life without him intruding, without him
butting in where he's not supposed to and ruining my life by making me say
things I didn't mean to say or would never say, but somehow did, all because of
him. Ralph can be a bad, bad monster.
I remember when I was little and dad used to take me on those walks in the
park. Yet as we got older the rains of time washed away those fond, old
memories and brought in the crime and drugs. The area became a bad place to
walk at night, but still dad took me on our evening stroll to the swings.
That's when I first met the man. He killed papa and left him to drown in a
pool of his own blood. The knife he'd stabbed into my father's stomach - it was
a pointless, cruel act for a human being to take onto another human being. He
did it for papa's wallet, and left me there to watch my father die, gurgling
for help. And I could not help him. I could not leave him. He died there, in
the sand by the swings, in my arms. I remember his blood stained my favorite
striped shirt.
He died in his blue flannel - that old, worn, blue flannel that smelled like
the cheap cigars he'd smoke every morning while ma was at work. He should've
been buried in that flannel he'd loved it so. But no, mom dressed him up in a
suit and tie, which he hated, and let those people put all that make-up on his
face. He looked so fake. Like a mannequin.
Ma was silent about the whole incident, quiet until her death came two years
later when I was six - she, having been drunk one night, strolled into the lane
of oncoming traffic and got hit by a semi head-on. She died instantly.
At the age of eight I moved in with my aunt, and there I experienced what hell
was truly like. Aunt Gurdy was a rich widow who didn't believe in wearing
deodorant. She used to run me these bubble baths that made me smell like her. I
hated that. She put me in a really strict school that made you wear suits every
day. And I had to go to church, which I learned to despise with a passion. I
would hide in the toy cabinet, refusing to come out and play. The teachers
would get upset and tell auntie that I was a disturbed child that needed
psychological help.
I met Doctor Monty at nine, and by the first day his goatee and curly
moustache was already getting to me. I wanted to rip it off and shove it up his
fucking ass, along with that pencil he used to scribble things down on his pad
of yellow paper. He would look at me and nod when I was talking, scribbling the
words down as he was looking at me. It was frightening as much as it was
annoying. Especially the way he kept saying "uh-huh, uh-huh" every couple
seconds. At one point I just stopped talking so he would shut up. Him and his
nagging questions. By my fifth visit he wanted to get me on medication, but I
stood firm on that I wanted no foreign chemical introduced into my body. He
asked me why, and I thought the reason was obvious. I was a victim of him and
his attempts to control my mind through drugs. I wouldn't yield to him, the
fruitcake. He got upset that day at the end, ranting and raving on how he
didn't want me to end up in a hospital, and so told me he was getting me on
medication immediately and gave some free samples to my aunt.
I would put the pill in my mouth, take a drink of water and pretend to swallow
it after dinner and before bed, and then spit it out and hide it under my
mattress when auntie had left the room. I thought it was clever, and she didn't
seem to be on to me, so I kept at it for several months.
School was a horrible experience as well. I talked to no one, and always got
picked on by the bigger boys. I took up reading and wrote and drew things
during class - it was my only escapism.
Auntie ended up marrying this man called Bruce. He was tall and had a dark
complexion. It didn't take long to discover that he was deeply religious and
very involved in a specific church, which my Auntie had also began attending.
That's where she'd met this man.
He had children - three sons, one five, named Jode, one nine, named James, one
eleven, named Greg - and a seven-year old girl named Lory. We were in the
playroom, all playing quietly, no one speaking. It happened this way for hours.
Then me and James started playing with some toys together, and our imaginations
fired off. In seconds we became great friends.
A bond quickly formed between us. We were like brothers - by marriage, indeed,
we were, but we became like actual brothers. We were so alike it wasn't funny.
Then one night after supper, after auntie and Bruce had gotten married, I
witnessed something that would change my life forever. To many it would be
nothing, some would find it humorous how deeply traumatic this event was for
me. Some would accuse me of being overly-sensitive, and that may be true, but
it hurt me. It hurt me bad.
The kids weren't aloud to jump around and be kids, but were told to be quiet:
"Children are to be seen and not heard," Bruce used to always say. It was his
second most favorite quote of all time.
Yet we were alone in the room, and the kids went nuts. They were running
around like a pack of wild animals let loose out of a zoo. Jode climbed atop a
toy box pulled out from beside the wall, lifted a flashlight into the air and
held his father's bible to his chest and announced rather loudly that he was
the Statue of Liberty.
I could hear what they were ignorant to. I felt the footfalls on the steps,
his presence becoming more intense with each passing second.
He was coming.
I dropped to the floor and pulled myself under the bed. I begged for them to
stop running around, stop being so wild and crazy an to just settle down. They
didn't listen.
Then I remembered Bruce's first most favorite saying of all time: "Spare the
rod and spoil the child."
The door burst open, and that tall man with a belt like a whip in his hand
came barreling in, screaming: "What's going on in here?!"
He didn't wait for any answers. He swung the belt in his hands and hit the
children with it. I hear the commotion, but I closed my eyes tightly. "Don't
run from me!" He'd yell. "Get over here, dammit!"
I heard the sound of fist against skin. Darkness encompassed me. Hatred, fear,
all rose up out of me. It was expressed in a scream that began in the inside
and rose out of my mouth to the outside. It didn't stop. My throat got soar,
people were shaking me, but I couldn't see them and I could hardly feel them. I
just kept on screaming. Dammit, how could they do this? How can people hurt
others so? what the hell is wrong with them?
I felt pressure on myself, as if I was out of my body. Everything was so
fuzzy, so blurred, so confused and distorted. What was happening to me? Why
couldn't i pull out of this? I knw the answer in a heartbeat:
Fear.
Anger.
Hate.
It ripped at me as if it was a monster, tearing at my soul and letting my
spirit bleed. I could feel the life drain out of me. The happiness float away.
The dark forces took me over.
I was in a land. Another world. The one inside m head, and I was stuck there
for some time. When I woke up I was in bed with a cold towel on my forehead and
Auntie standing over me. I looked up at her, the feeling of emptiness still not
gone from my chest. Now I felt sad as well. The world was horrible.
She just looked at me with compassionate eyes. She was a bitch, but she
understood. She had pity for me, but I knew she wouldn't do anything about it.
"Supper's in an hour, dear." She said, and got up from her seat and turned to
walk out the door. She stopped for a minute, and for a second I thought maybe
she'd come back to me and tell me she was sorry, that she'd help me get away
from him - but she just continued out the door.
I didn't want to leave the bed. I felt the etars streaming down my face, the
cold beads of sweat on my forehead.
I've never felt like this before.
The pain ended at age seventeen when Bruce moved, with his family, off to some
"group of people" in Washington state. I knew it was a cult, and my auntie
wanted nothing to do with it. It was just me and her, and she died in a car
accident four months later.
By the I was eighteen, however, and on my own. I got a factory job and got
drunk after work and shot pool in a bar across the road. Alcohol numbed the
pain, and I thought I just might make it if I could keep the beer and Jack
Daniels coming.
I stayed like that for nearly two years - depressed, stuck in the past. I had
painful memories of my life, vivid flashbacks of watching those kids get
beaten. The alcohol helped me; it was a cradle. It helped me survive.
Everything was terrible. Life had no meaning.
I was beating up a vending machine for not giving me a Pepsi when he came up
to me and asked what was wrong. What the hell did he want? He was a short man
with an army shirt on and a ball cat and covered in a trench coat. "Who the
fuck are you?"
"Chance Dublin," he said. "Wanna shoot some pool, mister?"
"I want a fucking Pepsi." I said. He came up to the vending machine, gave it a
swift kick, and it spit out the Pepsi I rightfully deserved. I looked at him.
"Thanks," and then, "yeah, yeah I'll play some pool."
After years of being a lonely old shmuck I had finally found a friend. He
tried to get me off the alcohol and onto the caffeine, which seemed, at least
partly, to work. Coffee became a new addiction. I had someone to talk to, to
tell my problems to, to tell my life to. Someone who listened, someone who
cared. He introduced me to some friends of his, and we'd raid the local coffee
shop until about eleven and then headed out to the pool hall.
I still got drunk on the weekends. Then, one Saturday, it happened.
Everything changed.
I met her.
Andria.
I was drunker than a skunk when I met her, shooting pool with some assholes
that I kept loosing my money to. Chance was there, rooting me on. I looked up
and her eyes were looking at mine, and I just got locked there. I put the cue
stick down, walked over to her and said, maybe too firmly, "hi."
"How are you?" She asked.
I sniffed. "Pretty drunk, how are you?"
She smiled. I think she felt pity for me, but I was sure that wasn't the
entire reason she was looking at me like that. No, I was sure I'd known her
before, but from where? Her face was so beautiful, but her eyes... they were so
damn familiar. Especially those eyes. They shot out invisible hands that
gripped me and pulled me toward her and her warmth.
She cleaned me up. She got me off the booze, took me in and loved me like I'd
never been before. She was my family, she was my life.
For three years I was convinced faerie tales could come true. I was convinced
that there was good in life, there was a reason to live and, just maybe, there
was, indeed, a God.
Then one night she came home late from work- as had been happening a lot
lately - and blurted out that she was seeing someone else and wanted a divorce.
I asked who, and she refused to tell.. We yelled, and I demanded to know who.
Then she said it. "Chance."
The fucking bastard. The indecent, lying, cheating fucking bastard. That son
of a bitch, I would kill him. He WOULD be destroyed.
The bottle became my friend again. I lived at the bar, shooting pool. I forgot
about my job and my house. I slept in the van, when I did sleep. I virtually
became an insomniac.
One night I was shooting pool. As I was on the eight ball, Chance approached
me. "Dan, we've got to talk."
"We've got nothing to talk about, fucker." I said. "You have her. Now fuck
off."
He was cautious with his words and how he said them. "I just want to talk."
"We're talking," I said, shooting at missing. "Now what the fuck do you
want?"
"You're a good friend, Dan," he said, "I hate to loose you."
I placed the stick on the table and looked at him dead in the eyes. "You
should've thought about that before you took that only thing that mattered to
me in this fucked-up life."
"Grow up, Dan." He said.
It was the wrong thing to say.
I threw my fist into his jaw with all the force I had in me. He fell to the
ground with a few agonizing grunts. Andria was there, picking him up. "You're
drunk, Dan, sober up."
"Bitch." I told her. "Bitch. I hope you die."
Five weeks later, I got my wish. She died in a car accident. I began to think
I had bad karma with cars or something. I attended the funeral.
I'd visit her gravestone every morning. I'd lost my job, my house, and my van.
I was living on the streets. I didn't care anymore. I couldn't care.
There was nothing to care about.
Nothing was left in this world for me.
I slept in dumpsters, on the stairs of apartment buildings, on city benches -
anywhere I could. All I did was sleep. I had terrible nightmares about all the
times of my life. I saw ma, dad, auntie, Andria, Chance. The past wouldn't
leave me alone. And then...
Then this little man in my head. He began to talk to me.
I call him Ralph and he said he was here to guide me on my way. People would
walk passed me on city streets and he'd call out for me to beat them over the
head with a lead pipe lying beside a garbage can. I would say no, but he
wouldn't shut up. He... he would never listen. His voice was always so loud
inside of my head - it hurt sometimes. Yeah, sometimes it hurt real bad. He's
such a monster. I even see his snarling face sometimes in my dreams. The
attacks me in my dreams, sucks the life out of me. He's always with me. He
never shuts up.
Never shuts up.
Never-ever.
It's still raining, but it's died down some. It's quieter now, but that's
probably because it's late and not many people are out. i live here, in my
dumpster, looking back on my whole life. It hurts sometimes, but it's reminds
me I'm still alive.
As long as I feel, I'm still alive.
Now why won't Ralph sleep?
The Gopher is (c) 1998! by Rewired. You know the people who wrote all that
stuff for Gopher? They own it, dammit. Fuck-ups are mine, and we really try not
to fuck up, but hey. Quotes belong to those who we quoted, even if we don't
know who it is which we quoted. Distribute copies of the Gopher, but don't be
a ninny and change things. Keep them the way they are.
Send us stuff on religion, good or bad. Please.
The Gopher can be found on a whacky li'l web site at
washout at http://www.washout.com/gopher
Any comments or suggestions or submissions are demanded by me to all those who
read this. Send 'em to: gopher@washout.com
...or exercise your right to use the postal service at: The Gopher Society, PO
Box 174, Thompson, Ohio, 44086-0174.
Awwwwww yeah!
