I stopped by his house one day with a couple of subs that I bought at Jenny’s. It was about noon, and he was just waking up. Shawn had quit his job a few months before and was drinking pretty heavily now; he would typically stay out until 2 or 3 am partying and sleep late, well into the afternoon. I had the day off, one of the benefits of my 3 day work week job as a computer operator. I noticed a book on his bureau and I busted his balls a bit.
“The Way of Zen”? What the fuck are you, a philosopher now?” I teased.
“When the inferior man hears of the Tao, he will laugh aloud at it” Shawn replied, slanting his eyes and over biting his front teeth in a mock Asian accent.
“Where’d you get that, from a fortune cookie?” I retorted.
Shawn smirked and took a bite out of his sub. We ate for a couple of minutes and then he crumpled more than half of his sandwich up in its wrapper and threw it into the garbage. I knew that it wasn’t because he didn’t like steak and cheese, but since he had started drinking so much he could barely hold down more than a few mouthfuls of food at a time. He twisted the cap off a Bud bottle and took a swig.
I was worried about Shawn. He had always had dreams and high aspirations; in high school he was a good athlete and thought he might get a scholarship to a D1 school. He used to get on me about doing something with my life, so now it was kind of ironic that I had a decent job and he worked as a roofer, at least he did on the rare days when he woke up before noon. It seemed like at some point he just lost all hope and resigned himself to becoming an alcoholic like his father. I remember how he used to be so embarrassed when his old man would stagger out of JJ’s bar and have to be helped home. Now he was the one who cracked open a beer for breakfast, and he was only 22 years old.
“What the fuck guy, you drinking already? You couldn’t even man up and finish your sub!”
“Mind your own fucking business. ‘We eat, shit, sleep and get up; this is our world. All we have to do after that is die.’ I read that in this book right here” he said as he tossed “The Way of Zen” in my lap. “You ought to read it, you might learn something.”
I had always been able to communicate with Shawn on my own level. He was smart and read voraciously, a trait that I admired about him and mimicked. Even though he had clearly deteriorated in the last year he was still my idol and I looked up to him like an older brother. I placed the book on his nightstand as I decided to try to dig a little deeper and reason with him.
“Dude, what are you gonna do for a job now? You can’t be out on a roof your whole life, you’re too smart for that. Why don’t you do the computer thing like I did? Go to school and get a job. Hell, you can work three days a week like me.”
He broke character for a minute and didn’t act like a hard guy. His face softened into a weary smile and the hint of a sigh accompanied his long exhale.
“I know I’m doomed, Bro. Fuck this place and fuck everyone. I’m done with shoveling shit for people I don’t respect. No offense to you, but I aint gonna be a suit and tie nitwit, busting my balls for people who look down on me. Fuck them! I aint kissing ass no more. If I’m going down I’m going down my way.” He took another sip from his beer and looked out the window.
He said it with such finality that I knew it was pointless to argue. He was bent on a path of self destruction and I just couldn’t reach him. He was at the bar every night, drinking beer, snorting coke, and getting into beefs. He pissed off a lot of people, and Shawn was very good with his hands. When he was drunk he got belligerent, and he had already beaten up a few known gangsters. A guy like Shawn had to be careful because the craziest, toughest guys out there couldn’t fight for shit. They would just as soon stab or shoot you than scrap hand to hand with you. If you beat them up and wounded their pride they felt they had a vested interest in keeping their reputation by hurting you back. If guys saw a gangster get his ass kicked they might think that they could get away with not paying their debts to him. A gangster had to save face no matter what, so if you scrapped with one you better be willing to take it to the next level. As tough as Shawn was, I never knew him to use a weapon. The guys he fucked with, however wouldn’t hesitate.
I left that conversation knowing in my heart that something bad was going to happen to Shawn. He knew it, too.
I left that conversation knowing in my heart that something bad was going to happen to Shawn. He knew it, too.
Years later, I was driving home from work through Wellesley
“Hey, keep this place clean, it’s a beautiful place. You’re lucky to be here. If you do what I tell you you’ll always live like this.”
Everything clean. New. Pretty.
In the projects, you live in a shithole. Neighbors right on top of you, loud noises coming through the walls, people always fucking with your stuff. Spray paint on the buildings and the hallways stink like piss. Garbage and trash everywhere because the dumpsters are overflowing. Cockroaches. You think somebody is gonna say:
“Hey, keep this place clean. It’s a beautiful place.”
You’d know they would be lying to you. You’d think they were a fool. Your parents have no credibility when they tell you to do the right thing and you’ll be successful. Is that how it worked out for you, Mom? How come we live here then, Dad? The only successful people I see are criminals. There are no heroes here, no doctors or lawyers. Only the strong survive.
You watch TV as a kid and you see suburban America
I silently chuckle when I hear some of my co-workers talk about how tough they had it growing up. “Nothing was handed to me, I had to work when I went to college!” Never mind that school was paid for by Mom and Dad and Junior started his professional career with an Ivy League education and no student loans to pay back. Forget about the fact that as a kid you had the best grade schools and high schools and medical care and attention to your every need. You had the latest style clothes and disposable income and you were allowed to be a kid with nothing more to focus on than your classes and extracurricular activities. You worried about baseball cards and homework and comic books. When I was a kid I worried about survival. You had all the advantages, the deck was stacked. No wonder why when the suburban kids drove into the projeks in their new cars looking to score drugs we jacked those motherfuckers quick and hard.
I thought about Shawn and his family. His old man was a drunk who just disappeared one day. One of his sisters OD’d on heroin. His brothers were fuck ups, forever getting into trouble and drinking and drugging and dragging Shawn down with them. I thought about my own family. Dad died when I was young and we had to move into the projeks. My Mom with seven kids, one of them handicapped, she couldn’t control me and didn’t even have the time to figure out how I was doing in school. She needed me to get a part time job so that I could contribute half my check to the house and pay for my own school clothes with the rest of the money I earned by working 30 hours per week through high school. I remember waking up in the morning in grade school and having no heat or hot water and then I had to go to class. Walking through the projeks, past the homeless drunks and standing on the corner to wait for the bus while the other kids smoked their morning joints. You see so much shit that by the time you’re 16 you feel like you’re a million years old, like you’ve seen and done it all. Not exactly conducive to higher learning, eh?
“We eat, excrete, sleep, and get up;
This is our world."
