Humanity's Lens: Sing a Song of Substance

[IanEye]

In late 2004, in between Christmas & New Year's Eve, I was arrested on a DUI charge. Thus begins my story.

2004 had not been the greatest year for me. My contract on the television show I was working on hadn't been renewed, and then my Wife let me know she was leaving me and moving to the Midwest. Various other events seemed to be conspiring against me as well, so that by the time Summer arrived I had somewhat of a nervous breakdown.


Earlier on, at the start of our relationship, My Wife (then my Fiancé) & I had lived with an affluent couple in the town of Weston. We were their live in dog walkers, and in exchange for tending to their canine needs we got to stay in their furnished basement apartment rent free. They pretty much fed us as well, I can't ever remember buying groceries while we lived there.

So this was a really sweet deal, and during the two years we stayed there we saved up enough money to put a down payment on a house in Somerville that we moved into after we were married.

I mention all of this because after my marriage fell apart and I was freaking out about life in general, this same affluent couple reached out to me and said I should come live with them while I got things straightened out. This was incredibly generous of them, I accepted their offer, moved out of the house my Wife had already vacated, put it up for rent so that the mortgage took care of itself and started getting reacquainted with two Standard Poodles that I had known in happier times.

Living in Weston in 2004 was an odd holding pattern. There were definitely strong vibes of regression in terms of my Life's path. How could there not be? There were times I would be watching their giant screen TV in the basement, just surfing through the channels and I would land on a syndicated re-run of "Friends", and then I would realize that my Wife and I had watched this very episode when it was brand new in this very room, and that I was sitting in the very same chair that I had been sitting in years ago. Sometimes I felt surrounded by ghosts, other times I felt like I was the ghost, inhabiting my old life, haunting the spaces of my past.

Needless to say, my mind was in a fragile state and I had the wherewithal to avoid any new TV jobs for a while. The last thing my career needed was for me to be facing some high pressure deadline, and then I breakdown in the edit room because some old song comes on the radio. But I needed to do something, because sitting around all day drinking Gin & Tonics with a couple twice my age, playing fetch with Poodles was just getting weird.

By chance I bumped into an old co-worker of mine from a job I had in college. While in college we had both worked for Borders Books at their Downtown Crossing location in Boston. I had been the head of the Jazz Department up in the music section of the store, while she had worked for payroll and Security. Since moving on from Borders she had become head of Human Resources for a record store chain called Newbury Comics. After telling her about my current state of affairs she offhandedly told me she could probably get me a job working in the main warehouse where they shipped all the new product out to the various store locations. I think she mentioned this just because she felt bad, but she didn't think I would take her up on her offer. On the contrary, this type of work sounded great to me. She had actually just left work on maternity leave but she called up Newbury Comics headquarters and told them to give me a warehouse job. So, as Summer turned into Autumn I was back working for a record store, something I had done previously to put myself through college. I was regressing even further.

Working at the Newbury Comics warehouse was actually just what I needed at that point. I had a lot of pent up anger and frustration about my life, and going to a warehouse, unloading boxes from truck for the first part of the day, only to spend the rest of the day loading different boxes back onto different trucks was quite cathartic. I was using muscles I hadn't used in a while and the first couple of weeks I would drive back to Weston exhausted, going to bed at 8pm, sleeping soundly for the first time in months.

I would always try to get on one of the unloading/loading details because otherwise you actually had to spend your day filling up the boxes with product to go out to the various stores. This typically went like this, me and a co-worker would stand next to a giant table that had a thousand air fresheners on it. Store 13 needed to be restocked with 18 air fresheners:

6 air fresheners that looked like Homer Simpson holding a donut
7 air fresheners that looked like Homer Simpson holding a bottle of Duff beer
4 air fresheners that looked like Larry the Cable Guy telling you to "git-r-dun"
1 air freshener that looked like Lois Griffin dressed as a dominatrix

So, you'd fill up a Store 13 box with the required air fresheners, then move onto another store's box and fill it up with similar items. By the time you had finished sorting all one thousand air fresheners your head would be spinning with the various smells of artificial vanilla, citrus and pine. One co-worker once colorfully described this as "working all day inside of Smurfette's vagina". She had a point, I really preferred unloading and loading boxes all day.

By now it was October and the Mrs. of the Weston Estate had packed up the Poodles and retreated to their second home in Jupiter Island, Florida. The man of the house had stayed behind because he was convinced that this was the year that the Boston Red Sox would finally "reverse the curse" and win the World Series. This was a golden opportunity for Newbury Comics to move a lot of Red Sox product, and I would spend a busy day packing up Red Sox stickers and pennants and bobble heads with a bunch of 20something co-workers, only to rush home to watch the game with a guy in his 60s. I would awake the next day, hung over from Glenlivet, not eating breakfast until the roach coach arrived at the warehouse for our first morning break. It was a very surreal existence, spending the day at work, living like the poor person I was in reality, only to return to the estate in the evening and drink single malt whiskey, being regaled with white collar tales of my hosts' adventures in Capitalism.

I will never forget game 4, the final game of the 2004 World Series. Stepping outside to relieve myself on a Juniper and staring full face into the crimson hues of the lunar eclipse. The moon looked so amazing I'd forget the game was on, until I heard the whooping of the old man inside which meant the Sox were that much closer to sealing the deal. Perhaps the eclipse provided the window of time necessary for the Red Sox to slip from the bonds of the Curse of the Bambino. All I knew was that within 48 hours of the Sox winning the series, I had the estate in Weston all to myself for the winter, the owners not due back until April 15th.

I spent Halloween evening alone in the state of the art kitchen, amongst the cuisinarts and convection ovens, waiting for upper class ghosts and goblins to show up at the door, looking for treats.

November and December went by in a substance induced blur. Days at the warehouse were very busy, gearing up for the holiday retail season. We were now expected to work on Saturdays as well, so Sunday was the only downtime. I remember rushing back to Western Mass to be with my parents for Thanksgiving, only to get right back on the road to work at the warehouse on Friday. I remember they were somewhat concerned at my level of contentment, working my warehouse job. I think they could tell by my angry drunken rantings about Bush just being handed a second term that I was in a bad way. It is probably hard to take your son's ramblings about class warfare seriously when you know he is living in a millionaire's basement.

Except that now I had the whole house to myself. It was really nice to go into the conservatory, crack a window, roll a joint and spend a couple of hours playing the same C 7th arpeggiated chord over and over again on their grand piano. I was becoming increasingly isolated, lost in my own headfull of memories.

Then, right after Christmas, an old college friend from UMass called me up to say he had been in the area visiting relatives for the holidays, was leaving the next day, but really wanted to see me. He was going to be at Red Bones in Somerville that evening, could I meet him and some other friends there for dinner? I eagerly accepted his invitation.

The main cause of my problems that evening was a failure to communicate. With the exception of maybe one person, I think everyone I hung out with thought I still lived at the house in Somerville I was currently renting out. They knew I was sad about the collapse of my marriage, so they all bought me round after round, listening to me vent about my frustrations. When I left Red Bones, I was fucking loaded, and they all thought I would stagger home on foot. Instead I got behind the wheel of a brand new Ford Explorer (not my car, it was the "Poodle-Mobile" used to ferry the dogs around Weston) and proceeded to haul ass through Somerville and onto Route 2.

*

[IanEye]

I am eternally grateful that I didn't hurt anyone that night. I was completely smashed and only through dumb luck did I not hurt myself or others. The Officers who pulled me over and arrested me were very professional, and I can't really complain about the way they treated me. In fact, throughout the ensuing court appearances the only thing that bothered me was when they took the goodwill I had towards the officers and used it against me as evidence of my intoxication. There had been a lot of stories on the news that December about a Mass State Trooper who had died in the line of duty because when he pulled someone over, they didn't pull over far enough and the Trooper got hit by another car as he stood beside the pulled over car.

So, when the Officers had their flashing blue strobe lights on behind me, telling me to pull over, I pulled as far off the side of the road as I could. Later, in court they said this was obvious evidence of how loaded I was, that I had plowed into a snow bank. But that was lame and unnecessary on their part, they already had the breathalyzer to show how loaded I was. But I had already agreed to a "continuance without a finding" plea, and part of that deal is that you have to just shut up and take your punishment. Another part of that deal was that I was ordered to enroll in a "Substance Abuse Awareness" Class, a five month class that met once a week.

In the aftermath of that night, they took my license away, so I thought I had to quit my job at the warehouse. There was really no way I could get from Weston to Allston, Monday through Friday without a license. Of course, most residents of Weston don't have this problem. If they lost their license, they'd just hire a limo to shuttle them around where they needed to go, which usually wasn't a warehouse. In fact, I didn't need to quit the job, because I was soon eligible for what they called a "Cinderella License", a limited license one could use from say 8am to 8pm to get to work, pick up your kids at school, things like that. But no one explained this to me.

So, in January I would very carefully drive once a week to Cambridge to attend my Substance Abuse Awareness class. There were closer classes than Cambridge, but I chose that location because Cambridge was the town where the woman lived who I bought all my marijuana from, and I figured if I was going to be driving around without a license I should try to get everything done in one trip. As those reading can probably surmise, my brush with the law had the effect of isolating me further, and my drinking and cannabis intake only increased. The one thing that kept me grounded during this snowy Winter was attending this Substance Abuse Awareness class, once a week. Otherwise I lived my days like Jack Torrance at the Overlook Hotel, except that in my case, Lloyd the Bartender was a Rasta who liked to keep the jukebox stocked with Ska and Rocksteady tunes, and my Wife was wise enough to leave me months ago.

The class was a revolving five month class that met once a week for two hours. That is, my first class was also someone's last class. Every week a few people would leave and some new ones would arrive. You were only allowed to miss one class which you had to make up by attending a weekend class. If you missed another class you had to start all over again, even if you were almost through with the five months, and of course to had to pay the full cost of the class again as well. I never missed a class.

On the one hand the class was incredibly boring, we would usually start off the class by watching an hour long "industrial" video about drunk driving or just generalized drug abuse, then we would all sit around and talk about what we had just seen. All of these videos were from the early 80s and had a mild amusement factor when it came to style of dress and 80s hairstyles, but after awhile no new information was being conveyed and you could tell that the real purpose of the class was not to educate anyone but to merely take up your time, that was the punishment.

Put it this way, another part of my sentence was to attend a separate one day head trauma class, where you spent the entire day with head trauma victims and saw first hand their struggles re-entering Society. I learned more in that one class than my entire stay at the Substance Abuse Awareness class. It was in the Head Trauma class that I really came face to face with just how close I came to fucking up my life and even worse, possibly the lives of others. It wasn't until I attended that class that I felt truly guilty and ashamed of my actions.

The most intriguing thing about the Substance Abuse Awareness class was the other attendees and the woman who taught it. The woman who taught the class kind of looked like a chubbier Diane Lane. She had a thick Worcester accent, which for those who don't know, not only do you drop the 'r's from where they are supposed to be, you add them where they are not. Thus, "Donna Summer" becomes "Donner Summaah". "Hey! That was a real smaaht ide-ar, leavin' yaah caah paahked in a tow zone are-ar."

She worked full time at Concord Massachusetts Correctional Institution and then taught this class at night. She loved to tell us stories about her kids and pretty much treated us all like children as well. None of us were in a position to complain. There was another guy in class who was nabbed on a DUI who worked as a TSA Agent at Logan Airport. He loved to talk about his job and if you wanted to pull off another 9/11 all you had to do was spend a few hours with this guy and you would know every weakness at Logan and how to get by security. I also remember an extremly attractive young woman who lived in nearby Arlmont, who had gotten drunk one night, gotten the munchies, and then proceeded to get her father's Lincoln Navigator completly wedged in a Wendy's Drive Through station. She said when the police showed up they had to pull her out of the sun roof because all of the doors were blocked off by brick and concrete.

There was also a woman who had struggled with a life long herion addiction. She was in her late 30s but looked like she was in her 50s. One time i showed up early to class and she was standing outside rocking back and forth looking more fucked up than usual. I asked her what was wrong.

"Well, I missed a class so I had to go to that weekend make up class, you know?" "Well, when we got there this other teacher said we were in luck because he had to be somewhere in an hour, so class would only be an hour long instead of two hours, alright?" "Well, then he put that movie 'Blow' in the VCR, you know, the one with Johnny Depp?" "Well, have you ever seen that movie? The first hour all Johnny Depp does is have a great time taking drugs and hanging out. Then the teacher turned off the VCR and told us to get lost." "So, I just watched a bunch of people have a great time on drugs and then I am supposed to leave and stay sober? I spent the rest of the weekend at AA meetings."

That anectdote really stayed with me for the duration of my time at Substance Abuse Awareness class.

*

[IanEye]

Time wore on, Winter turned to Spring and in late March, out of the blue, I got a call from a headhunting agency that wanted to place me at a job they thought I was qualified for. This was really odd to me because I hadn't been circulating my resume looking for work at all. In fact, the resume the agency had wasn't even mine. I mean, it was mine in the sense that the contact info was correct and all of the stats accurate. But it was all formatted in a nice slick way, and looked really nice. Someone I knew must have done this on my behalf. An old friend of mine had a brother who was a VP at Monster.com at the time. I have always suspected that they had something to do with this agency contacting me. Anyway, they set me up for an interview with a company in Tewksbury that made video editing software. I had used this company's software many times and was curious to see what an "SQA" job was.

As it turns out, they wanted me to be a sort of "test pilot" for beta versions of their software. To try and break it and then describe how it broke so that they could fix it. I nailed the interview, mainly because I had zero expectations about actually getting the job, so I was very calm in the interview, not all agitated and nervous like I usually am in interviews. I found out about that "Cinderella" license thing and in short order was back at work, using equipment that I was very familiar with, but with none of the usual pressures of show deadlines that I had been under in the past. For the first time in a long time, things were looking brighter for ole Ian.

Meanwhile, I was about two thirds of the way through my stint at the Substance Abuse Awareness class. One evening, after a particularly dreadful industrial video about when bartenders should shut you off at Applebee's, the teacher could sense the entropy that had taken over the class.
"OK, that one was pretty bad." she acknowledged. "Does anybody have any thoughts about what to talk about for next week?" As usual no one said anything.

Then, for some reason, I held up my hand. "Ian?" she said.

"Uh, well, I have had a lot of time in this class to reflect on whether or not I have a problem with alcohol abuse, and I think I am ready to admit I have a problem." I said.

"But to be honest, if that is true then I could just as easily have a problem with marijuana, and we never seem to talk about that here. Maybe next week we could talk about marijuana?"

"Ian! That is a great ide-ar!!" The teacher said. "Who here wants to bring in some research and information about the abuse of cannabis next week for class?"
Very slowly, everyone in the class turned to look at me. "Uh, I guess I will then?" I said.

That night on the way home from class I stopped off to visit the woman I got my pot from and bought a half ounce. I told her about that week's class and how I had to give a presentation about marijuana next week. She was very amused by this. "I am sure whatever you end up doing will be very educational."

I already had an idea. I had recently bought a DVD called, "The Educational Archives: Volume 1 - Sex & Drugs". On this DVD there was a chapter where for half an hour Sonny Bono talked about marijuana in a fair and balanced way. Except that it wasn't fair and balanced at all, and over the course of the segment, Sonny tried to bring you around and show you that smoking pot was for losers. In every way, this video was as bad as the alcohol videos we had to watch in class. Except where they were from the 80s, this Sonny Bono video was from the late 60's. We had never watched a DVD in class, only old VHS tapes, but I figured I could just bring in my DVD player and hook it up before class, then we could all watch the Sonny Bono Marijuana DVD and talk about it, just like any other class. A couple of days before class I decided to supplement the video with some actual current info about the pros & cons of marijuana. I took some time off during lunch at my new job to find some materials on the internet, then I had the Xerox print shop at work print out about 30 copies to bring to class. I remember the Xerox guy giving me a funny look after I came to pick up all of my marijuana propaganda.

But when I got to class a funny thing happened. When I went to hook up the DVD player to the TV I realized that the TV connector was really old and wouldn't work with my DVD player at all. This connector looked like something that you would have hooked up a PONG game to your TV with in 1975.

The teacher could see that I was disappointed, and the fact was I had shown more initiative in class than probably anyone had in years. She asked if we could still look at the handouts that I had brought and I said sure. While we were looking at them I had an idea. After class I told her about my new job and how it would be easy for me to run this Sonny Bono Marijuana segment off of the DVD and onto a VHS tape with the equipment at work. Then I could bring it in next week and we could watch the VHS dub of the show. She said it was the best class she had had in a really long time and that it would be great if I could continue next week.

So, the next day at work I "digitized" the DVD into the computer I was using to test software with at work and ran off a copy onto a VHS tape. This was incredibly easy and when I got home I started thinking that it would be fun to bring in other DVDs to digitize, so that I could have new footage to work with while trying to find software bugs. I woke up the next morning and brought out two big plastic tubs, my entire DVD collection, out of storage to take to work with me. It wasn't until I had gotten to work that I realized that I had brought along my collection of pornographic DVDs to work with me as well, but I just kept them covered up with other DVDs. I just started grabbing DVDs at random and digitizing various scenes that it seemed like it would be cool to edit with. After a while I realized that I had a lot of movies with scenes of people doing drugs. "A-hah! I have an ide-ar!"

The Sonny Bono Marijuana segment was about a half hour, but the video we usually watched were an hour long. What if I expanded the marijuana thing to a full hour by inserting some other scenes from these other movies? Then I could dub that off to a VHS tape and it would be even more like what we did in class. I started messing around with that idea. I got really excited. Soon, I realized I had more than an hour's worth of material. I figured I would deal with that later. I also rationalized that if anybody conplained about the scenes i chose, I would just relate the story the woman in class had told me about watching "Blow" during the make up class.

Occasionally, everything would freeze up and the computer would crash. That meant I had found a new software bug and I would go over to another machine and write up the bug. Often I would lose some of what I had been working on, but I was saving my work often enough that this didn't put me too far off track. I would usually leave at 5pm, but I was so into this marijuana video I was making that now I was staying long into the night, then I would run off the latest "draft" of the project onto a VHS tape, take it back to Weston, smoke some marijuana and watch it, taking notes about pacing and order so that I could fix things the next day. I had to take notes because my short term memory was so blown out that if I didn't write my thoughts down I would never recall them later.

*

[IanEye]

Finally, the day of class arrived. At work I put the finishing touches on my "Substance Abuse Awareness Class Video". It was 2 hours long but I had paced it so that you could just watch the first hour and get the basic gist. Then we could turn it off and the class could talk about it, just like a regular class. Or, if people liked the video we could just keep watching.

At the start of class the Teacher took attendance and then turn the floor over to me. I explained to class that the video they were about to see no longer focused just on marijuana abuse, but instead addressed substance abuse in general. in fact, I continued, it really addressed all kinds of abuse, especially the abuse of power. Then I put the VHS tape into the VCR, dimmed the lights and pressed "play".

As it turns out, the teacher made me turn it off before the first hour was even through.

Here is the video I showed in Substance Abuse Awareness class that day:

**

NSFW



NSFW

**

[Perelandra]

I'd love to read/see more, but the provided media requires a password.

[barracuda]

I found it.

Banana.

[brainpanhandler]

Curses. I must have tried about 20 or 30 passwords yesterday before I gave up.

[norton ash]

Thanks for the password, will watch. Tried NSFW, no dice.

[Perelandra]

Funny men.
Cheers, Ian.

[IanEye]

some adults are not mature or strong enough to stand the pressures of their daily lives. these adults can become just as emotionally dependent on marijuana as on alcohol, whichever is more socially acceptable and easier to get.




even when the alcoholic is physically withdrawn from his body's need for alcohol, he always goes back to it until he learns how to handle his problem.




just as the alcohol drinker who finds himself needing a drink more and more frequently is the warning sign of his dependency, so it is with the pothead. the more he needs the escape from reality, or the pleasure of marijuana, the more he is becoming emotionally dependent, exactly as the square and unhip alcoholic adult does.





do two wrongs ever make one right?

[justdrew]

marijuana's the flame, heroin's the fuse and LSD's the bomb...

[battleshipkropotkin]

The first time I saw Blow was in "Life Skills" class in a state jail. Also, Training Day and The Heist. I always thought of jail as "crime college."

I'm feeling much better now.

[IanEye]

In late 2004, in between Christmas & New Year's Eve, I was arrested on a DUI charge. Thus begins my story.

2004 had not been the greatest year for me. My contract on the television show I was working on hadn't been renewed, and then my Wife let me know she was leaving me and moving to the Midwest. Various other events seemed to be conspiring against me as well, so that by the time Summer arrived I had somewhat of a nervous breakdown.

as it breaks
a summer will end

but the winter will wash
what is left of the taste

as it breaks
a summer awaits...

*

[slimmouse]

Never read any of this thread before. Thanks for the bump IE.

[IanEye]

Thanks.
I just wanted to honor the anniversary.



Nice to have it in my rear view mirror.