Blind Date A Book 2020 – Book #4
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Chapter 1
In case you’re wondering, my name is Stanley Hockenschmidt. First name’s English. Last name’s German. Good ole All American boy. I write this stuff to keep my hard-earned sanity. That’s a full time job. I tormented all the people who cared about me, for a long time. I’m not proud of it, it’s just a fact. I’d like the world to know some of the story from my perspective.
Jay was one of my neighbors. I’d known him since he was a little kid. I was in high school with his big brother, Paul. Paul and I were friends and we were in Scouts together too. Jay was quite a bit younger than his brother. Paul and I would ride around partying. When we were still kids, Paul made a remark about my not having a father at Scouts one night. I wanted to crown him, royally. I’d still like to, come to think of it.
Paul knew my dad left us, but he didn’t have to make a big announcement about it in Scouts in front of everybody, like I was some kind of bastard. He didn’t have to say anything about it, but he did. The remark still bothers me sometimes. I let it go best I could, that is, after I screamed obscenities at him when he said it. I got in trouble for cussing him too.
Like an idiot, I hung out with Paul while he was around because they lived just up the street from me. Their house was just across Gilbert, on the main drag. I could walk there easily in all kinds of weather and did. Jay and Paul were always there in those days. There just wasn’t anybody else nearby to hang out with. To hang with any of my other buddies, I needed a bicycle or a car.
Paul moved to the Southwest somewhere, near an older brother. Jay was in high school by then and he and I were hanging out after Paul left town. We’d walk up and down the hill, a quaint little country road, going to a hay field off to the left, descending the hill toward the crick.
We’d go down the road to the hay field and blaze up. On the way back I’d get all paranoid about nothing. I told him repeatedly, all the way back up the hill to the world, we’re going to get busted for jaywalking. He’d just repeat it, “I’m jaywalking, alright. I’m Jay, walking.”
It was an irony I could not grasp. We were out on some back road in the sticks, for Christ’s sake. There was never any traffic. Once in a blue moon, you’d see a car. I wouldn’t shut up about it and I think I got on his nerves. I’m kind of sorry about it whenever I think of it. Lol.
We also went to an old wood and rock fort next door to my aunt’s house. It was back in the woods, behind old Ellie and Tom’s place. I used to cut their grass when I was younger. Ellie and I were good buddies when I was in school. Mother, auntie, Ellie and Tom, all knew we were going back there to blaze up, but what could they do about it? We were adults. I led a life charmed with the clout of whom my family happened to be, as far as the law was concerned and the major part of it was because auntie really was somebody in that town. She was actually one for the history books. My aunt always told me to leave the neighborhood boys alone, because I was corrupting their bad habits, but I wouldn’t heed to her. I couldn’t think straight because I wasn’t straight. I couldn’t add anything to anything and make sense in those days. I wish it wasn’t so.
It was my connection to Jay that led to my meeting Smithy and his crowd at the apartments. They were all still in high school. We hung out at Smithy’s. I got the bright idea one day to walk right into school and find them. Why not? I was always hanging out with them. It was time to ride around looking for a bag of weed. They didn’t care I was in my mid-to-late twenties and I didn’t care either. I’d gone to school there and graduated with honors. I felt like I had the right to be there, but the vice principal didn’t agree. He kept telling me I couldn’t come in there. I gave up and left, but it continued to bother me.
Later, I realized I could have gotten in a lot of trouble for hanging out with all those kids. There was a whole passel of them and some other guy whose name I forgot. I’d load up my car with those kids, get some beer, a bag of weed, maybe a bottle of Boone’s Farm Apple and do some DWI action. The MADD mothers weren’t very powerful yet, not enough the cops pulled young people over for partying in a car. At least, they never pulled me over. Seems like I was always intoxicated and it never stopped me from driving. My car was frequently banged up and there were an awful lot of times I parked in the bushes at home, missing the parking spot in the turn-around by a half mile. I’d been riding around with all those kids half the night, regularly.
I hardly ever worked a job in those days. Unemployed a lot I have a chemical imbalance in my blood and have always had trouble holding down a job. So I’d tempt fate unknowingly and hang out with all those kids all the time.
One summer I was at the swimming pool at the apartments. Robin was just coming out of the pool to walk home, in her two piece. I escorted her home. Don’t get me wrong. Robin was another man’s girl, and she was just a skinny kid. She and I were friends though and that day I needed a friend. I was talking to her while she was walking kind of fast. I suggested we sit on the grass and talk. I wanted to get her attention and she wanted to know what was up. We sat next to the apartments.
I told her I was thinking about killing myself. She reached out and took hold of my forearms with her bony little hands and said, “I want you to listen very carefully to me, Stanley Hockenschmidt. I think you are one of the nicest, sweetest, kindest, gentlest men I have ever met. If I ever hear that you’ve taken your own life, I’m going to cry for a long time. Do you understand me?” There was moisture in her eyes and she emphasized each word.
We were both upset. The gravity of what I said hit me suddenly. I didn’t think I was any of those things Robin said I was. I thought I was a terrible monster and should be exterminated. I had this paralyzing concept of myself throughout my twenties. Whenever my brother came home to visit, he’d remind me how horrible I was, compared to him. He was always self-righteous and squeaky clean. He didn’t smoke or drink and never cussed, but he’d chew me out and put me down, until I wanted to slug him one.
I succumb to my desire to slug him once. Woody was getting out of his car at the bank drop-box. He’d been chewing me out the whole the way up the street, so I punched him in the kidney. Woody wheeled around with the money bag and hit me in the teeth with it. He broke one of my two front teeth with it. The dentist never let me live it down, either.
Woody had some kind of resentment against my brother Richard and me, from childhood. He was such a nerd. He’d usually act like he didn’t care what people thought of him. He tore me down so much I felt like dying. It’s partly why I tried to kill myself twice. I had a lot of thoughts I didn’t like to think, much less dig them up in print now. I was at the point I was telling that stuff to the people on the hot-line, and everywhere else. I began assassinating the efficacy of my own character, publicly. I was the worst guy on the planet.
I don’t know why I got such an awful impression of myself. The fact that I was a drug addict and dropped out of university easily could have contributed to that self-image. Instead of shining all over my hometown like the noon day sun, I knew I’d failed. Everyone else knew it too. People frequently said how talented and intelligent I was, but all I felt was failure.
I’m the sort of fellow who wouldn’t kill a fly, gentle as I am, but I believed I was the worst of the worthless, throughout my twenties. This belief stopped me cold. I couldn’t get anything done.
One night, in the wee hours, I was up suffering with myself, talking to the hot-line, a lot of self-destructive crap and they called 911. I asked the cops to take me to jail. My aunt’s friend was the sheriff and his deputies were dispatched to auntie’s. Mom and auntie woke from the hubbub in the front hall. I was still begging the cops to take me to jail, but they refused. Go figure.
Mom and auntie asked what the heck I thought I was doing. They informed the sheriff they were taking care of me. The officers just plain left without me. I still feel bad about that sometimes, knowing I embarrassed Mother and auntie so badly. What a stunt to pull in the home where I grew up! Mom said, “You wouldn’t act like that if Richard was home.” She was rightly.
Once, Robin was in my car, along with some of the guys. We were getting pretty drunk on beer or getting high and Robin said she had to pee. I got paranoid, not wanting to stop in obvious places along the back roads. Robin started to cry.
Eugene said, “Why not right here?”
So I stopped. I figured Robin needed to go really bad and I better let her out. It was a country road, after all. There wasn’t any traffic anywhere. I don’t know why I didn’t stop sooner when she asked. Don’t know if she wet herself. Felt bad about the incident later too. I have a rather consistent pattern of beating myself up in life.
My life was increasingly coming apart. I was ready to jump out of my skin whenever there wasn’t any weed to smoke. I needed the stuff like I needed air. I had a bad case of reefer madness. I’d already been to the state hospital too much and sometimes I wanted to go back.
***
Two young couples moved in across the street from Jay’s, in an old apartment house across the street. None of them seemed to have jobs. Jay and I started partying over there, with their wives and babies around. I’ve forgotten their names. One day, Jay and one of them woke me up from a nap on the couch at home, and invited me over to party. Who ever came around to include me in on anything? There was another guy who was going to get some reefer, and he’d be right back. They wanted me around when the guy got back with the reefer. Yea, right. Nobody ever acted that way around me. No one was ever interested in being around me, back when I was getting loaded, and I knew it. It was suspicious behavior, but I didn’t catch on. I just got my jacket and walked out with them and went over to the apartment to wait till the guy got back with the weed. I had no clue. I walked home with Jay, after we got loaded. We were going somewhere in my car. Mom and auntie were standing in the middle of the front yard, yelling at me that we’d been robbed.
One of the apartment dwellers broke into my aunt’s house and stole a substantial amount of Aunt Ruby’s stuff. He’d entered through the screened-in porch, gone through the dining room door, and ransacked the house. A detective came and questioned me. He wanted to know who I hung out with, where they lived, and all that. I didn’t want to go to jail, so I cooperated. He didn’t seem to care what I was doing. He only wanted to know about all my buddies. I gave him names and whereabouts. I told him all about those guys, friend or foe.
***
When my brother Rick was engaged to Karen, there were people closer to my age around home. Karen worked at 7/11. I dropped in to see her at work fairly often. She was always nice to me. Talking to me in the cooler, she put drinks away. Karen asked me what I planned to do the rest of my life. She sensed my desperation. I didn’t have an answer for her. I had no idea what I was going to do about anything. She scarcely needed me to tell her. She already knew.
I lived with mom and auntie, collected a disability check, wasted it on substance abuse. I had no clue about what I was going to do with life. None. I was as lost as lost gets.
Sometime later, I was hanging around with Rick and Karen. They were still trying to help me. They took me to Bible classes and private worship in their friends’ house. I took the study course, though it wasn’t accredited. It was as intense as if it were accredited. I started to get my life back together, somewhat. I learned a lot about the Bible, began praying and established some trust in God. It was as though I’d awakened from a nightmare, at twenty eight years old, after a lifetime.
I went over and took a walk with Smithy’s mom one afternoon. Sharing what I’d found in God and that I was getting away from drugs. She wished her son could do it, said she knew what the kids and I’d been doing.
“But what can I do?” Smithy’s mother asked.
I talked to her seriously and was in my right mind. As far as my thinking went, it was the difference between being high and straight, an equivalent to night and day. Smithy’s mother seemed to understand what I was saying about being straight, and how hard it was. I wasn’t smoking anymore, but I was drinking. It was beyond me that I wasn’t totally straight yet. I didn’t learn the whole crux of the matter until much later. I had more trouble to go through before I figured sobriety out. I can’t help but wonder how I ever survived.
I was kicked out of the house where the Bible study was being held and couldn’t attend any of the worship there anymore. I don’t understand what was wrong. It seemed I was always getting kicked out of places. I was just different. Only had a couple beers now and then. I don’t get it.
Headed straight to Smithy’s place, like I’d always done. When I got there, it looked like the devil himself kicked in Smithy’s front door. I was scared, but I walked in anyway. Smithy was just sitting in the living room, like he always did. I hadn’t been there for a while because I’d found Jesus. Smithy had a little weed, a little dust, whatnot. I got a little of it, so wasted I could hardly walk. Couldn’t find my car in the parking lot.
“Did the cops kick in your door? Are you and your mom okay?” I asked him, wondering what in hell had happened to them.
“Some drunk guy wanted to see my mom. He kicked in the door. No one got hurt,” Smithy replied calmly. How he could be calm was beyond me.
There I was back to partying with Smithy. All of a sudden, it occurred to me my clothes were awfully loud. I had started dressing that way when I went to Bible classes. I looked like some kind of dandy. I wanted to just change back to normal duds and vegetate in my aunt’s basement. The whole world should beat it and leave me alone.
I left Smithy’s and tried to drive home, but the great granddaddy of bottle necks was on the road, blocking my way home. I sat there for hours and there was no way to get home. I’d lived in that town most of my life, knew every road in the whole darned county. All I could think to do was sit there and wait for traffic to move. A few hours later, I learned there was a bad accident at the main corner, just ahead at the traffic light. I was too high to think of any way around it, so there I sat, waiting for the mess to clear up. Once again, I was clueless as ever.
I was convicted of my own iniquity by myself and by God too. I’d slapped God in the face. When I finally got home, my mom and aunt were both in very bad moods. They wanted to fight with me about everything and anything. I tried to play them off and go to my room in the basement. My ploy didn’t work. Auntie was in the kitchen yelling at me.
Suddenly, she said, “Stanley Hockenschmidt, what are you planning to do with that knife?”
I was flabbergasted. “What?”
I looked down and sure enough, there was a steak knife in my hand. I don’t remember picking it up, getting it out of the drawer, or anything. I was seriously out of it.
“Well, I guess I’ll just put it back in the drawer here, okay?” I said, mystified by my subconscious actions. Geez.
The next day, my aunt kicked me out of the house. She took me to the city in her fancy, comfortable car. Auntie saw to it I had a little room to stay in. It was the beginning of a period of starvation, and being in a bad way constantly. I don’t want to think about it. Mom and auntie saw me get totally sober eventually and I stayed that way. It redeemed me in their eyes, I think. They saw me take hold of life and turn myself around, before they passed. I am doing alright, like I always wanted. I’m so grateful I was able to be that in their eyes – and for myself too, since I still live sober.
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