Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16

by Moshe Kasher

The Satmars are among the oddest and most insular of all the Chassidic groups. I’ll say that again. Of all the Yiddish-speaking, society-rejecting, gown and fur hat–wearing Chassidic groups, the group my father married into was the most bizarre and outside the lines of society. It would be like being among the fattest groups of Walmart shoppers.

People called me the Gandhi of the playground. Wait, no they didn’t, they called me white bitch.

Anyone who thinks welfare is an awesome meal ticket for undeserving people ought to be forced to eat one actual meal from below the poverty line. Following the most intense diarrhea of their lives would be the realization that being on government assistance sucks balls.

“Yeah, I smoked weed, dude, it was awesome. It’s not like they say it is, you know? It felt awesome. Like jerking off but you’re just cumming the whole time. It’s crazy.”

He always had the perfect amount of stubble, too. Not perfect as in: Hollywood-chic, but perfect as in: Yes, in fact I do drink beer with cigarette butts in it—what of it?

Here’s Leotis’s Talmudic treatise on the wisdom of cheap drinks: Malt liquor is standard alcoholic drinking fare, but there are levels. First, there’s Mickey’s—known as “white boy drink,” reserved for chicks and people who are still employed. In the middle of the spectrum is Olde English, a drink for Shakespearean alcoholics. And then there’s the bang-for-the-buck favorite, St. Ides. Ahh, St. Ides, the patron saint of cirrhosis. The only thing better than St. Ides is Crazy Horse, a true rarity, but if you ever see it on the shelf, you have to go for it. You know a drink is strong when, without any self-consciousness or irony, it is named after a leader of a culture that’s been decimated by alcoholism.

Wino wines had similar strata. Boone’s for girls, Rossi for groups, and Cisco for real men. Cisco was my favorite. A lethal sort of synthetic bum wine, it was made out of a combination of distilled Now and Laters, Ajax, and broken dreams. People called it Liquid Crack. I called it dinner.

But back to my point. Getting punched in the face is good for you. Unless you get punched in the face too many times or too hard, and then it stops being good for you and mashes your brain into soup.

There are moments in a life that make you think maybe there’s a thread of meaning through this bumbling little experience. Seconds and inches that peel open the epidermis of the universe to reveal the intricate nervous system of interconnectivity that lies within. Things that make you say, “There might be something to this God thing after all.” Little God moments.

You know the feeling of tranquility and cleansing a nice long shower gives you? Yeah, that’s not available during the five-minute mental hospital shower. Even in there you feel institutionalized. I scrubbed myself and dreaded the rest of the day. First up was some kind of group ball game led by the most chipper counselor you could ever hope to vomit directly in the face of.

My brother had been a straight-A student since anyone could remember. He had gotten through Claremont an unscathed exemplary student and been offered a full scholarship to the best private college-prep high school in Oakland, where he had gone on to continue to get straight A’s and, I assume, participate in fancy-lad sodomy parties where they wiped the cum off each other’s chests with their paisley ascots.

No one lives more in the moment than an active drug addict. I was always willing to accept a catastrophe that would be taking place in some abstract future for a fleeting moment of pleasure that could occur right now. The future had no meaning to me.

I didn’t even notice, to be honest. See, that’s how it happens. When you hustle like I did, you only notice the ups and downs of the day. Do I have money? Do I not? What should I do to get money now? Thoughts like “Where was I at last year at this time?” are rare and easily ignored for the more pressing issues of the day. Every line of moral defense you have is compromised. Every “I will never” becomes an “I might” becomes an “I did.” The moment you sink to a new low is the same moment that your conscience becomes compromised to the point that it won’t rebel against the indignity you are putting it through. That’s why so few addicts get clean. They never seem to even notice there is a problem because, for them, there isn’t. You ever wonder how addicts let themselves become such animals? That’s how. They forget they were ever human. It wasn’t gross that I was pissing in cups and leaving them littered around the room. I simply had to piss and the bathroom was too far away.

The great irony of the addict is that the thing he takes, which is the only thing that has ever made life feel good, stops working long before he considers the possibility of life without it.

Back upstairs, at the station, I sat on the bench, waiting for the train, and looked over at Donny. I sighed. “This isn’t working anymore,” I said, cracking a Budweiser. Donny looked up at me and I knew he knew exactly what I meant. I sighed. “I mean, is it normal? What we are doing? We are headed no place, doing nothing. I keep waiting for this thing to just change, on its own accord. I keep waiting for the balance to shift in my favor but I’m starting to think it’s never going to. I’m starting to think it’s never going to change. It’s like, is this my life?” I stared at my friend, my old friend, waiting for a laugh. It didn’t come.

I hadn’t expected this. I’d been telling myself for years what every addict will identify as a familiar trope: “I could quit if I wanted to, I just don’t want to.” Then came the day that I wanted to. Then came the realization that I couldn’t. The moment you need control is the moment you realize you’ve lost it.

It was a Wednesday six months later. Or maybe it was a Tuesday a month later. It was a day. In the afternoon. The fog was playing on the ground, unrolling itself onto Oakland like an old gray rug. The fog was everywhere, it was in me too.

I knew. That day, I knew. Why that day was any different, I don’t know. There comes a time. The pain of existence transcends the fear of change. There comes a time.

Donny looked at me. He looked at me in the eyes. Every scene of every moment we’d ever been through together was playing, fast-forwarding in them. He saw it. Saw the change. Saw that something had died in me. My will had died. My childhood had died. He saw that I was done fighting. He saw it. He smiled. He grabbed my hand and slapped a half hug on me. “Right on, man, we’ll holler atcha later.” Donny held my gaze. I looked away.

In February of my twentieth year, my father was diagnosed with cancer. He died in May. I was there. This isn’t amazing. Lots of people are there when their parents die. It’s amazing for me. I was never there.