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

We sat there for a while, silently, she trying to forgive herself, me trying to blame myself. Eventually I got up and left her to her tears. I couldn’t deal with that shit. I told myself I didn’t care, but the only thing I wanted to do in that moment was go get fucked up and obliterate myself, obliterate the memory of my mother’s tears. I did just that. I wanted out of those memories. Maybe that’s a kissing cousin of caring. I got high and forgot. I got high and silently fortified another paper-thin membrane wall around my feelings. Next time, next time I’d feel even less. That’s all I ever wanted. I didn’t want to feel good. I just wanted not to feel at all. With shit like this happening around you, who would want to feel it? I wanted out, and lucky me, at the bottom of every forty-ounce bottle of malt liquor was a trapdoor into oblivion. I leapt in and checked out. The next day, my mom informed me of my summer plans. “Things are going to change. I can’t keep accepting you trying to control me and the family. Larry is going crazy, too.” “Fuck Larry.” My mother’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve been trying, but having you in the house kills the mood.” I mimed vomiting all over the kitchen. Poor Larry. Larry was my mother’s long-term boyfriend. The poor bastard. He had not signed on for me and, unlike most stepparents, actually tried his damnedest to just mind his own business. I hardly made that possible.