The Edge
Autobiographical Fiction
*This piece is probably 80% “true,” 20% from my imagination. Enjoy. If you enjoy my work please consider a paid subscription for only $35/year.
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I was young but that’s really no excuse. Nineteen, to be exact. Just five months after high school graduation. Late 2002. It was early November, still warm and sunny and crisp during the days, with those gusty, hot Santa Ana winds which are famous in Southern California.
The party was at Tanya Kline’s parents’ house in Santa Paula, just up and over the mountain via Highway 150 from Ojai, where I lived with my parents. These were small mountain towns about an hour north of Los Angeles. Where I’d been born and raised.
I remember that early evening—it was purple dusk—heading slowly up the mountain on Highway 150 in my jade-green 1998 Volkswagon. My window was down and the cool air sliced beautifully across my face. No one else was on the road. A 24 ounce can of Pabst sat in my lap, half-finished, the aluminum cold against my thighs. I smoked a Marlboro, exhaling and watching the smoke get carried by the wind. Ozzy Osborne played loudly from the CD player, the song, Momma I’m Coming Home, from the 1991 album, No More Tears.
I felt alone and trapped on that drive, not just physically but emotionally. I couldn’t stand my domineering mother, my detached, absent father. I wanted out of their house. Out of Ojai. Out of Southern California. I had vague notions of San Francisco; Portland, Oregon; Seattle. I wanted to stay on the west coast, I knew that. But the question haunted me: Where was I going in my life? What was the point of everything? Was I doomed to become an unconscious, non-thinking Upper-middleclass troll like everyone else who’d gone to St. Andrew’s Catholic Prep?
Turning the volume knob down, I spotted her place. The address lined up. No other homes were around. Just hers. Word was that her parents had gone to Paris for a month. She was eighteen; she could take care of herself. At least in theory. There was a dirt circular lot with a fountain in the center. About twenty cars were parked all around it. I slowly pulled in and rumbled to a vacant spot near a few other cars and under a huge Eucalyptus tree. Cutting the engine I sat there, silence all around me, hearing the engine cool and click. The sky had become black as a void. A moon was already rising. No stars tonight. It made me think of being in the planetarium when I was in third grade, covered in darkness with all my classmates. What had happened to that childish innocence? It had died along with my youth when I got pulled into punk rock, alcohol and drugs sophomore year. My parents had thought they were saving me from myself by sending me to college-prep private school. But I was destined to meet trouble. It had been written in the Bible of my existence.
I chugged the rest of my Pabst, burped, crushed the can, got out, slammed the door shut, burped again, and tossed the can onto the dirt. The temperature had lowered a few degrees but it was still not cold. Voices could be heard from inside the house, and the splashing of water from a pool in the open backyard, and the soft thump of hip-hop music.
Standing at the door I breathed a moment and paused. I knew sometimes I drank too much. Ok, sometimes was an understatement. There were vague memories of blackouts. Waking up next to strange women. Coming-to behind the wheel, shocked that I was driving. Emerging from unconsciousness black and blue after some pointless fight. So I stood at that door knowing I could not predict the night.
I twisted the door knob and walked inside. Chatter was everywhere; constant, that high thrum of voices all clashing which sounds like nonsense if you relax your ears and just listen. Snoop Dog and Doctor Dre rapped from The Chronic album: One, two, three and to the four; Snoop Doggy-Dog and Dr. Dre is at the door…
Everyone laughed and half yelled at each other, grinning like apes, holding red plastic party cups. Again I felt alone, trapped, submerged inside of my own cave of fear and shame. Why did I always feel like I was about to be exposed, found out to be a total fraud? Maybe it had been my father, the sense that he never wanted to truly know me; that he didn’t understand me; that we spoke different metaphorical languages. Or my mother, with her strict rules, her anger, her critical judgment of everything I did that she didn’t like. Perhaps it was my small, inauthentic, fractured family, spread out around Ojai and Los Angeles. We were all separate and distinct, like close but detached continents.
I saw familiar faces. I knew almost everyone. From school. Since graduation I’d basically disappeared; I’d been shocked to receive the email invitation. I’d known Tanya Kline a little because she’d briefly dated by best friend junior year. One time I took her home from school—she’d needed a ride—and she invited me into her house. Her folks were still at work. Her sister was not there. We went into her room. We sat on her bed and she looked at me with her clear blue eyes, her blond curly hair, those twisted Cupid lips, and she said, “You want to fuck me, huh?”
Surprised, I’d said, “I don’t know.”
Tanya giggled, flipping a chunk of hair over her shoulder. She wore the girl’s St. Andrew’s short navy skirt, the high white socks, and the tight white button-up blouse. Unbuttoning the top two buttons of the blouse—exposing a bright red bra strap—she smiled at me, her head slightly tilted, and said, “Come on, Paul. Every guy wants to fuck me.”
She’d told me to come to her. I did, shuffling along her bed, my heart thumping like madness; adrenaline spiking inside. When I got very close I smelled her perfume and hair conditioner and a whiff of peppermint and rosemary. She always smelled like that. I just looked at her.
“Are you just going to sit there and gape at me? Kiss me,” she said.
Swallowing, I breathed slowly, and I kissed her. She tasted like coffee, cigarettes and pastrami but I didn’t care; in fact it turned me on.
Then, suddenly, she’d pushed me away, her small palms on my chest, and said, “Now get out of here.”
“What?”
She looked angry now. “You heard me. Get out. Or I’ll say you raped me.”
I stood up immediately, terrified. “What are you talking about?”
“Out!”
And so I walked out of her house, got into my car, and left. We never talked again.
*
In the kitchen there were a bunch of people. I nodded to a few of them. The hip hop had gotten louder. The chatter wild. The house reeked of good pot. That skunky stink. Smoke billowed everywhere. I felt antisocial; awkward. I found a bottle of Bacardi 151. I snatched a red cup and filled it halfway with the liquor. I drank.
“Hey man,” a dark-haired dude said to me, hair falling above his eyes, a massive, dumb grin skiing across the Mediterranean tone of his face. Kenny Corbett. From school. He was annoying.
“Hey,” I said, alone, leaning against the kitchen counter. I was watching the others talk and laugh and drink around me, taking bong hits, chugging beer, telling tales of the elite colleges they had gotten into. I hadn’t even taken the SAT—extremely rare at St. Andrews. I had decided to take some night classes at Ventura Community College and find a job. I needed money. My parents, of course, were bitterly disappointed. I had done a nice job of letting them down.
“Hey, Kenny,” I said, in a monotone.
“Hey Kenny,” he mocked in my own robotic voice, standing next to me, his back also against the counter. He was several inches taller than me, and far thinner. He wore all black, Dickies pants and a collared shirt with the top two buttons undone. He’d been one of those kids who wasn’t in the cool crowd but wasn’t a weirdo/loser, either. I had been considered a loser. Always had been. In grade school, too.
Kenny glugged beer from his red cup. “Dude, where the fuck have you been since graduation, bro?”
I drank another glob of Bacardi. It went down slow and hot and spicy. I started to feel loose. Thank God. The medicine was kicking in. Why did I come to these things anyway? Girls, a voice responded. Right. Girls.
I shrugged, avoiding his eyes. “I dunno. Going to punk shows in Ventura. Listening to music. Reading. Walking around.”
Kenny laughed like an ape. “Sounds like real enlightening stuff, my man.” I didn’t respond. The music suddenly switched violently to NWA’s Fuck the Police. The energy in the kitchen seemed to change. Several girls—tight jeans and short skirts—started dancing provocatively. The dudes watched and nodded, smiling. Some hollered.
“Hey,” Kenny said, jarring me, “I got into Yale, bro.”
I turned for a moment, looked at Kenny in the eyes, I mean really looked at him, and said, “That’s great, man.” I tipped my cup at him. “Best of luck.”
Moving off I made sure no one was looking and I snagged the whole bottle of Bacardi 151. I chugged the rest of my red cup. Down the hatch.
Ten minutes later I was outside, in the now-cool night air, sitting alone on a Chaise Lounge chair near the pool. Several guys with girls played around in the water, oblivious to my existence. I was always ignored. Sometimes I ignored myself. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Alcohol: That mattered. Oblivion. Darkness. That diamond void. Returning to the sacred womb. Return to safety. Return to pre-birth. Why did I hate myself so much? Why did I want to tear my organs out of my body and hurl them into the pool? Why did I want to die?
Drinking from the bottle, listening to the music from inside—NWA, Straight Outta Comton, now—hearing the splashing of water, half drunk, a woman’s voice suddenly rang out behind me: “Paul Herzog?”
She walked around to face me, sitting in the Chaise. Tanya. With her blond curly hair, her Cupid mouth, her blue eyes. She looked good: Tight jeans; high heeled boots which ended just below her knees, a low cut V-neck top showing off her cleavage. Her lips were smeared with red lipstick.
“What are you doing, Paul?”
I shrugged. Drank a glug from the bottle. “Being antisocial.”
She shook her head, giggling ironically. “You know practically everyone here. Why don’t you talk to some people? Have a good time.”
I took some cool night air in, held the air in my mouth, slowly released. “Why did you get all weird on me that day?”
She scrunched her lips. Her arms were planted against her bony hips. He imagined her naked. On her bed. “What?”
“You know,” he fake-smiled. “That day. When you invited me into your room.”
She instantly glanced around, scanning to see if anyone was overhearing us. “How much have you had to drink, Paul?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She looked me up and down in a slow sweep. “You know, if you got your shit together, and actually took care of yourself, girls might actually find you attractive.”
She turned around to head off.
“Can I ask you something?” I said.
She stopped. She faced away from me, aimed at the house. I took a big drink. Her shoulders bobbed. She flipped around.
“Yes? What is it?”
“Why’d you invite me to this party?”
She gaped at him hard, right in the eyes, and said, “I guess I felt sorry for you.”
*
The music had switched yet again to Weezer’s Blue Album. The world has turned, and left me here…
The chatter all over the house had grown even louder. The music’s volume had increased substantially. Everyone seemed wasted, or close to it, as if submerged in water, zigzagging sluggishly, laughing at nothing, slurring their words. I sat in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet with the lid down, using it like a chair. I’d locked myself in. I heard the thr0b of the music. The voices all wild and chaotic. I stared at myself in the mirror and I didn’t like what I saw: Hard, glinting green eyes; a ragged Sex Pistols T-shirt under an unzipped motorcycle leather jacket; tight, torn blue jeans. A couple badly done tattoos were etched on my arms.
Lifting the bottle of Bacardi, I slammed it. Again. And again. Someone knocked on the door roughly. I ignored it. I drank. I thought about riding the Amtrak train as a kid, in the early 90s, with my father, to see my paternal grandmother in coastal Oregon. We rode from Ventura all the way up there. I remembered my grandma’s massive, twenty-five foot high classics library; the smell of all those old dusty hardback books. And the electronically adjustable bed she slept in. And the huge floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room, seeing out to the bridge and the choppy blue sea. And the garage, musty and full of dust motes, her BMW parked in there, the tennis ball hung by string touching the windshield letting her know where to park when she entered from town. And the smell of cinnamon Sourdough toast which she always made in the morning. The rocky cliffs the mansion was built on. The Gazebo. All of it. The memory was so warm and young and safe. I felt alive and protected.
The door got knocked on again, jarring me out of the reverie. This time very aggressively. A male voice yelled against the door: “Jamie, is that you? Are you throwing up?” Pound pound pound. “Open up!”
I took another giant glug of Bacardi, stood up, wiped my nose, and swaggered out.
*
Fifteen minutes later I was back in my car. It was cold and silent out again. More cars were parked in the dirt lot; all over the place. The music pulsed from inside the house. I’d been there less than an hour. They were inside, I was outside. I was an outsider. Always had been. Always would be.
By this time I was drunk and I knew it. But what the hell: I’d driven wasted plenty of times. It was profoundly stupid—not to mention dangerous—but what else is being young for if not to tempt the gods? My punk buddies and I used to drive along the back-country roads of Ojai, drunk, after some show, music full blast, half a dozen of us, and I’d be driving and I’d hit the straightaway which ended at a 90-degree turn, and I’d punch it down to 100 MPH and would turn the headlights off, arrowing in towards that harsh bend where all the crosses of teens who’d died were, and, at the last possible moment, perhaps 50 yards before the turn, I’d suddenly switch the lights back on, and we’d all scream, and we’d test the edge of life and death, and we’d make that turn with the luck of Jesus. A few times we almost didn’t make it. It was thrilling.
I buckled my seatbelt across my chest. The bottle still had a little left. I drank. I flipped the headlights on. Bright. I flipped the ignition on. I had that momentary feeling like I shouldn’t drive. And yet anarchic excitement slashed across that fear.
Backing up slowly onto Highway 150, I pulled out and started driving towards home. It was about a half hour drive. I worried about the narrow road when it paralleled the steep cliffs closer to Ojai. I’d drive slow, I told myself. I didn’t even turn the CD player on. I liked the silence. I rolled the window up. I felt for my pack of Marlboros and stuck one between my lips. I used the coiled car lighter, waiting and then lighting the end of my cigarette; that low hiss noise when it caught. Tobacco gloriously filled my lungs.
About ten minutes into the drive I started seeing double. I placed one palm over my right eye and used my left to focus. C’mon, Paul, you can do this. I lifted the bottle and swigged. I felt the car swerving a few times, in and out of lanes. I grabbed the bottle. Probably about five shots-worth left. In one gargantuan swallow I chugged the rest down to the end.
*
I came to, hearing the noise of a metallic dink dink dink against my driver’s-side window. I opened my eyes. I looked down at my lap and saw it was covered in yellow lumpy vomit. Then I looked up and saw that the car’s hood was crunched up badly and the car had crashed into a thick tree trunk. Dink. Dink.
Finally I looked to my left, at the window. The dinking noise came from a police baton. Which was held by a large, intimidating cop. Black uniform. Duty belt with pepper-spray, handcuffs, gun. Fuck. Fuck.
I opened my door. It creaked loudly. I saw two squad cars near mine, red and blue silent rolling lights.
The cop stood back a foot or so. He looked down on me. “You alright, kid?”
I looked out at the dirt. I pressed my palm to my forehead. No blood. My head was pounding.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think so.”
The cop moved his giant black Mag-lite around looking inside my car. The light stopped at the empty Bacardi bottle.
“Been drinking tonight?” the cop asked.
I looked at him, right into the light, and said, “Just a few, officer.”
They had me step out of the car. I saw two bad, thick tire tracks across Highway 150 where I must have passed out. I’d been lucky. I could have been seriously hurt or killed. I could have hurt or killed someone else. They had me walk a straight line and I couldn’t do it. Not even close. They gave me a breathalyzer. I blew a .29%. The cop pulled my wrists behind my back and slid the cold silver cuffs on, tight. I knew I’d fucked myself over. They stuffed me into the back of one of the squad cars. They drove off, heading the opposite direction I’d been going. Towards Santa Paula. We left my crunched Volkswagen there.
*
Forty-five minutes later I was in Ventura County Jail. They thumb-printed me, snapped photos of me, and stuck me in a DUI holding cell. There were five of us. Three dark-skinned Mexicans, a black guy, and me. The black guy sat with his back slumped against the wall. Two Mexicans slept on the nasty concrete floor. I just stood there, against the other wall. The other Mexican seemed to be high on crystal meth or something; he paced back and forth, wide-eyed, mumbling curses to himself under his breath, half in Spanish, half in English. I avoided everyone’s eyes. There was a steel toilet. The floor was brown and crusty concrete and it slightly slanted to a drain in the middle.
I’d gotten a phone call and, by then a little past 8PM, I’d called, of all people, my senior-year English Lit teacher, Mr. Bryce. Carl Bryce. He had been surprised but had agreed to get me. He told me to call him when I was out.
Mr. Bryce had been the one teacher I’d always liked. In the 70s he’d been a punk rocker, in the first wave of punk, when it was all new. In high school he was in his mid-forties—ancient, we thought back then—and he had a big protruding belly and wore tucked-in white long-sleeve collared shirts with a red tie. He had a head of thick curly white hair. He made me think of an ex-punk Santa Claus. His blue eyes always had a youthful gleam. I came early to class to talk to him and often stayed late. He taught us about the ancient Greek classics (Homer) the Canterbury Tales; and about Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen. He loved my essays and sometimes praised them in class. He knew, vaguely, about the punk rock and the shows and the drinking and the anarchy. He understood. But I looked up to him. I never wanted to let him down.
*
I sat in that cell for twelve hours. Around 8AM the next morning—my parents certainly worried by now—they moved the five of us to another cell. This one was cleaner but smaller. They’d fed us earlier and the food tasted plastic and disgusting. We had little tiny milk boxes. They slid the trays of food in through a shoot in the cell. We’d seen the real jail-birds at one point as they walked by us wearing orange with black text: Property of Ventura County Jail, some mean, brutal eyes ogling me. A shiver of fear raced through my body. I didn’t belong here. I couldn’t stay any longer. I had to get out.
Being released took another five hours though. One by one we were let out. It was now 1PM the next day. The party seemed to be a distant memory, as if from a decade ago, in another time. Where was my car? What did my parents think? They had already had me fill out the exit paperwork; “released on my own recognizance.” I had signed promising to appear in court 30 days hence. But still I sat in the cell. Alone down. Always, always alone.
Finally a guard appeared and let me out. I followed behind him. I spoke to an officer about being released, I had my paperwork, and I used their phone to call Mr. Bryce. My former teacher told me to wait outside, at the Government Center—which the jail and courts were inside of—along the curb on Victoria Avenue.
I walked outside and the bright sun nearly blinded me. I felt like shit. I was badly hung-over. Exhausted. (I hadn’t slept a wink.) My head pounded in my ears. I knew I looked terrible. My hair was everywhere. I wanted to comb it. I was starving.
Sitting on the curb, watching the cars rush by on Victoria, I suddenly felt a deep well of sadness. I started gently crying. My life was a tragic mess. A disaster. What was I doing? Who was I? I wanted to express love to my parents but I loathed them. I felt unseen and unheard by them. I wanted out of this town but I had no money. I wanted to slow down on the drinking but I couldn’t. I wanted so many things, and I didn’t know how to achieve any of them. I hung my head in the hot sun.
*
Half an hour later Mr. Bryce pulled up along the curb in his little white Mazda. He’d never been a showy man. He was humble. Possessions had never been his thing. Learning—education—had. I stood up, seeing his beaming round face, his white curly hair, his vast blue eyes. He wore a tucked in purple collared shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbow, and loose jeans. It was weird seeing him both out of school and after graduation. And like this.
I opened the passenger side door and got in. Immediately he reached his thick arm across the rubbed my shoulder. “Howya doin, Paul? You look awful.”
I tried not to break down. “I know.”
“You ok?”
I shrugged. “I guess.”
I looked up and caught Mr. Bryce’s kind, deep eyes. He held my gaze for a moment. I knew what he was saying: I love you, Paul. Even if it feels like no one else does. I do. Know that in your heart.
We drove off, down Victoria, heading for the Highway 101 North entrance. The highway I’d been driving all my life. The highway that seemed to symbolize all my youth, all my punk-rock-ness, Freedom.
It was silent in the car. One of those green Christmas trees hung from the rearview mirror and I smelled its pungent scent. The car smelled of cigarettes, too, and black coffee. The dash was smooth and navy-blue. A McDonald’s wrapper sat crushed on the floor in front of my seat. Strange, seeing my old teacher in this new way.
“So,” he said, glancing at me. He found Highway 101 and got on, merging with traffic. “What the hell happened, Paul?”
I didn’t have the energy to lie. So I told him the truth. Everything. All of it.
Mr. Bryce inhaled some air, held it, slowly blew out. He scratched his forehead. Looked at me. Then faced the road again.
“Listen, Paul. Life doesn’t have to be like this. I mean, I get it. I understand. The drinking. The partying. The girls. But what are your life plans? What about a career? What about college?”
My father could have said the same thing and I’d have been angry. But when Mr. Bryce said it I didn’t mind. I didn’t feel judged. He was being genuine.
Looking down at the floor I said, “I don’t know. I feel lost. Trapped. Confused.”
I faced away from him. He switched from 101 to the twisting Highway 33 which detached from the coast and moved east, into Ojai. We had a 12 mile drive to my parents’ house.
“I remember feeling that way, son,” Mr. Bryce said. “All young people go through that. I know you’re smart. Remember when we read The Catcher in the Rye?”
I nodded, trying to grin a tiny bit; it mostly failed.
“You feel that way? Like Caulfield?”
“Yeah. I guess. Like everyone’s a fraud. People are all phonies. Everything is bullshit. What’s the point?”
Mr. Bryce didn’t respond for a minute. I watched the landscape pass by out the window: The mountains and empty fields and oil drills bobbing up and down like little mechanical hammers. Some were light blue and some were gray and several were covered in thick multicolored graffiti.
“We all have to find ourselves, Paul. It takes time. Your high school and teen years are very confusing. Trust me on that. You’re not a kid anymore, but you’re also not yet an adult. You haven’t made enough big life mistakes yet. Haven’t had to make your own money. Haven’t had any real responsibilities. Trust me: The stuff you’ve gone through so far will soon be a distant memory once you get older.”
I sighed again. The road rolled ahead of us into eternity. I watched the double yellow divider separating traffic going east and west. Where would the road of my life lead me next?
“I just want to get out of this fucking town,” I said. It sounded emotional and edgy.
“I understand that. Paul, you will get out. Be patient. It will happen. Just don’t kill yourself first. Fun and intensity are one thing, but you’re playing with fire, son. And fire can burn. Or even kill.”
I glanced over at him. He watched the road intently. Perhaps he was thinking of his own youth.
“Hey, Mr. Bryce? I just want you to know…thank you. I mean for everything. Picking me up, yes. But I mean for believing in me in class. For liking my essays. For talking to me. Making me love literature. You really changed me.”
Mr. Bryce caught my eyes briefly as we took another turn and headed into the greater Ojai Valley. “You bet, Paul. That’s what I do. I teach. I give kids a new perspective, just like one was given to me when I was young in my own time.”
Nodding, I looked away and said, watching out the window once more, “Well, thanks.”
*
Twenty minutes later Mr. Bryce pulled into my parents’ driveway in front of the big black gate surrounded by pink blossoming Bougainvillea. Fear pulsed inside of me. I would have to face my folks. The house and the gate looked so imposing from this perspective. I wished I were closer with my parents. I wished they understood me. I wished I understood me. Ironically, and insanely, I suddenly had a craving for alcohol.
“Stay safe, Paul. I’m glad you called me. I’m always here. Never forget that. I’ve been where you’ve been. Trust me. You will be okay. You will push past all of this and you’ll grow up soon enough. Life is short, son. I know right now you feel alone and like this all means so much. But give it time.”
I nodded. I reached across and we hugged for a moment. His body was large and flabby. But I felt safe and protected.
I got out and slammed the door shut. I walked to the black tall gate. I heard him rolling the passenger side window down. I slowly unlocked the gate with my key. Sunlight glinted off the little silver key, which reminded me of the handcuffs last night.
“Paul?”
I turned around, my eyes edged with water as I opened the gate.
“I love you, son.”
I nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Bryce.” I struggled for the courage. I found it. I said, “I love you, too.”
Mr. Bryce smiled. He waved. He slowly backed up onto my road, flipped a U-turn, and took off. When he was gone, and I couldn’t hear the whine of his motor anymore, I stepped through the gate, closed it, relocked it, and then moved toward my ultimate fate.