chapter Two

Twelve shiny red little pills rolled around in Day’s hand.  “Take these.”

                “What in the heck are they?”

                “Don’t ask any questions, just take them.  We are going to Kenya.”

                "Kenya," the top of a mountain about five miles out of town, is a plateau with shrubs and dirt and gravel trails that looked like it could have been a scene straight out of the Great Rift Valley.   It was one of my favorite trails to run.  I loved the feeling of being miles away from the rest of the world running my legs into a pulp.

                We were an excellent program for a small liberal arts school of 1600 individuals.  We competed with the best D1 schools we faced, beating many of them, and we trained like savages, logging 70-90 miles easily on any given week. 

                But ours was a very tiny school number wise, in a small rural community, a town not many would refer to as college friendly.  So we had a very different undergraduate experience than most.

                A few of us had a certain predilection to finding trouble in between classes, practices, and races.

                I had managed to go all throughout high school without drinking or partying whatsoever.  I was too closely guarded by my parents in my small and very quiet home town, and I was also too busy training for cross country, track, and maintaining my A plus average.  And then there was Latin Club, Quiz Bowl, 4-H, piano lessons, marching band, and sometimes garage band singing duties.  Not to mention, I was an altar boy.  And yes, my priest did come on to me several times and I was too naïve to realize it, which is beside the point.  I was a “good” kid.  I certainly wasn’t  projecting towards failure. 

                But I never necessarily wanted to be this kid; it wasn’t even really my choice, in fact.  A lot of people would have killed to have been in my spot.  I definitely took it all for granted.

                So when I got to college, I was definitely a candidate for “letting loose” a little bit, which is precisely what I would end up doing.

                It started out simple enough, a couple of beers here and there, nothing before or leading up to races.  I was a freshman, of course, so I didn’t immediately fit right in with the upperclassmen like Day, Joey, and Pubert.  But they did invite me to drink with them on occasion, mostly due to the fact that they couldn’t recruit any girls to hang out with them.  This was the conundrum at Cumberland College.  The girls were completely stuck up.  Either that or they were ugly, or fat, or football groupies, or wrestling team “cum dumpsters.”  So it was hang out with me or nothing at all.

                They also picked up another freshman runner.  “Mono,” named as such for having mononucleosis the very first week of school, was a high school state champion 800 meter runner.  Mono was built like a small bear, not the type of person who you would expect to be a very good middle distance runner, but what he lacked in height he made up for in “retard strength,” speed, and explosion. 

                Mono was never without a bottle in his hand and a dip in his gums.

                The five of us comprised a group called the Triple-S, which was short for Secret Sausage Society.  It was a suiting moniker for five horny and undersexed college students. 

                We started spending all of our time together after Nationals, where (as a team with no seniors, one junior, five sophomores, and myself) we finished 7^th out of 28 teams.

                This was the time in my life when I was introduced to Dextromethorphan Hydrobromide, or DXM, a dissociative frequently found in cough medicine.

                DXM just happens to be the active ingredient in the red pills Day handed to me on this Sunday afternoon after brunch. 

                Skeptical at first, but always somehow convinced through Day’s and Joey’s relentless and devastatingly logical peer pressure, what would I do?  I ingested every single one of them fuckers.

                One hour later, I was on a “level” that I could not possibly ever have imagined, in a place so beautiful that I knew without a shadow of a doubt that God existed, and that my fellow Triple S, Day, Joey, Pubert, Tiny Tim, and Mono were all with me, in a spiritual moment of “pseudo-enlightenment.”

                It was in this moment that I realized that my entire life I had only seen the very surface, but now there was such depth in every single thing.  I had never experienced such a glorious feeling of understanding before until this point.

                The significance of the trip can be summarized in a lecture I had heard from my favorite professor, Dr. Hancock.  The lecture was about string theory, and he explained that the ten or eleven dimensional world we live in as like a goldfish living in a Koi pond.  The fish understands the world in two dimensions, left and right, and forwards and backwards.   And then one day one fish postulated that another dimension might exist, a so called hidden up and down dimension to go along with the other two.  This would be the way Koi fish might explain the natural phenomena of rainfall on the Koi pond, because rain coming from above adds new realities that must be taken into account.  The rainfall is like unexplainable things here in our three dimensional world, such as gravity.  As such we can imagine gravity as possibly existing in a different dimension in nature.   The bottom line, just because the fish can only experience two dimensions does not suggest that other dimensions do not in fact exist.

                That afternoon my three dimensional world turned into an eleven dimensional world.  No words can really describe the beauty, wholeness, and euphoria that I felt.  It was the best day of my life.

                It was the best day, because it was the penultimate experience of my nineteen year old life, and it reinvigorated a sense of awe and wonder into the world that I had lost over time.  It was not just a singular, “self” moment.  It was out of self.  It was as if Heaven was making direct contact with me.  I felt “special,” and blessed by God's grace.               

                Coming down from the mountain, and also coming down from the high which lasted all afternoon, I recall telling Day that I felt as though I was part of God for the first time in my life, as opposed to something entirely separate.

                I had no idea that this ineffable feeling would be a turning point of sorts.  Because, when looked at in a much different context, I can also say that this was the worst day of my life.  But how can it be both?  If you consider that every single time I have consumed drugs since, it was in search of this feeling that I felt in Kenya, then it is an experience I would have much preferred I had never known to begin with.   It is this reason and this reason alone that I would never encourage someone to try cough medicine, or any other drugs for that matter.  

                Once you open up that Pandora’s box of consciousness altering, you can never, ever go back.  Because you will be chasing a bird that will lead you into the Devil’s Hand itself.

The Next Day.

                I remember waking up that morning.  I had missed my morning run for the first time ever because I was so worn out from the previous day.  I should have been getting ready for class, but I couldn’t seem to get out of bed. I wasn’t sick, or even particularly tired. but I felt a huge emptiness inside of me that I hadn’t felt before.  The emptiness was overpowering.  It was as if waves of negativity were crashing against my chest, swallowing up my heart. 

                In my head I knew that I was not supposed to do drugs.  I knew it was wrong, that drugs were bad, and could only lead to bad things.  At least this is what my DARE officer told me in high school.  And I believed what he told me on some level because I felt very guilty for having allowing myself to do what I did. 

                In this moment of sadness, I remember thinking to myself; my life is never going to be the same.

Chapter one

                I sit in my bathtub naked and beaten down.  I am so thoroughly exhausted from fighting with my wife, Rachel, that I can barely bring the bottle of Sailor Jerry to my mouth.  I drink Sailor Jerry because it is higher proof, and because I am a sailor myself.   I don’t really want to be one; however I did get the idea from Rachel.  And I am not really a sailor, but rather a corpsman.  Maybe that is the problem, that I have no idea who I am.  Anyhow, a corpsman is a sailor who provides medical assistance to Marines.  We are kind of a hybrid like that.  But like I said, I never really wanted this position.  And my troubles aren’t even war related, since I haven’t even seen combat.  At least not the kind of combat you would ordinarily associate with the military.

                I sink my head down into the tub water.  It will all be over soon enough.  I try to hold my breath for as long as I can, to see if I can pass out.  A minute or so passes and my lungs are screaming at my brain, begging it to make the executive call to surface for air.  I don’t listen to it.  I have always been a glutton for pain.  Another minute passes and I slowly feel the pain turning into a tingling sensation all about my body.  If I continue much longer I will probably pass out and inhale water.

                Just as I am about to fade into oblivion, I jerk my body up and gasp for air.  I didn’t figure it would work, and I laugh out loud because it is a little funny when I think about everything that has happened in my life leading up to this point.  After all, they say that your life flashes before your eyes when you die. 

                 The blade came from one of my shavers.  It wasn’t really hard to break open, and my fingers are pretty strong anyhow, so I don’t think it is any indication of just how cheap these products are being made these days.  I slide my finger across the blade and draw several beads of blood.  At least they make sharp razors, even if the rest of the shaver is a plastic piece of crap.

                My psychologist gave me Klonopin for my anxiety.  I lied to her and told her I was not an alcoholic.  Anyhow, do not mix the two.  Or you will end up like this. 

                I decided a long time ago it was going to be me or her.  I cannot live with this woman that I married.  I do not want to face the fact that I made the wrong choice and that I am quite possibly the stupidest motherfucker on the planet.  And I am not a murderer, although I have thought very long and hard about how I could kill her without getting in trouble.  After all, she would be better off dead.  She told me herself.  All I ever wanted to do was help her.  Why does she have to be such a bitch to me?  When I am the one that is actually on her side?

                I am married to depression.   So I inherited this mess fair enough, and I do not blame anyone but myself.   My life is a series of bad decisions.  And here I go again, making the ultimate bad decision.  Physical pain is something that I have never been bothered by too much, so it doesn’t hurt as I rake this blade over my wrist several times, trying to hit pay dirt.  Psychological pain is much worse.  It is actually a relief in a lot of ways, slicing my wrists like this.  Blood pours out of my arm as the bathwater starts to turn pink.  I dig the razor into my other wrist.  Let’s get this right.

                I think about Rachel as the booze and the drugs and the bleeding all come together in perfect synchronicity.  I see her little brother and sister, who I love more than words.  They are the ONLY reason why I have stayed so long.  And she has used them against me just like her mother uses them against their father.  Such a mind game they play the Stafford family.  I thought I was a gamer, able to psychologically fix this person.  I went to school for psychology.  And I had lived a happy life.  I thought that it would rub off on her.  Little did I know that she would rub off on me?

                Slowly I fade into oblivion and with golden rods and cut scenes I am hurled into a vortex of conscious unconsciousness.

                The strange thing is that ten years ago I was Graysville’s golden child.

                Oh, how the tides they turn.  No one saw me going into left field, but a whole lot of people noticed when I came back and wasn’t the same.  And they pretty much turned their backs, which suited me just fine, I don’t harbor any animosity towards them. 

                Not any longer, that is because I did.  I had a lot of anger, but all of that is gone now.

                This is the truth.  That is what you will be getting here, the truth.  After all, we are all searching for truth in some form or fashion.

                My name is Conrad Saint Louis.  Everyone would eventually come to know me as St. Louis.  This is a name I much prefer to any of the other ones that have been applied to me over the years.

                As a school boy I did exactly what I was told by my parents, and it worked. 

                Study hard. Check

                Get good grades. Check.

Run your ass off, because you suck at swimming, your shot is iffy, and you can’t throw.  You are good at something, and that something is going hard on the track. 

                I inherited running honestly, because running was just what my father was good at, and so I had a role model.  I had a coach.

                He always encouraged me to run with him when I was younger and so I did.  I would go run for a mile.   And then I would go run for two miles.  And by the time I was six I was able to run 4-5 miles at once, no problem at all.

                I entered every single race that came through the area and usually finished among the top in my age group.  I wasn’t exceptionally talented, but I wasn’t slow.  I did have a motor though, which caused me to run 70 mile weeks in high school, and eventually grow into a State caliber runner.

                And I was drilled on spelling words.  And I had no video games so I read encyclopedias for fun.   I got good grades.  I wasn’t exceptionally smart.  I was just smart enough, and had some gusto.  Just so happens that this is enough to include you in the 95th percentile in your class in Graysville.

                So heads did turn.  I didn’t ever think I was better than anyone.  I felt lucky to be honest, that my family was stable enough to give me such a foundation to grow and flourish.

                Running took me to Cumberland College.  This is in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains.  I chose to go here because the running program was strong for a small college, and there were plenty of rolling hills with a plethora of paths zigzagging through the Cumberland Gap.  And they were paying my tuition, which is the single biggest reason for going there.

                Jesus saves was the writing on the wall. Literally.  It was spray painted on a bridge you could see from the interstate heading south from Ohio.

                It was everywhere.  This liberal arts college also happened to be affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.  The money trail was obvious; the SBC funded this cadre of educators.   And they programmed every Southern Baptist kid in a 200 mile radius with their bullshit.

                I once saw our school’s president, Dr.  Taylor, carry several boxes of whiskey into the college’s hotel.  I worked there, and it was the same night as a big party he and his wife were throwing.

                Did I mention that Cumberland College is in the driest region of southern Appalachia?  That means alcohol is a no-no.  Not only was our community dry, but also it was outlined in our student handbook over and over that any student attending Cumberland was not to drink alcohol, regardless of age.

                Needless to say, I was given very mixed messages.   Desperately wanting not to conform with these idiots, I decided to become Atheist. 

                I remember the exact place where it happened.  It was on the football field, that was inside the track that I would run around a million and a half times for the next 6 years.  It wasn’t a rash decision made right there on the spot.  My rational thinking mind had been bugging me for years about inconsistencies in the church, but this was the tipping point.

                We were playing ultimate Frisbee.  All it took was one like minded individual in this sea of southern righteousness.  His name was Joey, and he was also a member of my cross country team.  He said he didn’t buy into the baloney the school was feeding him.  I was engrossed from the very beginning.  I do not believe in God.

                What was developing right in front of me was a beast of a situation that would send my life in directions once unimagineable.

                Because I was “exceptional” in high school, in a manner of speaking, it was all the more difficult to watch myself slide into nothingness.  I got to live this debacle, so I can only imagine what it looked like from the outside looking in.