At the Edge of the Stream

So stately strong the currents run
that down to death will bear us all
beyond the fire of the sun
beyond the musty marble hall
where light is banned and darkness reigns
the flickering glow of ego wanes
the hoarded store of spirit drains
where we slip into oblivion

-- Mark Grimsley, Autumn 1976

Once I was young and had so much more orientation and could talk with nervous intelligence about everything and with clarity and without as much literary preambling as this; in other words this is the story of an unself-confident man, at the same time of an egomaniac, naturally, facetious won’t do—just start at the beginning and let the truth seep out, that’s what I’ll do--.

-- Jack Kerouac, “The Subterraneans” (1958)

This is the story of a seven-month journey. It begins on an ordinary afternoon in the classroom of a Creative Writing course, early in my senior year at Westerville South High School--Monday, October 18, 1976, to be precise; to a moment, shortly after midnight on a balmy May evening in 1977, when I swallowed seven capsules of Tuinal, a powerful barbiturate, and succeeded in getting within a few minutes of my intended destination.

In telling the tale, I will follow Kerouac’s strategy: start at the beginning and let the truth seep out.

To be sure, I can’t recall the *exact* beginning, because I can’t recall a moment in my life when suicide was not a thinkable thought, sometimes more thinkable than others but always present; and although I had no particular method in mind, I couldn’t shake off the conviction that, sooner or later, I would die by suicide.

But in terms of a place to start, the session that day in the Creative Writing class is as good as any.

And for the most part I’ll let my 17-year old self, a youth who was a little too skinny and a little too serious—he always seemed to have some bitterness of mind to chew upon—tell the story.

The youth is long gone. Yet sometimes his ghost hovers close, the reason for his spectral presence never clear to me, but simply there.

Calling my 17-year old self “the youth” for several dozen entries will come off as stilted and mannered and a rip-off of “The Red Badge of Courage” (whose protagonist is known only as “the youth”); and above all, stupid. So henceforth he will be Senator, his nickname at the Ponderosa Steak House—“Pondo” to the largely teenage crew that worked there. And yes, this itself is a direct steal from Norman Mailer’s “Of a Fire on the Moon,” in which he calls himself “Aquarius.”

To be precise, the nickname will be bestowed, not on the day this tale commences, but a month hence, on Saturday, November 20. Senator records his christening on page 149 of Notebook 11, the third of the personal journals he has kept since Thursday, April 24, 1975.

“Worked 4-7:45,” he reports. “Mostly P&R [the baked potatoes and dinner rolls station]. Found I have a new nickname: ‘Senator.’ As in Mr. C [the head manager] saying, ‘Senator Grimsley, I need two bowls of French fries up front;’ or ‘Need a mop on the line, Senator,’ etc. Or, best of all, ‘Good job tonight, Senator.'"

This new nickname, however, is not necessarily all that big a deal to Senator, who spends the next two pages recording the play-by-play of a hot date, after he clocks out, with Annabelle [not her real name; very few real names will be used in this story]. Annabelle will be among the major figures in this story’s cast of characters.

But the story itself begins a month earlier. Senator describes its commencement in a 3-section theme book he has purchased that day. He inscribes the cover, “Notebook 14, 18 October 1976,” then gets on with its maiden entry.

***

In Creative Writing today we had yet another of those interminable exercises [the exercise being a poem, extemporized by requiring each student contribute a phrase, in round robin fashion] …Ms Curry trying valiantly and vainly to coax some voluntary output from the class. Priming the pump—except in this case the pump refuses to be primed. No Lorena’s in this group, no bright little romantics only too eager to place their handiwork before the Mistress’s eye. (I had thought for a while that Annabelle might be our Lorena, and gush forth great quantities of material. But I was wrong. No quantity: a certain quality however, though rough-hewn.)

The tendency is to treat it like any other class: we waltz in, wait for the assignment, carry out the assignment, and waltz out again. Ms Curry’s cries for us to develop an independent project go largely unnoticed. Only Cole has heeded them by tackling a musical composition. My own project, “The Lynchburg Campaign,” sits forlorn and forsaken somewhere among my files. Indeed, it is a rare day when I turn in *anything* or even *work* on anything. And Ms Curry shakes her head dolefully and tells dark tales of what happens to little boys of talent who do not use that talent.

The readers unacquainted with the three volumes of my Journal might be hard-pressed to understand why I am not using said talent; especially if they *were* acquainted with my files, now bulging with several dozen stories, essays, articles, poems, and other items dating back to second grade. The reasons are threefold (unless I should think of another, in which case they’d be fourfold.)

One: I’m too busy. The greater glory of [Jimmy] Carter [I was a volunteer in Carter’s presidential campaign] and Ponderosa System, Inc. [the company that owned the family-friendly steakhouse where I worked part-time for $2.15 an hour] are making extreme inroads on my free time. Two: I’m too agitated. All damn day and all damn week something or somebody vexes me and I can’t write when I’m vexed. Three: I lack something that I really want to tackle that I feel I *can* tackle.

I wanted to write a novel about Central College [Presbyterian Church, which I attended, in a desultory way, with my family], or at least outline one. I wanted to do it in episode fashion, interweaving stories of the past with the present, the theme behind it all being the role of organized religion in people’s lives. But it’d require a lot of research and I haven’t the time. Moreover, it’d require a lot of insight into religion and its workings, and I’ve been on the outside of religion for as long as I can remember. Organizational skills and clarity of thought would be essential, too. You have only to scan this paragraph to be convinced that I need improvement in those areas.

In keeping with my reputation as a brazen egotist, I also wanted to write something explicitly about myself, an autobiography or memoir. Keeping a journal isn’t enough: I’d like to take my life and weave its isolated incidents into a cohesive tapestry having a message and purpose. But such a project requires honesty, and I doubt whether anybody can write their own story honestly. We con ourselves as a matter of course; I suspect because to see our true selves would be equivalent to seeing the head of Medusa.