“Frank Fest” and “The Top of the Slide”

Posted: July 6, 2012 | Author: Trevor Charles | Filed under: Messy Shit | Tags: Frank Fest, heroin, Lawrence, MA, Pinkerton Academy | 1 Comment »

Frank Fest

by Trevor Charles

Because he is deaf in one ear, when you talk to Frank, he leans forward, his good ear tuned into the conversation like a satellite dish, creating the effect that what you say matters and that he is desperately trying to sop up all your words as though they were last morsels of his wife’s Mac and Cheese, Hamburg Salsa Casserole, which tastes like America, with subtle hints of illegal alien that are best brought forward in the dish when paired with Sam Adams Summer Ale and 34 bong rips.

It is the truth and it is delicious.  And so is any conversation with Frank.

Unsurprisingly, being deaf in one ear has taught Frank to listen in ways that most people never learn.  Because he listens so well, talking to Frankie taps me into an intangible sense of being alive and an appreciation for the moment because being there to experience it is good and enough.  I am not alone.  People come from far and wide to sit in a chair next to Frank and be reminded to go fuck yourself if you can’t revel in the simple gift of being alive.  He is that frank.

“Seriously, guy.  Fuck off,” Frank say as he exhales a plume Camel Light smoke, and laughs, that Lollipop Guild laugh of his.

I take his words seriously because he is an authority, at least for me, on living and dying.  In 34 years, Frankie has done some hard living, died twice, and is around to remind his friends of what matters and what doesn’t.

For example, it doesn’t matter that Frank and I were not friends in high school and I can I barely remember him.  I have a vague memory of a short blonde kid in a Grateful Dead tie-dye, hanging out with the other druggies near the Vocational Building in between classes at Pinkerton Academy.   I had no beef with him or his degenerate friends, but I would walk past, giving them no attention as I hurried off to the next class.  I didn’t have time to skip class to analyze an Allman Brothers’ concert nor the intricacies of an acid trip. I was way better than Frank, and everyone else that I had mindlessly three hole punched and snapped shut in a binder that kept high school clean and organized for me.

Frank didn’t keep a binder in high school.  It is awfully hard to keep everything straight when classes and people melt and morph into one another during a kaleidoscopic trip through 6 periods and a lunch.  Nonetheless, he categorized me the same way I did to him.  In his mind, you could me find in the file folder labeled, “phony piece of shit” because from time to time, I would change out of my prep/jock gear and wear Birkenstocks and a Grateful Dead t-shirt to school to let it be known that I listened to “Uncle John’s Band” and that made me electric and interesting.

Frank didn’t think so.

He later told me how pissed he was that I wore a Grateful Dead shirt. Bear in mind, we were in high school, so most of our thinking was as irrational as the importance we placed on what to wear to school that day.  Nonetheless, he felt like I was a preppie jock, falsely masquerading in a music and drug culture that was his and I was trampling on the one identity he hung onto.  After all, Frank was really into music, and really into drugs.  I owned a shirt and a few CD’s.

Because he hated me and I never acknowledged his existence, we never spoke in high school.  I learned all this later, when, by some karmic quarter-life crisis clusterfuck we became friends during that early twenties rite of passage when you circle back to living in your childhood room because, despite being absolutely sure are you an adult; you aren’t.  It is too expensive to be an adult, and besides, it is hard to be something you don’t really want to be.  To escape my parent’s house and looming adulthood, I spent most of my post-work afternoons getting stoned and listening to the Grateful Dead in Frank’s apartment.  In this way, I earned some credibility in Frank’s eyes, and we made up for all the conversations we never had in high school.

I began to understand what I couldn’t in high school.  He taught me why a normal kid burns away a life, or tries to at least.  I learned that Frank’s sister had brain tumors and for years was in and out of hospitals, trying not to die and that his parents had no choice but to dump all of their attention, money, and love into his sister during Frank’s formative years when all kids, brain tumors or not, need to know they matter.

“Yeah guy, I was like a 90’s student up until that shit happened.  I loved school.”  Frank says, as he exhales, and leans back into his throne, the right hand slot on the green sofa in his living room where you can find him 94% of the time.

He starts to break up weed into a little dish, and he continues on, “Well, what the fuck?  Who was going to take me to baseball? What could my parents do? They were always at the hospital.  Or sleeping.  Or trying to make money to keep us afloat.  Fuck college; I knew my parents had spent everything on my sister.  They were thrilled I wasn’t dying and not causing too much trouble, ya know?  They didn’t have time for me.  I don’t blame them; it just was.  But I can’t say I felt like anything I did mattered, because, to me, it didn’t, so I stopped caring.”

And so Frank drifted through high school, without a care in the world beyond getting a bag of weed, or whatever was available, and burning out the school day, and all days, until it was over.   Unlike me, he didn’t believe that life would be different than what he had seen, or that there would be more if you got A’s.   But during high school my parents weren’t trying to stave off my sister’s death.  They had time to convince me I was right and proofread all my papers and give me the attention every high school kid – fuck it – person, craves.

Frank wanted some attention too.  Because he is smart and observant, he quickly figured out what he needed to do in order to get his parents to look his way.   So he tried to die, just like his sister.  Back then, he was no different than he is now, if he puts his mind to something, it happens.

I see Franks walking like doped-up zombies through every high school I have taught in.  I spend a lot of time talking to them, but more time listening, the way Frank taught me how.  And when I listen, I hear Frank’s story replayed, with subtle plot differentiations here and there, but the Frank story sticks to its basic narrative trajectory, as if governed by gravity.

Here is how it goes. After 1.2 high school classes, a smart kid like Frank figures out that most of high school is total bullshit.  A bunch of well-intentioned teachers try to convince him otherwise, but he has a 15 year old’s thick skull and the truth working against those pleas, so why not roast a fat one before it starts to make the whole experience a little funny while he sits in those uncomfortable chairs, trying to learn Geometry.  And his apathy towards school, and life really, is boxed in by high walls built out of fucked up shit way beyond a 15 year old’s control, like a sister with tumors, or an abusive father, or a mother in jail, or whatever mind-bogglingly tragic shit kids have told me about over the years.

And when the Franks finish telling me what their walls are made out of, then I have to tell them, “it is not your fault” over and over again, like Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting, god-willing, without the hugging and the crying and the weird, but what the fuck else is there to tell the Franks other than you did nothing to deserve this role of fate’s dice.

“So why I do I have to pay the price?”  They ask.

“Fuck me if I know.  I am not Jesus.”

I’ve found a good f-bomb and a weird joke go a long way in diffusing tragic moments when the truth is fixed and there is no good advice to give.

“Na, really, I don’t know.”  And after telling the kid the truth – that I have no fucking idea why shit happens, sometimes I have a moment of recognition of just how fucked the kid is, and I look at him, and see that he realizes it too.  In these moments, saying nothing is better than saying something stupid like, “well, things happen for reason.”

Maybe they do.  Maybe they don’t.   Life has taught me that they do.  But it has also taught me that in those moments of despair and helplessness, hearing “shit happens for reason,” from a person who can’t possibly experience the shit that is happening to you, right fucking now, is the last thing you want to hear.

More than anything, a Frank wants someone to lean in, turn a good ear, and listen.  Maybe that’s the reason Frank is deaf in one ear.

So I shut up, or mutter some shits and fucks of solidarity.  But I don’t, like I stupidly used to do, say “I get it,” to a Frank because it is impossible to understand, precisely, what another human being is going through at any given point, no matter how much you want to wrap them in your heart.  You don’t get it.  You can’t.  So don’t say you do.

Just listen.

The conversation with a high school Frank ends with something completely lofty and useless for the kid, like, “Well this sucks.  It isn’t your fault.  But you can control what happens next.”  An idea I would like to believe, but is too often undermined by the existence of random shitty things that happen to anyone, at anytime for no fucking reason at all.

Sometimes conversations with Franks end on horribly depressing and unfulfilling notes because we both understand that no matter was said, no matter what the repercussions, or how much help is offered to him, Frank’s life is his own and he will have to learn his lesson by living them.

Frank, like most intelligent people, is a stubborn fuck who has to learn everything for himself.  And If I had pulled him aside after a class in which his eyes balls were rolling in his sockets like the Price is Right wheel for 45 minutes, and desperately tried to explain to him that “dropping acid at 7:00 am before high school starts is going to fuck you up, like today, and the rest of your life.”  He wouldn’t believe me until he fucked it up for himself.

And that is what Frank did.  He got fucked up.   Bad.

After Frank stumbled his way to a high school diploma, he took the job that is available to every next to unemployable 17-year old in New Hampshire.  He started roofing.  Without having to waste his time in high school, he could work a 60-hour week, humping shingles up and down ladders.  Those paychecks made the hyperbolic stashes of drugs Frank daydreamed about in high school, a reality that he could buy on the streets of Lawrence.

Way lead onto way, and Frank was blowing bags of heroin, until the number of bags he needed to get off outweighed his paycheck, and he walked, dope-sick, into a darkness only a junkie could describe.

From time to time he does.  And when Frank reaches into his darkness and pulls out a tale from his past, I sit, spellbound by the humility and eloquence with which he tells a story that is only believable because he is telling it.   Frank has no reason to lie, or exaggerate for effect.  The truth is haunting beyond plausibility.

I am not sure which is more horrifying.

The gruesome tale of the when he drank himself to death and hit a .36 blood alcohol level before his heart stopped, and he had to be zapped with a defibrillator to get his heart beating again.

Or the morning Frank woke up with blood dried like a frozen stream, running from his nose to his belly button and a one inch hole that he had burned in his own thigh by the lit cigarette he was holding in his hands when slipped into the coma of a heroin overdose and had a stroke at the age of 20.

Whenever Frankie finishes a story, I say, “No really, dude, how the fuck are you alive? You should be dead.”

“Well technically, I died twice already.  But I was the one dying, so I don’t remember. My parents had to tell me about it.”  He says with smirk.

His stories are terrifying, but nothing is scarier than how easily he slipped from a high school kid with a load of brains, but a heavier load of family burden, to a junkie, dancing recklessly to the Grateful Dead, on a ledge of life and death.

Not enough, I say what everyone who loves Frank feels when we talk to him.

“I am glad you didn’t die.”

“No shit guy,” with an exhale of smoke, “no shit.”

And Because Frank isn’t dead, and neither are we, every July, our rag-tag family of friends, make the pilgrimage to the banks of the Androscoggin River in Mollidgewock State Park, a full two hours deeper into the New Hampshire woods than any Connecticut tourist would ever dare go, beyond cell phone towers and the comfort of flushing toilets.   It anchors our summers and we try to schedule weddings and births around it.

It is called, “Frank Fest.”

It is a down and dirty, pure “oh yeah guy” New Hampshire celebration of living free and not being dead.  At least, not yet.    While we are all there for Frank, in reality, we are there to enjoy the lessons about friendship, simplicity, and redemption that Frank’s life symbolizes.  That’s why we keep coming back.

It is a tradition Frank’s family began when he was a boy, before all the random shitty things happened, at a time when life was as tranquil as the water in the morning.  Over the years, Frank Fest has taken a life of its own, and each year 30 or more of Frank’s friends assemble to be alive together, talking and listening to each other’s stories because, really, they remind us of how wonderful it is to just be there to hear them.

I could on and on, and show you how Frank emerges from the bottom of his life relatively clean with just enough grit in his soul to make him real.   I could tell you how he makes himself into the man I know, and love, and the man I know all of you would respect.

There is so much about his life that is interesting and useful for others to hear, but it is his life and he should tell it.

He recently started writing, trying to capture his stories, and maybe, in the process rid himself of some of the weight of his past.   I am not sure what motivated him to do this, but I don’t care because I think it is pretty fucking cool, inspiring really, that a 34 year old man, who barely passed his English classes in high school, and never went to college, has the courage to put his past out there, and own it, without excuse, or the fear of shame.

But he is Frank like that.

He has a hell of a story to tell and the natural ability to tell it.

We hope you enjoy.

——————–

The Top of the Slide

by Frank William Naylor

Levon Helm, the recently deceased drummer for The Band, wasn’t kidding when he said,  “If God made a better drug than heroin, then he kept it for himself.”

I would know because the day I first experimented with heroin is etched in my mind like the grooves in a rock caused by running water.

Growing up, I was your average middle class, white kid, whose parents strived to give him everything they didn’t have.  Believe me when I say, they gave me more than I deserved.  School was never a problem for me. I got straight A’s, was liked by peers and whatever else the reports cards said about me.  The world was whatever I wanted it to be, until doubt crept in when I reached high school.

This period was tough for me to figure out who I was.  All I knew was that I was a midget compared to everybody else.  I didn’t break 5 feet until my junior year.  I spoke with a lisp and I was left to deal with a not so pleasant legacy that my sister left behind.  (Not her fault, but that is a story for another time) The feeling of not being enough began to make me overcompensate in other areas.  It seemed to bring my Napoleon complex to the surface.   If you could do it, then I could do it better.  Unfortunately, the area I chose to surpass every one in was drug use.

Flash-forward to the summer after my high school graduation. I am 17 year old narcotics dumpster.  I use anything I can get my hands on -  weed, cocaine, opium, special K, (a horse tranquilizer) ecstasy, LSD, Mushrooms, any prescription I found to be worth my time, booze, crystal meth, crack, nitrous – fuck it.   It was all fun to me.  Sadly, I took pleasure in being able to consume more of anything, than anyone.  Oddly enough, heroin still scared me.

That summer I took a job as a roofer with a friend of mine’s husband.  I showed up on my first day and my boss told me, “Willie, follow in your car and Burnah is gonna ride with you!”

Burnah happened to be a schoolmate’s older brother who I had only heard about, but never met. As he sat in the passenger seat of my newly leased 1995 Ford Probe, the entire car sank to the left like a see saw you rode with an overweight relative as a child.  This kid was intimidating, 6’ 2”, 250 pounds.

The next thing I noticed was Burnah’s “track marks.” Each arm, from shoulder to wrist, had hardened veins, scars and scabs.  They looked like road maps with cigarette burns, and tears all over them. It wasn’t hard to figure out why they called this kid “Burnah.”  Back then, I didn’t know that, minus the size and track marks, I was riding next to a picture of myself in 2 years.

We started out of the parking lot and headed for the job in Methuen, MA. Burnah wasn’t shy about his drug abuse, and neither was I.  I had already been to rehab, had my stomach pumped twice, and put in the hospital on a bad LSD trip.   Not even 10 minutes into the ride, Burnah informed me that my lunch-break would be spent taking him to Lawrence, to score some cocaine and smack.

For the next month or so, these trips to Lawrence to buy drugs become routine.  Depending on his cash flow, he would score drugs before and after work. Despite having my nose rubbed in it, my fear of dope held strong but I frequently had him grab me some rock or blow because at least it wasn’t heroin.   And I had rationalized that I wasn’t fucking crazy like him, so a little coke or crack would be fine.

We would pull into back alleys and walk into houses that in any respectable neighborhood would be condemned or lit on fire by hardworking people who were sick of seeing their property value having its blood sucked by these whore housing, junky feeding, shitholes created by Beelzebub himself.  Take what you see in the movies and make it worse and real.

All of them were just a flophouse – two to three bedroom apartments with shit-stained, vomit smelling, puss covered mattresses covered in herpes riddled skanks and scab covered junkies.

These nasty places always had the best shit.  If we were in a rush, we could always get equally good stuff from a “drive through.”  I’m not talking about Wendy’s or McDonald’s.   Drug dealing is a business and the people who do it, do it well.  If you knew the area, and Burnah did, you could drive down certain streets, look for the Puerto Rican or black kid, wallpapered in his FUBU clothing, wearing his fence climbers, standing in front of his pathetically supped up, primer gray, 1981 Toyota Supra, or Honda Civic.  While passing by him, you roll down your window, politely tell the immigrant, what you wanted and then make a slow swoop around the block. Upon your return, standing in his place would be completely new, overdressed minority with your package. You barely had to slow down to make the exchange.  It was genius enough for the cops to never catch up with the deals.

If you’ve never been to Lawrence, the streets look like the face of the moon.  There are potholes the size of craters that would swallow up a car like a tramp stamped junky swallowing a load for her fix.   We couldn’t get 3 blocks down these streets without Burnah starting to fix-up.

I watched him.

Seeing Burnah trying to spike his hardened veins on these bumpy roads was like watching a rescue worker at ground zero trying to jack hammer through the rubble for survivors. It was tough to watch and you couldn’t imagine it was possible, but he always succeeded. This should have re-instilled my fear of the Dragon, but for some reason, coupled with the everyday wallet draining field trips, I was beginning to wonder what felt so good that it would pull him back here every day like the earth’s orbit of the sun.

It wasn’t long before curiosity killed my cat.  One day after a brutal 10 hours of roofing, we made our usual trek to Lawrence.  On the way, I decided I would grab a half-ounce of blow for myself to get me through the weekend.  An 1/8-ounce can be split between 3-6 guys in an evening, so evidently I was planning on having myself quite the party.  We stopped at one of our usual flophouses to see one of our more dependable hook-ups, named “Goyo.”  Goyo was a user/dealer and not like the strictly business oriented pimps you would meet at the drive throughs.  However, Goyo’s mind set was the same.  He knew that his livelihood depended on his ability to provide a quality product on a professional and convenient level.

For some reason, on the ride over, I had calculated the cash left over after splurging for the nose candy.  I decided to finally to find out what “chasing the dragon” was all about. The “dragon” is your first heroin high.  You chase it because your tolerance builds so quickly and you will never achieve that original feeling again, something I wish I knew then, but doubt the knowledge would have stopped me.

I bought my first 5 dime bags then. My intent was to wait for the privacy of my own home and experiment with speed balling. This is when you piggy back the use of cocaine or speed with heroin or morphine.

On the ride home, the procedure took its natural course of me watching Burnah’s syringe filled with 90% pure dope, kaleidoscope with the tan colored cooked dope, water, and blood. This happens because, when you inject such high quality smack into your veins, you should always back feed a little of your own blood into the syringe before compressing the plunger and pounding the sweet Jesus Juice into your body to help ease the shock to your cardiovascular and nervous system.   After watching his eyes roll back in his head and his body look like it was about to seizure, he emerged from his coma, looking like the hand of God had just reached down from the sky and given him a hand-job.

When he was able to speak again he turned to me and said, “Go ahead, take her for a ride and let me know what you think.”  In my mind I was saying, “Wait til you get home. You are driving down an interstate.”

Burnah cut me a straw, and handed me 1 of my bags.

I said, “I am driving.”

“So, I’ll Hold the wheel!”

I remember feeling like a child on a playground.  I was standing at the top of a slide for the first time and weighing the feeling of being on top of the world against my fear of the slide down.

Should I do it? Is it safer to climb back down?

Fuck it.  I’m gonna do it.

I tore into the bag with my teeth, buried the straw in the bag, plunged the straw up my nose, blocked the other nostril, and then inhaled like a child in the throws of an asthma attack who thought he was breathing his last breath.  Within seconds I felt the heroin take hold.  My body went numb, my mind left my body, and my toes curled up like a Danish.

Next thing I knew, my entire upper body was out the driver’s side window on 93 North and I was retching violently all over the side of my own car while in the slow lane in rush hour traffic. I’m not really sure how long it lasted but when it was all over and I sat back in my seat, grabbed the wheel, and I was sure that having my first born, or playing a round of golf with Jesus, would never match  euphoric cocktail of emotion of feeling, I experienced in that moment.

My fear of heroin was gone and I plunged down the slide, falling weightlessly away from the life I had known.

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