Healing Neal
by Matthew Glarner (glarnere@aol.com)
I had never seen a man smoke cough syrup, at least never with the ardor, the hunger or the sheer drug-lust of one Neal Pollack. And never in the morning. Rich crimson smoke curled from Neal’s nostrils as he stared into space, glassy-eyed. He appraised the fading red tresses with a self-satisfied smirk, each puff becoming a ghost of Mars, a reminder that the war was over. Yes, those would do just fine. He coughed.
Neal would never get sober. He had surrendered to Tourgenief, his pet name for drugs, long ago. Even here, in Southern California’s most reputable inpatient drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility, he continued to Use. Sober Shores could do nothing to quell Neal’s muscle car road-rally towards self-immolation, and neither could I.
As his Sober-Big-Brother-Buddy, I felt it my duty to rescue this demigod from the demon drugs had made him.
Neal drank a bottle of Stetson. We had a talk. Neal freebased Hawaiian Baby Woodrose seeds. We had a talk. Neal exchanged sonnets for benzodiazapines at The Pier, he drank guarana tonics until he wet himself, he snorted line after line of cream of tartar…we had a talk. To no avail, as Tourgenief had The World’s Greatest Writer clutched in its sickly little monkey hands.
So I watched him smoke cough syrup, pulling deeply off the bong he had hand-fashioned from a safety-orange road cone. With each lung-rasping hit Neal seemed closer to peace. As he relaxed, so did I. We laughed heartily. He wrote me a sonnet for free. I, too, had surrendered, not to Tourgenief, but to Mothra, my pet name for Neal’s charm. Neal, this Neal, was my friend. And that was okay.
