Gratitude in Darkness
A Memoir by Dustin Pickering
Part 2
The link to first part of the memoir: “Gratitude in Darkness,” A Memoir by Dustin Pickering, serialized in Himalaya Diary – Himalaya Diary -Leading News Portal from Nepal, Kathmandu, Asia
“I’m the wreck of you
I’m the death of you all” -Soundgarden
“Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old.” – Psalm 25:6
Now listen, I am not here to play victim: some of these events foreshadowed the troubled patterns of my teen years.
When I was a young boy, a new priest joined our congregation straight out of seminary. He took a few of us altar boys to a baseball game. As we approached the stadium, I paused at the first merchandise booth. In the shuffle I was lost to my group. However, I spoke with a guard who took me to my seat and bought a hot dog and coke for me out of pity. I spent half the game by myself. Finally, the other boys and the priest arrived to the seats, flabbergasted!
That wasn’t the last time I made a fool of the priest. I decided at age 13 I would teach myself to drive at the same church. My aunt left me in her new Oldsmobile (she named it Matilda) while running the AC and radio. Keys were in the ignition. I thought I would drive the car around awhile. As she and the priest emerged outside, I pummeled the car into a truck! Holy shit! Yet it was only the beginning of this situation. As the priest admonished my aunt not to kill me, I jumped from the car and slammed its door. The car locked itself automatically. The vehicle was now stuck on a parking brake, in reverse, in front of the church. My aunt hurried me home and returned, keys clutched in fist, to stop the car from backing into the church building.
Several years later, I even tried to set my hair on fire with the Easter candle during Mass. Needless to say, the priest’s best advice was to not bring me back.
However, I was eventually forced into Catholic school because of a shoplifting excursion at the mall. I stole hundreds of dollars worth of CD’s, clothes and silver statues from stores. My girlfriend implored me to not return for more CD’s, “You will get caught!” I don’t know how she knew! Barely escaping from the agent who caught me, I waited outside for our ride. Mounted police on horseback approached. My girlfriend perambulated with the bags of stolen goods, finally tossing them. However, they were found by police.
A blonde kid dressed like me in shorts instead of pants was arrested with us, but he hadn’t stolen anything. One of the clerks at a clothing store informed police that he recognized the kid, but instead he had actually seen me. The three of us were taken to Lake Jackson police station. I continued acting up, creating confusion—I flipped the cop off and talked trash until I was removed from the room. My ex-girlfriend conversed leisurely with the kid as the interrogating cop took a break from the interrogation. At her request I returned as the officer closed the door. A camera eye zoomed in while I saluted. I asked my ex to give hand jobs to the kid. I thought he might need something to calm him down. He bowed into his own legs, tearful.
In her confession, she blamed me. My doppelganger and ex-girlfriend were given one night in juvenile detention. I was locked up several weeks. The ex even told the cop I flipped him off behind his back, unsurprisingly. I told him I was raising my hand to stretch, but she quickly corrected my lie. “No, you were flipping him off weren’t you? Don’t tell stories!” All this in the back of the police car on the way to juvenile detention…
I read Stephen King while in the detention center, waiting for my aunt and grandmother to take me back home. The judge planned to release me after a week, but my aunt requested they keep me. My grandmother said when I returned home that the evenings I was absent were some of the most peaceful nights she had for years.
While in juvenile, I was put on lockdown for passing a cellmate’s note to a female inmate. I threw it through a door where the girls were congregated. Sitting Indian style, the three of them were watching a television. I sat with one of the prisoners who convicted of raping an eight year old girl. This caused some trouble for me. The other inmates did not like me sitting with him, and one of them filled the soap container with his seminal fluids. I took a shower after him, unaware. My cellmate dared me to skirt dominos under the door of our cell. When the kid across the block snitched, we flushed the dominos. I was put on lockdown the day of my release. As they prepared me, I was taken to the closet where my belongings were kept. My prescription drugs were not given to me. They also confiscated colored drawing pencils. My grandmother insisted to the authorities, “Dustin likes to draw.” The guards permitted me to have only one pencil. My cellmate created a tattoo ink from the shavings, his toothpaste, and water. He sharpened a magazine staple on the walls of the cell. Then he jarred the staple in an eraser to create a tattoo gun.
“Hey, everyone in juvenile gets tattoos like this,” he said as he dotted one of my knuckles. I recoiled because it was un-Catholic to get tattooed. He taunted me. The guy was locked up for killing someone at a bar. He said his parents were tired of him but he was innocent. When I first met him he pulled out a string of dental floss and asked, “You know what I do with this?” He said he used it to kill people. My eyes must have lit up like the dawn. Supposedly I was also in the same cell as a suicide who hung himself with bed sheets.
I was forever banned from the mall and wrote notes of atonement to store owners. Although facing one year probation with curfew restrictions, I was allowed at an Atticus Finch concert with my aunt attending me. Atticus Finch was a local alt-rock band. While buying tickets, I recognized the other juvenile kid in line! Even though I saluted him he still rolled his eyes, “Yeah, it was you who got me busted.” I experienced my first mosh pit. Other concertgoers pummeled me to the ground as I rolled in the spilled beer. Toward the end of the concert, I even stage dived. Concert security caught me by the legs as I fell on the bar guarding the crowd.
I met Chlorine, one of the opening acts. “You guys were amazing performers,” I said. The lead singer reached his arm up and exclaimed, “Thanks!” Then I got the autographs. Atticus Finch signed my CD with a note: “Dustin U R bad!” A friend informed them I was banned from the store for shoplifting. He went to their signing in my place to buy my CD.
It was a few months before I was in court. The probation officer was an acquaintance of my closest friend’s mother. At first, she did not place my face. Perhaps I am not the most memorable person. I learned she was a probation officer during our first meeting. While she was on the phone I picked up a receiver in another room, “Hey, fuck you!” I intended it as a joke. Imagine being in court with this person testifying against you, determining your fate! I even told her I enjoyed stealing and had been caught!
We group of delinquents were all handcuffed together so we could not escape. After the initial meeting in the state van, she remembered me. She even testified at the second hearing where the judge would determine my penalty. “The judge might not be lenient,” I thought. Outside the courtroom, my aunt drilled me for my dressing etiquette. I did not think it was necessary. A stranger approached us, “Your judge is intolerant. He will not like your attitude.” Finally, I tucked my shirt. After this ordeal my aunt forced me into a private Catholic school.
In Catholic school, I made a friend who planned to use gag fireworks as pretend gunshots to terrify other students. I was labeled a troublesome kid, and was even suspended for putting pudding in a student’s hair my first year. I wore a stolen padlock necklace in punk rock fashion. I was called to the principal’s office and given weekend detention. I got to know the assistant principal on many occasions.
I stole books from Salvation Army and even jacked off on the store floor. I also stole from the local library. I thought myself fearless. The following year the assistant principal (also the football coach) and his wife (the secretary) were fired. A New York Times article ran a piece on Billy Russell, a football player our coach invited for his athletic ability but who was un-teachable. He was granted a diploma without earning it. To cover up the coach’s decision, Russell and others graduated with unearned diplomas. The wife committed suicide after she was subpoenaed for embezzling from her previous employer, as well as misappropriating funds at the school. I wondered why she was so eager to get my tuition check! Our future principal told the Times that such things happen frequently and he felt the media was being unfair. This same principal was a student at the school himself. One of his teachers still taught. She was my English teacher, so we heard anecdotes about his teenage-years mishaps. Later, he cheated on his wife with another employee on school grounds. Rumors circulated he slept with one of my classmates too. He was fired, hired again, fired, and finally dismissed completely, and the school changed its name.
I also loved pranking the other students, creating havoc everywhere. Once I told the biology teacher to go fuck himself during instruction. “What? Excuse me, I am the head honcho here. You do not tell me to go fuck myself!” He became livid. I told him I was cursing at the kid behind me even though it wasn’t true. The kid dared me to curse at the teacher himself. We also often laughed about the geometry teacher who yelled angrily at students. He sometimes put boogers on the papers while wandering the classroom. Some clever idiot once taped a tampon with ketchup to his projector for our amusement.
Another successful prank was telling other students the camera film was loaded backwards during a school photo shoot. One of my troubled schoolmates announced to the groaning student body, “We will have to do the shoot all over again!” I stared disinterestedly in space so the prank would not be uncovered. Even though we confessed to the joke, everyone stayed pissed.
I had a huge crush on a girl in my class. She and another classmate volunteered to be auctioned to raise funds for graduation. I began with a modest amount. Even though she disliked me I engaged in a competition with her boyfriend to buy her. I suddenly shouted my bid, “40 dollars!” The entire school body booed me and the auction started over, ignoring my winning bid. I believed this girl was my soulmate during the height of my post high school delusions. Her soulmate was trapped in my guitar, but was also in my head. It was him who demanded I destroy my guitar. If you really love her, it said, stab yourself in the hand…
I was accused of stalking her our senior year. The school counselor had tape recordings discovered by my friend. On the recording I sang offensive punk songs, recited poems, and offered snide quips against other students but there was nothing damning. My junior year I wrote a short story about love going wrong in which the protagonist murders other students during a paranoid frenzy. “It was only fiction,” I said. “Not to be taken literally.” I shared it after my English teacher claimed she would have worried about Stephen King if he had been her student. The story was intended to be a piece of horror fiction, and to this day the teacher fondly remembers me. Columbine had just traumatized the nation. Some parents wanted to ensure I was not dangerous.
The counselor informed me she listened to the recordings and thought I should take a school day off to visit a psychiatrist. While being disciplined, the principal teased me about student rumors he impregnated the counselor. We guffawed about it and she laughed with us! “I didn’t do that,” he said while pointing to her pregnant belly.
The day following Columbine, senior class took a scheduled field trip to the local prison. I was the only one who spoke on the bus. I ranted about politics and musical tastes. I was seated in the front near the principal who drove us. At the prison, an inmate stared at the mirror in his cell. We passed each unit while the guard discussed prisoner life. “They cannot read here,” he said, “except law about their own cases.” As we left the unit, I stepped to the front of the line and declared that none of the prisoners were “really that tough.” I interrupted the theology teacher who was talking with the guard, “I don’t understand him,” the teacher whispered. The guard responded, “I wouldn’t worry too much over him then.” Something about the Columbine mass murder drew the worst from me.
The psychiatrist said I was not dangerous to others, but possibly to myself. After signing a note that clarified I would not self harm I was allowed to return. I graduated in the top half of my class, scored well on the SAT’s, and smiled during graduation. A car wrecked outside during the ceremony, but this time it was not me. Although I refused to buy a class ring in Thoreau-like protest against having to pay myself, I was still the principal’s favorite.
Gratitude in Darkness is a serialized memoir of a poet’s troubled childhood and mental health struggles.
Bio of the Writer:
Dustin Pickering is founder of Transcendent Zero Press. He has contributed writing to Huffington Post, Café Dissensus Everyday, The Statesman (India), Journal of Liberty and International Affairs, The Colorado Review, World Literature Today, Asymptote Journal, and several other publications. He was given the honor Knight of World Peace by the World Institute for Peace in 2022. He hosts the popular interview series World Inkers Network on YouTube. He is author of the poetry collections Salt and Sorrow, Knows No End, The Alderman, Only and Again, The Nothing Epistle, The Stone and the Square, and several others, as well as the novella Be Not Afraid of What You May Find. His most recent poetry collection Crime of the Extraordinary resonates with themes of guilt culled from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
Himalaya Diary urges the readers to check out the new book of poems titled “CRIME OF THE EXTRA-ORDINARY” by Dustin Pickering. Here is the amazon India link: amazon.in/dp/8119858956