From the Vault: 1983 (from 1998)

I can’t remember anything before 1983… I think it’s a subconscious reaction coinciding with the artificial source of love flowing down over me. Love? No… sympathy… and contrived at that. I remember 1983 clearly, though. It was sunny all year, even throughout the winter months. Uncle Jed used to joke that we would all die that year, on account of the grape shortage in Guatemala. Mom said he was full of shit. The price of cheese was high, the tolerance level low, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses were all locked up in our basement so no one would shoot them… accidentally, of course. I looked like a mix between a chimpanzee and a blank wall… my invisible friend, Jim Kirschbaum, made fun of my receding hairline. But he’s dead now and probably smells like the East River. 1983… boomboxes blaring on street corners, the sounds of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” on every station around the clock. Faded jeans, war bonds, and a ticket to Yugoslavia that I conveniently lost on a particularly steamy day in June… June 16th, I think it was. Living in Shelby, Idaho, in shacks by the bay… trying to speak but the words won’t come, meaning won’t come, an avalanche to drown out the competing cacophony won’t come. But I’m safe here in my bed. I might be dead, but I’m not. Drinking apple juice from cups because the glasses are all broken… another drinking binge, I assume. Watching the television 24 hours a day, absorbing the propaganda of politicians, sitcoms, and religion… blurring together until it is all the same in my mind. Am I blind? Switching off the light and the darkness envelops me in its warm embrace… just another year. And I remember.

Sam