This despicable man asked me to help sort things out and try to make sense of his life, to enable him to get out of bed , at least, not to even begin to hope he would try to leave his house.
Lets call him Peter. He has anxiety neurosis and personality situated on the autistic-schyzotypal continuum.
Peter is very under the weather and throws away his money gambling, drugs, drinking and other obsessional diversions to numb his mind from the acute effects of his ever recurring angst.
His life goes from binge to binge, his job is about to terminate him, his wife has a boy friend whom she poses as a threat at times when she is ready to walk out, their home is about to be sold at a foreclosure sale, and they are without a clue ,as to where they would move to, as their credit fell south after the last bankruptsy.
Their kids’ condition for them for taking them in is that they go clean and sober and serve them hand and foot.do it, forcing them into the stupor of unending servitude.
Peters big shtick is his gambling problem, and his stealing, particularly after hours of losing money.
They quarrel constantly about infidelity and he has suggested counseling but she thinks that’s crazy and he can go but she would never go , especially to marriage counseling.no way, no how.
Their youngest son committed suicide because being abused by clergy and his wife two timed him . even though he was faithful to her , and in spite of being less then an attractive cougar, hunting bars for one night stand hookups. before her previous husband beat the hell out of her,. being a cop after charges were leveled against him , thrown out of the force, seamlessly , leaving her unloved , and turning her into a woman set on revenge.
He sadly shook , as he lofted his glass of Chablis, trying to hide delicately the wrenching seizures beginning to be noticeable.
So Peter looks squarely in my eye, and stutters with that familiar tone that he retained since their high school days that "This is why I need to drink, cause I can’t stand to loose and my old lady worries constantly about loosing the old domicile .We are now the butt of the neighborhood for
hiding behind the overgrown shrubs and trees , resembling a forest.
As he speaks I wonder why he can not get out from under this tangled web, the only conclusion I can make is that he likes it that way.Compelled by a deep urge,as strange as it seems, I have spoken with people who state matter of factly that most homeless people want to be homeless.
He must be a retard, but a romantic fool of a retard, always going on and on about life after death, and his obsessional fear of falling(failing?) , especially his deep hatred of anyone able to take up sky-diving as a sport.
I told him I’m pretty good at seeing his falling as a metaphor , for his ultimate fear of downward mobility into untold miseries of having to move to the wrong side. from which it took him nearly 30 years to escape from.
He intimates that he does not want to return to the dive, where he could deny his loneliness , containing a mix of drunks where he spent his time in early adulthood. , It being the only watering hole this side of what he called my side of paradise.
So he goes on and on about his need to gamble big to save the house, but his.losses are usually followed by despair, drink and unnerving compulsive cleptomania.
My friend Peter, the hopeless romantic.