THE COMEDY PARTNERS
If my journey to drugs was the naive journey of a kid, Del's journey was a more painful and adult path to drugs.
There have been studies that show 3/4ths of drug addicts had abuse in their past. That means two things. They are self medicating. They had been let down by the state when they were abused, then they are tossed in jail or murdered as a second stage of abuse.
I say murdered, because in the UK, Denmark and other nations with legalized heroin they have discovered junkies live long lives. They have jobs, stay healthy- because the drug they get is a standardized drug. Making heroin illegal means harmful impurities, wild variations of quality, street life and shortened lives. By making it illegal, we kill them.
Del lost his virginity in the carny, but never answered how. It must not have ended well as he decided to go back home and go to college. Pretty good for a person who had skipped school to be with the carny.
Must have been tough to walk into that kitchen the first time.
To see where his dad had gathered the family before he drank the liquid that would eat its way out of and deeper into his body as the family screamed.
He knew about speed and could do his work and read science fiction and search for cool around the world. So many writers in New York City. Doing heroin and getting drunk. Del had started drinking in the carny and drank in school speed rapping a mile a minute his carny stories, which no one believed. But were all true. If anything, they were toned down.
In those days, not all college kids had sex.
Drinking, speeding his way through college- like everyone else.
He graduated, took off with a traveling horror show.
Horror shows traveled the U.S. from the 1930's until the late 1960's. They would pull into a town, show a classic old horror film someone owned a print of, and put on a stage show. For Del this would mean throwing spaghetti at people so they thought it was worms. You don't leave the sauce on it by the way, stains could get you hurt.
Drinking, reading, speaking, throwing. Between shows hit a bar to drink again.
Del's way of dealing with people was to hit them with one liners - he liked being on and getting the attention he never got at home. Get to really know him, the jokes dropped.
It must have been the avalanche of insights and jokes that led him to his third big heartbreak. He was dressing funny and wearing disguises in publicity shots of the time.
He found himself in a comedy group. In love with "the woman". I guess everyone has that one woman who haunts over the years. She was bright and smart and funny and they would stay up all night speeding and laughing and dreaming of making it.Together.
There was another guy in the group. Smart guy. Del liked him. He spoke of the three of them doing an act together. He just needed to rehearse, with Del and Her.
Apart. You know, for character work.
When she sat Del down at the kitchen table, without realizing the pain that table represented, and told him she was pregnant he thought the world had stopped.
Del thought marriage, but she said she needed an abortion.
(Even though abortions were illegal, every community in big cities had abortionists working the then illegal trade usually in the persons home. Rich people went to doctors who would do the act "off hours").
Del had money, she didn't, and his other partner didn't either, so Del put up the money for the procedure if he could go with her.
They held hands on the way in, and he held her on the way out.
He prayed she wouldn't hemorrhage, that it was all over.
A few days later he awoke and she wasn't lying next to him. He got up, walked around calling out to her. That's when he saw the note. On the kitchen table.
That damned kitchen table.
He sat down at the table and held the note up to his eyes. He couldn't see what it said, not because he wasn't wearing glasses but because his eyes were filled with tears. He had a good idea what the note said.
She had flown.
With the other comedy partner.
Thanks for helping with the abortion.
The blues is a heaviness. It's the feeling you can't get out of bed, or think straight, "a nervous wreck" they called it back then. No one understood depression.
But the pain was so bad Del wanted to die.
So it was time to runaway again.
New York was calling.
