Little deaths in The Falls.

I am seventeen and I am at Paul Trigona's house. It is Saturday night. I am very stoned. I have been drinking for a significant period of time, beginning sometime around mid afternoon, and recently I began stacking on top of that copious amounts of weed. I am far beyond gone and meandering around Paul's house like a vagabond hoping that no one will speak to me, as the inane, incoherent babble that I will issue back at them will surely send them fleeing into the night. My wonderings are taking me up and down the stairs. Does Paul's house have a second floor or I am I imagining it? Who knows? Not me.

I pass Jana and Jenny coming down the stairs while I head up them. I think they have incredibly large breasts for such young girls and momentarily think about telling them so. I am thinking about it, and miss my chance, as I can not decide if it would be better to use the word tits or breasts in my exclamation to them, and they are gone before my mind gets around verbalizing anything. My wonderings continue and I get smears of people talking, laughing, and drinking as I bob and weave among them not making eye contact for fear of invoking a conversation that I will not be able to participate in.

I have to step outside and clear my head. Maybe the night air will bring me some measure of clarity, and straighten up my thinking and allow my mouth to begin working. I open the first door I see that looks like it might lead outside and say a little prayer that it is not a closet and I am not walking into it while a room full of people watch. On second thought, that would be great if I played it correctly, but it is not a closet and suddenly I am outside. The air is fresher here and there is certainly a lot less pressure to converse as I stand alone on Paul's Back porch.

My mind is not clearing and the darkness creeps my foggy brain out, so I think maybe I will walk a bit. I head across the yard towards the back gate that leads out into the dirt alley behind Paul's house. I swing the gate open and it makes a loud squeaky noise. I turn left and begin walking down the alley. Out of the right side of my vision I think I see two people fucking on the ground in the alley. Are they really there? Am I losing it? Who fucks in an alley? I don't look and just continue past at a steady walk while trying to discern if I just really saw two people fucking on the ground in an alley, or I have forgotten that I took LSD tonight.

As I walk down the alley random thoughts are coming into my head. I read earlier in the day about a French philosopher that had referred to masturbation as his 'daily suicide'. I too have killed myself many times. Don't the French refer to the orgasm as the little death? Don't they also say that in love there is one who kisses and one who turns the cheek? Fuck the French.

It is not long before I get to the end of the alley and learn that it goes no where. I am trapped in an alley and I may or may not have two people fucking on the ground between me and getting back to the party. At the start of the night I would not have imagined my self in such a dilemma, but here I stand inebriated beyond comprehension facing the dire possibility that I am going to have to walk back by these two people in the throws of alley sex. Is not love grand?

I take a deep breath and head back down the alley towards Paul's house, the party, and an infinite amount of conversation to avoid, all the while hoping that to my left I will not see two naked people on the ground having sex by a trash can. I am unlucky and indeed they are there. I think the guy is yelling something at me. Asking me something along the lines of why the fuck I am disturbing his goings on, and I want to yell back, "why in the fuck are your fucking some girl in an alley beside a trash can!", but I don't as going back in to explain to the party goers that I just got my ass kicked by some naked guy in the alley with a wet dick is more than I could possibly take, so I just move on and back into Paul's yard.

I somewhat gather myself, do some deep breathing, count to two and open the door and head back inside. The blurry people are still here. They are still apparently having a good time as it seems very loud to me. What time is it? I need a watch. I stumble around looking for a clock. They must have a clock somewhere. It is a must and people have these things. After what seems a very long time to me I find a clock and it is 1:45 in the morning. It will be Tuesday before I am able to operate a motor vehicle. There is no way I will be able to drive home. What is one to do?

My mother, who knows of my tendency to imbibe, has made an agreement with me that if I am in bad shape I just call and tell her that I am alive and will not be home. This is my plan, however I must speak into a phone and have what I say understood by another human that is not drunk/stoned/some other stuff. First I must find a phone. I do this by asking everyone I see, "Phone?" and following the direction their blurry fingers points. What is my phone number? I poke at the phone for awhile and after a couple of wrong numbers my mother answers and I say,

"Fucked up. Not coming home."

Just as I am about to hang up she says, "You must tell me where you are I have to come get you right now, something terrible has happened."

"Fucked up. Not coming home."

"Brian hand the phone to someone that is not drunk and let me get the address I am coming to get you."

I hand the phone to the first person that walks by and tell them, "It is for you.", and walk out the front door.

My mother arrives sometime later and pulls up in front of Paul's house. I get in the car. I don't even try to pretend to not be out of my mind. She says that she has something to tell me that is very shocking and I need to brace myself. I think about telling her about the people fucking in the alley as that is pretty shocking too, but I think better of it.

"Tonight your step brother and sisters mother was gunned down in a bowling alley while they watched." Did I hear that right? Who dies in a bowling alley? They should add that to the game Clue. In the bowling alley, with a gun, by the Son-in-law.

"Really?", I say while I think Paul sure has a lot of Morrissey records.

"Yes, there was a dispute at the bowling alley that escalated until shots were fired." As bowling alley disputes are want to do, I want to say, but don't.

The long and the short of the story that my mother told me on the car ride back home is this: My stepsister husband had been drinking and was asked to leave the bowling alley by my stepsisters step-dad. Follow? They were trying to have a family outing with kids, cousin, aunts and uncles and he was majorly messing up the program by being belligerent and obnoxiously drunk. When asked to leave he did, but only long enough to go to his car and get a .357 and return to the lanes. When it was noticed that he had returned and was now armed and pointing a gun at my stepsisters mother the step-dad stepped in front of her and an explosion erupted in the bowling alley as he was shot in the back. Follow? The bullet went into him, through his heart, out his chest, into the face of my stepsister's mother, then into her brain. They both died there, instantly, at the feet of her children and his wife. He proceeded to flee and was chased by the aunts and uncles. He was tackled near the door. He turned and another explosion erupted in the bowling alley that was only prohibited from entering the face of the aunt, by the fact that the uncle hit the gun and the bullet flew into the ceiling. He escaped their grasp by kicking his boots off as they held him by the legs and ran into the night. He was later discovered at a nearby country bar on the dance floor trying to mingle in.

In a normal frame of mind this would have bee a lot to take in and digest, but in my current state this overload to say the least. About the time the story ended we were at my house and it was time to go in. I got out of the car stumbled to the door and went in.

One of my stepsisters was sitting in my step-dad's recliner. She was the middle of the three and in the eighth grade. I asked why she was laughing and eating a sandwich. I was told that she was heavily sedated, and did not really know what was going on, and had mentioned that she was hungry. My step brother who was eleven was sitting in the floor with the Vietnam veteran one thousand yard stare on his face. While not sedated I don't really think he was in the room either. I have no idea where my stepsister that is married to the now double murderer is, and I don't think my parents do either.

What do you say to two young kids that just earlier witnessed their mother being gunned down at a bowling alley, when you are out of your mind? The answer is nothing. You say nothing. You try and melt into the furniture. Fuse with the wall. You let them soak things in, freak out, and eat a sandwich.