(part 225) "JUST NOT RIGHT NOW."

My mother, me, and Dj in Shell Beach California 1983-84

There were people who believed I was headed for a disaster, that being, of course, that I would get loaded. I worried that they might know something I didn't at that point.

I did not have enough time sober, back then, to dispute the possibility with much conviction. All I had was a stubborn streak a mile wide that refused to get drunk on any given day.

It helped that they thought I would, because I relished proving them wrong. I could just picture them running off at the mouth in a meeting, or at coffee, saying, "Well, did you hear about Bobby Jameson?"

Thinking about it convinced me more than ever not to give them the satisfaction of fulfilling their Goddamn prophecy.

It was my one great success, I believed. Bobby Jameson, sober and clean no matter what. Meaner than shit and angry at the world, I vowed I would die before I ever got loaded.

The Doc Holiday of AA and NA. I would not fold in the face of a crisis, any crisis. I took on all comers, and come they did.

The advice givers, the God freaks, the false prophets of a reason to slip, as they called it. I knew I was doing the best I could no matter what they said or thought. I knew that in my gut and in my heart.

I had found sobriety in the cesspool of my life, and it proved a far more reliable asset than the tinker-toy version they talked about.

I chalked it up to experience. My experience versus theirs. Mine was honed in hell; too many of them had been light weights, so recovery for them was easier, smoother, more appetizing.

Sobriety for Bobby Jameson was like reassembling a completely shattered individual...it was just gonna be that way...it was just gonna take more time...more work.

At times my opinion counted; when others saw their own failings with regards to someone they had sponsored or guided, they'd say quietly, "Send em to Bobby Jameson, he knows all about living sober through disaster."

That was about the only time I got credit for anything with most of them...when they needed me to tell the truth to someone they'd been feeding pablum to.

Otherwise I was just looked upon as someone who couldn't, or wouldn't, let go of my anger and resentments. I was the poster boy for who not to be like.

In 1983-84 I got involved with a girl from Northern California who stopped into a few Southern California meetings when visiting her father in L.A.

Her name was, DJ, and she was a good chick. She seemed undaunted by my moods and angry rhetoric about how sobriety was not going too good for me.

We used to go to Harley Davidson shops in various places and look at the bikes and buy t-shirts. I played her some of my music, and she would push me gently back toward it, telling me I had a gift.

"Yeah, well that gift is trying to kill me, so I don't know what to do with it," I told her,

"Well you just have to keep trying, Bobby, you are a talented human, and you can't escape it no matter where you run to."

I knew she was right, but I was not ready to entertain any more attempts to make use of it at that point, so I would nod my head and say, "Yeah, I know, and someday I'll start again and see what happens, just not right now."

(part 224) THE ROAD AHEAD

It's not that the situation with Gary was so different from things that happen to other people, it was what it did to me personally that makes it stand out in my life.

I had already found it difficult to trust people, because each time I did, something bad usually resulted in the end.

Gary was just a guy I knew from the program. It never occurred to me that I had anything to fear from him.

But after what happened, I found myself even more wary, sizing up each person I encountered. Not in a positive way, but looking at that them as potential foes.

I moved out of the house in Culver City and once again took up the old practice of living here and there, but never anywhere for very long.

I spent God-awful amounts of time driving around in my car with no particular destination, just cruising the Southern California streets alone.

I would drop into xxx book stores and peep shows on a regular basis and sink ever lower on the scale of self worth and personal dignity.

My outlook on life had deteriorated into a self-imposed exile from the human race and any kind of normal routine.

It felt very reminiscent of my life loaded, not in the sense of what I did, but how I felt about it...in a word, bleak.

I stayed with the tool-selling job as long as I could, for money, but eventually quit out of frustration. I was good at the job, but a lot of what I sold was crap.

Because of this, I found it hard to lie to some farmer in Indiana about the quality of what I was trying to get him to buy. I had a phone name, Cole Parker, and a lot of those guys trusted me.

One day a man in the midwest said, "Well, Cole, do you think this is a good buy?" I knew it was garbage, so I told him, "No, it's junk, don't buy it." I knew then I was through selling tools.

I made jewelry, sold jewelry, painted houses occasionally, worked for contractors when I could, bought stuff and sold it. Whatever I could do I did at one time or another to keep going.

What I couldn't do was get and keep a regular job, or have a relationship that was stable with another human being.

My past, and all that went with it, would eventually explode inside me and wreak general havoc with any normal setting I might have been attempting to engage in.

This was as painful and confusing as anything I have ever had to deal with. There was no way to know when it would happen, just the knowledge that it would happen sooner rather than later.

Various people, mostly women, tried to fix me along the way, but without success. I was fighting my own demons and locked in a desperate battle to stay alive and sober.

The rock bottom nature of my dilemma was slowly, cruelly, and clearly making itself ever more known to me. The dream of a good life with things to be grateful for dimmed to a bare flicker.

I was an outcast among outcasts. A man alone in his own desperate quest for salvation. The future loomed ahead, promising, I feared, more of the same.

The recognition of that possibility, probably saved my life as well as my sobriety, because it forced me to accept, however grudgingly, that the best I might achieve was to simply survive each new calamity.

(part 223) WHAT HAPPENED GARY?

Me in 1983

The aftermath of the attack in the kitchen left me feeling like Gary's prison "bitch." It took some doing for me to resolve it in my own mind. I'd met him through one of my sponsors in AA, Bobby E., and he was Gary's sponsor too.

Gary and I had known each other awhile, and we liked each other, so it was hard to make sense out of the episode. What had really happened? I didn't know for sure, but suspected, and still do, that he was getting loaded.

There is no way of knowing this, other than guessing about it, but it would explain, in part, the outrageous behavior that seemingly came out of nowhere. Anyway, it made sense to me at the time to incorporate the possibility that he was not clean.

I went and talked to Bobby E., who had once sponsored both of us, but was no longer my sponsor, and asked him if he knew what had happened and what was going on with Gary. He said he had heard about it, but didn't have all the details.

I laid it out for him, but got no real definitive answer from his feedback, other than Gary had been grappling with some problems of his own.

I told Bobby E., that I wanted to kill Gary because of what he had done to me. I said I had to set it straight in my own mind.

Bobby E., who came from the streets like me and Gary, understood my position and feelings, but asked if I was prepared to spend a long time in prison and ruin my own life over it.

He asked if I could live with the mental and emotional consequences of killing someone, even if they deserved it for doing what Gary had done to me. I told him I didn't know, but I would seriously think about it.

I left feeling the same way as I had before talking to Bobby E. My problem was that I felt ashamed that Gary bashed my head in and I had done nothing about it. I didn't try to defend myself. I had just taken it.

For me, this was a serious problem. It made me want to seek revenge by getting even, but getting even would put me in jeopardy of losing my freedom, and could possibly be something I couldn't live with, which could cause me to lose my sobriety, the only thing I had of real value.

I reasoned, and it took a couple of months, as I recall, that what had happened was not a fight, it had been an unwarranted assault with a deadly weapon. I was half asleep, partially dressed, in my own kitchen with a friend, I thought, when he went off and attacked me with a blunt instrument.

For me, this gave context to my difficulty in regards to the shame I felt for not fighting back at the time. This was extremely important, because it explained to me why I did not defend myself.

I further reasoned that Gary was in a world of shit himself and was going to have to cope with what he had done to me. Sometime later I ran into him at an NA meeting and got to ask him, "What happened Gary? What the fuck was that about?"

He looked me straight in the eye, half smiling, and said, "I don't know, I just went goofy."

I remember staring back at him, trying to think of some way to answer, but couldn't. It was the last time I ever saw him. A few years later I got an anonymous phone call and the person said, "I thought you'd want to know that Gary was found dead in his own bed, he bled to death internally."

To this day I still do not know what actually caused Gary to do what he did. When I heard he was dead I said, "OK, thanks for letting me know."

After that I thought, "What goes around comes around, and in Gary's case it killed him..." What I have recently come to believe is that Gary may have been using steroids, but again I have no way of knowing for sure.

(part 222) RUNNING ON EMPTY

In 1982-83 I took to the streets and got a job selling tools and machinery on the telephone at a place called Pacific Freight, in the San Fernando Valley. I rented a bedroom in a guy's house in Culver City, who was a member of NA.

Each day I drug myself through my life, despising it. There was nothing to shoot for, no dreams, just make a few dollars, keep going, and stay sober.

I dropped into AA and NA meetings all over, mostly where I was unknown. I would stand in the back drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and then leave.

I drove a lot, picking up hookers on the street. Relationships were out. Couldn't make any more commitments to human beings, they always expected too much, and I was tired of failing.

It was easier to admit I was incapable of living up to the standards set by others than try to do so and fail again. People looked down on me, but I knew they didn't have a clue as to what I was about.

"Why bother?" I thought to myself, "They'll just tell me to get off the pity pot, or verbalize some other quaint phrase from the program. No one's interested in the facts, so why bother tellin' em?"

Through thick and thin I maintained my sobriety, never wavering in the endless storms that kept on coming. It was like I finally realized the way it was gonna be. Exactly the way I didn't want it. I was just going to stay sober anyway...

I woke up one morning in the house where I had a room, and stumbled half asleep into the kitchen to get a cup of coffee. "Hey Gary," I said to the guy who owned the house, "could you could ask you're friend next door to hold it down at three o-clock in the morning, he was......."

"Tell em yourself, Jameson, I'm not your fucking mother," he snapped.

"Aw shit, Gary, all I said was......"

"Don't fuck with me Jameson," he yelled, turning toward me with the top half of a blender in his hand. He'd been making his morning protein drink in it.

It was a heavy-duty restaurant version and was full of creamy liquid. He raised it up to shoulder level and swung it like a baseball bat at my face.

I remember the impact of it connecting with my eye as I stood in the kitchen still half asleep, dressed in a t-shirt and towel. It was like getting sucker punched with a hammer.

The metal bottom of the blender cut into my flesh and made contact with the bone around my eye socket. The blow nearly knocked me unconscious as I fell backwards. I crashed into the wall and fought to maintain my balance, not knowing what was coming next.

I looked at Gary's face, which was contorted in a way I'd never seen before. He looked like a madman standing before me with the now empty blender in his hand.

I felt the sticky liquid running down my face and looked down at my chest and waist. It looked like strawberry shortcake, blood and protein drink mixed together in a slimy mess.

I slid down the wall to the floor, realizing I was hurt bad and bleeding like a stuck pig from a gash around my eye. My head felt like I had been hit with a two by four.

I stared up at Gary's face. He seemed calmer, and showed signs of concern at the river of blood now pouring from the wound he had inflicted.

He set the blender on the counter and said, "Aw shit, man!"

"Damn Gary," I managed, "what the fuck is wrong with you?"

He didn't answer. He got a dish towel and handed it to me to sop up the blood. "Guess you gotta go to the hospital, man," he said, "looks pretty bad, I'll take you."

"Fuck you," I moaned, "I ain't going anywhere with you, man."

"Well then we gotta call an ambulance," he said, "and that'll just cost a lot of money."

I sat on the floor trying to gather my wits, knowing I was hurt bad and in need of a doctor. Calling an ambulance was bullshit I thought, so after a few minutes I said, "OK, help me the fuck up and we'll go."

He reached down and grabbed my outstretched hand and pulled me to my feet. My head was throbbing so bad I felt like I was going to pass out but managed to stay erect.

Stumbling into my bedroom I struggled to get into my levi's and boots, then yelled to Gary, "OK man, let's go do it."

I remember the feeling of riding in the car to the hospital with the guy who had literally just bashed my head in with a blunt instrument. "God," I thought, "my life just fuckin' sucks."

The doctor wanted to know how I got the wound, but I didn't tell him that the guy I was with hit me with a blender or he would have called the cops.

It would have been a felony assault charge with a deadly weapon, against Gary, and I wasn't into that kind of revenge, I had other ideas about how to handle it.

I had a brain concussion and a whole lotta stitches when I left the emergency room. I rode in silence with Gary on the way back to the house in Culver City. I knew I had to move at that point, so it just became another problem for me in a life filled with nothing but problems.

(part 221) THE MONSTER

“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”
- Hunter S Thompson

For me the monster was the music business and my involvement in it, or not, as the case may be. The continual up and down, as it related to making records and trying to do something with them, had finally done to me sober what it had done to me loaded.

It had trashed every dream and every desire I had ever had about being in the music business. I was broken inside like a clock. My main spring was damaged in a way that left me unwilling to reach out to anyone where music was concerned.

I didn't dare participate for fear of being sucked back into another attempt at success. The monster had kicked the shit out of me one too many times, and I saw clearly the wreckage of my life in bold technicolor terms.

Like a reluctant soldier, I admitted defeat and turned away from the battlefield of my dreams. I retreated, and wandered off into the land of isolation, the land of nobody.

I stopped talking about music and playing. I cursed my life and God for my abilities. I wished I had never written a single song or ever made a record, but mostly I cursed ever wanting to.

The young boy in Tucson, Arizona in the 50's, and his decision to be a star was now the cause of my despair rather than my salvation. I looked back in time at him, wishing in vain that he not follow his dream.

There was nothing and no one to turn to. No place of safety from the monster. It was out there lurking. It's minions were everywhere, spread out across the city.

A casual hello could lead to a conversation that once again might lure me into foolishness. A chance meeting in a coffee shop; the catalyst for further regret.

"I have to be careful from now on," I thought, "that little prick is still a child and doesn't know any better... even now."

I stayed here and there with different people from the program, but the sense of isolation was too deeply etched in my soul. I didn't believe anybody really understood or cared what had happened to me.

I tried a thousand times to explain to someone the damage that had been done, but their eyes always gave them away, always said clearly, "Get over it Bobby. Give yourself and everybody else a break, will you?"

I always left, I always had to. I could not do what they wanted, what they expected. I was trapped inside myself. I was in there, but no one could see me, hear me, or contact me.

I knew what was happening, but could not prevent it. Others saw my face and my body, and that's who they talked to, but way down inside that shell was me, screaming for help and finding none. Falling into myself like a collapsing building.

I stared out at life like a man in a cell. I kept to myself, occasionally making contact with the living for brief periods, only to retract again and lose myself in the dark aloneness of my existence.

(part 220) SWEET DREAMS

click
(vinyan photo)

NOTHING SUBTLE
ABOUT THE COFFIN
LIKE REALITY
I LIVE IN...

ONLY AS DETRIMENT
REGARDS ITSELF
NOT TO BE THAT
WHICH IT IS

DOES THE LIE
OF REGARD
UTTER ITSELF
INTO MY EAR...

WHO I AM
IS NOT DECIDED
BY ME
BUT BY THOSE

WHO TEND TO THE MISERY
OF CONSCIOUSNESS
AND DRESS IN
WHITE SHOES...

THE PORTRAIT
OF ANOTHER
HUNG ON MY FACE
NAILED TO MY SOUL

HAND PICKED
DURING MOMENTS
IN THE GARDEN
OF DEATH

CARRIED HERE
BY CHILDREN
OF DECEIT
IN CHALKY HAND

AND DELIVERED
AS A NIGHTMARE
WRAPPED IN
SWEET DREAMS...

Bobby Jameson Dec 6, 2010