Category Archives: Alcohol

Don’t go in the American River, kids in our neighborhood were often told. There are branches, rocks, and an undertow you can’t see. Here, read today’s newspaper; another boy’s drowned.
We still couldn’t stay out and swam whenever we wanted, never meeting danger until mature enough to drink Friday night. The cops [...]

Also posted in American River, Rivers, Sacramento, Short Pieces - GTC

Executive Jack

July 7, 2012

Click here to read an excerpt from “Snapshots of Distressing Events”

Also posted in Families, Football, George Allen, Los Angeles, Short Pieces - GTC

Was Vincent van Gogh Murdered – Part 2

May 28, 2012

Two clever biographers appeared on Sixty Minutes and said Vincent van Gogh didn’t really shoot himself in a wheat field more than a bumpy mile from town since he couldn’t have walked so far bearing a wound destined to finish him in thirty hours.
Instead, the sleuthing biographers state two teenagers in Auvers, a spot for [...]

Also posted in Art, Bullying, Campaign 2012, Mental Health, Mitt Romney, Painters, Suicide, Vincent Van Gogh

The Pool Player

May 21, 2012

Click here to read an excerpt from “Snapshots of Distressing Events”

Also posted in Families, Food, Health, Pool, Short Pieces - GTC

Thomas Kinkade Meets Another Artist

April 13, 2012

God rang the bell quite early and told a short bald man, “Here’s your new roommate. Put down that brush. You’ll be painting together until further notice. Now turn on the TV. I’ll check on your progress directly.”
The old man aimed huge eyes at a pudgy, gray-goateed fellow, and activated a [...]

Also posted in Art, Mental Health, Pablo Picasso, Painters, Religion, Thomas Kinkade

Blood Alley

April 12, 2012

Click here to read an excerpt from “Snapshots of Distressing Events”

Also posted in Cars & Driving, Murder, Poetry - GTC, Short Pieces - GTC

Soul

April 5, 2012

stranded
soul
implodes

Also posted in Drugs, Mental Health, Poetry - GTC

Mind Afire

April 5, 2012

mind
afire
doused
with
gas

Also posted in Drugs, Mental Health, Poetry - GTC

Ambitious Diet

March 25, 2012

much
younger
wife
serves
spicy
meals
and
strong
drinks

Also posted in Diet, Food, Marriage, Poetry - GTC

Downtown Drinkers

March 14, 2012

Click here to read an excerpt from “Snapshots of Distressing Events”

Also posted in Families, Friendship, Sex, Short Pieces - GTC

Baseball Bat Killers Sentenced

March 9, 2012

Two years ago a murder story in Bakersfield haunted me and, despite uneasiness, I decided to view the crime scene. A forty-year old man, Patrick Matsuda, who lived in a neighborhood of new and expensive homes, had been killed by bat-wielding miscreants. For weeks residents had been complaining to each other and the [...]

Also posted in Bakersfield, Bodybuilding, Drugs, Housing, Mixed Martial Arts, Murder, Neighborhoods, Wrestling

Female Beverage

March 6, 2012

she
kept
drinking
and
the
phone
stopped
ringing

Also posted in Mental Health, Poetry - GTC

Bobby Brown – The Whole Truth

February 28, 2012

Before presenting what Bobby Brown allegedly said and did, I must explain this book was originally conceived as an autobiography and author Derrick Handspike, according to his account, hung out with and interviewed the singer for a year, diligently wrote the book, and later squirmed as Brown and his advisers delayed final preparations for publication. [...]

Also posted in Bobby Brown, Cocaine, Drugs, Families, Heroin, Marriage, Music, Whitney Houston

Just One More

February 20, 2012

said
have drink
come on
let’s party
least
one
more
now
no one
listens
so
exhorts
himself

Also posted in Mental Health, Poetry - GTC

Reviving Whitney Houston

February 15, 2012

Only in quite rare cases am I permitted to intervene retroactively and attempt to salvage lives of those recently deceased. Heretofore my efforts, results of which cannot be discussed, focused on people unknown to the public but intimate with some of your neighbors. In this instance, I was summoned not merely to recall [...]

Also posted in Bobby Brown, Cocaine, Drugs, Music, Whitney Houston

Whitney Houston, 1963-2012

February 14, 2012

remember one
beautiful as whitney houston
who made star spangled
banner soar and
moved heaven singing
i’ll always love you
may harbor soul broken
as man in gutter and
seek relief same way
To watch Whitney Houston sing the National Anthem before the 1991 Super Bowl, please click here

Also posted in Bobby Brown, Cocaine, Drugs, Mental Health, Music, Whitney Houston

The Right Room

February 9, 2012

first time on
puerto vallarto
tour quite hungover
stand at basin
looking into fright
woman pops up
behind and says
sir are you aware
this is women’s
years later long
sober at bakersfield
movie women enter
one says what’s guy
doing in here
leaving rapidly
forget to say heat
intoxication

Also posted in Bakersfield, Mental Health, Mexico, Poetry - GTC, Puerto Vallarta

Blood Alley

February 5, 2012

Click here to read an excerpt from “Snapshots of Distressing Events”

Also posted in Cars & Driving, Murder, Poetry - GTC

Middle of River

January 11, 2012

(This poem has been rewritten in prose in posted July 24, 2012.)

stay out of american river
kids in neighborhood often
told there’s undertow you
can’t see branches either
here read today’s newspaper
another boy’s drowned
still couldn’t stay out of water
nor could other kids
swimming whenever wanted
never meeting danger until
mature enough to drink friday
night cops yelled hey you guys
come here instead friend [...]

Also posted in American River, Poetry - GTC, Rivers, Sacramento

Executive Jack

January 6, 2012

Click here to read and excerpt from “Snapshots of Distressing Events”

Also posted in Families, Football, George Allen, Los Angeles, Mental Health, Poetry - GTC

Drink Vacation

January 1, 2012

had too
much last
night or
wouldn’t
have left
underwear
stacked
in motel
rushing to
early mexico
city flight
* * *
proud
had attracted
beautiful
senorita
in loud bar
but regretted
smile
disappeared
shortly before
she did

Also posted in Mental Health, Mexico, Mexico City, Poetry - GTC, Travel

Nightmare Returns

December 26, 2011

many years
vowed
never would
again
but defiled
mouth and
head
convinced
really had
awakened

Also posted in Dreams, Drugs, Mental Health, Poetry - GTC, Sleep

Tijuana Taxi Ride

December 16, 2011

american drunk in tijuana
night lumbers into taxi and
in spanish asks for senoritas
and marijuana fine says
cabbie few minutes later
american admits really wants
cocaine cabbie reminds
not what said then silently
drives way out and says
here’s best place for you
american enters and
thinks goddamn that guy
dropping me where there’s
only slender men and booze

Also posted in Cocaine, Drugs, Mental Health, Mexico, Poetry - GTC, Tijuana

Fallen Star

December 14, 2011

Producers and directors often exhorted Martin Steven to beat or at least be like Errol Flynn, and that seemed attainable. In terms of facial structure, Martin looked as if Flynn had fathered him. Hell, maybe he did. So the sequence was logical enough. Martin was outfitted in tights in his first starring film role and [...]

Also posted in Drugs, Errol Flynn, Homeless, Mental Health, Movies, Short Stories - GTC

Deadbolt Rules

December 11, 2011

(This poem has been rewritten in prose and posted September 22, 2012.)

hell of hot day fishing
in thin mountain air
sun scorched harold
and he drank too
many beers
didn’t matter he caught
no fish he had to return
to rat hole room at
rear of house in bad
area
rusty deadbolt jammed
and impatient harold
broke key in lock
pounding landlord’s
door she wasn’t
home
in his trunk he
got [...]

Also posted in Housing, Mental Health, Neighborhoods, Poetry - GTC

Flowers for Errol Flynn

December 2, 2011

on sunny
forest lawn
fresh
pink flowers
lie across
errol flynn
caressed by
lady lost
in distant
dreams
To read “Fallen Star,” a story about a disturbed actor who looks like Errol Flynn, please click here
To read “Arnella Flynn, Too Much Like Errol,” please click here

Also posted in Errol Flynn, Fallen Star, Los Angeles, Movies, Poetry - GTC

Proper Rest

November 6, 2011

father died from
drink but also
suffered arising early
carlos avoids that
asleep all day
mother ironing
his clothes

Also posted in Families, Poetry - GTC

Table Top

November 2, 2011

shag
carpet
reached
through
invisible
table top
shattering
wine
glass

Also posted in Poetry - GTC

Buried Drinker

October 31, 2011

i don’t
drink anymore
and neither
does the man
who quit
shortly after
they
buried him

Also posted in Poetry - GTC

Professor Party

October 28, 2011

taught english
or something
at berkeley and
students
called him professor
and admired his
clipped beard
cheering when
he entered
their parties
students
eventually
said they
didn’t know
when the professor
asked
and he stopped
because they
hindered
his drinking
and teaching too
proved inconvenient
before he
lugged a
ragged beard
into the streets
of bakersfield

Also posted in Education, Homeless, Mental Health, Poetry - GTC

Was Vincent van Gogh Murdered?

October 17, 2011

This poem has been rewritten in prose and posted May 28, 2012
two clever biographers appear
on sixty minutes to say
vincent van gogh didn’t really
shoot himself in a wheat field
more than a bumpy mile from town
he couldn’t have walked so
far bearing a mortal wound
destined to finish him in thirty hours
instead the soon wealthy
biographers state two teenagers
in [...]

Also posted in Art, Bullying, Mental Health, Painters, Poetry - GTC, Suicide, Vincent Van Gogh

Criminal Justice in Islam

June 23, 2011

Near Baker Street in blighted but inexpensive east Bakersfield a new mosque with amenities has opened and last Saturday hosted the Fifth Annual Bakersfield Shoura Conference. I also attended last year, in the theater of a college on the affluent west side of town, when some in attendance referred to the event as the [...]

Also posted in Bakersfield, Crime, Drugs, Islam, Jordan, Main Al-Qudah, Marriage, Middle East, Rape, Religion, Saudi Arabia

The Education of Ulysses S. Grant

May 30, 2011

I loved this wonderful horse that cost twenty-five dollars but when the owner brought it to our house my father said it wasn’t worth more than twenty and that’s what he offered. The owner wouldn’t yield and left but I so earnestly urged my father to help he gave me confidential instructions and ordered [...]

Also posted in Abraham Lincoln, Civil War - American, Dominican Republic, Mexican-American War, Mexico, Ohio, Politics, Ulysses S. Grant, West Point

Material Handler on the Road

January 29, 2011

I still wonder if my adult working career for many years progressed like a tortoise in sand because of apathy or a reflexive hatred of manual labor that began too soon, at age nine, when my mother remarried and her new husband, a drill sergeant masquerading as an electrical engineer and contractor, drafted my stepbrother [...]

Also posted in Abraham Lincoln, Auburn, Babe Ruth, Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Burbank, California, California Youth Authority, Carmel, Cars & Driving, Chico, Clint Eastwood, Coast Ranges, Construction, Drugs, Electricians, Errol Flynn, Families, Frank Lloyd Wright, Fresno, George S. Patton, George Thomas Clark, Grass Valley, Hollywood, Interstate 5, Los Angeles, Manual Labor, Marijuana, Media, Mental Health, Monterey, Newspapers, Pacific Ocean, Rocklin, Rolling Stones, Sacramento, San Francisco, Seattle, Sierra Nevada, Stephen Stills, Stockton, Television, Unions

Death on the High School Website

January 17, 2011

Last fall, just before deadline, I bought a ticket to the forty-year reunion of my high school class in Sacramento. I wanted to see about ninety percent of the people on the party list but had hesitated, fearing that a few of the rest might say something insulting and there’d be unpleasantness so a [...]

Also posted in Cancer, Cars & Driving, Education, Energy, George Thomas Clark

High on Hallucinogens

December 21, 2010

I must begin by warning you not to try hallucinogens because they’ll transport you to very strange places there’s no good reason to be but where curiosity and the devil may compel you to venture again. I remember my first trip, in the summer of 1970. I’d just graduated from high school and [...]

Also posted in Drugs, George Thomas Clark, Hallucinogens, LSD, Mental Health, Mexico, Mexico City, Mushrooms, Oaxaca

Shooting Baskets in my Dreams

December 10, 2010

Click here to read an excerpt from “Snapshots of Distressing Events”

Also posted in Basketball, Dreams, Drugs, George Thomas Clark, Housing, Mental Health, Sacramento, Short Pieces - GTC, Sleep

Golf Course Braces for Wild High School Reunion

October 1, 2010

Sacramento, CA – Officials at scenic Ancil Hoffman Golf Course, which stretches along the American River east of town, issued an emergency decree this morning after police informed them that a (publicly-unnamed) suburban high school, notorious for its rowdy alumni, plans next week to attack the links with ten foursomes celebrating forty years of parole [...]

Also posted in American River, Education, Golf, Sacramento, Tiger Woods

McSorley’s Cats Soothe John Sloan

September 3, 2010

I’m shy and nervous and can’t get much from women except in brothels where they’ll at least pay attention awhile. In 1898 I meet Dolly at my regular place and suddenly feel I have a chance, maybe I can relax with this woman and really have her, away from here. We start going [...]

Also posted in Art, Ashcan School, Diego Rivera, George Luks, John Sloan, Jose Clemente Orozco, Mental Health, New York City, Painters, Robert Henri, Williams Glackens

George Luks Knocked Out

August 20, 2010

Stick with me and you’ll have a great time. I’m alive and witty and drinking plenty and proud to tell you I’m a real American artist and tired of too many dollars going for European art which is fine but no better than mine and probably not as good. How could it be? [...]

Also posted in Art, Ashcan School, Boxing, George Luks, Museums, New York City, Painters

Jackson Pollock Assists Lee Krasner

July 31, 2010

Some of you may disapprove but I mustn’t care since I know what I’ve got to do to make Polar Stampede right. My abusive, alcoholic, bipolar, philandering, supremely-celebrated husband, Jackson Pollock, is five years dead in 1961 after he’d drunkenly, and I believe with suicidal determination, gunned his car through the night into a [...]

Also posted in Abstract Expressionism, Art, Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Mental Health, Museums, Painters

Cruising in My First Car

July 16, 2010

I wish I’d been more on the ball and returned to somehow punish the scoundrel who sold me my first car. The deed occurred on an ominous weeknight when my stepfather drove me east of Sacramento to a fine suburban home where a slender dorky old man at least forty-five opened the door and [...]

Also posted in Babe Ruth, Baseball, Basketball, Cars & Driving, Civil War - American, Elvis Presley, Football, George Thomas Clark, Grambling University, Grapevine, Highway 99, Jim Cleamons, Kentucky, Lebron James, Los Angeles, Louisiana, Luke Witte, Mississippi, New York City, Niagara Falls, Notre Dame, Ohio, Ohio State University, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Racism, Roberto Clemente, Sacramento, Siege of Vicksburg, Tennessee, Texas, Travel, Ulysses S. Grant, Vanderbilt University, Western Kentucky University, Woody Hayes

Billie Holiday Visits Young Obama

March 13, 2009

Please click here to read an excerpt from “Obama on Edge.”

Also posted in Barack Obama, Billie Holiday, Drugs, Music

Father of Obama

March 3, 2009

Please click here to read an excerpt from “Obama on Edge.”

Also posted in Barack Obama, Economics, Kenya, Mental Health

Poe at the Gentleman’s Magazine – Part 11

August 20, 2008

Edgar Allan Poe, despite working for Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, seemed not to understand the implication of my being William E. Burton: I paid ten dollars a week, more than sufficient compensation starting in June 1839, and expected him to be a dutiful and deferential editorial assistant. I realized many readers considered Poe brilliant, particularly after [...]

Also posted in Depression, Edgar Allan Poe, Mental Health, Writers

Heath Ledger and the Joker

August 14, 2008

I am weary of, though not entirely unamused by, the preferred psychoanalytic question about my posthumously-released role as the Joker in The Dark Knight. Fans gathered at my cinematic altar continue to ask: “Did playing that deranged criminal, and other cutting roles, drive you too far?”
No, I explain, it was rather the opposite: my deteriorating [...]

Also posted in Depression, Drugs, Heath Ledger, Mental Health, Movies

Roderick Usher Assails Edgar Allen Poe – Part 10

July 28, 2008

My family and I are profoundly distressed by Edgar Allen Poe’s recent short story “The Fall of the House of Usher”. We, who so often said yes when this forlorn orphan begged to visit, now learn he considers our home “melancholy” and one which pervades his spirit “with a sense of insufferable gloom.” Had Poe [...]

Also posted in Depression, Edgar Allan Poe, Mental Health, Writers

Virginia Clemm and Edgar Allan Poe – Part 9

July 17, 2008

I hated gossip about Eddy living with his “child cousin.” I wasn’t a child but a young lady only three months short of fourteen. Eddy still made sure our marriage bond said I was twenty-one. That afternoon in May 1836 a smiling minister married us in our boarding house. My mother and our landlord and [...]

Also posted in Depression, Edgar Allan Poe, Mental Health, Writers

Poe the Editor and Family Man – Part 8

July 7, 2008

When Aunt Maria’s mother died her pension was also buried and that night Edgar Allan Poe raged to dig it up. Aunty and Virginia guided him into bed from which he two days later arose dazed but determined to be responsible. Aunty had become his real mother and Virginia, though only age thirteen, was already [...]

Also posted in Depression, Edgar Allan Poe, Mental Health, Writers

Aunt Maria Clemm Nurtures Poe – Part 7

June 20, 2008

Eddie was a sweet boy who loved me and my young daughter Virginia. He tried to help but except selling a young slave I’d inherited he couldn’t make any money for us despite writing hours a day. Our best prospect was John Allan, and sometimes I wrote him Eddie deserved to do well and would [...]

Also posted in Depression, Edgar Allan Poe, Mental Health, Writers

Henry Poe – Part 6

June 6, 2008

Not critically but with pride I suggest that for his third book, Poems, Edgar had copied some of my stanzas. I also concede I might have borrowed some of his. I couldn’t guarantee much in the spring of 1831. Once, I had appeared an impressive big brother, donning the uniform of a merchant marine and [...]

Also posted in Depression, Edgar Allan Poe, Mental Health, Writers

Poe the Scholar and Soldier – Part 5

June 4, 2008

In person I may have addressed my foster father John Allan as Pa but in my heart and with others I called him a tyrant who, despite his wealth, denied sufficient funds for dignified survival at the University of Virginia, sentencing me to dress inelegantly and use my own hands to tidy my room. Fellow [...]

Also posted in Depression, Edgar Allan Poe, Mental Health, Writers

Poe the Athlete – Part 4

May 19, 2008

I’m head track coach at a major university and have trained some of the finest young athletes in the world. I don’t recruit anyone lacking potential to place high and score points in important meets. That I explained to members of a literary society when they presented physical data about Edgar Allan Poe. He was [...]

Also posted in Depression, Edgar Allan Poe, Mental Health, Writers

Foster Father of Poe – Part 3

May 13, 2008

Convinced of my correctness I sailed from Scotland to America at age sixteen and immediately began as a clerk in the Richmond tobacco company of my Uncle William Galt. The old bachelor was the wealthiest man in Virginia but kept me tight to business and doted on his four adopted children and four more he [...]

Also posted in Depression, Edgar Allan Poe, Mental Health, Writers

Keeping Hemingway Alive till 109

May 5, 2008

Never had I craved anything so much as this strange and alluring task. Thousands of other doctors were clamoring for the opportunity but many piously claimed personal considerations were more important still. That disqualified them, I am sure. Only a man obsessed was fit to lead a scientific revolution, and only I was poised to [...]

Also posted in Depression, Ernest Hemingway, Mental Health, Suicide, Writers

Eliza Poe – Part 2

April 18, 2008

In more than thirty years representing actresses I had never received such an astonishing application. At first, naturally, I considered it a hoax. Eliza Poe, claiming to have been born more than two centuries ago in England, wrote that she most urgently needed to meet me. Ordinarily it is difficult approaching impossible to get through [...]

Also posted in Depression, Edgar Allan Poe, Mental Health, Theater, Writers

The Pain of Heath Ledger

February 13, 2008

Last November I said I feel good about dying now, at age twenty-eight, because I feel alive through my two-year old daughter Matilda. I quickly explained that didn’t mean I wanted to die; I wanted to be around for the rest of her life, and noted this was an interesting kind of little set up. [...]

Also posted in Depression, Drugs, Heath Ledger, Mental Health, Movies

Exhumation of Edgar Allan Poe – Part 1

January 1, 2008

Baltimore, MD – During forty years of torment Edgar Allen Poe was orphaned, shunned by foster parents, dismissed from the University of Virginia because of indigence, dishonorably discharged from West Point, underpaid by editors, beset by depression and other organic ailments of the brain, mired in poverty, torn by feuds personal and professional, widowed when [...]

Also posted in Depression, Edgar Allan Poe, Mental Health, Short Stories - GTC, Writers

A Book about the Talented but Tragic Rogers Family

October 11, 2007

Early this year I received an email from freelance writer Sean Harvey, who’d read my 2005 article about Donald Rogers, the college and pro football star and a champion in every sport he tried. Of course, I told him. I’d be delighted to reminisce about a man as memorable for personal appeal as his athletic [...]

Also posted in Cocaine, Depression, Donald Rogers, Drugs, Football, Mental Health, Reggie Rogers

Letter to Talented and Troubled Lindsay Lohan

June 1, 2007

Dear Ms. Lohan,
After grading about 400 English tests during the week and feeling increasingly tired and tense and lethargic, I didn’t want to write or exercise Saturday morning, as I usually do; I just wanted to shower and get out and relax at the movies. Frequently, there aren’t many good ones in Bakersfield, primarily just [...]

Also posted in Depression, Drugs, Lindsay Lohan, Mental Health, Movies

The Rogers Brothers – Triumph and Tragedy

April 14, 2005

Twenty-seven years ago this month I went to Norte Del Rio High School in North Sacramento and interviewed a sprinter named Roy Mosley who’d just won two races at a large invitational meet. As a visiting correspondent I received lots of attention from kids wanting to learn what I was doing and some, after [...]

Also posted in Cocaine, Donald Rogers, Drugs, Football, George Thomas Clark, Mental Health, Reggie Rogers

Hunter Thompson and Mental Health

February 28, 2005

Since Hunter Thompson put a gun in his mouth and shot himself last week, I’ve been digging deep into the Internet and reading lots of articles about him. The first wave of stories commended his hard-punching, eye-gouging, “gonzo” style of insightful political writing in such books as “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and “Kingdom [...]

Also posted in Drugs, Hunter Thompson, Mental Health, Suicide, Writers

Arnella Flynn, Too Much Like Errol

November 15, 2004

For decades the inside cover of Parade magazine has been like it is today, a page glistening with faces of beautiful and famous people. And as I write this, one of those pages stands out more than hundreds of others I’ve read. It was from an early 1970’s issue and featured the delightful image of [...]

Also posted in Drugs, Errol Flynn, Movies

Category Archives: Alcohol

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