Explosives and Corrosives

The balloon count was down to three. What had initially been a squeaking septet of latex and color was now reduced to a trio of white and yellow; two of the former, one the latter.
My karmic burden, currently represented by the wiry, anxiety-ridden black dog, foamed as she repeatedly tried to find escape from the tiny, pickled Toyota sedan. Her lips were pulled back to reveal the one insane smile that she’d worn almost constantly from the day I picked her out at the pound until now. As each balloon popped, the smile grew, to the point where I feared the next one might turn her completely inside out.

Another one went and now there seemed to be something downright medical about the appearance of the two enormous white balloons battling for space with the crazed mutt and the sweating, pasty alcoholic driver. It was as if we were in some kind of self-service transport to a mental institution.
Empty bottles rattled underneath the seat, muted slightly by the vodka, beer and wine that had given my car’s floor mats a syrupy, turf-like texture, similar to what the dirt and grass under the bleachers at a Single-A ballpark might be like. I thought about how when I arrived at my friend Paul’s niece’s birthday party, I’d take care to not let any of the bottles come into view. I thought about how I was going to spin the fact that there remained only two balloons, as I’d told Paul earlier in the day that I was going to stop at the toy store on the way to pick up at least six, if not more, “It’s the least I could do,” I said, knowing - as we all did by now - that I was indeed capable of considerably less.
This had been a big investment for me. This was something I considered to be a true act of generosity and honor. I spent nearly $20 on these balloons (gourmet balloons at that) for my friend’s niece and arriving with only $5 worth angered me on so many levels. $20 could buy two 1.75l bottles of generic vodka and two 40 oz. Miller High Life’s. $20 could get you two cases of Golden Anniversary beer and a jug of Burgundy. $20 could kill you if you played it right. Instead $2.50 was in my pocket, $12.50 worth of shriveled rubber and ribbon lay scattered about the car, and $5 now bounced between the ceiling of the Corolla and Jackson’s lathery snout, ready and risky like mines at sea during wartime.
When you’re an alcoholic nearing the end of a chapter of drinking, you know it, whether you’ve seen it before or not. If it’s not the neon yellow bile coming out of both ends of you, it’s the anxiety that forces you to pull over to the side of the road and sit in the dirt next to your car, trembling and praying to a god you still can’t believe in to please, oh fuck, please slow your heart down at least to the point where you can actually identify individual beats. It could be the way the mustard tint to your skin can no longer be rationalized as a tan (even in August) or the way the sweet, rotting smell emanating from every pore on your body disgusts your very own nose; a self-perpetuating nausea machine.
When you’re an alcoholic, you look for any little shot at redemption, if only to get you to the next drink in one piece. The failed love, the fights, the patronizing simultaneously horrified and sympathetic looks from complete strangers, the humiliating moments just before and just after blackouts; all of these rocket through your head like a major release movie being shown on all 10 screens of your cranial Cineplex at once. The film is paced perfectly, there are no lulls, no unnecessary character setups that could have been left on the cutting room floor. Every moment is exact, terrifyingly shameful art, and the coming end seems as if it in no way should be a surprise, and you hope to God it isn’t. You want the Disney treatment. You need the tidy little wrap-up.

I chose Jackson out of desperation. A friend of mine who was living at my house had two dogs and I became quickly envious of the constant companionship he enjoyed from them. I figured that a dog was indeed “man’s best friend,” especially because one wouldn’t have to worry about a dog waking up at 3 a.m. and drinking the rest of one’s bourbon. Well, not unless one were dumb enough to get a Border Collie or a Standard Poodle; they could do that and worse.
I’d been going to the pound every day it was open for a couple of weeks. I didn’t know exactly what kind of dog I wanted, but I had a few models in mind. A black dog would be good, I thought. When he or she would shed, it would match nearly everything I owned. Plus I would blend in more with the Cape Cod scenery, as the Massachusetts legislature had recently passed a bill providing tax incentives for anyone buying a Cape Cod Black Dog within the Cape and Islands area, and the resulting boom of the little ebony critters running the beaches was astounding. It was like when you hear your great uncle talk about how when he was a child, passenger pigeons were so populous that they darkened the sky; their 10 million strong flocks blocking out the sun like an avian eclipse.
I suppose I was already looking more and more like a native, as Cape Cod had the highest alcoholic rate per capita of anywhere in the country and my puffy redness gave me a free pass at any VFW or hardware store. But the dog would really camouflage me and for once in my life, I really wanted to go unnoticed; it was easier to drink alone that way.

I pulled into the driveway of Paul’s parents’ house, where the party had been going since 10 a.m. Since it was a birthday party for a six year old girl, the drinking would be easy, tempered and professional. Paul’s dad, Paul Sr., came out immediately to welcome me and survey my condition, sort of like a potbellied, Armenian version of the guy at the club entrance with the clipboard and the hold on the velvet rope. “Hey there, Joey. Glad you could make it,” he said, smiling and hopeful that I’d live through his granddaughter’s party. “Hey, is that your new…”

“…dog?”
The black blur escaped Paul Sr.’s sight before the word had fully entered the air. A few drops of spittle landed on the Corolla’s hood and remained for a single second before the hot metal introduced them to the July air.
I quickly responded with a loud “Yes!” to ensure that Paul he would know the dog and I were on the same team and ready to behave.
“Why don’t you come on in and we’ll find you something to, uh... drink.”
It was impossible to not notice my particular affliction. It was the middle of summer and even the majority of alcoholics had great tans going. It was just me and a small handful of seriously committed boozers who had this sheen that made one look as if one had spent the last week zipped up in a bowling ball that was tucked under an elephant in equatorial Uganda. Is it possible to look clammy? I was finding out.
I reached into the car and delicately brought out the last remaining balloon and followed Paul Sr. up the walkway to the house and readied myself for the waiting onslaught of sights and sounds. There’s something truly unnerving about pointy hats held on to little heads by rubber bands, especially when those little heads are making so much noise and having such a great time doing it. Depressed adults don’t really want to be reminded of the care-free happier times of youth, especially when they’re half in the bag on a hot summer’s day. The great irony was that these kids, so hopped up on sugar they’d probably fail a breathalyzer test themselves, would inevitably have to face the come-down, a descent would exponentially worsen just after the six year old boy who had the flu anyway and a tummy full of cake and Tang threw up on the five year old girl next to him after the big-for-his-age 10 year old man-child (and who let him in anyway?) with no motor skills whatsoever whacked them both with a broom handle as he missed the pinata by a good four and half feet. And then, still blindfolded and hearing something hit the ground after he’d hit it, proceeded to hit them both four or five more times before he realized pinatas don’t scream. Oh yes, they’d have their introduction to the pain of the vicious cycle.
Paul Sr. opened the door and it was all I’d feared and more. There was cake on the walls, on the ceiling, on the ceiling fan (which, I supposed, was why the cake on the ceiling had such a cool “spin-art” look to it.) One kid was hitting himself in the head with a plastic sword and another was drawing a lovely picture of the sun on the floor with a stick of margarine. A tape of the “Backstreet Boys” that sounded like someone might have spilled apple juice on it at some point blared warbling and distorted from a cheap boombox in the kitchen. Paul Jr. was sitting between his niece and some bald 6 year old (I didn’t even want to know) with a desperate smile so tight and pulled back that his goatee was practically hanging from his ears and I seriously wondered if he’d had plastic surgery since I’d seen him last.
He was being a good uncle. He loved his niece so much that anytime I saw him with her, it gave me that instinctual, paternal feeling that I really wanted to have kids someday, and soon. Of course, I came to my senses as I thought about how swimmingly things were going with Jackson and thought it best to just live vicariously through my stable friends.
Jackson, oh hell, where was Jackson? It wasn’t that I was worried about her getting away, it was quite the opposite. I was concerned more about a possible sneak attack. Jackson was hyperactivity disorder personified. She was hairy, black anxiety. She was in no way mischievous, it was rather she was absolutely chaotic. In a one mile radius, her speed alone ensured one would have a potentially disastrous encounter with her within 10 minutes.
“Jo-eeey!” said Paul, Jr. with great enthusiasm. “Glad you made it!” And he really was.
The good uncle would be here alone if he had to, but he very much welcomed even the trivial amount of help I could offer. “Paulie. Baby,” I said, using the Sinatra-isms we as a group of friends had all attempted to adopt during our ongoing love affair with swinger culture. Of course, even Joey Bishop wouldn’t be caught dead dressed like a church thrift shop mannequin and holding onto the sweat-soaked string of a single white balloon at a birthday party for a six year old girl (though Dean would have at least appreciated my aroma, while Frank would have just had us all shot and dumped in Bass River.)
I walked over to the end of the long table he sat at, dodging flying crayons and being careful not to slip on the sun. Paul’s niece, Corey, sat next to him, smiling calmly and helping the bald girl make a picture with the Etch-A-Sketch Corey had received as a gift. The amount of charity in this small corner of the kitchen was enough to nearly make me cry. It was, as everything involving this family and pretty much all the families of all my friends was, a remarkable, impossibly powerful machine of grace, love and absurdity. It was exactly why I had to be here, even if all I brought was one balloon. “Nice balloon,” Paul said, grinning. “Let me guess: Jackson?” he asked. “Mostly,” I said.
“How many did you start with? Four?”
“Seven.”
“Jesus.”
“Tell me about it,” I said.
“Wow, man. Did they all pop in the car?” he asked.
“Yep,” I replied.
“Christ, Jackson must have been freaking out,” he said.
“I’m lucky I made it here alive,” I said. “If you lived another five minutes further away, all the balloons would have been gone and I would have been picked up by the ambulance that takes you to the other hospital.”
“Ha-ha-ha-ha!” we both laughed, knowing that I wasn’t joking.
“Wanna drink?” Paul asked, fully intending the double entendre of asking both if I wanted a drink as well as whether or not I wanted to drink. “But of course,” I replied to both. It as like I was in the VIP room at The Sands as the Tanqueray and tonic was in my hot little hand within seconds (really it was jut dumb luck, as Paul’s mom was keeping ‘em coming in Paul’s direction, as along with a great deal of love that was getting Paul through this party, an equal or greater amount of gin was at work.) “Thanks, Althea,” I said, knowing that while Paul practically had an I.V. going, I would be limited to this one cocktail, as his mom was smart enough to ascertain that this was just sort of topping me off. It was relaxing though, and for the first time in hours, I exhaled.
“Happy birthday, kiddo,” I said, handing Corey the string to her lone, boring latex blob. “Thanks J...” It was at that moment that I heard the crash and the screams.
Jackson never had great eyes. She wasn’t blind or anything, probably not even near-sighted per se. It was more like her vision couldn’t hope to keep up with the rest of her and as a result, she ran into and through things all the time, even when one would think her reflexes - which were lightning fast - would compensate. But they often did not.
“Jesus Fuck!” Paul Sr. said, using what is still my all-time favorite expression. I looked over and saw that the screen of the patio door had been ripped away and was still recoiling from the impact of the streaking mutt. She had hit the deck on the fly and must have then been too preoccupied with the landing to determine her next move. She probably didn’t even notice the screen, it seemed, since it didn’t slow her progress in the slightest. “Joe, get your damned dog!” Paul Sr. yelled. But it was too late and before I knew it, her next leap had landed her smack dab on the middle of the buttery likeness of our solar system’s only star. It was like watching Mario Andretti hit an oil slick at Indy, if Mario Andretti were a retarded Labrador. Her legs seemed to multiply in front of our very eyes and I don’t think anyone would have been surprised to see a stream of silk fly from her ass and attach to a wall as an anchor. But instead, she accelerated, flying straight ahead towards the tunnel that was the space under the dining room table. Just as she was disappearing through the tent-flap of the tablecloth, the kid with the sword missed his head by a long shot and whacked the balloon as Corey was taking it.

And so it went.
And so did Jackson.
She blew up like a depth charge far beneath the surface of the sea. The sound began with the bang of the balloon and swelled into an explosion that lifted the table and everything on or around it off the ground. The Etch-A-Sketch hit the bald girl in the face, the punch that had been in Dixie cups for this moment floated in the air as if it and we were in orbit. My and Paul Jr.’s gin and tonics rose between us, out of our respective glasses and headed towards each others’ face. “Jesus Fuck!” said Paul Jr. as the table came crashing down, the punch came splashing down, and the gin and tonics made their burning baptism. I felt instantly blind as the alcohol doused my eyeballs. I reached under the table, wildly fishing around with my arms out straight like Lon Chaney playing a game of Marco Polo. “Jackson!” I practically screamed. “Get out from under there right now!”
Jackson ignored me completely and instead just kept jumping up and hitting the underside of the table with her head, though not nearly as hard as she had initially, as now she was probably a bit dazed. I finally got my hand on what I assumed was her collar and began to pull the bald girl under the table by her leg brace. “NOOO!!!” the bald girl screamed, thinking she was about to meet a most horrifying end at the hands of the crazed beast, unseen and scurrying madly, margarine-covered claws dancing a million steps a second as she tried to find purchase. The bald girl grabbed the Etch-A-Sketch that had hit her and swung it like a tennis racquet at me, aiming for my ear. I ducked and almost immediately, it seemed, I saw Paul Jr.’s nose explode in a gush of blood. He fell backwards off his chair and in doing so, created an opening for the captive dog to escape, which she did, running over the bleeding Armenian uncle, leaving a sunkissed, oily pawprint on his forehead. “Jesus Fuck!” Paul Jr. and Sr. said in almost perfect unison, with Paul Jr.’s utterance being slightly more garbled and nasally. “Oh my god, Paul!” I said. “Are you alright?” I certainly couldn’t blame him for not feeling the need to answer such a completely useless question, but I didn’t expect him to hit me, which he did, rather squarely in the nose. I careened to the side and fell on my back. Under any other circumstances, I’d have definitely hit someone back, even my best friend. But it was absolutely undeniable that I deserved this. If not for the total chaos, just for the balloons.

Hours later, with Jackson securely in the car (after she’d run through a neighbor’s yard and caused such similar mayhem that it made me think that she may have simply stumbled upon her calling and if she had, I was screwed) Paul Jr. and I sat outside his house, reclining on the back deck, ice bags and gauze held softly to our bloated faces.
“So, How many balloons did you start out with?” He asked.
“Seven,” I replied.
“Jesus,” he said. “That must have been one hell of a car ride.”
Paul was smiling, as much as he could.
“Man,” I said, “I’m lucky I made it here alive.”