VINCE

February 2006

Almost five years into sobriety, things were unraveling in my life.  Things assuredly appeared swell on the outside.  But my desire for chaos prevailed when I decided to practice for an upcoming Caribbean cruise by having a couple of drinks with my girlfriend Sarah.  I enjoyed a really good Italian beer, and a sip of her fancy woman drink that night.

The next night, sans girlfriend, I downed half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s alone at a local pub.  I woke up with the worst hangover I’d ever had.  I vowed I would never drink again.  And I didn’t.  Until the cruise the next week.

Viva la Mexico!

A few days after my relapse and before the cruise, Sarah, with whom I was going on the trip, broke up with me.  I really didn’t see it coming.  We had gotten along so well.  She was beautiful, smart, and funny.  All the things everybody looks for.  I took it pretty badly.  Blamed myself, then her.  Then me again.  But we still went on the cruise.

If you have never been on a cruise, I have two pieces of advice for you.  #1: Do it!  #2: Bring all your money (don’t forget your savings).

I spent most of the cruise on a pretty good buzz.  We went from Miami to Costa Maya, to Grand Cayman, to Jamaica.  I almost drowned in Grand Cayman after my snorkel filled with salt water and I was in 7 feet of water.  Until then I had never been in a body of water that had currents.   I say I almost drowned because my lungs filled with burning water and I panicked.  Until then I was unaware that the dog paddle was so useless in a current.  In a lake, of which Minnesota has 10,000, you can float if you need to.  Not true in the ocean.

Thankfully, the current brought me right to a floating dock after about a minute of breathing a mixture of air and water.  I climbed up the ladder, threw up, and laid down until all the other assholes who knew how to swim were done snorkeling.  Then I did an Olympic dive of the dock and the 100-meter breast stroke of a lifetime to the shore.  Piece of cake.  People looked at me as if I had been chased by a shark.  Which was my motivation when I dove in.  Fuck the ocean.

Sarah and I didn’t speak much on the cruise, and I think only once after.  After that I hit the ground running in Rochester.  A couple days after I got back I picked up a nasty little meth habit.  Lost my job after I found out I could get two days off paid if I said I was going to a family funeral.  Suddenly, back to back weeks, both my grandparents suffered fatal heart attacks.  I was so traumatized by the second that I never went back to work.  But I got a huge check including severance.  And I used that to fund my new drug-dealing business.

ANNE:

We went home separately from the high school after his withdrawal/drop out was done, and stood wordless when we met.  I had threatened him that, if he wasn’t in school, he’d have to move out.  Education was how I had gotten ahead and it would damn well be his ticket to doing better than me.

So I told him to leave. He could come home the minute he decided to go back to school.  We could look at a different school, an alternative school, whatever.  But he had to finish high school—that wasn’t such an unrealistic expectation, was it?

He walked out the door with a pillow sack full of his clothes. I figured he’d be back in a couple of days, after he realized he couldn’t make it on his own making minimum wage.

When I hadn’t heard from him for three or four days, I went to the sub shop where he had a job as a dishwasher. They said he’d taken another job. Where? They didn’t know.

I didn’t see him again for a year.

I reported him missing to the police, who looked at me skeptically. “You kicked him out for dropping out,” one of them said as though that was perfectly understandable. “But now you want him back?”

These are Vince’s school portraits from 9th grade and about a year later, just before he dropped out:

I found the second one stashed in his room months after he’d left.

I talked to his friends in the neighborhood, but they said he had dropped them months before. They said he’d acquired some stoner friends whose last names or addresses they didn’t know. They did give me one lead, a kid called Mike, and I knocked on the door of that house two or three times during the year but there was never an answer.  My cousin, who lived a block away from their house, called me a couple times to say she thought she’d seen my son walked down the sidewalk but she’d been driving fast and wasn’t sure…

But sure enough, that’s where he was.  Mike’s parents were survivalists, home schoolers, and pot heads.  They felt sorry for Vince.  What a buzz kill of a mom he had!  So for a year, they all sat around and got high and drank and played video games like Grand Theft Auto.  They had been home when I’d knocked.

Vince’s using got so out of control that it was even too much for them, so they kicked him out and he showed up on my front porch, almost a year later, with his pillow sack.

[VINCE: Mike’s parents were good people. I never had one drink there. They both worked full time and wouldn’t let me live there if I didn’t. Mike was never home schooled and he got his GED before his graduation day.  I never smoked pot with his mom and only on occasion with his dad.  They let us drink when we went up north to their land.  But they made sure to keep an eye on us and always promoted responsibility.  When I was arrested my first time Mike’s dad told me that he wasn’t kicking me out, but it was time to find another home.  It was during my stay there that I worked as a security guard at Liberty State Bank, and overnights at a gas station off I94.  I don’t want anybody to think Mike’s parents ever did anything to negatively affect my life.  Mike’s dad accidentally shot himself in the stomach years later while making bullets.  He was nearly paralyzed and hospitalized for months.]

ANNE:

I’ve found myself brooding about the day Vince declared he would drop out of high school.   I asked myself, “Why am I thinking about this now?” I’ve always considered it the worst day of my life—and I’ve had some doozies—but it has been 20 years.  After a few days it struck me that it was bound to come back around because it was a milestone that marked when “it” all began.

A few months before Vince’s dropping out manifesto, I had been Absolutely Shocked to find out that he was drinking and smoking pot (and much more that, thankfully I didn’t find out about until years later). Well, lots of kids experimented, right?  I wasn’t happy about it but it was sort of normal.

Dropping out?  NOT Normal.

He was 16 though, so legally he could drop out.  I marched him down to the Vice Principal’s office at Central and announced to him, “My son wants to drop out! Talk to him!”  I figured he would be best equipped with the facts on how much less high school drop outs earn over a lifetime, how they end up homeless or in prison or, even worse, how my son might end up living in a trailer home, wearing Zubas, and working as a short-order cook.

But the VP disinterestedly slid a form across his desk and said to Vince, “Sign here.”  It was a waiver of responsibility or some such form, formalizing his “withdrawal” from school and absolving them of responsibility. I’m not clear on what I did then. Probably cried, pleaded, accused the VP of being an accessory to failure, cursed myself for thinking anyone had my back as a single mom. But the guy said, “If they wanna drop out, we can’t stop ‘em.”

Vince signed, and that was it. The school no longer had to deal with his truancy or factor in his failing grades into any reports to the school district or state. My son dropping out would improve their average scores, no doubt. He was no longer their problem.

ANNE:

Dear Vince:

I am looking through old photos of you—having a water fight with your auntie in grandma’s backyard, at the lake, at your Montessori preschool, you and your little friends in that subsidized housing project we living in that had a million kids your age, me spinning you on one of those twirling rides at a playground, birthday parties with my terrible lumpy cakes (but I did try!), a seder at the Levine’s, religious school (and you are smiling!), camping, birthday pinatas, your Big Brother, weddings, playing in the snow, doing your homework, you doing your volunteer dog walking at the humane society, at Paul Bunyan Land feeding a tame deer, another birthday cake decorated like a baseball (by me, the least sporty person I know!), Halloween costumes, you feeding your new cousin a bottle, our trips to Chicago and New York and Seattle, pet cats, Disney World, posing with your uncle for Boy Scouts, your aunt dressed in a gorilla suit for your 15^th birthday surprise party.

And then the photos stop, until you came back from Hazelden and Florida when you were … 21?

You would think I would just stop caring by now, or as grandma says, “Just don’t think about it.” She’s always said that, about anything unpleasant, not necessarily about you. I wish I could.

I think I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t ask myself, “What was I missing in all those photos?” He looks healthy. He’s smiling in a lot of them. Should I have seen some signs—gotten him to a shrink? Should I have been more strict? Less strict? Was it because we were broke for so long and lived on ramen and went to foodshelves? Was it because I was depressed for so many years—would a child take that as neglect and think it was is fault? Was it the whole awful chapter with [abusive alcoholic but filthy rich ex boyfriend I’ll call Kermit]? I take complete responsibility, being desperate to get married and have more kids, at the expense of exposing you to domestic abuse and all sorts of inappropriate shit? Was it how I stupidly told you about the brother you didn’t know you had, thinking it would cheer you up, which backfired? God, what an idiot I was!

Maybe I should have never told you how I smoked pot and drank in high school, trying to warn you against them. Again, my parenting backfired, when later you told me you took that as a sign that you could drink and smoke, since I had turned out ok. (Ha!)

I know you’ve said you were “over” not having a father but maybe you really aren’t? I think you tell me what you think I want to hear.

Or is your addiction mostly genetics? Me passing down my alcoholic/addict father’s genes to you, loaded with your father’s alcoholic/addict genes?

Do you really have Bipolar Disorder, as Hazelden diagnosed you? Are the drugs and booze medication?

I can hear you saying, “Oh, mom.” You’ve rarely talked to me about any of this, so I don’t know if you’ve ever given it a thought or if you even think you have a problem.

I hope it is not too awful there. I hope you’ll take advantage of whatever resources they offer. I hope you know that I love you, no matter what—always will, always have. You have dug your way out of some very deep pits and you’ll do it again. You probably don’t feel young anymore but from my perspective you are so you’ve got time to rebuild.

I Love you,

Mom

VINCE:

I talked to an investigator for the Olmsted County Public Defenders Office last week.  Now that I have been sentenced, Katie and I are no longer banned from communicating with each other.  Part of my plan. This also means that I am allowed to testify on her behalf during her trial.  D.A. didn’t see me coming!  I plead down to 2nd degree possession, which means technically that I’m not a drug dealer,.  Since she is charged with the same crimes as me, and double jeapardy can’t apply to me, I can finally take the rap for all of the dope.  Something I probably should have done back in December, but, we don’t talk to cops.  If they want to put people away, make ’em work for it.

COPS, technically an acronym, Constable on Patrol.  I don’t know if cop has become an actual word in the English language yet.

—

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK!

“Katie ____, open up!  R.P.D!”

Katie and I stare at each other with blank expressions.  She’s not ready.  But there’s little choice.  She has a D.O.C. warrant.  She has to go if I stand a change.  We say our good-byes.  She opens the door and shuts it behind her.  Two minutes later, more knocking.

Pissed off, I open the door.  I say, “What?”

“Can you step outside and talk with me, please?” says the officer.  I should have said no.  I don’t know why I did a lot of things the way I did that night.  But I stepped out.  Big mistake.  With my back turned, Katie asks if she can go in the room and get her purse.  A cop says, “yeah.”  Flashlight searching high and low for the purse on the bed, a cop spots a tiny bag of weed on the floor I had dropped earlier.  Fuck!  The other cop comes out and asks for my consent to search the room.  And for whatever reason I will never know, I say, “Go ahead and search.”  Ugh.

For fuck sake, who ever would look up in a light fixture when looking for dope?  Everybody.  Especially the cops.  Out in the lobby I am casually chatting with officer Lou, who had pulled me over the week before for speeding and let me go, and the officers come out and say, “Who want to go to jail?”  I raise my hand.  The cuffs go on.  Booked in for 1st degree sale of methamphetamine.  [Editor’s…er, mom’s note: actually it was 4 felony charges for possession of meth, heroin, marijuana, and cocaine.]

Only murder is higher up in our state as far as sentencing.  That’s right.  Selling more than 10 grams of meth within 90 days in the State of Minnesota is punishable by up to 30 years in prison.  Most first-time sex offenders are given probation.  Granted, 30 years is for the most extreme meth cases, but all 1st degree controlled substance crimes carry mandatory minimum sentences. Fuck my life.

VINCE:

August 3, 2014, 8:40 p.m.

My roommate has aspirations to become a M.M.A. fighter.  Would you like to know how I can tell?  Well.  Yesterday after a short flag, he came back in the cell and yelled, “You call that a workout?!” and promptly punched the wall.  Then the poor towel.

He’s an angry man.  Every time he hears someone breathing heavily on the weights that are just below us on the bottom tier, he rushes the 6 feet over to the bars to see what’s going on.  Always shirtless, he picks them apart.  Much like I’m doing right now, to avoid talking about my problems.  Yep, he’s a fuckin’ douche bag.

[A “Flag” is prison-speak for time outside the cell–to make phone calls, shower, or talk to a guard about some official business–usually 10-15 minutes.]

9:30 p.m.

Another weekend of boredom done.  With minimal staff, we have no work, no school, recreation, or activities.  Plenty of church available, though!  So I spend my weekends reading.  I have read quite a lot since I arrived in St. Cloud.  I have not gone much further than Tim Dorsey and Dean Koontz, but that is much broader a selection for me than before I got to prison.  I am almost to an average of a book a day at an average of 300 pages.  I think that’s pretty damn good.

VINCE:

December 19, 2013, sometime just before midnight

As evidenced by the fact that Katie had called for a ride from a boyfriend, I came to the conclusion that she still had no desire to sleep with me.  What I didn’t know, was how her ride would change everything in our lives forever.

December 20, 2013, just after midnight

Katie says her ride is outside the hotel.  We say good-bye.  Thirty seconds later, pounding on my door.  She’s back.  The car and occupants that came to pick her up are surrounded by police, she tells me.  I turn on the police scanner I have downloaded on my phone.  First thing I hear is, “…at the Super 8 South.”  Shit, that was here.  I knew I had all the shite hidden from view but that was all I remember thinking about.

Katie gets a call.  It’s her ride. He says he’s been pulled over.  What we don’t know is that he had told the officers that Katie had a D.O.C. warrant, was in Room 141, and she had meth.

Five minutes pass.

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK!