Doodling

A manager came up, gave the room a perfunctory sniff and grudgingly agreed with me. The second room was slightly better, but I slept on top of the comforter, not trusting the sheets to be clean.

The campus of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington is breathtakingly beautiful. Apparently, a goodly portion of my tuition and dorm fees is applied toward the upkeep of their grounds and their buildings.

For the summer semester, I took nine hours. My student advisor had advised me to get all the prerequisite courses done and out of the way. That way, my junior and senior years can be devoted entirely to my declared major, as well as maintaining my required minor.

Before leaving my home, I'd gone to my favorite arts and crafts store and purchased a few pens in the colors of U. N. C. My first day of class, I wore a tee shirt with teal and gold (yellow) Spirograph designs. A stunning brunette with firm round boobs asked about my shirt.

I told Clarisse McNaughton that I'd made it. I then told her they were twenty dollars apiece, but I'd do one for her free of charge. All she had to do was tell everyone who asked about her shirt where they could get one. Furthermore, for every person that purchased a tee shirt and mentioned Clarisse's name, I would give her one dollar.

"One! Uh, how 'bout five?" Clarisse demanded.

"Bye," I smiled. "By the way? You're not the only beautiful girl on campus, you know."

Tiffany Baskin wasn't as mercenary as Clarisse and readily agreed to be my sales force. As long as I didn't ask her about Robbins.

(Apparently, Tiffany had taken her fair share of jokes about Baskin-Robbins 31 Flavors.)

"Uh huh, and don't ask me where Ernie is," I smiled and she laughed.

(With a name like Bert, more than one kid would ask me where Ernie was. I was seven years old before I found out that there were two puppets named Bert and Ernie on a show called 'Sesame Street. After that discovery, the joke became clear to me. And my answer to the few that asked where Ernie was, I would respond with 'he's up your butt.''

My first week on U.N.C. campus, I had forty three orders and Tiffany earned forty three dollars. Yes, having a well-endowed blonde wearing a tight and colorful tee shirt is a great way to garner sales.

There was a two and half week break between the summer semester and the fall semester. My mother was proud of my four point oh GPA. And she was disappointed that I'd not be coming home for the two and half week break.

"Hey man," Hank greeted me cheerfully. "Listen, man, just promise me, promise me you going call home every week, huh? Your momma, she kind of likes know you doing all right, you know?"

Then he lowered his voice and asked me about all the pussy I was getting. Truthfully, I was getting none and told him this. He laughed and assured me that when the fall semester started, when there'd be more students, I'd be getting laid so much, I'd go to class just so I could get some rest. I could hear my mother complaining about Hank 'putting filthy thoughts in my head.'

For that two and half week break, I rented a room from a widow that lived four blocks from the campus. The room was small, even smaller than my dorm room, but had a clean, comfortable bed, a small tube television on a low dresser, and a bathroom right down the hall. At two hundred a week, it was a steal.

Marjory was a pleasantly plump woman in her late fifties, possibly even early sixties. I called her 'Ma'am' and she laughed a tinkling laugh and told me to call her Marjory. She told me what time breakfast was, and left me to unpack and put my stuff away.

Even though the agreement was that I got a breakfast each morning, but was responsible for my own lunches and dinners, Marjory invited me to join her for dinner that first evening. The smells of fried chicken had my stomach rumbling so I gratefully accepted.

Over fried chicken, green beans and mashed potatoes, Marjory told me she and her husband had been married for twenty nine years. They'd taken in their first boarder five years ago, just after Charles's first heart attack.

"The medication? Made it impossible for Charles get a boner," Marjory said calmly.

I almost spit out my food. Marjory took a sip of her tea and told me about Jimmy, their first boarder and his nice hard dick.

After I helped clean the dishes, Marjory took me down the hall to her bedroom. Sandra had taught me how to fuck. Marjory taught me how to make love to a woman.

For the seventeen days I stayed in her home, I never did sleep in my bed. Since I wasn't in class and Marjory lived off of her husband's savings, we pretty much stayed in bed around the clock.

I LEARNED HOW TO TREAT A WOMAN'S BOOBS. There's A LOT MORE TO BOOBS THAN JUST GRABBING, SQUEEZING AND SLOBBERING ALL over THEM.

I learned how to eat pussy. I had only thought I knew how to eat pussy. Marjory smiled and gently patted my cheek and said that there was a difference between girls and women.

Marjory also enjoyed anal sex. She taught me how to prepare a woman for ass fucking, how to make sure that my partner enjoyed the experience.

On the seventeenth day, I weakly packed my boxes again, paid Marjory five hundred dollars and thanked her. Again, she smiled and patted my cheek.

For the fall semester, I was taking sixteen hours; my Microbiology class had a one hour lab with it. I had to take a foreign language and opted for Spanish. Even as President Trump kept saying he was building the wall, it seemed like there were a whole lot of people that spoke Spanish in our country.

Tees By Bert did fairly well. Again, Tiffany helped with sales and also helped with Spanish. She was in her second semester of taking that language, so whenever we met, we'd conversed with one another in that language.

I was maintaining a four point oh; the lowest mark I'd made so far was a ninety seven on a Spanish test. I MIXED A FEMININE AND MASCULINE TENSE. I don't know where my mind was; maybe focused a little too much on Allison's butt cheeks hanging out of her cutoffs. Allison had the seat right in front of me and while she had an acne RIDDLED face, she had a phenomenal body.

I HAD A THRIVING BUSINESS. So FAR, I'D SOLD THREE HUNDRED PLUS TEE SHIRTS. My stocks were doing quite well; I checked my portfolio every evening at the close of trading. The main thing, I never became sentimental about any stock or company. That hard edged business approach was serving me very well.

In THE HALLS OF THE BUILDINGS, I NODDED AND SMILED at OTHER STUDENTS, SOME I EVEN GREETED BY NAME and fist bumps. In THE DORMITORY, I NODDED TO MY PEERS, SPOKE WITH some, EVEN SAT IN ROOMS WITH SOME AND LISTENED TO their MUSIC, SWAPPED TALL TALES ABOUT THIS ONE-NIGHT stand OR THAT LONG LASTING RELATIONSHIP.

And I HAD NEVER FELT SO COMPLETELY ISOLATED, SO UTTERLY ABANDONED AND alone. In MY ROOM, WITH THE LIGHTS OUT, I RARELY ENJOYED A FULL NIGHT'S SLEEP. Most OF THE TIME, It WAS FITFUL SPURTS OF SLEEP, INTERRUPTED BY LONG HOURS OF STARING AT THE CEILING. My mind raced almost feverishly and most of my thoughts were of an impending doom.

My PRAYERS TO God WERE HITTING THE WATER-STAINED ACOUSTIC TILES AND bouncing BACK DOWN TO THE HARD FLOOR. My PLEAS, MY entreaties, MY BARGAINING WITH WHATEVER Cosmic Creator, WHATEVER Higher Power, WHATEVER OLD MAN IN ROBES MIGHT be SITTING UP IN THE CLOUDS WERE GOING UNANSWERED.

So, I BECAME MORE AGGRESSIVE IN MY INVESTMENTS. I STUDIED HARDER. I AGONIZED OVER MY ASSIGNMENTS. I had Tiffany recruit another attractive friend of hers to help sell more Tees By Bert tee shirts. I EVEN WENT TO one OF THE CHURCHES NEAR THE CAMPUS.

Thanksgiving WEEK CAME. My MOTHER AND Hank UNDERSTOOD WHEN I MADE my REGRETS; I WOULDN'T BE COMING HOME. I told them that Marjory had invited me to her home, so, yes, I would be enjoying a Thanksgiving meal.

"Well, IT'S JUST AS WELL," My MOTHER SAID. "I'M SURE YOU REMEMBER HOW bad I AM AT DOING A TURKEY."

"Is that what that is?" I asked and laughed as my mother squealed in mock outrage.

There was no invitation to Marjory's. I COULDN'T LEAVE the DORM ROOM. The dormitory was eerily silent; most of my peers were gone. I LAY ON MY BED, PARALYZED WITH FEAR. It WAS A MIND-NUMBING OVERWHELMING DREAD. Dread OF WHAT, I DO NOT KNOW.

Thankfully, FINALLY HUNGER FORCED ME INTO ACTION. Actually, it HAD BEEN FOUR DAYS, NINETY SIX HOURS SINCE I'D EATEN. I WENT TO A LOCAL PIZZERIA, ATE AN ENTIRE PIZZA BY MYSELF, THEN PROMPTLY THREW UP. The NEXT TIME I ATE, I CHEWED MY FOOD THOROUGHLY, AND I DID NOT GORGE MYSELF. Throwing UP SPICY Italian SAUSAGE HURTS.

Again, I ENDED THE SEMESTER WITH A SOLID FOUR POINT OH GPA. And, SINCE THERE WAS NEARLY FIVE WEEKS BEFORE THE SPRING SEMESTER was DUE TO BEGIN, I HAD NO PLAUSIBLE EXCUSE TO NOT GO HOME.

A LARGE PART OF ME WANTED TO JUST ABANDON MY CLOTHES, MY BOOKS, MY Spirograph SET, EVEN MY TACKLE BOX. Part OF ME JUST SAID 'FUCK IT, LEAVE IT, LET SOME OTHER LOSER HAVE IT ALL.'

But THEY EXAMINED YOUR ROOM WITH YOU BEFORE YOU COULD LEAVE. They LOOKED INTO THE CLOSET, LOOKED INTO THE WOBBLY CHEST OF DRAWERS, LOOKED UNDER THE BED. And THEY WOULDN'T ACCEPT 'FUCK IT, I DON'T WANT ANY OF IT' AS AN EXCUSE TO JUST LEAVE IT BEHIND.

I ALMOST RAN OUT OF GAS; I HADN'T BOTHERED TO FILL UP WHEN LEAVING CAMPUS. I ATE AT A Waffle House IN Atlanta, THEN STOPPED AND SPENT THE NIGHT IN Mobile, Alabama. That MOTEL room WAS MUCH NICER, CLEANER THAN THE Atlanta MOTEL room, AND THIRTY DOLLARS LESS EXPENSIVE TO BOOT.

Arriving home, I saw a brand new pickup truck parked next to my mother's car. I shrugged; what did I care if my mother blew her money? Hank was her husband anyway; she wanted to buy him a truck, she could buy him a truck.

"Oh my God, they're not feeding you?" my mother asked, hugging me.

"Man! You looking good," Hank greeted me, giving me a one armed hug. "Woman, hush! Of course he's losing weight; when does he have time to eat? You don't get no four point oh by sitting around."

My mother prattled on about work, about this neighbor, about that neighbor, about the things that had been going on in our local politics. Hank slid a can of beer across the table and rolled his eyes as my mother continued to chatter.

On Christmas, we attended Midnight Mass. My mother accused me of not going to church the whole time I'd been away. I smiled and told her she was wrong; I'd been attending Fellowship Baptist Church in Wilmington and was thinking of converting.

"You are not!" she gasped.

"Man! Don't even joke like that," Hank ordered me.

The truth was, I didn't even know the name or denomination of the small church I had visited that one time. I had gone in, sat on a hard wooden bench and begged God for help, begged Him for answers. None had come, so I did not return to the church.

On the day I was supposed to leave, I felt a weariness threaten to swallow me whole. My vision was clouded by blackness, my thoughts were distorted jangled, no rhyme or reason. Each step felt like I was trying to walk through quicksand.

"Going miss you, boy," Hank said.

"Need to call me," My mother demanded.

If my cell had not been given me point by point directions, I would have just sat in my car, on the clam shell driveway of our trailer park, with absolutely no idea where to go.

This time, I passed through Atlanta and spent the night in Commerce, Georgia. The motel room was much nicer, was clean. The bed was surprisingly soft and comfortable.

Again, in the morning, the haziness, the blackness was there to greet me. I lay in the bed, staring at the ceiling until Housekeeping knocked and then came into the room. Had a friendly maid not said something, I would have left my suitcase and my clothes and toilet kit behind.

With the assistance of my advisor, I scheduled fifteen hours of classes. I forced myself to put one foot in front of the other, marching through each day.

And on February ninth, it all came crashing down. At eleven thirty four in the morning, Hank called me, sobbing uncontrollably.

It was no one's fault; it was a freak accident. On February eighth, there'd been a light rain. That night, the temperature dropped to twenty nine degrees, with a wind chill that made it feel like fourteen degrees. On her way to work that morning, my mother had hit a patch of ice and slid sideways into a metal support post. That billboard had been there forever and I couldn't tell you what business it had advertised. It had just become part of the landscape. But now, they would have to take it down; that Malibu had done a number on that post.

A grief counselor helped me pack my belongings. My student advisor said the university would simply give me an 'I'' for my five classes; I could make them up in the fall.

I am sure my mother's funeral was a somber but beautiful ceremony. Yes, I was present and accounted for. But I wasn't there. I vaguely remember my mother laying in a box. I vaguely remember thinking that the mortician had done a remarkable job; she looked young and beautiful, very peaceful.

I remember it was cold, there was a light rain falling as we drove to the cemetery. The last thing I remember is Hank hugging me, not a one armed hug, but both arms tightly around me.

"Man, I, man, I won't ever leave you," Hank assured me, and I lost consciousness.

I slowly came to. I was numbly sitting in a hard plastic chair, numbly chewing some cardboard as my vision slowly cleared, my hearing slowly returned.

I looked around at the eight or nine or ten others in that small room. The plastic band on my wrist told me I, we were in a hospital. But I couldn't figure out why I was in a hospital. Swallowing the mouthful of flavorless mush in my mouth, I looked at my arms and my legs. I didn't have any bandages visible. A mental assessment did not reveal any aches and pains.

"Okay ya'll, time for our medication," an obese woman cheerfully sang out, pushing a small cart. "No, Bernadette, the doctor says it's not time take you off the Depakote just yet; give it couple days, okay?"

The nurse walked around, using a small hand held scanner to read each patient's wristband before placing a small cup in front of them. She firmly grabbed my hand, scanned my wrist band, and then put a small paper cup with three pills in front of me.

"Go ahead, Sweetie," she cheerfully said. "Take it, okay? Or you need my help again?"

"What is it?" I asked, pointing to the pills.

"You, you can talk?" she gasped, astounded.

She turned and looked at the other patients. None of them looked at me; they just continued to eat.

"Ya'll, how long, any ya'll know he's awake?" the nurse asked.

She pressed a button on a wall. When a speaker crackled, she informed them that I was awake, speaking. A few minutes later, another nurse came into the small lunch room.

Apparently, I'd been brought in, catatonic, uncommunicative, and unresponsive. At breakfast time, they would lead me into the lunch room, plop a tray in front of me, put a spoon in my hand and I would eat. Then, they would march me to group and I would sit, unresponsive. After making me shower, they would drag me back to the lunch room, put a spoon into my hand and make me eat again. After lunch, we'd sit in group again.

I was awake, but I felt very foggy. I could not focus on any one thing for very long; I would just slip back inside of myself after a few minutes. But it was still more progress than I had shown in the previous eleven days.

Hank came to see me the next day. He hugged me tightly and sobbed tears of joy, tears of relief. We sat in the sun room and talked. Really, Hank talked, I sat and wished the haziness, and the fog would just leave. I felt very nearly like a brain-dead zombie.

"Anyway, the insurance? Man, that's yours, hear? Wouldn't believe shit had go through get them release it," Hank said, slapping me on the leg.

"Insurance?" I asked.

"Uh, yeah, from your momma dying?" Hank said, eyeing me nervously. "I, that, hearing 'bout your momma, that ain't going make you go cuckoo again, huh?"

"No, probably not," I smiled tightly. "And, they don't like it when we use words like 'cuckoo,' okay? They prefer we use the much more clinical term 'fucking nuts' here."

For a long moment, Hank stared at me. Then he let out a loud laugh and hugged me again.

"There he is! There's my Bert," Hank said, laughing. "Yeah! That's my boy."

The doctor diagnosed me as clinically depressed. The therapist I met with listened as I described my life as far back as my memories would go. With a nod, the woman surmised, I'd most likely been suffering the effects of clinical depression for years. What caused my episode over Thanksgiving may have been triggered by a chemical imbalance, brought on by the very unhealthy albeit quite typical diet of a college student. As it was, they were still trying to figure out what medications to prescribe.

"It is nothing to be ashamed of," she hastened to assure me. "You'd be surprised how many people suffer from clinical depression, how many people have a chemical imbalance."

"Not ashamed," I assured her.

I almost wanted to go back to the hospital when Hank and I had to sift through all the papers. My mother was a pack rat; if it looked official, my mother hung onto it.

"Okay, Hank," I finally sighed. "There's the matter of the one hundred and thirty three thousand, four hundred and three dollars and fourteen cents in this account."

"How much?" Hank goggled. "Plus the fifty thousand life insurance? Or that included?"

"No, no, that fifty thousand's a separate entity," I said.

"A separate what?" Hank asked.

Hank objected, but he and I finally came to a gentlemen's agreement that my mother's estate would be split fifty-fifty between the two of us. We agreed, even though the pickup truck was in my mother's name, he could keep the truck, in exchange for me keeping the trailer.

"But, you, I don't got to move out, huh?" Hank asked.

"Not if you don't want to," I said. "Hank, this is still your home, man."

One thing had sparked my curiosity; my therapist had said my unhealthy diet might have triggered that episode at Thanksgiving. And, I had never truly moved on past that episode. I had simply forced myself to keep moving.

So I began to eat healthier foods. I incorporated a lot of raw fruits and vegetables into my meals. Less sugar, less sodium, less processed foods. Hank playfully teased my food as he chomped his way through a bowl of Cap'n Crunch cereal.

"Uh huh," I smiled and diced the tomato for my omelet. "Want some sugar to go with that sugar there?"

"Why, yes, please," he said cheerfully. "Want some more stink go with that cheese there?"

"It does kind of smell, doesn't it?" I agreed. "But boy does it taste yummy."

I did make the decision that I wouldn't be returning to the University of North Carolina. I had U. N. C. forward my transcripts to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Unbelievably, all my credits would transfer. That was twenty five credit hours to go toward my degree. But I decided to wait until the fall semester to return to academia. The winter, spring and early summer of 2019 were spent travelling back and forth to the University Medical Center, getting my medication cocktail corrected.

Those were some long months too. One day, I would be happy, energetic, and then would descend very quickly into homicidal or suicidal thoughts. Or I would be so manic, by the time the dopamine and endorphins would burn off, I would be nearly comatose.

My step-father was witness to it all, and was quite often the hapless victim of my incoherent rage. And the son of a bitch withstood it all. I asked Hank once why he didn't just smack me, or leave.

"Promised you, Boy," he smiled, giving me his stupid, dumb ass infuriating, loving one armed hug. "Remember? At your momma's grave. Promised you I'd never leave you."