The Son and the Drunk Young Man

By Colby Stead

 It doesn’t take much to put things in perspective…

Like when your mother goes to the front door (because it is being pounded on endlessly and loud) only to find an extremely Drunk young man.  She then proceeds to shut the door and look for the son.  She finds him.  He then goes around the house and sees before mentioned drunk young man (and two big backpacks.) lying on his stomach on the pavement, he is crawling slowly with his hands covered in his own blood.  Son slowly approaches man to see if he is alive.  He is. Drunk young man says to son “can you help me?  I have a hundred dollars…I have cigarettes…can you help me?  I am bisexual—I will do anything…can you help me?”  Son tries not to cry.  Drunk young man extends blood-covered hand and tells the son that he isn’t H.I.V. positive.  Son responds, “Good…neither am I.”  The son lifts drunk young man to his wobbly feet.  The drunk young man is big 6’1 190 lbs.  They stumble towards the front porch and sit together on the steps.  Staring at the snow covered mountains they talk about surfing in Hawaii and ultimate fighting.  The son is getting nervous. He tries not to show it.  The drunk young man’s hands are still bleeding, maybe he fell or was in a fight?  Quickly the son goes into the house to get baby wipes and band-aids.  The son returns to the porch to find the drunk young man sleeping, using one of his large backpacks as a pillow.  The son begins to clean the cuts and scrapes on drunk young man’s hands.  The blood is starting to dry.  The son has to scrub hard.  “I love you” say’s the drunk young man.  “I love you too” says the son.  A cell phone is unfolded with hopes of calling for help.  Who?  The son asks drunk young man if he has friends or family nearby.  “No. I am homeless.”  The traffic is loud.  Drunk young man pulls out a small folded piece of paper from his pocket.  A phone number and an address are barely legible.  The son dials the number and waits.  An angry man answers and asks if drunk young man is drunk.  “Yes.”  Responds the son.  Man tells the son to take him to the barely legible address so that he can sleep it off.  Cell phone shuts.  Drunk young man says loudly “I have to take a piss!”  Both stumble into the nearby trees.  Drunk young man balances against the house and tries to undo his paints.  The son holds tightly to drunk young man’s coat and tries to help him stand.  The sound of wet urine hitting dry leaves.  Sound stops.  Drunk young man starts swearing…he can’t get his button fly back up.  The son helps him.  Drunk young man is not wearing any underwear.  Its 3:30 in the afternoon and the son hopes that no school kids walk by.  The smell of urine and vodka is strong.  They make their way back to the steps and sit…again.  “I’m going to get my car and take you to someplace safe and warm.” Says the son quietly.  Drunk young man stares…quietly.  The son runs back into house to get towels and a bowl just in case he has to clean up vomit.  Car running twenty feet away from the steps.  Hazard lights are on.  They carry each other (and the two large backpacks) towards the car.  The son hoists in the 6’1 190 lb. drunk young man.  They drive.  Spitting into a bowl without safety belts on.  Car turns left on 600 East and right on 200 South.  Address is located and car is parked.  Drunk young man makes a fist and asks the son if he wants to “fucking fight?!” “No” say’s the son.  They exit the car and land softly on the grass.  It’s green.  Drunk young man lowers his head (once again) onto his pillow…that is to say backpack.  The son goes to the front door of a small house.  On the porch is a hanging sign that reads “WE BELIEVE IN ANGELS”  The son wishes he could fly.  Door opens and a slightly crippled grey haired man answers.  The smell of urine and vodka is still strong.  The son asks if he knows the drunk young man sleeping on the grass.  He does.  Grey haired man calls for someone to help him.  A very small sober man named Bob appears…like an angel.  “Are you who I spoke with on the phone?” asks the son.  “No that was Grant,” replies Bob.  Together the son and Bob lift drunk young man into the small house.  The front rooms are clean.  The back rooms are dirty and crowded with two other drunk young men.  They make room for one more and they sleep.  Bob thanks the son for his kindness and walks him out the door.  “They can’t live on the street...it is cold…so I let them stay with me…” admits Bob.  Son tries not to cry….again.  A half-full vodka bottle on the grass where drunk young man was lying.  Son picks it up and puts it in the car.  Engine starts.  Car drives.  Son returns home.  Running water into the bowl…washing out spit.  The son has never tasted vodka; he pours it down the sink.

LOVING #2  

                   LOVING #3

A LOVE-LESS STORY

As John sat down to write a story about love a certain amount of empty thought overcame him. To call this stupefaction a writer’s block would have been an understatement. His inability to recall even the slightest hint of a story line was more like an extinction of where to begin rather than a mental restraint that was preventing the floodgates of inspiration from opening. As he sat looking out at the cold rain drizzling down, he thought about his own love life, and quickly realized he would get nothing from that. It would be like Donald Trump trying to write a book of personal experience with serious poverty, or like George Bush giving a teary sermon about his own self-reflective self-doubts stemming from a mid-life crisis. No John knew that his own love life would hold nothing for him to write about. So he contemplated the other people in his life that he knew. There was Ritzy who had just broken up with her boyfriend over an argument about who lost the keys to the car. There was Jeffery who proposed to Selina after watching three straight PG-13 movies, one of which involved a climatic make out scene in the front seat of a red convertible while the actors were watching a movie about World War II. Then there was Mr. Andrews down the street who had just had a 40^th wedding anniversary. Then again Ms. Andrews had been in a coma for nearly a decade. No John thought, he couldn’t write a love story about people that he knew. Hell the people that he knew needed him to write a damn love story so that they could forget about their own lack of a love-less plot. 

So John decided to make up a story, and this is what he wrote: 

Once upon a time, there was a nation peopled by inhabitants who did not know the meaning of love. Day after day the people woke and went about their daily activities and day after day the people went to bed without ever experiencing love within that day. They would wake and go to work. They would clean their house and wash their car, they would cook their meals and clean their clothes, they would even hug and kiss each other but they would not experience love, because love had died. No one knew how love had died, but there were plenty of stories about how love had died. 

One story claimed that love had been shot by a photographer, who took a picture of a woman’s body and then sold it for money. Another story said love had suffocated in the marketplace when employees’ faces were forgotten and customers failed to resuscitate them with eye-to-eye contact. There was a story that said love was tortured to death by school kids who held love at ransom for the price of another student’s dignity, and when no teachers or co-students responded, and then the captors simply finished the job. There was a story that said love died in a car accident, when the manufactures of jealousy constructed an alcoholic who crashed somewhere near the edge of town. There was a story of love dying in an elevator, while music played its eulogy. And there was a story of love passing away in an old folk’s home, to the sound of silence and the smell of excrement. There was a story of love dying in vain, because the blood could not circulate in the incubation of a test tube fetus. And there was the story of love freezing to death in a marriage, because of someone’s hypodermically cold heart. There was a story that said love hung itself by an overpass, because no one ever noticed it crying all alone for months at a time. There were stories of love being run over, beaten down, thrown away, torn and shredded, kicked and slaughtered, used and abused, lost and abandoned, hated and forgotten. But for all the stories of how love had died no one seemed to know how to bring love back to life. 

Then one-day love came to town in a book; it was a book about love itself. The book told about the author’s feelings, his emotion, and the art that was within his heart. The title of the book was: Universal Imagination. The first chapter of the book was called: You & Me. The second chapter of the book was called: Purpose & Passion. The book told the tales of everyone that lived within the town and everyone that lived within the nation. The pages of the book were made out of glass and metal, so that a mirror formed in the words of the pages. Some of the people in the land read the book, but most did not. For those few people who read the book, they noticed that the last chapter was completely empty. Expect for a tiny paragraph at the bottom of the page, which read:  “Love is alive only if ye are living in love, for as the carriers of fate and destiny shall speak, only in the melody of love can ye be capable of hearing. And so like the memory’s of thine life, ye shall remain in these pages, and this book shall ring as an echo in thine mind, telling thee of how thou treated love and her life while thou were on earth. For when ye are dead and gone, it is not thee who shall remain; rather it is only love who shall continue. And love shall only continue if she lives within thee, and thou shalt only continue after thou art dead, if indeed love is in thee. For whatever thou doest to love, in thine end, thou doest to thine self. For love shall remember thee, and all that thou doest in her name.”           

LOVING #4

There once was a man among us who possessed a great ability and a natural example to lead an entire nation. He was one of the greatest public speakers the world has ever known. He was a leader of dedication, and unbending determination. He was relentless in his drive, all encompassing in his fervor, and heightened by his own ambition. He maintained ideals that led a country, and held to beliefs in times when others would have faltered. This man may have been said to be strong willed, and unyieldingly devoted to his mission. He was called heroic, inspiring, historical, and even courageous. But there was something about this man, that no one ever knew about, or at least something that most people did not realize. 

Who was this man of fervor who could captivate, an entire nation with his riveting speeches? Was he a reverend dedicated to the civil rights movement, and the equality of all mankind? Are we speaking of a man by the name of Martian Luther King JR? The answer is no. While it is true that Mr. King was one of the greatest speakers of all time, he is not the man of whom we are referring too. The man we are discussing was also a man of great presidential importance; he achieved world prominence not only upon a pulpit but also as a political man, with a death that would leave a historical trail for millions to be effected by. Does that mean then we are speaking of John F. Kennedy, a man with charisma, charm, and prestige? No. It was not Mr. Kennedy, for the thing that separates these two individuals, is the fact, that the person in question also had an aim towards architectural design, to go along with their social ideas. So then who is such a man with lofty cultural aspirations? Could he perhaps be one of the ancient pharaoh’s of Egypt, or one of the mighty leaders of Greece? He very well could have been a Ramsey’s or a Zeus type of figure. However the man we are talking about, was also a man of romance, a man for whom 6 of his female companions would attempt suicide in his name. Who then could reach such seemingly endless realms of the human spectrum for potential possibilities? Who could possibly posses such innumerable talents and gifts, and accomplish so much in a single lifetime? To be a memorable public speaker, a political leader, a social architecturalist, and a lover of the magnitude that women would thrown themselves upon an alter of death! What a human being who’s very finger seemed touched by the gods themselves! 

This man of course is someone you know; someone you have heard of, and someone that has already effected your life in the cosmos of ordered things. He is someone extremely unforgettable and yet someone who was never seen into. The millions of people, who followed him, did so out of lifelong loyalty, and undying faith. They listened to him, because he was a great speaker, and because of the social promises that glistened like gold before a team of 49ers in the shimmer sunlight of a glittering mine with unlimited fortuitous potential. His policy’s were like a lightning bolt from Saturn, a mesmerizing display of raw power and efficiency, that blasted through the universe with thunderous ground shaking proportions causing an unmistakable echo in the ear of every listener. He effected not only a nation, and a country, but a race, a civilization, and an entire world. But again despite all this notoriety, he was unknown. So how could he possibly be unknown, if his name and face would be recognized throughout time? 

The answer is simple yet profound. The reason that no one knew this great man was not because he wasn’t great, gifted, or well respected. The reason that no one knew this man, is because no one took the time to look deep within him. Not his peers, not his followers, not his friends, not his comrades, or any of his allies took the time to notice what was WITHIN this man. The reason that this man was virtually unknown was because no one took the time, to see what was in his heart. He was perhaps the most famous person to have ever walked upon the earth, and yet no one knew him. Of course everyone could see the brilliant display of efficiency, of course everyone could be captivated by his words and promises, and of course his ideals could be understood and believed in as the absolute truth. All those things were easy to see, what was not so easy to see, was what lived within this man. The things like black twisted roots, and knarley screaming faces, corroded and decaying in soot smothered holes, that covered it’s corpses of sludge, slime, and grease with a stone and ridged mask of puritan idealism, and clean handed superiority. Without the ability to see, vision is but an illusion of grandiosity, and the left or the right wing of extremism, is but a devil that creates it’s own monsters in a mirror made of Iron and steel; a will of Christian morality, and political hypocritical arrogance. Essentially the reason this man was unknown was because of collective unconsciousness, made up by tiny little believers who were unaware and unable to see. 

Only with the eyes of angels can one ever hope to spot a demon, it is only through consciousness that clarity can be seen. It is an inner perception that gives perspective to a person in a paradigm of a soul prism, an angle that offers the observer a crystal clear in-sight into the mind of the observed. For it is in the eyes of the angels that the gods are able to see directly into the heart of man. Which is why no one ever knew that a man with honorable prestige, amazing influence, undeniable faith, unbending certitude, and straight forward focus, was really nothing more than a devil in disguise. That is why you personally have not recognized that the man I have been describing, is the greatest of all unforgettables; the one and the only, the alpha and the omega, Sir Adolph Hitler.   

The point of this story is not to remind us to choose the right, or to vote more often. The point of this story is to wake people up to the reality, that tyranny is not only upon the face of an ancient dictator, rather tyranny also lives between the lines of your own face, and behind the masks of those standing right next to you. Tyranny exists every time you follow an unbending rule, and each time you believe in a ridged way. It exists upon knees of arrogance, and within empty hearts hidden behind masks of ear smiling do gooders. So the next time you lay down to sleep, please look more deeply at whom is really with you in your bed. After all even Satan himself can kiss and make love. 

LOVING #5

Love does not exist and here’s why: Love by definition is nothing more than feelings of fondness, or excitability.  Love is always attached to expectations, or beliefs of how the loved one should behave.  Love by nature must be conditional, there is nothing unconditional about love.  Here are a few examples.  Love of parents can easily be attributed to the offspring in ways of nurturing or care taking.  But the child rearing is always done in a manner of fulfilling a prescribed definition of how the child should behave or turn out in the end.  That is what we call love, the parents say I will raise you, but you must act in accordance to my will. 

Another example, is religious love, this is clearly a set-up of ideals, if a person follows the ideals then they are loved, and incorporated into the church body.  The cost of sin is really nothing more than the removal of the religious support.  For an individual who has sinned it means they have discontinued their part in the love agreement that says: you must follow the rules in order to be loved.  If you don’t follow the rules…well then, you are on your own. 

The same holds true for the social politic, society sets up the laws, and if a citizen breaks one of the laws, then love ceases to exist, in the form of prison, an institution, or a side walk avoidance.  There are basic expectations, of how a person should behave in public, and everyone knows about it.  Proper dress, proper speech, proper conversations, proper silence, proper touch, proper ideas etc. etc.  Any rebel should know the risk he runs by not conforming to the vast majority. 

Personal sexual relations is another classic example of how love works.  When you go into a relationship, there are certain, expectations that you will be attaching yourself too, once you get involved with the person.  Depending upon the person you are indebted too, and the extent of their rigidity.  You will no longer be allowed to have sexual feelings for any other human species, you will no longer be allowed to have close ties with persons of the opposite sex, and you will no longer be allowed to have your own identity.  You will give up your identity as an individual in exchange for an identity as a couple.  Then you will be expect to perform up to the image that your partner has made for you.  If you do this well, you will be entitled to have love ever after.  If you do not do this well, then you will be on your own completely void of any support from the partner who no longer loves you.

I think what love really is, is nothing more than a contract.  It is a contract of expected human behavior.  Whether it be social, economical, political, biological, physiological, psychological, or sexual.  Whatever area of the human condition you find yourself in, there will always be unspoken rules, and regulations that you are expected to follow, in order to receive support, time, attention, acknowledgement, and approval.  So essentially what we are talking about here is nothing more than group or partnership identity.  A person must fit the image that his peers, or partner wants him to fit, otherwise he will be ostracized from the group or the relationship.  If you reduce this phenomena even further then what we are really saying, is that conformity is all that love is. 

I think what humans are really searching for when they speak of love, is understanding.  Understanding by its definition is a comprehension, through perception.  It is the ability to learn, think, judge etc.  It is an accord of thought and feelings, toward individual judgements, and interpretations.  It is also (and this is very important) a mutual reconciliation of differences.  Along with a disposition towards compassion, tolerance, and kindness.  Even the ideas of love and understanding are vastly different.  While love’s definition remains flighty, momentary, and simplistic.  Understanding’s definition is filled with layers, clearer meanings, and much more depth.  In the definition of understanding it is not required that a person fit a hidden agenda or a list of unspoken rules.  Rather it acknowledges from the get go, the important fact, that we are all different and that it should be expected that those differences be acknowledged, and respected through reconciliation.  Furthermore understanding leaves no blind spot, it has no closet door to be locked away, and it leaves plenty of room for the weird, twisted, deviant, bizarre, and undefined.  Where love abolishes where it cannot reside, understanding moves in closer and deeper, to the realms that love has cast away.  Understanding because it has no definition can move into the corridors of sexual perversion, social psychopathology, demented ideology, and iconoclastic suicidal tendency’s of the most deviant form.  Because understanding is based on perception, it does not need to judge, condemn, or even justify its behavior.  It simply posses the power and the ability to see the scenes, or the world, from the eyes of the observer.  No matter how anti-social, (anti-loving?) they might be. 

When we speak of “un-conditinal” love, or love that knows no boundaries, or love that never dies, or love that can withstand the test of time.  Or love that conquers all fear, or love that we would be willing to die for, or love that will be faithful to the end, or love that will last forever.  What we are really talking about is understanding, not love.  When we utter the words at the marriage altar, “to love and to cherish, all the days of your lives till death do you part” what we are really implying is the understanding of the other person.  That vow really has nothing to do with love at all.  If it did it would read something like this: “do you take this image in your mind, to hold and to mold, into what you want them to be, all the day’s of your lives, until you can’t reconcile your differences and you have to file for a divorce.”  That is what love is really saying, because love is what comes with an inner mind frame, the certain specific way’s that we want and expect another person to be. 

What we are searching for when we go into a personal relationship, (a sexual relationship) is understanding, not love.  No one wants to be told what do to, or find out twenty years down the road that they are living and sleeping with a complete stranger.  What we do want is to feel special, and different, and unique in the eyes of our lover.  Why do you think people always say:  “I’ve found the right one for me.”  It isn’t because they have found love, after all anyone can have love as long as there is a social contract of expectations and proper human behavior.  The reason people go to romance movies, and read soggy novels, is because the idea of finding the right one, implies being recognized for your own uniqueness in the eyes of another.  And what is it that makes us unique, other than our little quirks and odd habits, that we can’t ever seem to get away from?  In a strange way love actually destroys what is sets out to obtain.  Because we are born different, and because one of the deepest roots of human desire is to be different, then love is actually an enemy to the other person, because it attempts to smooth out or completely annihilated their individuality.  How is that for irony?  Maybe we should all start wearing black to weddings, and bring our handkerchiefs too!

Now people will say that there has to be some right and wrong, some good and bad.  If we don’t have proper decency, and altruistic human behavior, then all hell will break loose.  Anarchy will result if we don’t have morals, or standards, or ideals, or ethics.  However look at what we have right now.  People in prison, people that are locked away, people who won’t talk to each other because of something they said, or did, or didn’t do.  Our society is completely fragmented, and falling apart, and we are worried about anarchy?  Oh but we have love, we have men and women, and mothers, and fathers, and lovers, and brothers and bosses, and bishops, and presidents who all say they love us.  But what about our closet sex, our family secrets, our nasty divorces, our dead end jobs, our grudge match’s with our parents, our children who won’t talk to us, not to mention wars, unemployment, and domestic violence.  Haven’t we all had enough love yet?  Can’t we see what love creates?  It isn’t our enemy’s that we divorce, molest, disown, ignore, or murder.  It is the people that we love.  Which is why love is always an illusion, because love always creates a specific acceptable mold for people to fit in, and when they don’t fit it, then love shows it’s true face, which is destruction.  That’s what people are really saying when they tell you that they love you.  They are saying:  “I want to destroy you.”  Obviously they don’t mean it that way, they are good intending people, they just don’t know what love really is.  If people really knew what love was, I don’t think they would want it.  But because they are under the impression that love is accepting, loyal, and permanent then they go after it. 

If anything is accepting, loyal, or permanent it would have to be understanding.  Because understanding is flexible, it has no right or wrong, it has a wide open scope in which to see the world, and most important of all it takes the shape of experience, not of expectation. 

The ramifications for this are huge, because it would indeed change the way in which we saw the world, ourselves, and each other.  With no good, and evil, right and wrong, ethical, and non-ethical, then the entire focus of society would shift from one of love to one of understanding.  Or in other words transforming a view of expectations, into a view of experience.  To eliminate all human behavior from ethical consideration is too drastically alter our interaction with each other.  However just because there is no ethic’s, that doesn’t mean there is no justice.  Keep in mind ethic’s only exists for the purpose of the human who is “acting” ethical.  Ethics arise for the benefit of the ego, not for any sort of human connection.  Humans are ethical because of the love from others that they receive by being ethical.  In other words by being ethical they are reaping rewards for their behavior, such as a positive self-image, social approval, high standing in the eyes of others, and conditions with benefits from family, peers, and lovers.  By eliminating ethic’s what do we have left?  No not anarchy, remember anarchy is a result of the oppression from rules and regulations, or to be blunt, anarchy results as a rebellion against love.  If we removal all ethic’s then the only thing left standing is human experience.  Do you realize how revolutionary this is?  If all we have left is human experience, then the only thing left to do is connect to those experiences via understanding.  How profound indeed!  By destroying love, (the destroyer of understanding) we arrive at a place of common ground, it is then a ground of unity, of connection, based upon the understanding of all human experiences.  At this level there is no need for ethics because everyone is free to do what they will.  And by being free we are allowed to just be ourselves.  And what do we really want?  We want to express ourselves in our uniqueness, again remember the inclination toward love, is really the impulse toward understanding, which is a perspective that can recognize originality.  That is what it means to be ourselves, it is to be original, to be what no one else can be.  To be able to go to work and do a job that no one else can do, to be able to say: “now this is a truly original piece of work, this work is truly me.”  Would not this solve a multitude of economical problems?  And what threat would there be of anarchy?  Why would someone revolt if they were satisfied in every possible way through an individual working performance? 

What else would we want if we were free of love?  We would want to worship, and imagine, and question the nature of God.  To give sway to whatever compulsive thought or idea, that came into our minds, about the potential of a divine creator.  Think about the implication of this, wouldn’t such a non-ethical approach completely eliminate the need for all wars, and religious abolishment’s of damnation’s and judgements?  How could there be chaos without the love of religion?  The only thing left would be the freedom to act in the spirit of whatever spontaneities happened to arise within us.  And without any ethical consideration, our only reaction would be that of observational viewing.  There would be no stance to take other than witnessing another human, perform whatever ritual he wanted, in whatever way he wanted.