Denis Johnson, fiction writer

this is a production of Cornell University this is from a I guess I would call it a piece which consists of a just a series of letters all written by the same person and I'll just read some excerpts it's called the starlight on idaho dear Jennifer Johnston well to catch you up on things the last four years have really kicked my ass I try to get back to that point I was at in the fifth grade where you sent me a note with a heart on it said dear mark I really like you and I turned that note over and wrote on the back of it do you like me or love me and you made me a new note with 20 hearts on it and sent it back down the aisles and it said I love you I love you I love you I would count there to be about fifteen or sixteen hooks in my belly with lines heading off into the hands of people I haven't seen since a long time back and that's one of them but just to catch you up in the last five years I've been arrested about eight times shot twice etc etc and I think I got run over once but I don't even remember it I've loved a couple thousand women but I think you're number one on the list that's all folks over and out signed Cass in the fifth grade you used to call me mark full name mark Cassandra PS where you might ask am i funny that you asked after all those adventures I'm at an undisclosed location right back here once again in Ukiah the armpit of Northern California dear old buddy and beloved sponsor Bob now hear the latest from the Starlight addiction recovery center on Idaho Avenue in its glory days better known as the starlight motel I believe you might have holed up here once or twice yes I believe you might have laid up drunk in room 8 this very one I'm sitting in at this desk writing this letter which is one of the few I'll actually be mailing because I need a few things which are in that box in your closet anyway I hope they're still there I think there's a pair of jeans and I think there's a few pairs of socks and in fact if you would just bring the whole box if you did that you would increase my holdings between six and seven hundred percent I'm down to one of everything except for two of these socks which are both white but they're not the same brand my good old boots collapsed but I've been given an excellent pair of second-hand running shoes here but I'm writing to tell you this that I'm not running anywhere I'm standing my ground I intend to do the deal and here's why because the last four years have positively kicked my ass in the last four years I've been shot jailed declared insane etc and even though I'm just 32 years old I'm the only person I've ever met who's actually ever been in a coma I've repeatedly been told by medical people who probably know what they're talking about you are lucky to be alive and nobody around here has any idea why you aren't dead Wow I think I just took a nap they've got us on antabuse here and sometimes blip you just fade out and dream in a few days that's supposed to pass they won't let me call you but I'm pretty sure they'll let you come to family group which is on Sunday 2:00 to 4:00 before I mail this I will check if it's okay for you to come I'd sure like it if you did I wouldn't mind seeing a friendly face in the circle there I'm not the type to trudge along I'm the type to come shooting off the block get 20 yards ahead of everybody else and go stumbling and sprawling off onto the sidelines with a collapsed lung and pretty soon I hear the others here they come I hear them trudging steadily along on their road to happy destiny I've got to have somebody reminding me to stay in my lane and take it easy that's where my buddy Bob see comes in he's my sponsor in the a a but the thing about your sponsor is you've got to call him I don't like to call him he's always got something wise and reasonable to say so if he turned up with my box of stuff and two cents of input for the family group discussion what a relief Cass dear old dad and your grandma well grandma that was entertaining what you pulled in family group last Sunday but ridiculous come on back some time to keep a lid on it okay I don't need grandmotherly help I need trained and certified counselors to point a few things out and I can't have my grandma's family group red dogging the whole discussion and preaching about Jesus Christ and Satan or anyway the last 30 minutes of a two-hour group that's how much time you took up jiving on Heaven and Hell thanks a million thank you for representing the cassandra' family in a most standout way I'm not surrounded by demons here these are trained and certified counselors I am through explaining this family to each other it's G damn ridiculous is what it is I guess I can swear here grandma as you won't be receiving this as I won't be sending it do you remember when the Starlight was a motel I remember when it was a motel and used to sit out on the bench at the bus stop across the street really miserable gals with blotchy skin and dense in their head who've been run out of San Francisco you have to be pretty down on your luck to get knocked off the market in the Tenderloin I mean you wouldn't cross the street for them but I guess once in a while some desperate character from one of these rooms in the Starlight would make the journey do you know what I've had one or two minutes here where I might have done it myself but no more the bus stop benches are empty as far as I know the benches aren't even there anymore I don't think the bus runs past here no more I mean this is not a family to get their coat of arms tattooed on your chest do you remember when bro broke his girlfriend's nose in the living room and said there I rest my case do you remember when dad scooped his hand down in his soggy cereal and just sat there staring at nothing for about 22 minutes with a glop of it in his hand do you remember when John got his picture in the papers in Dallas being arrested and he sent it to us in the mail like it was really something to write home about you know what I remember most about that picture the boarders were all ragged because they had to tear it out of the page with his fingers my oldest brother is somebody who the state of Texas won't let him possess scissors that's your litter of geniuses jailhouse geniuses in orange jailhouse overalls ram full of sin and picking up trash by the road stuffing trash in white sacks along the interstate incidentally if this program works and if I get it together if I reach a point of balance I will enroll in college that's not what I started out to say but if I get so I can look people in the eye hit so I can make change and carry on conversations I will get a part-time job and enroll in college but as for my grandma as for last family group day dear Pope John Paul do you have two first names or is Paul your last name like your mr. Paul and I know it's not just dumb luck I know I ordered the circumstances I mean I get that glass as far as touching my lower lip and next thing I know I'm on the ghost bus to Vegas there's a certain power in that you know it's like if you don't like the movie you're in you just grab this jug going by and it takes you and flings you in a completely different story what do they feed you when you're the Pope try this stuff around here sometime for lunch they give you a marshmallow and a coffee bean it's a salvage yard for people who totaled their souls called the Starlight Recovery Center in Ukiah California on Idaho Avenue I he'll what's wrong with me I won't be sending the letter to the Pope but I'm telling you I think I've been dealing with the devil and I could use some expert coaching there really is a devil he really does talk to me and I think it might be coming from some antabuse giving me side effects but be that as it may I need to know the rules so far I think I found out that I don't have to obey his orders I can just ignore him sort of but if I keep pissing him off is he going to get after my people Mark Cassandra dear Satan send your mr. business you are one big bubble and I'd hate to be there when you go pop because then I get a lot of really rank stuff on me hang on this is just water I mean I'm here to change or die trying but all I can think about is if this was still the old starlight the motel of bad dreams I'd scraped together a couple hundred dollars and lay up here drunk until they smelled my corpse and broke the lock but everything changes and the star lights all different and I better get there too and find a different way of filling up than alcohol I like the thing this guy Wendell was saying in group he put out the idea of pouring in the right thoughts into our poison thinking like pouring good water into a glass of dirty water until I'm filling up and spilling over and just keep going like that until I'm running clean my grandma puts it that Kass if you keep drinking your babies will come out cross-eyed and you'll end up buried in a strange town with your name spelled wrong on your grave dear Melanie you know I'm glad I met you and heard the story from you in group about your daughter dying and your purse it would have made me even sicker if it was just a story about some person I could only think about like somebody I could only imagine but it isn't as hard since I got to really meet you and hear about it in person because you have a sweet sincere quality you're bouncy smiley young for 61 years and no matter how hard you've been knocked around I saw you in a light you're beautiful these last four years have chewed several giant holes right through me I thought I was finished before but that was minimum damage compared to this your fellow inmate Mark Cassandra Cass dear Satan I did not enjoy it at your Jamboree last night dear doctor I'm going to roll a cigarette and I'd like to light it and get through the entire thing in a state of sanity I did see the devil one time dear doc in group the other night a guy just like me said I woke up in Vegas sticky broke and confused a perfect description in that place I've never gone there just woke up there that guy was funny reminded me of Gary Cooper I'm getting depressed depressed I think this antabuse is going wrong on me you said we'd feel rundown or sleepy two or three days to start with but you forgot to say prepare to fall down through a trapdoor in the bottom of your soul I mean when I lie on my bed in this room by myself I get dragged down to a black place I've heard people talking right outside my window who aren't there when I go look around other folks I mean real folks folks who are really there I feel absolutely fine they talk I talk everything appears as normal get in this room and shut the door behind me and I'm alone with somebody who's not there dear friends and neighbors in the universe dear Rolling Stone and TV Guide I think I need to tell you I am totally out of Kools some kind person has donated a whole can of bugler that we can roll out of but I tell you what bugler smoke burns like fire from your lips on down to the pit of your lungs so if you brought me a couple packs of my brand know what I mean cools I've written thousands upon thousands of these letters and the reason I don't write out run out of ink I don't think I'm actually writing too many of them down or any of them I think I'm just wandering hiking marching all around this room like it's a small tiny mental institution hallucinating writing letters on imaginary paper where I just was was the road of hell black boiling dirt and burning diesel smoke nothing burns as diesel people by the side run over squashed killed and dead devil laughing so close I saw the veins in his teeth you don't get me my ticket says to Texas he rolled the stone aside and in the cave the mysteries flitted like bats and insects hear the answers to everything said the devil like UFOs and life beyond the grave like what was Elvis thinking what was Elvis thinking and feeling in those last dark days like just who masterminded JFK and the cave was his mouth like a bathroom full of stink and his tongue popped with cheap sweat yeah boy he dragged me down to his Jamboree dragged me down through the toilet formerly known as my life down through this nest of talking spiders known as my head down through the bottom of my grave with my name spell ground on the stone standing on his stump shouting jive just get a whiff of sulfur and wet fear come read these rank aromas for the purposes of course of scientific inquiry alone the mayor is inside already come it's all respectable Satan says the gamblers shake the dice and shake I the gamblers Snake Eyes in paradise Satan shouts you know who Judas was he worked for me I run the Jamboree and Hollywood and Vegas and start all the wars vampire breather of the baby's breath I the worker of the strings to jerk the fools dancing at my hellhound hoedown Jamboree glue Huffer x' jelly rollers paint suckers bikers truckers Cowboys teachers preachers about a million hipsters hooked on dope shaky alkies with their nerves burned up hey God where is you you ain't nowhere we search for some faint signal from your power all that just now right now while I'm writing it down not your boy Cass dr. so-and-so I forget your name listen to me I can't get this across to anybody in this ridiculous pathetic excuse for a rehab but I have to tell you I think this ant abuse you gave us is backfiring with some serious side effects I lie on that bed over there and my mood goes black and then I can feel my mind my actual mind pulling itself into I hear the devil laughing and I hear him ordering aim to kill people don't worry he's been running me all my life but he can't tell me straight out what to do there's no way I would ever take a direct order from anybody that's why I never went into the military but if you read the papers you see every day where somebody just jumps up and chops the baby's head off and I have to tell you there's been some of that in my very own family my mother when I was four years old went psycho herself and has been in prison for 28 years in Gatesville Texas and prison has not in any way reformed her she should have gotten out by now but she won't behave and they just keep adding on my sponsor Bob cornfield dropped around finally with a box of my stuff not much a small box and the contents inside still rattled he gets his cigarette going standing here in this room room eight looking around like he invented to place these a a guys are faking about 80% of it but let's just hang on to the truth they're clean and sober and I'm the one woke up moaning with his head in the toilet not two weeks back I think to see me here made him sad but he won't show pity not allowed I told him I feel like I might be Jesus Christ and the devil is sending me messages and he said you can't be the second coming because I am I think it was a joke but I've lost my talent for humor it scared me when he said it everything they say sounds very deep their voices sound like they're echoing out of eternity let's just face the music and the facts somebody's going out of my mind your patient at the starlight mark Cassandra just call me Cass jeez I'm out of pages I'm sorry

Channel: Cornell University

Views: 31,492

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Cornell University, Denis Johnson, playwright, memoirist, fiction, writer, reading

Id: TbdVKF-TuII

Length: 17min 38sec (1058 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 16 2009