Free Double Double by Ken Grimes Page A

Hamlet; nothing in the play adequately explains his inability to kill Claudius.)
    I think this was the problem with Mrs. D. and me. That I didn’t know what the reason was for her anger became almost a metaphor. Because even when I thought I knew, I didn’t know. Neither did she.
    She poured alcohol on it. I did, too, to a lesser degree. That got the anger down to embers, but it still burned, and after not too long, the flames shot up again.
    Because nobody knew what caused it. Except that we caused it, a kind of double arson.
    Double, double toil and trouble,
    Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
    I wonder if there are things that, if acknowledged, would sink us faster than any fifth of gin. I wonder if there are ways of behaving that we simply cannot manage, like a tearful goodbye, or even a tearful hello.
    My father died when I was five. I remember my mother telling me about his death and adding, “Don’t cry.” I might have looked at that injunction throughout my life as bearing more weight than it merited. “Don’t cry” is so often a knee-jerk response to a situation, doing little more than marking the other person’s responses. It’s a breathing space while you think of something that might be more comforting. “Now, don’t cry.” “Be good.” “Be quiet.” Phrases that are the mere ghosts of meaning.
    Given half a chance, put a foot wrong, and we’re all capable of going down. We know we’re standing at the edge—and what does a good stiff drink do? Pulls us back just in time.
    Hello. Goodbye.
    Don’t cry.
    If I think on all of this too long, I will be overcome by lack of purpose, failure, or nostalgia.
    Nostalgia, someone once said, is the death of hope.
    I guess I won’t drink to that.

8
KG
Hawaii Five-0
    T o paraphrase Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, some alcoholics are born, some alcoholics are made, and some have alcoholism thrust upon them. I earned an A in all three categories. My experiences when I was eleven and twelve living in Hawaii would be in the “made” category. Trying to escape from my life through books no longer worked. Having to fend off the bullies at a new school, followed by the loneliness of being by myself six hours a day in the college library at the University of Hawaii where my mother taught English, was the harbinger of what I would embrace in high school.
    During the bicentennial summer of 1976, we rented our gray shingle home in middle-class suburban Washington, D.C., and temporarily moved into a rental in the Ilikai hotel in Oahu. Situated in downtown Waikiki, it was famous as one of the locations for the filming of Hawaii Five-O . I even appeared as an extra in oneepisode, striding confidently behind Jack Lord as he hurried by the swimming pool on the way to meet Danno.
    Summer was over too soon. I had to stop spending hours alone at the pool and the beach where I gazed at the girls. In Washington, D.C., I was lucky to attend a small, relatively inexpensive private school based on the philosophies of German philosopher Rudolf Steiner. I was used to small classes. No bad behavior was tolerated, the teachers were completely devoted to their students, and the students were expected to obey their teachers.
    Here in the middle of a verdant paradise, my new junior high school campus was old and dirty. The palm trees drooped as if tired from the years of bearing the weight of children. The grounds were worn, the grass a dull green, and the school buildings like Quonset huts from World War II.
    I hated going to the school’s bathroom. Located in a small building separate from the main school building, it was small and smelly. Several of the older Hawaiian boys seemed to spend most of their time in there. When I went in on the first day of school, they grinned at me and said, “Hey, brah, want to buy a joint? Only a quarter.”
    I didn’t know what they were talking about, but the fear