ACTon

We left the interstate for a canyon highway. Taz and I stared out the windows at the ugly barren landscape. He tells me he picked this place to get clean cause its near nothing. No way out. I did too. We drive through dirt mountains sparsely covered with brush and veined with two track roads to nowhere. We pass the add outcropping of buildings that I’m sure million dollar ranches but only look like a collection of landscaped pole barns form this distance. Nothing is scenic. My vague plan is to stay out here in the desert, away from Hollywood, but how can I? This is Mars.

As we turn off the highway Taz points out an arrow shaped sign with Acton painted on it. It’s not just a rehab, it’s a town. Its funny cause I’d been thinking it had some deeper meaning, Act On your problems or whatever. Take ACTion. We drive by the road into the town. Old store fronts surrounded by shacks and trailers. Spahn ranch. We’re in a valley surround by rocks dirt and tumbleweeds. I wonder how many bodies are buried out there.

Harbor Hall

There were usually a few guys malingering on the porch til lights out. One night I hung out with them and found out it wasn’t only the last drag on their cigarette that was keeping them up late. It was also for the blow-jobs that were offered up by an old native woman who set up camp a few nights a week behind a hedge across the alley. I was being a wet blanket cause none of them wanted me to see what they were up to. At first I thought they were afraid I’d snitch, then I saw her, and understood their shame. She was big—as in wide—and boxy. Short dark hair was tucked behind her ears. Her mouth lacked teeth. Her head was built for blow jobs. She stood still for a moment, hands on hips, then ducked behind the bushes.

cats at Acton

Richard was one of my cabin mates. He liked cats and had adopted one of the creepy feral ones. He’d bring it in at night so it didn’t get cold. I don’t remember if the cabins were heated at night, it doesn’t seem likely. It did get cold, and even snowed one night. I don’t like cats so when he wasn’t around or wasn’t looking I’d toss it out the front door. Next to cats, crystal meth was his favorite thing, so when he wasn’t going on about his cat back home, he told the usual meth-head paranoid conspiracy tales. Copters hovering above his house, dropping balloons filled with anthrax spores. Mexican ninos crawling into his yard with explosives strapped to their backs. He claimed a DEA agent posing as a mailman had tried to kill him by slipping a rattle snake through the mail slot in his front door. His storytelling was detail oriented and the stories were always long. He didn’t need us to respond so it was sort of calming to sit there in the sun with his voice as soundtrack. He said he wasn’t there from court, that he wasn’t hiding out. I didn’t really care. I worked from the perspective that everyone was telling the truth. It was easier.

harbor hall

Harbor Hall

An old rich guy named Walter was the CEO—or whatever—of the place. He was the money man and when he was around we were supposed to pay attention to him. I spotted him as a predator right off. He liked to hug the better looking and/or younger residents. When he moved in on me the first time I blocked him by extending my hand between us as a rigid barrier. He had no choice but to abandon his intended flesh-press and grab the hand for an awkward shake. The aborted embrace left our faces no more than a couple inches apart. I briefly glimpsed my own reflection in his rheumy eyes then looked over at JD to see if he had caught the maneuver. His smile indicated he had. He’d told me that the old man had blindsided him with a hug that’d quickly turned into a discreet dry hump before he could break it off. I told him about the hand trick and that I’d demonstrate it for him if I got a chance although I wasn’t sure if I was in his target group. Turned out I was.

the fail

twenty pounds of gut hang over the waist band of his rust stained gap cords. crusty enchilada sauce embellishes his soiled brown hoodie hidden under which is the gray stubble of his once shiny vibrant bleached blond hair. his once pride in appearence, philosphy even, has been sucked away by the rotted and filthy self propegating self sustaining medusa head thing called treatment center. The fluorescent ceilings of aa meeting rooms spotlight his external disinegration unkindly...clean and vibrant and sharp once he will emerge a fecund and rolly polly hippy, a thing to hate. pray for him, pray for mike m for he, I, is an alcoholic!