ENTER THE MONKEY KING

January, 2011. Berin and Ayla had been gone for about two weeks when Ivan started talking about monkey dust again...and this time, he called it by name. We had both been depressed and out of sorts since the bleak little Christmas we had spent together in the apartment on Elm Street. The weather was cold and snowy, and as the snow accumulated in mountainous drifts outside our living room window, we entertained ourselves by watching movies and Family Guy episodes, which, thanks to the free cable we had somehow managed to acquire with the help of one of Ivan's friends, who was apparently gifted in hooking up the wires left behind by the apartment's previous tenants without the knowledge of the cable company, seemed to always be playing on some channel or other. It was one of our few bright spots. Money wasn't just tight, it was close to nonexistant, and for the first time in my life, I had to struggle to make ends meet. I'd lived on the edge of poverty before, but I'd been a lot younger and infinitely more confident about my ability to make it as a writer. In college, which I attended in my early twenties, I'd had to work as a waitress to pay the bills my student loans and grants didn't cover, and had somtimes even resorted to pilfering toilet paper from the rest rooms of fast food restaurants. But, back then, I'd been part of a community of young, cash-strapped students, some of whom were also single mothers like myself. We had known that our moneyless state was merely a temporary one and had taken solace in our respective dreams of a successful future following out graduation from school. This was different. I was ashamed of having squandered my divorce settlement money in such a short time, and too embarrassed to reach out for help from the usual government sources. Finally, after giving in and applying for food stamps, I learned from my case worker that, even though I hadn't worked for a year, I was probably eligible for at least some kind of unemployment compensation. The thought hadn't even occurred to me, despite all the times my ex-husband had collected unemployment during sporadic lay-offs from the railroad where he had worked during the years we had been married. So, hoping for the best, I made the necessary calls, and was awarded the sum of $295 a week. It seemed like a windfall at the time, even though it was barely enough to cover the $675 monthly rent on the Elm Street apartment. But it was at least better than living off the money that Ivan made from selling his monthly prescription of suboxon.

Suboxone is a form of Buprenorphine HCl and naloxone HCl, a synthetic drug used to treat opiate addiction. Although I wasn't aware of it until just after that Christmas, Ivan had been taking suboxone ever since returning from Denmark the previous year, even though he insisted that he wasn't really addicted to opiates. However, he told me, many of his friends in Europe who had been involved with opiates, mainly heroin, had taken it regularly and urged him to try it as well. It gave him "energy", he explained, and when he relocated back to Bangor, he had gone to a local clinic where he'd been able to get a prescription of his own. This seemed a little suspect to me. After all, I wondered, what kind of doctor prescribes an anti-opiate drug to someone without bothering to substantiate whether that person is actually addicted to opiates. But my concerns were inconsequential to Ivan's way of looking at the situation. For him, suboxone was not only a source of energy, which he claimed to need in order to get through the day, it was a source of much-needed income. At the beginning of the month, when he recieved his prescription, he would fill it at the drugstore and then divide the pills into those he intended to keep for himself and those marked for sale. While I did my best to keep our little household afloat with the money from my unemployment checks and the food stamps I received each month, Ivan made the rounds of his Suboxone customers, all of whom seemed more than willing to shell out ten bucks for one of his little orange pills. Some of them, Ivan told me, would even pay half-price for a small piece of a pill. My $295 a week seemed like a hard-won pittance compared to the $100 or so Ivan would bring home after just one afternoon of Suboxone sales. It didn't seem to matter to him that he was engaging in a highly illegal activity that could, if he were ever caught, land him in jail.

"Everyone does it," he told me, with more than a hint of disdain toward my "mainstream" attitude. "Besides, you've bought Ritalin off the street. You're in no position to judge."

By "everyone", he of course was referring to the other people he knew for whom drug use was a daily part of life. But they weren't people I respected, even though some of them were regular visitors to our apartment. In fact, that had become a huge bone of contention between us. Ivan had always been someone who collected a wude array of friends and acquaintances from all kinds of unusual backgrounds and walks of life. Naturally outgoing and blissfully unburderned with the normal amount of prejudice that most of us have to overcome when it comes to deciding with whom we are willing to associate in social and personal situations, he seemed almost pathologically determined to take every new person he met on face value. If I voiced misgivings about a new relationship, he would often become angry, denouncing me as "arrogant" or "pompous." But, until now, most of his friends had been reasonably intelligent people with at least some sort of ambition in regard to making a good life for themselves. The ragtag contingent of suboxone users who had begun stopping by our apartment were an entirely new wave of humanity. One which I mistrusted right away. When Berin and Ayla had lived with us, we had maintained a semblance of a normal life, even with the fighting and discourse that had so frequently marked Berin and Ivan's day to day interaction.

Now, I found myself kept up half the night by a steady succession of nocturnal visitors who Ivan would immediately usher into his room, where they would sometimes stay for hours, talking loudly and taking God knows what kind of drugs. I knew it had to be something more than Suboxone. Ivan's claim that the drug gave him energy were belied by his inability to stay awake in the daytime. More than once, he had even fallen asleep in the middle of a conversation, or over dinner, his eyes glazing over as he slumped forward into his plate of food. Worried for his health, I had even called the clinic where he got his suboxone prescription and told them my fears. The nurse I spoke to had informed me that she couldn't dicuss his case with me. And of course when Ivan found out that I had called, he was livid, and, true to form, had lashed out by bringing up my own Ritalin use.

"I just don't want these people here," I told him. "It doesn't matter if I do too much Ritalin. It doesn't even matter if you're doing other drugs besides Suboxone. I just don't like having these people around."

But it was a losing battle. The way Ivan saw it, the fact that he contributed to the rent with the money he made from selling his Suboxine gave him carte blanche to have whoever he wanted in the apartment. And because I knew we needed the money, I didn't argue as fervently as I might have otherwise. By the end of January, I felt marginalized and oddly superfluous in what had become my own home. I knew things were going on inside Ivan's room...things of which I was sure I would not approve...but depression had started to get the better of me once again, and, as had always been the case, I tried to stave it off by withdrawing into a daily, often nightly, regime of writing. I had been working for some time on a screenplay, which, with the help of an agent I had managed to secure in New York, I hoped would be my ticket back to "the real world." Day after day, night after night, I sat at my computer in the living room, music playing to shut out the sound of Ivan and his friends' voices as they congregated behind the closed door of his bedroom several feet away. Through it all, Ivan continued to display signs of excessive drug use. It wasn't until I overheard him talking to one of his friends one night that I finally discovered what he had been taking along with his regular doses of Suboxone. It was Klonopin, a drug used to treat panic attacks and anxiety. Taken with Suboxone, was affecting Ivan's system like a large dose of sleeping pills. Angry and terrified by the possible physical consequences, I confronted him, demanding that he stop taking it. He responded with the usual sneer and battery of aspersions directed at my use of Ritalin. But this time I was adamnant. It was time to make a choice: stop using klonopin, or move out of the apartment.

"You can't kick me out of my own apartment," he replied.

"It's not your apartment," I told him. "I pay more money toward the rent than you do."

"But you couldn't pay it without my help, " he countered.

Unfortunately, he was right. As usual, the argument went nowhere. His friends returned that night, ensconcing themselves in his bedroom, while I took my place at my desk in the living room and wrote into the night.

It was a few days after the klonopin revelation that Jared Lawson stopped by. As usual, he was accomnpanied by one of the many young women who always seemed to hover around him, like groupies around a rock star. Like most of the rest of them, this one was somewhere in her early to mid twenties, reasonably attractive, and dressed like a trailer park fashionista in a tight, glittery tank top and hip-hugging jeans underneath a short black leather jacket. I couldn't figure out what seemed to make him so appealing to young women. He wasn't good-looking, and with his black hoodie pulled up tightly around his bony face, he still reminded me of a walking, talking cadaver. If there was anything that set him apart from the rest of Ivan's friends, it was that he was, without question, intelligent. He seemed to have an almost encyclopediac knowledge of the drugs he bought and sold. No matter what drug it was, if asked about it, he could rattle off not only its medical name, but its known side effects, the date when it had first been manufactured, and the penalty for having it in one's possession. Apart from his storehouse of drug knowledge, he had an unexpectedly philosophical streak as well, occasionally quoting such philosophical luminaries as Kirkegaard and Nietzsche in the midst of conversation. But on this particular day, as he and Ivan greeted each other, and then slipped off into the privacy of Ivan's bedroom with the unknown young woman following behind, I had the sense that there was something new going on. As it turned out, they were only in Ivan's room for a short time when Ivan reemerged and made his way across the living room to where I was sitting at my computer. Before I could say anything, he opened a small plastic baggie no bigger than a quarter, and sprinkled a small line of white powder on my desk.

"I want you to try this," he said.

"Ivan..." I began, but he was in no mood to take "no" for an answer.

"Come on, Mom," he pressed. "I just want you to try it. Just once. Please."

"Is it that speed you keep talking about?" I asked.

"It's called monkey dust," he said. "Jared gave it to me. He wants you to try it, too. Come on, just do it. It's free."

I stared at the white substance on my desk. It didn't look like anything I hadn't seen before. It could have been anything. But from the look on Ian's face, I knew that he thought that it was something very special. "Aren't you almost out of Ritalin?" he asked.

"I have enough for tonight," I replied.

"Right. And then you'll be out," he said. "But if you snort one line of this, you can write all night on it, and still have enough Ritalin to write tomorrow. One line will last you til morning."

"No," I said. "I don't want it."

Ivan looked at me as though I were a drowning woman who had just refused to grab hold of the life preserver he was offering me.

"Okay, well, I'll just leave it here in case you change your mind," he said. "But you really should try it. It's the answer to all of your problems."

I studied his face. He seemed more alert and upbeat than he had for weeks. And the sneer which usually accompanied his references to Ritalin versus the drug he was now calling "monkey dust" had been replaced by a strangely earnest expression. As his mother, the expression worried me. As a writer perpetually in search of energy to maintain my "creative regime", I had to admit that I was intrigued. But I didn't tell Ivan that as he returned to his room and closed the door. I continued to write for several hours, then, feeling my focus beginning to wane, reached for my vial of Ritalin. The sight of the white powder still on my desk distracted me for a moment. I glanced over at the closed door of Ivan's bedroom. The three of them were still in there, oddly quiet, and I began to wonder if I should check on them to make sure that they were all right. As I was trying to decide, the bedroom door opened, and Jared emerged from the dim-lit, silent space, his groupie behind him. He paused and looked at me.

"Did you try it?" he asked.

"Of course not," I replied. "I don't take speed."

"It's not speed," he said. "It's a combination of a lot of different drugs, but in their purest form. It's like nothing you've ever had before. Just make sure you drink a lot of water. You don't want to get dehydrated."

Great, I thought. Health tips from a drug dealer. I told him, again, that I had no intention of sampling his wares. He smiled.

"I told Ivan not to push you," he said.

Then he and his groupie left. I sat staring after them for a moment, then got up and went to check on Ivan. Poking my head into his room, I found him sitting on his bed, a drawing pad propped open against his knees as he sketched intently on one of the pages.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Drawing Berin," he said.

It had been a long time since I had seen Ivan pick up his sketch pad and draw anything. His interest in music had succumbed to a similar fate since Berin and Ayla's departure for Denmark. For a moment, I felt a spurt of relief that he was actually doing something relatively normal after spending hours just sitting in his room with his two visitors. Then suspicion took over.

"Why now?" I asked.

"It's the dust," he replied. "It opens a creative portal. It's amazing."

There was that word again. Amazing. I watched him for a moment while he continued to draw, seemingly oblivious to me, then returned to my desk. Taking my place once more in front of my computer, I thought of how few Ritalin pills were left in my vial, and how much effort it would take to secure replacements in the week that remained between tonight and my next visit to the doctor. Except for my Ritalin, and the occasional pain pill I'd been prescribed over the years, I had no real history with drugs. Mostly, I was scared to take them, afraid that I would be that one isolated person who tried one drug, one time, and just happened to have an adverse reation that ended with my unintended death. But Ian had seemed so much more at peace than he had for weeks. And he was drawing...

I reached for the straw that Ivan had left on my desk, poised it over the little white line of powder, and inhaled. I felt a sudden, bitter rush of discomfort in my nostrils, followed by a bitter, metallic aftertaste in my mouth. Then nothing more. I clicked back onto my computer and resumed my writing. The next time I glanced at the clock, an hour had passed. I was astounded. An hour? How was that possible? I had been writing for two hours without flagging, totally immersed in my work, and feeling as good as I had felt since Christmas. More than good. If Ritalin gave me the energy I needed to focus on my work, this so-called "monkey dust" gave me the same energy multiplied by ten, with the added bonus of a euphoric edge that I had to admit was pretty welcome. It wasn't some scary, dangerous new drug at all. And, as Ivan had told me over and over again, it was legal. If it was legal, it had to be all right.

I stopped writing and got up to check on Ivan again. He was still in the same position on his bed, still drawing, but this time he looked up at me as I stood in his doorway.

"Did you--"

"Yes," I said,

He smiled, as though we had just shared a wonderful, new, very important secret.

"It's going to be like Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters," he said. "Just like the sixties when LSD was legal. Dust is going to change people's lives. It's going to open people's minds and taken them to a whole new level of understanding and creativity."

"We'll see," I said.

It was close to four o'clock in the morning when I finally called it quits with my writing and laid down on my bed to try to sleep. But I couldn't sleep. I felt as though I would never sleep again. Restless, I went back to Ivan's room and found him still drawing.

"Can I see what you're done?" I asked.

He showed me his sketch pad. It was filled with the same picture of Berin on almost every page. She was naked with long dark waves of hair swirling around her, as if pushed by wind, and intertwined in the wild strands were strange, small, demonic faces, their features twisted back in grotesque smiles.

"I don't think Berin would find these sketches very flattering," I said.

"It's not really her," Ivan replied, taking back the sketch pad. "It started out being her, but now I'm just drawing what I feel."

Then he went back to his work, drawing more hair, more faces, and more grotesquely demonic smiles.

To be continued....

FIRST DUSTING

December, 2010. My son had been telling me about monkey dust for some time. Only he didn't call it "monkey dust". He called it "this kickass new speed" that he'd obtained through a friend while touting its virtues with the religious fervor of a sinner who had just found Christ. At thirty-two, Ivan had recently returned to Maine from Copenhagen with his girlfriend, Berin, a Danish native, and their four-year-old daughter, Ayla after he had run into complications with his passport. Since their arrival in Bangor, the three of them had lived in a succession of apartments, paying their rent with the help of welfare checks and donations from relatives as they struggled to find their equilibrium as a family. So far, their track record hadn't been a particularly good one. Before Ayla had come into the picture, while still living in Denmark, Ivan and Berin had broken up and gotten back together so many times that it had been impossible to keep up with the stops and starts.

Still, as Ivan's mother, I found his again-off again relationship with Berin in keeping with the mecurial nature of his life since high school. Following graduation, he had taken off with a group of "new agers" for the jungles of Peru where he had paddled down the Amazon and sampled a hallucinagenic concoction courtesy of the jungle locals. Returning from that initial sojurn (bearing gifts which included an ocelot hide he had smuggled past customs) he had spent only a short time in Bangor before taking off once again, this time for Copenhagen where he hoped to explore life in Freestate Christiana, that city's controversial, self-proclaimed "autonomous" community whose residents consider themselves exempt from municipal law and whose involvement in the cannibas trade continues to spark conflict with the Danish government. Before his departure for Copenhagen, Ivan had told me that, in visiting Christiana with its small, but committed community of bohemians, artists, expatriates, and social mavericks, he hoped to find himself among like-minded people who were more interested in increasing their spiritual knowledge than they were in settling into the prescribed strictures of society. Not knowing much about Christiana or its politics, I could only wish him well and try not to worry about my first born son as he struggled to find himself so far away from home. I understood the compulsion he felt to seek out a place where he felt at peace and in synch with those around him. That was the same reason I had taken off for England after high school. I may not have found exactly what I was looking for there, but the experience had taught me a great deal about the world outside the confines of Bangor, Maine. I wanted Ivan to experience the same sense of worldliness. In high school, I had never felt as though I truly fit in, and neither had he. We had a lot in common. I thought that a trip to Denmark would, if nothing else, mark a rite of passage, one that would expand not only his mind, but, perhaps, his soul.

As it turned out, once had finally made it to Christiana, Ivan found himself less than impressed by the so-called "free state" he had heard so much about. He was surprised to find that, even in a community that defined itself by its aversion to violence and intolerance, there was still a considerable degree of politics and back-biting going on. He had gone there searching for spirtual enlightenment, but most of the people he met there were little more than Danish versions of the pot heads and slackers he had known in Bangor. Disappointed, he had left Christinia and intergrated himself into a community of squatters who lived in another part of Copenhagen. Many of them were artists and musicians, leanings that Ivan possessed as well, and, as his life became intertwined with theirs, he developed friendships and attachments that led him into situations that were far beyond my realm of understanding. For the next several years, our communication was limited to sporadic phone calls and emails in which Ivan made brief references to people and places I had never heard of, but which, from the way he talked about them, were clearly important and exciting to him. It was only much later, when he brought Berin back to Maine for a few weeks before they returned once more to Copenhagen, that I began to get a real sense of the changes he had undergone since first leaving home. He was still the same person he had always been---a handsome, fair-haired, round-faced young man whose Scottish and German Jewish heritage on his father's side of the family showed in his pale skin and expressive blue eyes--but there was a new edge to what had always been his naturally gregarious nature. I suspected it had something to do with his relationship with Berin, who, despite her seemingly unpretentious manner, struck me as far more sophisticated and cynical than Ivan. Perhaps that's the way all Danish people were, I thought.

Berin was a beautiful young woman, in her early twenties, with a thick tangle of dusky brown hair that fell around her face and down to her shoulders in a wild mass of waves that accentuated her rounded features, enormous green eyes, and outsized lips. "Exotic" was a phrase that people used frequently to describe her unusual looks. It was an appropriate one. Her mother had been born in Michigan and adopted as a baby by a Danish couple who raised her in Jutland, the peninsula thaqt forms the mainland of Denmark, and a place that Berin often referred to as "provincial", unlike the city of Copenhagen where she had grown up. Her father, who had died of a heroin overdose before she had been born, had, as far as we knew, been Danish. But Berin's dark looks and the sultriness of her facial features hinted at something other than Danish in her heritage. Ivan thought that she had hispanic blood. Berin believed, without anything to substantiate the claim, that she was part black. Whatever her true heritage, she was, without question, an extremely unique young woman, and a definite stand out among the Bangor-ites with whom she and Ivan associated. Attired almost always in black, a cigarette poised ubiquitously between her fingers, she had a way of drawing attention to herself without even trying. Although she was still struggling with English when I first met her, her heavy Danish accent and occasional verbal mishaps couldn't hide her intelligence and sharp wit. It was clear from the start that she and Ivan were deeply in love. Yet, despite that, there was still something about her that made me feel like an outsider in her and Ivan's life.

"Danish people are stand-offish," Ivan told me, when I mentioned my misgivings to him. "It's nothing personal."

Eager to keep thing running smoothly, I accepted his explanation and did my best to get to know the new woman in his life. By that time, I had moved away from Bangor and was living with my husband Michael on fifty-eight acres of land in Brownville, a rural town an hour north of Bangor. Our two children, Ivan's half brother and sister, had grown up there, and were, from all appearances, content with their lives. But things were far from ideal. Married now for over twenty years, with two children, and, for the first time in my life, financially secure, thanks to Michael's job with the railroad, I remained restless. My writing hadn't taken off as I had hoped it would. And as much as I enjoyed certain aspects of country life, I felt keenly the lack of intellectual stimulation that I had known when I'd lived in other places where I'd been able to interact with friends who were writers and with whom conversations didn't invariably include references to woodpiles and ATV's. My restlessness had become a daily issue between Michael and me. He loved living in Brownville, reveling in the close proximity to the woods and nearby lakes. I longed for the city. It was a difficult compromise, and by the time Ivan and Berin returned to Maine with little Ayla in tow, my marriage to Michael was on its last legs. I didn't realize it at the time, but he had already met and fallen in love with another woman whom he had met during his canoing exploits with a group of people who shared his enthusiasm for outdoor activities.

In the fall of 2009, he broke the news to me that he wanted out of our marriage. I was devastated. As unhappy as I was, I had thought that this, my second marriage, was the one that would last. Even though Michael and I had reached a point where we spent more time apart than we did together, I saw no good reason to split up. If nothing else, I believed, it was important to stay together for the sake of our son, Tristan, who still lived at home. But Michael had different ideas. And so, that cold November, just weeks before the start of the holiday season, I found myself alone, facing the prospect of beginning life all over again at the age of fifty-two. Our daughter Hannah had already graduated from college and moved to New York City to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. Tristan, still in high school, decided to move with his father to a rented house closer to Bangor so that he could take advantage of some courses that weren't offered in the Brownville area high school. Ironically, I was the one left alone in Brownville, in a big, empty house at the end of a long dirt road that ended at the railroad tracks. Overwhelmed with emotional pain and feeling like the biggest loser on the planet, I took the money from my divorce settlement and went to Europe where I squandered almost all of it in the space of one year. I revisited London, flew to Copenhagen where I stayed on a houseboat owned by friends of Ivan amd Berin, and explored Berlin and Hamburg, all as an antidote to the pain and depression that, despite the thousands of miles that separated me from its cause, still seemed to shadow my every thought and action. Returning to Maine, I settled for a few months in South Portland, mostly to be near the ocean, which I loved, but then, unable to find a job and beginning to feel the pinch of decreased finances, I decided to relocate back to Bangor where Ivan, Berin and Ayla were living in an apartment on Elm Street.

By then, Ivan and Berin were once more on the outs. Berin was already making plans to return to Copenhagen with Ayla. Drugs had become a divisive factor in her and Ivan's life together. Over the past year, I had learned that neither was a stranger to recreational drug use. The money they didn't spend on rent or food, they spent on their respective drug habits. Berin's drug of choice was marijuana. Ivan was drawn to speed and hallucinogens. Moving into their apartment on Elm Street in Bangor, I found myself surrounded by their friends, most of whom were also involved with drugs of one kind or another. I didn't like the idea, fearing that it would have adverse effects on Ayla, but somehow I convinced myself that I could help stem the wayward tide and maintain a semblance of normalcy for my granddaughter's sake. Despite her and Ivan's extracurricular activities, Berin was still a good housekeeper and a committed mother. Ivan was less dependable in that sense, but it was obvious that he wanted the best for his daughter. For the first week or so that I lived with them, it seemed as though things might even turn out all right. Ayla had already started kindergarten and seemed happy and fairly well-adjusted even with the almost constant arguing that went on between her parents. Spending time with her, I was able to put my own pain aside, at least temporarily, and enjoy what passed for "family time", even though the situation was far from idyllic.

But drug use is an insidiuous thing, and, unfortunately, the ones that Ivan and Berin used weren't the only ones causing problems within the household. For the past twelve years, I had been prescribed Ritalin by my doctor, after she had diagnosed me with adult ADD. The medication had been a mainstay in my life all that time, allowing me to focus in a way that I never had before. The problem was, as a writer, I sometimes wrote late into the night, and when I did, I would keep myself alert by taking more Ritalin than I had been prescribed for that day. Because of that, I often ran out of medication early. Now, living with Ivan and Berin, in the midst of people who regularly bought and sold prescription drugs, I found myself spending precious cash on extra Ritalin. I had moved to Elm Street with the intention of salvaging what was left of my family, but, instead, I found myself turning, much too often, to either Ivan or Berin, for help in procuring extra Ritalin.

It was just before Christmas, 2009, that Berin announced her intention of returning to Denmark to raise Ayla on her own. She and Ivan just couldn't seem to mend their differences, and unable to find steady employment in Bangor, she had decided that there was just no alternative. I tried to talk her out of going. So did other members of our family. But she was adamnant. And it was on the night before she left, after I returned from a trip to South Portland to collect what was left there of my belongings, that I heard about monkey dust for the very first time.

"You should have been here last night," Ivan told me, as I settled back into the apartment with my things. "Jared Lawson was here, and he gave us this amazing, kick ass speed."

Talk of drugs was hardly taboo in our household, and I took his mention of a new addition to the daily regime in stride.

"What was it?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said. "But it was better than anything I've ever had before...and it's legal."

I wasn't impressed by the reference to Jared Lawson, a young man Ivan's age, who I had already met once or twice before. I hadn't thought much of him at the time, mostly because he always seemed to be sleeping. Thin and angular, with outsized blue eyes and unkempt dark hair, his bony frame invariably enveloped in a black hoodie, he reminded me of a walking cadaver. I had a hard time believing it when Ivan told me that he was an ex-Marine. He looked too weak to have ever been a member of the military. Not only that, but from what I had heard, he made his living dealing drugs. I didn't want him hanging around the apartment on Elm Street, and I definitely didn't like the idea of him encouraging my son's own drug use, even if it was with "amazing, kickass speed."

"What do you mean...it's 'legal'?" I asked.

"It's sold in stores," Ivan explained. "But Jared gets it straight from the manufacturer. So it's pure. And it's incredible. You have to try it. It's better than Ritalin. One hit of this stuff, and you'll never settle for Ritalin again."

"I'm prescribed Ritalin," I said. "Besides, I don't use it recreationally. It's to help me focus."

"Oh, come on, you know you take more than you're supposed to," Ivan responded, with a superior little smirk. "You take it so you can stay up and write. And what I'm saying is that, if you took this stuff, you wouldn't need Ritalin. It's better."

His needling made me angry. He'd hit a sore spot. As much as I didn't want to admit it, I did have a problem when it came to taking my Ritalin in the manner in which it was prescribed. But that didn't mean I thought of myself as a "pill-head" or, even worse, a "junkie." The fact that I took my medication in excess wasn't something I was proud of, but at least I only took extra doses when I was writing. Or so I told myself. As far as I was concerned, that put me in an altogether different category than the stereotypical pill popper. My drug use--or misuse--was for working purposes. It was sacred. Like the tobacco some Native Americans once used in their religious ceremonies.

"Thanks, but I think I'll stick with my Rits," I told him, making it clear that the subject was closed.

The next several weeks were filled with the emotion and chaos of preparing to say good-bye to Berin and my granddaughter. Their flight back home was scheduled to leave Boston on Christmas Eve. That meant that they had to leave Bangor by bus early on Christmas Eve morning. It was a one of the most wretched holidays I had ever endured. Still smarting from my divorce, and my younger son and my daughter in two different locations, I could hardly bear the thought that I would wake up on Christmas morning in an apartment inhabited only by Ivan and myself. Saying good-bye to Ayla at the bus station, I cried so much I almost hyperventilated. I told her that I would miss her and begged her not to forget about me once she got to Denmark. She clutched my hand as tightly as she could and smiled at me through her own tears.

"You can come and see me," she said. "I'll just be across the ocean."

That made me cry even harder, of course. But there was nothing more to do except kiss her good-bye as she whispered, "I love you, bedstemore."

Bedstemore. The Danish word for "grandmother," or, more precisely, according to Berin, "best mother." Watching her board the bus with her mother, I wondered how long it would be before I would hear her call me that again. As the bus pulled away, Ivan and I got into my car and headed back to Elm Street and the Christmas tree that we had all decorated together just a week or so before. I hated the thought of seeing it in that empty, quiet apartment which, just that morning, had reverberated with Ayla's voice as she tried to cheer the rest of us up by singing the same two Christmas songs over and over again.

"It's too bad they'll be on a plane tonight," Ivan remarked, as we drove. "In Denmark, Christmas Eve is when they actually celebrate Christmas. Ayla's going to miss out on it."

"Yeah, well, it's just a stupid holiday anyway," I said.

A few minutes later, we were back on Elm Street. As Ivan disappeared into his bedroom, I went into the living room and looked at the tree. The lights were off. It was Christmas Eve. If there was ever a time when a Christmas tree should be lit up, it was tonight. But I didn't have the heart to bother with them. If Santa Claus deigned to make an appearance, I decided, he would just have to find his way in the dark this time around. Turning my back to the tree and the scattering of presents underneath it, I headed off to bed. What I didn't realize was that Santa Claus would definitely be making a stop on Elm Street. And he would have no trouble finding his way in the dark. But it wouldn't be a white-bearded Santa Claus in a red suit with a sleigh pulled buy eight reindeer. And the presents that he carried in his sack would have nothing to do with Christmas.

To be continued...

BEFORE THE DUST STORM

Summer, 2010. Bangor, Maine was on its way to becoming the bath salts capital of the United States. Quite a claim to fame for a small New England city that, until then, most people in the rest of the country had either never heard of or knew only as the place where horror writer Stephen King lived inside a red Victorian house set back from the street behind a black wrought iron gate fashioned in the shape of a pair of bat wings. That summer, like many other summers before it, out of state visitors could be seen standing in front of the famous bat-wing gate, smiling for posterity into cameras while marveling at the quaint New England visage of the neighborhood around them, its relatively quiet sidewalks, the similarly upscale, but far less decorous houses inhabited by their idol's neighbors, the surprising air of solitude hovering over the one street in the entire city that would ever have any real meaning for them. No idea that, only a few blocks away from that hallowed ground, and on other unknown streets on the other side of the city, there were horrors far more menacing than anything the renowned author had ever committed to the pages of a book. Strange, unfamiliar, as yet unnamed horrors, still forming, still stirring to life in the shadowed corners of neighborhoods that would soon become as famous as the one in which Stephen King resides, but for far more nefarious reasons, because the horrors taking shape there, unlike the wrought iron bat wings adorning Mr. King's endlessly photographed gate, were real. Real enough to destroy those who encountered them, whether that encounter occurred by choice, or simply--and unfortunately--by chance.

Like most cities, Bangor, Maine is divided into two sections, not only geographically, but socially, historically, and emotionally as well. For as long as I have lived in it, which has been on and off again for the last fifty three years, the east side of Bangor has always enjoyed the reputation of playing host to the majority of the city's middle and upper middle class neighborhoods where the histories of many of the houses and buildings can be traced back to the nineteenth century. Many of the residences of the city's long dead elite still stand, their graceful, grandiose cupolas and widowwalks evoking the imagery of the days when Bangor, Maine was a major stopping point for those who made their living from the logging trade. Many of these houses face the river, which, though no longer the most vital part of the local economy, still flows like life blood past the updated landscape, its silent, innocuous presence a reminder of Bangor's once semi-glorious past.

Remnents of Bangor's past still exist on the city's west side as well. Separated by the east side by several blocks of businesses, stores, and restaurants referred to by residents as "downtown", Bangor's west side has, with the exception of a few isolated streets such as West Broadway (home of the aforementioned bat gate), always been associated with the city's more humble neighborhoods, the ones known as "working class", although, in recent years the division between "working" and "middle" class has, as in most other cities and towns across the country, become blurred by economic hardship and the erosion of the social attitudes that marked previous centuries. As a child growing up on the east side of Bangor, I, like many of my peers, considered the west side to be somewhat "foreign ground", where we might go to attend church or to visit friends and relatives, but a place that existed outside of our everyday reality of our own localized existence. One way in which we mentally separated the two sides of Bangor was by the names of their best known streets and neighborhoods.

In the nineteen sixties and seventies, we, the youthful denizens of Bangor's east side, made frequent references to "Little City", a conglomoration of streets near the interstate and the city's so-called "miracle mile" which was characterized by its large Jewish population, many members of which also happened to be the movers and shakers of the city's business community, the owners of such well-known stores as Viner's Music, Miller Drug, and ----. A few blocks over from "Little City" was a neighborhood known as "The Bangor Gardens", or, in our everyday used vernacular, "The Gardens", whose residents lived in neat, white, pastel-trimmed houses fronted by meticulously tended squares of lawn decorated with the now classic lawn ornaments of the time--plastic duck families, donkeys and carts, colored gazing balls, and, of course, pink flamingos. These were the abodes of the east side's working class, or, to appropriate a more technical term, its "high proles", who made their living as well-paid employees of one of Bangor's several factories, the most prominent of which was Striar Shoes. The men and women who kowtowed to their betters during the week, but on weekends, assumed mastery of their own unwavering fates and drove their shiny, mid-priced cars to the Chuck Wagon, Bangor's premier steakhouse, readily identifiable by the plastic steer on its roof, or to the shopping center on Broadway, where they bought new shoes for their kids (the kind that come in pairs connected by a plastic cord) and ogled the latest color TV sets, wondering which one would look best sitting opposite the La-Z-Boy armchair lounger that dominated their shag-carpeted living room.

And then there were the "tree streets", which was what we east side inhabitants called the several blocks of pavements that sliced through the main thoroughfares of Stillwater Avenue, Mt. Hope Avenue, and Garland Street. They were all grouped together, as though whoever had named them had been too unimaginative to come up with anything more than a perfunctory allusion to the ubiquitous elements of nature. Grove Street, Elm Street, Maple Street, Birch Street, Fern Street, Fruit Street, and Palm Street were the names emblazoned on the green signs which marked them as a specific neighborhood characterized by the now nearly extinct accourtements of the city's "middle class." Streets where doctors and businessmen came home at night to stylishly-attired, bouffant-sporting wives who cooked dinner on avacado-colored ranges and well-scrubbed progency whose last names were synonymous with popularity and peer acceptance in the local schools. In Bangor, in the nineteen sixties and seventies, on any given day, it was a safe bet that there was at least one house on every single tree street where a highschool cheerleader or basketball star was debating what to wear to that Friday night's dance or pondering their chances of "kifing" a bottle of Seagrams 7 or V.O. whiskey from their parents' liquor cabinet without getting caught.

On the west side of Bangor, there was a similar hiearchy of neighborhoods, but that didn't concern those of us who lived on the east side. We had our tree streets, the west side had its "number streets", starting with First Street and, with a few lapses, going all the way up to Fourteenth Street, where the elementary and junior high schools were located. Like the division between East and West Berlin, the one between the two sides of Bangor was perpetuated by an artificial sense of rivalry, yet one strong enough to elicit disparaging remarks directed toward the occasional ship jumpers who dared take up with members of the opposing side. The rancor between the Montagues and Capalets had nothing on the collective wrath visited upon the junior high school girl from the tree streets who dared offer her cherry-glossed lips to a boy from the streets identified by numbers. Until, that is...high school. Bangor has two high schools---John Bapst, which was, until recently, a parochial school, and Bangor High School, whose students streamed through its doors en masse from all four corners of the community. By the time my friends and I entered Bangor High School, the chasm between east and west was tempered by a more universal atmosphere of school spirit. That, and the even stronger sense of connection that came from the shared angst of adolescence itself. Grades, body image, and peer pressure were our concerns, and they were not indigenous to a specific side of the city. West side boys brought pot to east side parties and offered hits to all comers, east side girls sneaked out of their houses at night to let their west side boyfriends fondle their breasts in darkened living rooms while their parents danced and sipped cocktails at one another's dinner parties. By the time I graduated from high school and fled to England for a two year sabbatical from what I had come to consider the suffocating sameness of life in a small northeastern city, all that remained of the east side versus west side rivalries were the memories of having grown up with them. And much later, long after I had returned to a city where the landscape had not only changed with time, but had reinvented itself in almost every way possible, those rivalries were not only forgotten but had been forever replaced by a disconcerting alliance that came from a shadowy source far beyond Bangor's borders, but which, having come, had embedded itself so deeply into the city's fabric that it was impossible to undo the threads. The newspapers and TV reporters referred to it as "bath salts." The people who lived on the tree streets and their counterparts on the streets marked by numbers had their own name for it. They called it "monkey dust."

To be continued...