The Apartment (Crescent City Chapter 3)

It’s hard to describe what it’s like to be hurt, to almost die, at 22 and being forced back into your parents home after six years on your own. Like so much else about my injury and recovery at first I didn't even notice how miserable it was. I was too tired. Too hurt. Too weak to care that after six years of not just being out of my parents home but being thousands of miles away, I suddenly found myself sleeping in a recliner in the living room, watching Oprah, and spending most of my time alone with my parents Dachshund. But as my health improved and I got stronger it became harder and harder to tolerate being locked in the house.

As a patient, you can feel something shift in your relationship with your parents. I don’t know quite how to put it in words, they devolve, they start behaving like you're a little one again. You can feel them becoming the concerned parents of a sick kid and not the parents of a grown man who’d been sent to war. They hover. They worry. Sometimes you wake up and they’re just staring at you, like you’re a newborn again and they’re afraid you’ll stop breathing in your sleep. I get it now that I’m a father. I understand the inclination. But at 23 it’s creepy and stifling and it only gets worse because the stronger I got, the more my conditions improved, the more I chomped at the bit to get out of the house. It was like a second puberty. It was like reliving High School again, six years later. I’d want to push boundaries. I’d want to have adventures. They’d push back, trying to keep me home and safe.

At first it was easy for them to keep me inside. For a few months pain and pain pills kept me from driving but I weaned myself off the percocet and bought a cell phone so my parents could keep in touch and was begrudgingly allowed to run errands. I got day trips. I could go out to dinner, or over to a friend’s house, but the nightly dressing changes kept me tied to home and a curfew. After a few months I heeled enough that the dressing changes became unnecessary. By then I was fishing with my buddies some mornings, but mom still didn’t want to let me out overnight. I had to plead a case. I had to lobby my dad to my cause. I had to show her that my cell phone didn’t get a signal in our backyard and that I was in more danger checking the mail on our rural property than I would be in town with my buddies. Only then did she agree to let me go out for real.

I was still hurt. While I’d learned to handle the colostomy bag I still hated the painful and hated suprapubic catheter. But I hurt the same hanging out with my buddies as I did going to appointments at Walter Reed and the drive to New Orleans for a concert was the same as the drive to New Orleans for yet another flight to DC. So after almost nine months in my parents living room I started going out. I started making the hour long drive from my parents house in far Northern St. Tammany Parish to The Apartment in Metairie, where I’d spent the bulk of my time until the Army called me back.

Chuck, John K and Jake shared The Apartment, a three bedroom in an old building south of I-10 between Cleary and Clearview in Metairie. At the time Chuck and Jake were going to the University of New Orleans. Between classes, Chuck worked part time on a survey crew deep in the swamps between New Orleans and Baton Rouge and drilled with the National Guard one weekend a month. Jake worked at a big box computer store. John was a short order cook at the local Hooters.

The Apartment was a dump. Two parking spots in the carport, three bedrooms and a bath on the second floor, a half bath, kitchen, living room and patio on the first. The walls, cabinets and doors were all painted landlord white. The kitchen floor was cheap tile. The carpet was matted shag. The walls were paper thin. It was furnished with hand me downs, dumpster finds, and folding camp chairs from Academy Sports. It was decorated with National Guard recruiting posters, flags, and out of focus, badly lit, four by six snapshots of parties past. Jake and John had a cigarette smoking contest and kept score of every cancer stick they burned by making hash marks on the sliding glass door to the patio with a dry erase marker. They threw the butts into an old 5” artillery shell casing someone had found somewhere and on long nights the shell would smoke like it’d just been fired.

Chuck had the master bedroom, Jake had the guest bedroom, John lived in a space little bigger than a walk in closet and when I was in town I slept on the fold out in the living room. While they went to work I sat on the couch, dipping Copenhagen snuff, drinking Diet Coke and playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 on Jake’s new XBox. I paid “rent” in Camels, Marlboro Lights, tins of Copenhagen snuff and cases of Bud Light until John decided he wanted to make Budweiser “the King of Beers” again and we switched to Bud heavy. I never paid a dime in cash but came with offerings of Zapps potato chips, Coca-Cola, and boxes of chocolate glazed when the Krispy Kreme “hot” light was lit. In return I got a spare key, a shitty fold out mattress and raucous company. Probably the best deal I’ve made in my lifetime.

Country music was the excuse the first time I drove down. That's how we convinced my mom to let me stay the night. I got us tickets to a Jack Ingram show in the Parish Room at The House of Blues. We met at the apartment before heading downtown. I paid for parking at Canal Place and we walked over to the House of Blues on Bourbon where we met Jack Ingram waiting in front of the venue without realizing it. He’d grown his hair out long and we didn’t recognize him until hours later when he took the stage.

We learned a trick that night, one that we’d use for two years to get free drinks. Venue bathrooms didn’t offer much privacy. There was rarely a stall available in the men’s room. With the suprapubic catheter draining into a bag on my right ankle I had to prop my foot on the lip of whatever urinal or trough was available, roll up my pants leg, and empty the piss from my bag in full view of everyone in the restroom. This inevitably attracted some attention. Some drunk joked “Jesus man how big is your dick!?” and I laughed and explained it was tiny actually, I lost three millimeters overseas. I’d show them the bag and they’d ask, “What the fuck happened?” and I'd explain my accident.

This was in 2002 and no matter what self righteous people want to claim on the internet support for the war was running near 75%. People were insanely patriotic, annoyingly so, and the moment some drunk in a bathroom found out I’d been hurt in Uzbekistan they immediately offered to buy me a round of drinks and I’d have to explain to them that I couldn’t drink but… “My buddies are still in the Army.” It was a little white lie. Jake never joined and John was long since out, but Chuck drilled one weekend a month two weeks a year and none of us had a problem with accepting free beers from drunk tourists, so every time I returned from the restroom it was with a free round for the table.

We saw Jack Ingram, Pat Green, Cory Morrow, Cross Canadian Ragweed, Steve Earle and Reckless Kelly at the House of Blues. We saw Robert Earle Keene at Tipitinas. We saw Jason Boland and the Stragglers and Roger Creager at The Hangar uptown. Chuck and I drove out to Gonzalez to see Chris LeDoux in a rodeo barn there. All the while staging out of that cruddy apartment in Metairie. After a while I didn’t need an excuse. When I got bored or tired of my parents and had nothing else to do I’d head south to The Apartment.

In March of 2003 I was driving South across the Causeway bridge in a severe thunderstorm. I was barely past the eight mile bridge when I looked in the rear view mirror and witnessed a waterspout touching down and the Causeway Police closed the bridge behind me. John was off work when I got to The Apartment. We were sitting on the couch, shooting the shit, when Breaking News came on the television and together we watched as Shock and Awe played out live on television knowing full well my brother was somewhere in the Middle East preparing to take part in the invasion. Chuck picked up fried chicken from a gas station on his way home from work that evening and Jake rented movies and we settled in to watch a French horror film about Werewolves but something was wrong.

I’d recently had a catheter change. They were always painful, and the hurt lingered, but the pain had gone on for longer than normal and I was beginning to have other problems. It felt like the catheter was clogging. I could feel the pressure building and then there was a painful “pop” sensation and my bladder would empty suddenly and painfully. As we settled in to watch the movie my bladder began to spasm. As it tightened it pulled on the catheter until it felt like the tube would pop out. It felt like I was being ripped in half. I tried to hide it. I tried not to worry my buddies, but they could see the pain on my face and before long I ended up doubled over in the bathroom choking back screams. Then I noticed the blood and the mucus in the bag on my ankle.

Always the responsible one, Chuck made the call to go to the emergency room and all three of them accompanied me the short distance across the Interstate to East Jefferson Hospital. They sat in the waiting room and watched the start of the Iraq war live on Fox News while I was in back being diagnosed with a severe bladder infection. The hospital gave me antibiotics, pain meds and pills that made my piss look Gatorade orange and sent us on our way by midnight. I collapsed on the fold out couch and stayed there for a week. Each of my buddies taking turns keeping me company while I played video games, dipped snuff, and hurt until the antibiotics knocked back the infection.

I returned to the apartment later that spring, after the last of my surgeries when the doctors at Walter Reed finally removed the painful and hated catheter. We had a crawfish boil though it was as much a routine party as it was a "welcome home." I wore shorts for the first time in two years that night, finally able to show my legs with the catheter and related bag of piss gone. I bought the beer. Chuck and Jake bought the crawfish and John provided the propane tank and burner. Something was wrong with it though. We never quite found out if it was the propane tank, the hose, or the burner. When Chuck came home from work he found me in the living room wearing his Army issued Kevlar helmet and using an overturned coffee table for cover as Jake and John sat on the patio smoking cigarettes and trying to locate a propane leak. I don’t remember the cause of the problem, but I know it was Jake’s girlfriend Rebecca who saved us. She called her dad and he brought over a working boiler.

Later that night John would save me too. It was well after dark and only he and I were awake. We were on the patio smoking and drinking one last beer when two men approached out of the darkness. I was drunk for the first time in over two years but even through an eight beer haze I could recognize the menace. We all knew it was a rough neighborhood. We all knew nothing good happened after dark. Then two strangers came walking out of the dark, cutting across the grass toward where we were siting, calling out the universal warning sign, “Say brah!” John didn't panic or hesitate. He just smiled and met them halfway across the grassy strip that separated The Apartment from the building next door, greeting them with “What’s up bro!” like we were all buddies. I don’t remember precisely what was said, but John fixed them a plate of boiled crawfish and gave them each a cold Budweiser and they very happily walked off into the darkness. It wasn’t until five years later, when I worked that very same street as a part of a Sheriff’s Department anti-robbery task-force that I realized how close we came that night to getting jacked. Johns smile, leftover crawfish and cold Budweiser saved us from being robbed.

There were other parties. Other stories. There was Ray and Lisa’s wedding in the summer when the Priest left us alone with nothing to do for almost an hour during the rehearsal so we got bored and caused a minor scandal by pitching pennies against the altar. Then the day of the wedding we bumped into our Vietnamese neighbor as we were leaving and he gave us all Jello shots. A few weeks later we'd watch as a Sheriff's Office SWAT team arrested him for distribution of narcotics.

At the wedding the happy couple once again made the mistake of leaving us alone. They disappeared to take wedding photos leaving us hungry and without food in a room with an open bar and by the time they returned from taking photos we were all trashed. I don’t remember much else about that evening other than we used a Fat Patty Sex Doll someone had bought from a porn shop in Slidell to decorate Ray’s car. That doll later went around the world shipped from APO to APO making trips to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Qatar because we thought it was funny to mail her to our deployed friends.

Eventually it had to come to an end. The Army called me back and I was sent to Fort Johnson to finish my medical board. Afterwards I chose Southeastern Louisiana University over University of New Orleans and moved to Hammond for two years. Jake and Rebecca moved into the dorms at UNO. Chuck moved into a place on Carrollton. John moved around. The Army sent Chuck and Ray to Afghanistan. Then there was Katrina. Then I joined the Sheriff’s department. Chuck and Jess got married and moved away. My wife and I got married and moved away. We fell out. We lost touch. We reconciled. At some point we became grown ups. We became taxpayers. The last time I saw that apartment was while I was working that anti-robbery task force with the Sheriff’s department. I arrested someone for warrants just feet away from that back patio but by then everyone had moved on and it was just some apartment in some bad neighborhood. The Apartment is still there. Chuck and Jess and Jake and Rebecca all live within a few miles but none of us ever pass by. We’re grown now. Middle class. At best I point it out to my kid as we drive by on the interstate headed for Chuck and Jess’s nice house in town.

It’s a shame too because that place, that shitty, filthy apartment in a bad neighborhood of a lame suburb was a refuge for me. It was a place to go when I needed people. It was an escape. It let me live a little at a time when dying was all too real and living was way too hard. I saw what happened to other guys who left the Army after a tour in Iraq or Afghanistan and came home and married and moved into the suburbs and never once spent a week living on the fold out and there’s something cruel in the normality of that kind of life. They never had that space to decompress and just be. They never got the chance to spend a week playing video games and counting how many cigarettes they smoked. They never had to wake up at midnight because the “hot” light was on at Krispy Kreme. It’s cliche to say “they never got to sow their wild oats” when sowing wild oats for me meant drinking beer and eating crawfish in a cluttered suburban apartment but cliches are sometimes true. I know a half dozen guys who never had The Apartment and their lives are worse for it. I’m glad I got the opportunity, and I will always remember those days fondly.

Chuck, Jake and I all married the girls we dated while we were living in The Apartment. We’re all still married to them today and it’s funny how much more that place meant to us than it did to them. When I look back I see an oasis. A place of fun and comfort and belonging. When they look back they see a cesspit. A filthy, smelly, place populated by juvenile delinquents. We loved that place and still talk about it longingly. They loathed it and you can see the visible disgust when we inevitable have two too many and start talking about the good old days in The Apartment. I find that hilarious because somehow, for some reason, they saw how we lived in that hovel and still married us. They witnessed us living like apes in the monkey house for two years and yet they still eventually gave in and walked down the aisle. I have no idea what they saw in us or why but if I can I’d love to convince one of them to write a companion piece, a ladies view of The Apartment because I think it’d be funny as hell.