Dino-OL & Opal SUSY

Chapter 1. Book V ~ Edition II

The return to Baltimore after an early Army discharge and ensuing divorce made life at twenty-three a mess. Closing the mailbox began the daily reading of junk letters and bills until an envelope from an attorney halted the sorting to mull the final divorce papers it contained.  

The ex-wife was a self-righteous whore whose whorishness rose not from promiscuity but from an unfounded entitlement to take what little belonged to me. Promiscuity only enflamed her whorish nature, but still, the blame for the divorce rested solely on me for marrying her in the foolish assumption of having found true love. The absurd belief of discovering true love conflated with the equally ridiculous notion of remaining true to one another. A mistake not to be made again. 

The walk between the mailbox and front door of the apartment building recalled a crazy girl met at a Grateful Dead concert many years prior. She worked the caravan of the Dead playing the part of a fortune-teller in a standard ruffled underskirt, tulle petticoat, sequined sash, and rhinestone-encrusted bandana. She ushered me into a tent where Cream sang “Tales of Great Ulysses” from an ancient Kenwood stereo, and a table held the standard tools of the trade: tarot cards, crystals, and of course, a crystal ball. 

She claimed to be psychic capable of foretelling my future for a mere ten dollars. Tripping on acid forced questioning of reality, watching her eyes roam in a crazy way while moaning in a fake indeterminate accent, “You’re writing a book, and that book will be the vehicle of your success. You will reinvent poetry, but no one will recognize the value until you’re dead. You cannot die except by your hand. You're destined to marry a rock star.” 

Her knowing I actively wrote a book inspired an odd feeling, and this clever guesswork inspired the occasional recall of the soothsayer’s fortunetelling to determine its truth. With an envelope stuffed with divorce papers in hand and a book rejected many times by publishers, resting in the desk in the living room, I laughed, “She has two more chances.” 

I entered the building and descended to the basement apartments but stopped when a voice echoed my name in the stairwell. Following the voice to the floor above revealed my neighbor, Dino, staring over the handrail. 

Like most Baltimorons, he went by a nickname or alias, and people called him Dino-Ol because his real name was unpronounceable, which over time shortened to Dino. An older man in his late forties, Dino looked the part of the college professor, complete with penny loafers, corduroy jacket, cheap Oxford shirt, and tie. Acting the part of the professor, Dino carried a trusty suitcase and sometimes a work briefcase to hide his self-indulgent purpose. Caught somewhere between serious-academic and captivating storyteller, Dino comfortably and recklessly walked literature’s tightrope of interpretation. He also believed in the craft of writing but strangely refused to write, making his many stories and literary references an entertainment paradox. His explanation for refusing to write only confounded this paradox. “Vince, when I think of something truly original, I’ll write it down.” 

We met the first week I moved into the apartment complex after he lost the battle for balance in the throes of a drunken bender. Rendered a stumblebum drunk, a drunk who walks into walls and does embarrassing things like falling asleep at a bar, he helplessly sprawled the hallway of the apartment building. Walking him to the front door of his apartment and into the care of his old lady inspired gratitude in the form of teaching me the finer points of drinking while discussing poetry and prose. 

Teaching night school at the local community college afforded Dino the benefit of teaching while intoxicated, and with little oversight, Dino exercised this benefit frequently. Drinking didn’t allow much advancement in academia, and Dino didn’t care about career success. 

He knew everything about culture, entertainment, literature, and most importantly — booze. A veteran mixologist, Dino concocted drinks the way an alchemist transmutes gold from base elements. If caught before becoming too wasted, he recited obscure stories or epic poems while extolling the virtues of the martini, likening drinking with Dino to Homer getting hammered in the living room. 

I called up the stairs, “Dino, what are you up to?” He patted his trusty suitcase and smiled as I answered the call to pleasure, “Come on down.” 

Dino descended the stairs. “Why the long face, my friend?” 

Entering the apartment and turning right into the kitchen, the envelope of legal papers dropped into the trash. “Just a bunch of bullshit. I still need a full-time job, and I just got the final divorce papers. I suppose I’m just disappointed with life.” 

Dino placed his suitcase on the kitchen table. “Ah, love and money. Two things that will destroy a man with certainty.” 

A launch into heroic verse seemed imminent, but Dino’s lack of drunkenness stifled the poetry but inspired the unlocking of his old and well-traveled suitcase. Travel stickers randomly decorated the case with the most prominent sticker, having nothing to do with travel, poised in the lid's center, Golf Stuff. 

Dino flipped the case on its short end and opened it like a display unit with one side containing golf tees secured in small sleeves and the other side containing golf balls in a layer of foam egg crate. A convincing disguise at first glance. With a tug, the tray of golf tees lifted from the suitcase, revealing a bottle of Grey Goose vodka and several small jars of olives and cherries. The removal of the egg crate of golf balls showed a shiny stainless-steel tumbler and stirrer. The near-perfect travel bar lacked only the ice he asked me to fetch. Cracking ice trays into a bowl, I turned to him. “How are you doing?” 

“Not bad. I got a new job teaching Greek Literature.” He mixed vodka and vermouth in the tumbler with precision. 

“Congratulations.” I set the bowl of ice before him on the table. 

“The job pays a little more than my current job, but we need to move to the other side of town.” 

“Well, I am glad you got a better job, but it sucks you’re moving.” 

“Thank you, Vince.” He handed me a martini. “Seems like yesterday when I found you drinking cheap vodka and piss for beer.” 

I found him, and that meeting occurred about eight weeks prior, but Dino had no sense of time. He took a sip of his martini. “You know Vince, I like you. I like you because you’re teachable. That’s important because humans are mostly unteachable creatures frittering precious time rather than trying to enhance themselves. Yes, you’re much wiser than when we met. Just remember, if you drink well, you’ll live well. There is no substitute for good booze, and good booze is the great elixir to life’s woes…” 

Most people likely felt bored or frustrated listening to his ramblings, but Dino’s talk distracted me from life and brought solace. Not a repetitive schmuck, he was one of the last great teachers from an era when professors advocated and argued causes. He was one of the last of the great teachers who shared a drink with students during a philosophic catharsis. He was one of the last great teachers who might sleep with a student, not for being slimy, but because passion erupted from the mixing of alcohol and dialectics. 

He held up the martini to examine. “…and Nietzsche was a sad bastard. Despite such profound musings, he took all his lessons to such dark places. Only Nietzsche could interpret the last words of Socrates to mean Socrates suffered from life. Like life is a disease to be cured. You see, life’s all about passion. If you surrender to passion’s fire, then you’ll fill with emotion, and your life will burn with intensity.” 

“What if life throws you a curveball of disaster or a terrible situation?” 

“Vince, the passion, fire, terror, horror, and sadness of existence are all elements of the great narrative. In those terrible times, when there’s no interpretation, no optimistic view, and no solution, only the warm comfort of booze will get you through the moment. Sometimes, the only thing you can do is drink.” 

With the raise of the glass to agree, a knock came from the door. Damn it. Always an interruption to a good night of drinking. Annoyance gave way to a pleasant surprise when opening the door revealed Opal Susy, Dino’s other half. Unmarried but together a long time, their relationship remained a mystery, having never heard the tale of how they met, but for sure, there had to be a tale like everything in the lives of Dino and Opal. 

Opal, a university philosophy teacher, maintained a positive career trajectory, probably resulting from not drinking the way Dino indulged. A reserved academic who followed the rules of her subject’s craft, she held a different and equally entertaining view of the world than the impassioned Dino. Whereas Dino might praise a pupil who wrote a poem without meter, Opal admonished the same student for breaking the rules of proper poetics. Their conversations generally centered on interpretations of epic stories, quandaries of good and evil, and other metaphysical topics. Like mixing salt and sugar, they balanced a recipe but ruined a dish if haphazardly used. They often balanced one another and sometimes ignited a room in philosophic conflict, but whether in agreement or not, Dino and Opal entertained and enlightened. 

Opal entered and scolded Dino. “I thought I might find you here corrupting the youth with your insane thinking.” 

“Silence, naysayer. You wouldn’t know passion if it lit you on fire.” 

Dino’s drunkenness readied an argument, and Opal’s sobriety held the sword of criticism to drive through his position. Opal sat at the table. “You shouldn’t bother Vince. He has enough going on without your mindless musings to add to his problems.” 

Dino pointed at Opal. “See, this is what I’m talking about. No zest for life, no passion, she will have you calculating solutions to problems the way a mathematician solves formulas on a chalkboard. No heart, I tell you.” 

“I suppose he is better off stumbling drunk through life and walking into walls of problems? You act as though living rationally somehow makes life worse.” 

Dino nudged me. “See? See the lack of passion?” 

She frowned in confidence. “Fine, I wager reason will provide Vince happiness and love before passion and emotional indulgence.” 

“I’ll take that bet.” Dino moved forward in the chair. 

“Fine, what shall we wager?” 

“Hmmm, an epic narrative calls for a large wager.” 

“Agreed.” 

Leaning back in the chair listening to the ramblings of the mad professors, their heated arguments went back and forth, determining the rules for the great wager. Dino promised love and happiness wrought from life’s passion, fortune, and misfortune while Opal interrupted making promises of true love resulting from a commitment to a rational strategy and practical decision-making based on human nature. Booze flowed in a raving discourse that lulled into a peaceful sleep. 

The early morning light entered the bedroom, bringing a need to rise from bed. Dino and Opal’s moving in the prior week vanished them in the vapor of life’s acquaintances and left an emptiness combined with envy for their literature knowledge. The constant struggle with the basic mechanics of writing amplified the feeling of failure when seeing the ease at which Dino and Opal wielded the knowledge of literature. 

The close of eyes in procrastination allowed sadness for Dino and Opal’s leaving to fuel the dismay felt for returning to Baltimore. Departure from Baltimore at eighteen occurred, feeling a need to escape the town’s hostility and many negative experiences, something I no longer felt. 

The reluctance to go job hunting and memories of youth rolled me on my side, staring into a pillow. Appearing as a distant place, twenty-seventh street in Remington, Baltimore, where I was born in 1970, felt almost foreign, along with the rules of toughness learned in upbringing. Stand up for yourself, never hit girls, don’t take disrespect, blood is thicker than water, ad infinitum. Today, the rules held greater acceptance but still confounded in the oldest memories of parents proving family or blood had no special meaning. My biological father, a gambler named Vito, spent life at the track betting on horses. No recollection and little knowledge of him beyond, sort of, sharing the same name did not stop him from haunting my life. Despite never raising any children, my father decided to name all his son’s Vito, and although never confirmed, I had at least two or three brothers from what extended family told me. My mother divorced the gambler and rearranged my name, changing my first name to Vincent, making my middle name Vito. She didn’t make this change out of kindness but as a means of not embarrassing my stepfather. 

Sitting up in bed inspired no motivation and instead dropped my head in a sigh, recalling the prominent businessman my mother married after Vito left. The stepfather wanted nothing to do with me or my mother’s trashy Baltimoron family and moved us to rural Westminster, Maryland. A daily reminder of the despised Baltimorons, he referred to me as the Guido that came with the marriage. While he might have felt trapped in the country with me, life in the country trapped me with a neighbor who sexually abused me until he went to college, and I started first grade. Rape soon morphed into schoolyard bullying, and combined with beatings from parents, the Baltimoron culture of toughness seemed to mosaic childhood in violence. 

Stretching and yawning brought to mind the day I left Baltimore and the clarity held before leaving. Reasons for leaving seemed simple, wanting to avoid the conflicting rules like don’t be a sissy and stand up for yourself, only girls cry, and man up that formed the Baltimoron culture of toughness. While meant to impart strength, those values also reinforced the violence, abuse, and constant provocation I desired to escape. In the past, the Baltimoron became the focus of blame for abuse and violence, or at least, worsening them. This blame still held some merit because in the culture of toughness, the undiscerning-strong attack the wounded, mistaking them for the weak. 

Shrugging off the past, the new day’s plan entailed a job search and a new perspective. A few years away eroded misplaced blame of the Baltimoron, allowing a comfortable feeling in Maryland. The true dismay in coming back to Baltimore took root in returning as a failed writer, soldier, and husband. The ex-wife’s thoroughness in the divorce left little money, a lot of anger, and no choice but to return to Baltimore for knowing the town and job opportunities available. 

Turning and sitting on the edge of the bed, thoughts of places to get a job stirred with possibilities. Qualified for the plentiful undesirable jobs in Baltimore due to lack of education and qualifications, I considered returning to college. The dream of earning the stamp of job-worthy faded in current debt and deep-rooted resentments towards academia. Memories of uncaring teachers watching kids bullied and sometimes performing the bullying still haunted. Dino and Opal gave pause to the hostility held for teachers, but returning to school still lacked appeal and relegated me to the crap jobs. 

No phone calls from the temp agency the night before or in the morning cleared the day for job hunting. The temp agency called most days because I showed up and worked, but the pay sucked. Needing steady work impelled a personal search of an industrial park about a mile from the apartment instead of relying on newspaper classifieds. 

A shower and cup of coffee launched a short walk to the industrial park, which seemed worth the effort when the first building encountered displayed a now-hiring sign, but on entering, one of six guys sitting outside waved a hand to stop me. “Man, you don’t want to work here.” 

“What’s wrong with the place?” 

The men responded by a lift of hands, revealing an assortment of old injuries, mainly traumatic amputations of digits. The man who stopped me pointed half an index finger to the road running into the industrial park. “Go up the street, yo. There’s a moving company ‘bout a block up, and you’ll find work there. You too late now, but go there tomorrow morning, like five a.m., and ask if they got work. They always got work because the job sucks. They’ll give you ten an hour cash, but they’ll try to get you for eight.” 

“Thanks.” I nodded and took the advice, returning home to leave the next day at four-thirty a.m. The predawn walk to the moving company recalled the military and working in restaurants as a kid, confirming that all crappy jobs started at five a.m. or earlier. Believing the military would end job frustrations made the service a tremendous disappointment. Preconceived notions that the Army supported camaraderie and loyalty proved false when the Army offered nothing more than a fast-food occupation that treated an enlisted person like an indentured servant. Looking back, the only reasons for why the Army held some promise of a better life seemed to reside in a brief experience with military school and some family connections with the service. Slight desperation also drove my enlistment as life in Florida devolved from a hopeful struggle to be a writer to endless daily work doldrums. 

Turning and walking into the industrial park brought many negative thoughts of work. In many ways, work’s unfairness just naturally extended from other parts of life. Ushered along by coaches and teachers from one point of life to the next, little leaguers became varsity, then college players, then onto good jobs or managers while most people earned their way. Even average people went from high school to college or a job and exerted effort, earned raises, and as long as they didn’t mind living the life patterned for them, they lived in relative peace. The outcast didn’t have this option, and the push towards the bottom of life once haunted me with the questions of why this is happening and why I am not normal? Why I wasn’t normal once disturbed me to nightmares. Realizing the reality of normal, eventually, ended inner conflict but produced a fatalist understanding of life's futile endeavor. Had my birth occurred in a caring family, falling victim to sexual assault might never have occurred, smoothening life's journey in a well-adjusted, compliant state, providing more friends, ignoring the internal confrontation with bisexuality, earning possibly a sentence to Jesus Camp for Queers to learn to emulate the good people who played sports and bullied the ugly kids and fags, but none of this happened. 

I stopped walking and looked back to make sure I didn't pass the moving company, and looking ahead in the darkness, lights from a yard filled with trucks appeared the likely destination. Continuing to walk towards the undesired job held the ironic truth. From the moment of birth, life forged a path to this job, and the question of why held the disturbing answer that the pattern of life chooses winners and losers from one generation to the next using affluence, attractiveness, wealth, race, sex, gender, and a hoard of other factors. This truth appeared obvious when young, upper-middle-class, white kids went missing, mobilizing police and media to find them with a force that occurs for no one else. 

Yet, learning this truth neared impossible except in a meaningless academic manner or thrust into the outcast role. Even the outcast struggled to understand since pervasive inequality mired in the difficulty of constant blame for one's injustice. The language of the oppressor underlies the mundane, daily, thoughtless discussions and rules, claiming it’s your fault you’re poor, and people choose to be victims. Whatever inequality or disposition suffered, society tells you it’s your fault, and this circular blame wraps in religion, faith, norms, and every part of life, making it impossible to separate much less fight. Rebelling led to futile dreams and bad relationships, but more than that, hypocrisy. Even if I knew how to be a bisexual, there was no talking about it or being open with people. I learned a long time ago, listening to bosses and fellow workers speak in epithets, that any declaration of honesty meant opening life to more ridicule and threats to an already meager living thrust upon me. Any belief held for winning the unwinnable battle disappeared in the Army and divorce. Since the age of eighteen, fighting taught nothing other than relationships suck, and the only thing good about a job is getting paid. The only real aspirations remaining centered on writing, hopefully getting published, and maybe having a successful book. 

Thoughts of bad jobs continued to grow, nearing the massive Atlas Movers’ sign displaying a man holding the planet on his back with the words printed on the logo’s earth, 

Titan Van Lines
Moving the World 

Rows and rows of eighteen-wheelers lined the yard with the same logo while gathering workers moved in between trucks and the building as the awakening titan prepared to move the world. With a sigh of reluctance, I walked through the yard of trucks to the building. Behind the counter in the dispatch area, the dispatcher, a short man in stature and tone, barked, “What do you want?” 

“I heard you needed help.” 

“You got any experience?” 

“No.” 

He pointed to a clipboard on the counter. “Sign your name and take a seat in the driver’s lounge. You’ll work as a driver’s helper on a truck, and the driver will pay you as a subcontractor. I’ll call your name if a driver needs to hire someone.” 

Confident of receiving work, I signed the clipboard. The moving and storage industry seemed no different than other undesirable, manual labor jobs that dictated success based on good attendance due to a lack of manpower; not that success concerned me since the job provided only a temporary means to a goal. 

In the driver’s lounge, the television blared the news as I ruminated my loose-knit career plan. In the past, the plan focused on obtaining a job that allowed comfortable living while writing books and finding an agent or publisher. The plan began at age eighteen after writing my first book and entailed escaping Baltimore to Florida to become a full-time author. A few expensive years of writing and mailing manuscripts and queries failed to publish. 

In retrospect, the plan failed from not writing, the bane of any author. The problem lacked complexity: one can’t publish what’s not written. Modifications to the plan included practical goals such as actually writing and actually trying to publish. While hopeful of the future, experience stole a lot of faith from the plan and its ability to accomplish goals. 

Interrupting thoughts of life’s great narrative, a tall, slender, elderly man entered the room and opened a plastic trash bag to empty the room’s waste bin while asking if I was trying to get a job. 

I nodded. “Yeah, trying.” 

He worked a new bag into the can. “This is where you’ll be movin’ real good. Is both redeemer and hangman’s hood. The day ends the same way that it starts. Beginning with heavy weight that smarts. And ending with the weight on the heart.” 

“Thanks.” I watched him work the janitor position and later learned his name was Raimo. Every company had a Raimo characterized by obvious mental deficiencies and the ability to be invisible to staff and customers. Raimos kept to themselves, and when they talked, they usually rambled in an odd, religious, nonsensical, or ambiguous manner. Their positions required little contact with customers and limited communication with the staff, making them desirable to bosses along with the pittance paid them to complete all the shitty, undesirable tasks. Raimo wiped the dirty tabletops. “The men still be movin’ good right now. End of the line for those who know how. The great ones have abandoned us all. Place of pain, we have no one to call. Where the dark one lives, enslaving us all.” 

Raimo served another integral purpose in the workplace hierarchy as the bottom rung on the great corporate ladder, allowing everyone above to feel good by shitting on the guy at the bottom. The secretary, irritated with the boss’s undesired sexual advances, released her frustrations by scolding Raimo about dirty bathrooms or trashcans overflowing. The boss, sitting in his office hoping for new business to magically appear, assigned Raimo new shitty projects that worked Raimo in a fantasy of management skill that feigned the creation of profit and productivity. Raimos never complained, worked diligently, and if not for their lack of mental ability, the bosses would fill the workforce with them. The ironic plight of the boss clarified in Raimo with the best employee lacking the ability to perform most jobs and could only go about the business of cleaning the business, muttering nonsensically, “The God of Plenty’s Will must provide. Unseen, he releases her with pride. Will we know the value of this play? Men who worked and slaved their lives away. Send us to wander the deepest Hell. To where my brothers and sisters dwell.” 

Watching Raimo work made clear he held the best job since he came and went unnoticed, and neither bosses nor staff bothered him beyond asking for trashcans to be emptied or occasionally rubbing him with the boner of authority. His job also had the most security because the guy paid minimum wage doesn’t worry about termination during economic downturns, not that he seemed to worry about such things as he worked and rambled, “Bear the weight; we weep and pray, ‘No more.’ The Gods give mercy to us no more. Massive unending torturous weight. Weight you will be forced to love and hate. Of those who can endure endless weight. The world to hold and move is their fate. 

“World is movin’ good, movin’ real straight. Into your fate, that’s nothing and great. Dark is the spring when it turns to bones. Shade will claim and take the souls it owns. They’re all waiting for you outside. Cast down but still standing side by side. And waiting for their eternal rest. Hurled into the task that they do best.” 

One rung above Raimo on the corporate ladder meant slightly higher pay and more responsibility, causing me to eye the janitor position in a new appeal until interrupted by a crowd of workers filling the room as the dispatcher called my name.  

In the office, the dispatcher argued with a driver who complained, “He’s new, and he’ll break shit.” 

The dispatcher pointed to me. “He’s fine. He fucking shows up on time, and he doesn’t smell like booze.” 

I neared the counter. “Hey man, I promise I won’t be a crackhead. I’ll do whatever you tell me.”  

“See, he’s all right.” The dispatcher returned to shuffling paperwork. 

The driver cast a worried look. “Okay, just be careful.” 

He motioned to follow and explained the day’s work on the way to the truck. “We’re going to be offloading about twenty-thousand pounds today. The house is not too far, just over the Virginia line, and if we leave now, we’ll beat the really bad traffic.” 

Stepping up and in the passenger side of the rig while he entered the driver’s side, the discussion continued. “Now look, you’re new, so just do everything I tell you, and you’ll be fine. You seem like a decent enough guy, and the dispatcher said you show up on time. That’s a big thing in this business. If you show up on time and you’re reliable, then you’ll be successful.”  

“That’s right!” A voice from the sleeper compartment shouted as a skinny young man with a fierce bedhead appeared from under a pile of blankets. “Me and Larry been doing this a long time. You new? Don’t worry; we’ll get you trained. Just follow what we do, and you’ll be fine. You don’t want to blow a tip, so…” 

Other than acting like moving furniture was a form of rocket science, the guys were cool, and the day went well, even a little fun. When the end of the day came, Larry completed the paperwork with the customer while Ned and I finished loading the equipment and trash. Larry exited the house and handed us our pay, including an extra fifty dollars each the customer tipped, which far exceeded the assumed earning of ten dollars an hour. Drivers paid good movers a dollar on the hundredweight or one dollar per hundred pounds and receiving two-hundred-fifty dollars for twelve hours of work felt shocking never earning this much from a job. 

After returning to Atlas at the end of the day, the walk home filled with a hope for life shifting in the right direction. The prospect of earning good money caused excitement for possibly fulfilling the plan to be a writer. The job sucked like most laborious jobs but would get me where I needed to go.