Читать книгу Dancing on a Razor - Kevin John White - Страница 10

2: Decision

For many years now, I have sought for some reasonable explanation as to why I made the most ruinous and destructive decision of my life. That I was very afraid, I already know. Why I was afraid and why I chose that catastrophic course of action to deal with my fear is what completely bewilders me now. Perhaps part of it was because I made that decision when I was only seven years old, and I was afraid, and very alone.

I had what I see now as an unusually good childhood—my early one at least. We were all loved and well cared for, and I have fond memories of times with my siblings and both my parents. I know I was treated no differently than any of the other children. The same love and discipline were given to each of us. I was a bit more independent than the other kids, but there is nothing I can think of that could possibly account for such a drastic decision. Life was pretty happy for all of us. Other than when he was preaching, I’ve only heard my father raise his voice once. We were being quite loud downstairs, and he was trying to study for a very difficult exam which would admit him to practice psychiatry in Canada. It shocked us, and we looked at each other—frightened and a bit bewildered. The exam has long since been banned as being far too difficult. He passed it. His professor failed. As I said, my father was a remarkable man.

I do not remember my mother ever raising her voice to any of us once. How she managed that is to me now simply incomprehensible, especially considering I was one of those children. I never saw or heard my parents fight or argue—ever. We were always taught right from wrong, and more importantly, we were taught why things were right and why they were wrong. We were taught to understand. If I did something wrong, my father, who carried out the discipline for “serious” offences, would first ask if I knew why I was in trouble. If I was unsure (which wasn’t very often), he would explain. Then he would ask if I knew why it was wrong. Again, if I was unsure, he would explain. Finally, he would ask if I understood why he was going to spank me or take away a privilege, and I know with me at least, the discipline dispensed, he would take me into his arms and tell me I was loved and that the matter was finished. No one was ever allowed to tease anyone about what had been said or done. Discipline was, of course, carried out in private.

I write these things because I truly don’t understand why I became so fearful—what it was that drove me to such a terrible decision that morning. Perhaps it was because we had moved to a new house and a new neighbourhood and it was my first day at a new school. We had just moved from South America to Winnipeg, Manitoba, two years earlier, and then, when we moved again, it seemed something happened to me. I became afraid. Or maybe it was being run over by that car on my sixth birthday. I don’t know. All I do know is that on the very first day of grade three at my new school a terrible fear took root inside me and immediately began to destroy any hope I had of a normal life. That day saw a horrible nightmare begin—a misery from which I could not wake for over 45 years.

I had arrived early that morning, and as I sat by myself on those cold school steps dreading the arrival of the other students, I felt very alone and afraid. For some strange reason I believed deep down inside that if I didn’t master that fear in every area of my life I would crumble and be utterly destroyed beneath it. That thought frightened me more than the fear itself did.

For some reason, by some strange convolution of logic, I decided that I must become really fierce to overcome this fear. And in order to become fierce, I felt that I must become … bad. They seemed to be two sides of the same coin. Inseparable. So that day I made the decision to become bad—really bad—and fierce—fierce with all the fury that this “being bad” would require of me. Unknowingly, I had made that decision an unspoken vow, and as I felt it sink to the very core of me, somehow I felt safe—protected with a shield of badness and armed with a sword of fury.

Now all of this was fine and good, but I immediately discovered I had some serious hurdles to overcome. You see, I was only seven, and at that age I did not know how to be bad, or fierce, for that matter. I had known nothing but goodness and love all of my life. I thought carefully about my predicament for some time as I sat alone on the steps that morning. After quite a bit of serious puzzling, I was suddenly struck with what I thought was a wonderfully good idea about how I could become terribly bad. I needed a mentor—someone to show me the ropes, so to speak. I decided to accomplish this task by carefully observing all the other kids, picking the one who always seemed to be in trouble, becoming his friend, and then watching and learning all there was to know about being bad.

So I did exactly that, and by the end of that day I had found my new teacher. My progress right from the start was outstanding—amazing, really. I found that I had a truly exceptional genius for this particular field of endeavour, and so I quickly surpassed my mentor.

He had given me all the basics (lying, stealing, talking back, how not to get caught, mess making, and sticking to my story). By the end of the following year I had taken things to a whole new level. I had added to my craft stealing smokes, school skipping, and its companion, note forging (a true art, for which I was paid). At the end of my third year I was the “Holy Terror” of the entire school, and it was thoroughly exasperated with me, never mind how my parents were feeling. They were hurt, confused, and exhausted. By the time I hit grade five, the school was going to kick me out for the second time. The only reason they didn’t was because it was just a couple of weeks till the end of the school year.

But to my dismay and confusion, the fear—it hadn’t really gone away. It continued to fester deep inside me. No matter what I did, I was still afraid, and I didn’t know why, and I felt like a coward for it. Yet there I was, at no more than eight years old, hopping on and off freight trains—sometimes hanging on to the side ladders and digging my boot heels into the gravel, skiing alongside the train and timing my hops to skip over the railway ties. By age 11 or 12 I was skipping school, riding long-distance railcars, howling into the wind, and jumping off high train trestles into the river—smoking, drinking, staying out way past curfew—and then, if my folks would try to ground me, I’d just slip out a window and be gone the minute I wasn’t being watched.

Yet I can see now that God’s hand of mercy, protection, and care seemed always to be on me. I clearly remember sliding down a long banister at school (which was strictly forbidden) and, at the bottom, flying through the air a good six or seven feet and smashing through a 12 by 8 foot sheet of plate glass for a nature exhibit. I also remember very distinctly feeling as though underneath me was a great cushioned hand, and it seemed as if I was almost floating through the air—to the point where when I glanced around I half expected to see the Pillsbury Doughboy’s fingers wrapped around my waist. This was all done with a detached observation or, at most, a mild surprise.

When I crashed through the glass I felt it as it closed in all around me. I had no fear of harm at all. Even while getting up amidst the great thick shards of plate glass and putting my hands into tiny splinters, I remember looking at the glass all around me, and all I felt was like “Well, that was odd.” Nothing. Not even one scratch. I never even thought twice about it.

Had you mentioned God might have been protecting me I’d have probably looked very gravely at you, shrugged my shoulders, nodded my head, and said something like “I know …” then turned around and in no more than five steps have some new mischief bubbling away in that endlessly diabolical imagination of mine. In my young mind, the whole not getting hurt by the glass thing was normal. I never got hurt, so all was simply as it should have been—as it always was. Everything had gone as naturally as things like that always did.

This bad behaviour was not kept to myself. By the time I was 12 years old I had gangs of my buddies skipping school and taking off downtown with me. There I would organize them into pairs, give them their lines (“Excuse me, ma’am, but I have to call my mom, and I don’t have a dime for the phone”), and send them out with an exact number of dimes to panhandle. We would then meet at the agreed upon location, where they’d give me what they had collected. This coin I would change into bills. Then I would watch all the people going into the liquor store, spot the person in the crowd who I knew would go in and buy beer for me (my accuracy at this became legendary), and then take the beer and get drunk with the boys in an alleyway. Simple, really.

The first time the cops brought me home I was about eight, and by 10 years old I’d had a few run-ins with them. By the time I was 12 or 13 I was dropping lots of acid, sometimes 10 to 20 hits of the good old White Blotter. (This was only barely out of the sixties, so the acid was powerful and uncut.) I was smashing out liquor store windows for booze and popping stolen morphine pills like they were candy. I was smoking dope, oil, and hash and drinking Lysol with my back alley Native buddies in the middle of Winnipeg winters—basically doing anything that spelled trouble.

By age 14 I’d been sent to Vancouver by my parents to escape threats on my life for stealing some very bad drugs from some very bad people (that’s when I became a Christian). After that, my parents tried to place me in an expensive private school (St. John’s-Ravenscourt)—I had to wear a uniform and tie!—to get me away from all the bad influences at school. What my dear parents didn’t realize was that I was the bad influence at school.

I didn’t last the year, but because my grades were quite high, they passed me anyway—on the condition that I never come back there again (that meant even setting foot on their property). The next year I was kicked out of four junior high schools in six months (that would be all of them), so really, after that there was just no more school. I rarely came home for long. By the time I hit 16 I’d already been to California twice. My folks knew some people down there who were in the middle of some kind of revival. I guess they hoped some of it would rub off. A whole chunk of my life was spent going back and forth between Winnipeg and Bakersfield, California. It’s all a bit of a blur as I made the trip three or four times. That was when I got into smoking PCP. The last time I went I just didn’t come back again. It’s hard to keep things straight in my head. I was young and there was just so much happening.

But long before I stayed in California, I had overdosed several times on strange combinations of weird psychotropic, psychogenic, and psychoactive drugs, as well as some other kinds of brain chemicals, the names of which I have no idea of. (I took them all at once and downed them with a 26 of vodka.) I wasn’t trying to hurt myself; I was just curious to find out what would happen.

On one of these overdoses I woke up a few days later in my father’s psych ward with some whacked-out character’s face planted against the glass-walled observation room I was in, euphorically cackling in hysterical glee, “THE SNOWFLAKES! THE SNOWFLAKES ARE EVERYWHERE! CAN YOU SEE THEM? THEY’RE EVERYWHERE!” That was just the first time. Hell, it’s no wonder I can hallucinate whenever I want to. That was not to be the only time I was in his ward for overdosing on strange pills. (I think I was in there three different times.)

When I went back to California for the fourth time, what followed was an insane nightmare of heavy IV drug use, drunkenness, and degradation I cannot even begin to describe. Now it’s mostly a dark haze, from which, from time to time, come horrifying memories that emerge to torment me—things I so much wish I could forget—terrible things.

I know now that at the end of my time in the States I was demonically driven and oppressed (my father’s friend John Wimber told me he got rid of at least seven or eight) and had several dangerous run-ins with some extremely nasty black witchcraft and occult stuff.

I eventually wound up getting kicked out of the States for good after I was thrown in jail for stealing that Burmese python. It was there that I was to learn real quick all about respect and survival. Cook County Jail (the Chicago city bucket) taught me a lot of brutal lessons. But even there, God’s hand was on me, protecting me and giving me favour with some of the heaviest members in the entire jail system. I was … untouchable. Someone stole from me—once; that same day I received back almost three times what I’d lost.

When I got out of jail I returned to Canada (well … let’s just say the USA asked me to leave quite pointedly) and began a long 24-year stint of hitchhiking all over the country. I’d just turned 26 years old. When I wasn’t couch surfing, most of the time I was sleeping outside (often in the winter) or in stairwells, on heater vents, or anywhere else warm that I could crawl my way into. It would take extreme conditions to drive me into a hostel or shelter. I hated them … despised would be a more accurate term.

After a time, I could no longer tolerate the insanity of the larger cities and usually just stayed on the outskirts of them, drinking anything and everything every waking second of every single day, just moving from town to town, city to city, coast to coast, and back again, not knowing where I was going or why. I was just running hard from God knows what and using anything and everything I could to feel nothing. The loneliness I felt during this time was simply overwhelming. Often I would grab a bottle and sit alone, crying to God for some kind of solution—anything to fill that horrible hole in my soul.

I know this chapter seems to jump around a lot. I apologize and ask for your patience.

It is not my intention to give you a chronological picture but rather to give you a quick sketch of the kind of kid I actually was. My life during those early years was so insane I myself can scarcely believe I survived it. Really, I should never have lived long enough to even see the beginning of my teens. I was, in short, completely uncontrollable and desperately trying to prove to myself I was without fear. That meant I did a lot of incredibly stupid and dangerous things. As I look back now, I literally shudder and shake my head at God’s mercy and protection.

It has only been as I reflected on my past that I have realized that throughout my whole life highly unusual things kept on happening to me—almost like they were chasing me. Unexplainable things. Amazing things. Events I had to understand. What follows is every word the truth to the best of my ability. I know it’s the truth—I was there. Sometimes others were too. I’ll try to just stick to the facts, but believe me, there were a whole lot of feelings involved as well. I had to look. All I wanted was to understand—to make sense of what had happened to me. What I found was more than my heart could contain.

Do I regret the decision I made as that seven-year-old? Think about it. Did I really have any other choice? I was “set up” … remember? (And I’ll leave that for all you predestination hounds to bark and howl at!) But no matter what your conclusion is, you’ve got to admit that God always has a plan … doesn’t he?