Caring For Pete

OK, right at the outset here I am going to give away the end of the story: I failed a personal test, and violated what I thought were my deeply held values around caring for other people, and about virtue and selflessness. This failure and this violation were purely internal things…decisions I have made about myself, within myself, and only occurred long after the time I am about to describe.

Actually, the more I think about it, by saying what I just said, I am not "giving away" anything. It isn’t as if this were some mystery and I had revealed the identity of the guilty party at the very beginning, or told you some secret that was at the center of the whole thing. And the truth is, this personal judgement I made falls more in the class of a "postscript" than in the class of "end of the story." The story stands on its own, unlike (and I am guessing here) the subject of the story – Pete - who probably is dead by now. At least that is the direction he was headed when I saw him last.

Pete was a drug addiction counselor, one of several who treated the clients of the nonprofit organization I was employed by as a fundraiser a few years ago. Pete was among the newer counselors, and had moved to Portland from New Jersey and Philadelphia a few months before I met him, because of a relationship with a woman (which promptly went south). "It’s always a dame," as they say in the films noir I love so much. He had been a counselor back there, too, and his position at our organization was incidental to the move.

Without knowing much about Pete, I liked him right away for two reasons: a personal trait and a thing he did. The personal trait was his east coast accent, which I have always been a sucker for, both as a result of watching too many movies as a kid and of having been stationed around Bruce Springsteen’s early stomping grounds – the northern New Jersey shore – during the Viet Nam era. His accent was a combination of something out of Asbury Park, NJ, and/or "South Phiwwy," as any true Philadelphian will turn their "l’s" into "w’s" in pronouncing the name of their hometown.

The thing he did was related to the trait: he posted a note on the employee bulletin board announcing his intention to have genuine Philly Cheesesteak sandwiches airfreighted to our office, and asking if anyone else wanted to go in with him on the venture. Point being that the cost of airfreighting one sandwich was astronomical, and would be considerably less painful if amortized over several sandwiches ordered by colleagues with a similar "jones" for them. Talk about what people will do to feed an addiction………

I doubt if his plot came to fruition, but the sheer guileless innocence of it endeared Pete to me. Here was a guy trying to recapture some sublime element of his hometown experience, and wanting to share it with others.

Warning: Digression and Long Sentences Ahead

Our collective lack of interest in joining in Pete’s sandwich project and ordering the most expensive sandwiches we likely ever would have eaten was no doubt in some part due to the fact that in those days, none of the counselors were confident of maintaining their jobs from one week to the next. It was not that the Greater Portland area lacked for drug addicts; quite the contrary, the growing underclass of citizens engaged in self-exploration of the wonders of personal biology as revealed by their participation in a burgeoning methamphetamine market lacking only discount coupons in the local papers and enabled by the turnstile justice system guaranteed to have its clients back on the street in the nick of prime car-prowling hours only added to the legion of drinkers, shooters, smokers, huffers, poppers, and other miscreants whose main defining characteristic were poor choices of mind-altering substances (NOT the socially approved caffeine and nicotine), wrong skin color, and lack of "juice" sufficient to insulate them from vulnerability to the uniformed shock troops in the War on Drugs who patrol our streets and alleys while acting out their parts in this particular chapter in the Fairy Tale that is America.

No, what was lacking was funding for their treatment, and hence, money to pay counselors to work their spells in the lives of people whose prime motivation in coming to us at all was to get their driver’s licenses and/or their children back (and for some, the part about the kids was a Jack Benny question…….. "I’m thinking it over!"), to get their parole or probation officers to pick on somebody else, and/or to get their records expunged of their substance-related transgressions so they might have a shot at the presidency of IBM after all.

Money to pay these counselors emanated largely from the state, filtered down through the county, and took the form of contracts and grants, renewable each year after a few statistics were jiggered around by cubicled bureaucrats in accordance with what they learned at the latest workshop/seminar/conference/meeting/session addressing Total Quality Management By Objective Pursuit Of Excellence Six Sigma Leaders As Servants Who Dare To Be Empowered. This was How Things Had Always Worked. Great system, unless something changed, some big problem came along. And now we had one: we could no longer count on Mississippi.

Up to that time, and since the ink was dry on the Declaration of Independence, no matter how bad your state – any state – was, according to any indication you might choose, you could always compare it to Mississippi, the perennial #50 (#51 if you included our nation’s capitol or Puerto Rico). Poverty, education, hunger, racist lynchings, weirdest spelling, you name it, Mississippi was always dead last. Until now. Oregon had gained the honor of being the hungriest state in the nation, even as it had simultaneously become the fattest as well. AND, thanks to the Doonesbury comic strip, everyone – including Mississippians who could read – knew that Oregon also had the shortest school year in the country. The phrase, "Mississippi with a view" was bandied about in countless boardrooms around Portland as increasingly descriptive of our state.

It is said that state government exists to educate, medicate, and and/or incarcerate its citizens, and if you look at budget expenditures, you readily see the accuracy of this assessment. Our Organization’s funding derived mostly from the intersection of the medicating and incarcerating parts – parts like all the other parts in that they were shrinking, not from demand but for lack of tax money. When funds are tight, stuff gets cut, and since adult drug addicts, imprisoned or not, rate only slightly higher in the public’s estimation than sex offenders or legislators or sex-offending legislators, and are considered to be equally hopeless, the funds necessary to deal with them took a giant hit. This "hit" took the form of a New Method for doling out what little money was available, and this New Method did not treat Our Organization well – a predictable result for an organization which, when confronted with Anything New, invariably pleaded, "But we’ve always done it this way."

So, what with everyone’s job on the line every day, morale was pathetic, and different staff members reacted to the status quo in different ways: whining, moaning, crying, somatic disorders, committee formulation and other tantrums, and extreme denial. (And this was among The Leadership Team.) The counselors themselves sent out resumes, learned the locations of their local unemployment offices, and considered alternative careers, including the dream of owning that big pink Mary Kay Cadillac. Pete had been a plumber before, and thus fell on his sword by taking a sales job in a Big Box Home Store for a few months. Eventually he came back to counseling part-time, and about then learned that his inability to breathe very well while schlepping plumbing supplies up and down those huge wheeled ladders that clog store aisles had to do with the fact that one of his lungs was pretty well shot. That’s where I came in, and here’s where the digression ends.

The deal was, a large part of the offending lung had to come out. What was also true was that Pete faced a long period of recuperation at home after the 3,000-minute drive-through surgery/hospital recovery episode, as allowed by the health insurance company. Pete had no relatives or other discernable local network of human support, and by the tenor of the interoffice e-mails floating around, it became pretty clear that he could not count on his Extremely Caring Colleagues to help him out beyond the Get Well Quick Card they all signed. (I learned that many addiction counselors are themselves "In Recovery," which I suppose gives them a degree of empathy which comes in handy while counseling people who are trying to shake off their own demons. As a layperson, though, on the whole, I have never encountered a more narcissistic, uncaring, emotionally unavailable bunch of malcontents in my entire work history. And I used to work among Ballet Dancers!)

So, what the hell…….I kind of liked Pete, I had some time, and a few extra karmic points in my favor couldn’t hurt. We talked it over, and agreed that I would pick him up from the hospital, take him home, and generally make sure he had food in the house, etc., for the duration of his recovery. Pete also had a fairly new love interest, whom he had met before the dire diagnosis, but she seemed "missing in action" as the plans were made. He said his Lady Faire lived in Vernonia, a place which to me was only a name on a highway sign several miles west of town, near where the coastbound Sunset Highway divides.

Mystery Woman was of independent means and lived on the side of a mountain reputedly owned by her family, a la The Waltons, but assured Pete she would "come into town" if he needed her. Pete had set her picture as the "wallpaper" on his computer monitor, and every time he turned it on in my presence, I became afraid for him. (Granted, as someone whose wallpaper consists of the cover of the classic Jackie Gleason record album, "Martinis and Memories," and whose screensaver offers flying cans of Spam, I am not the best judge of these things. Still, this woman scared me.)

Christ, Here’s Another Digression.

I must admit, in the blessedly few times in my life when I have been either the recipient of others’ care, or have provided care, I have hated almost everything about either role. I imagine that in situations where care is given and received in professional settings, either in institutions or in recipients’ homes, clear role boundaries are established and maintained which go a long way toward smoothing out the rough spots of ego manifestations. On the other hand, I have repeatedly surprised myself at my marked inability to either receive or provide care with anything approaching grace or dignity. This personal inner territory was a consideration as I offered to help Pete out in his Weeks Of Need.

Twice in my life, as a result of my own clumsiness while jogging, I have been laid up for days with either a severe sprain or a fractured bone, and as a result have been completely dependent, not upon the "kindness of strangers," but of friends. Better they were strangers, from the way I acted. I don’t know if I unconsciously envied my caregivers for their mobility, or could not accept the role of being helpless, or felt that I could not clearly state my needs, or what. I acted like a jerk, and alienated roommates, girlfriends, and anyone else within striking distance. (In my partial defense, I will hereby state that the milk of human kindness did not exactly gush forth from my caregivers. In those days, I was keeping them from important romantic interludes, and anyone can guess where my needs rated on that priority scale.)

Conversely, when I found myself in the role of caregiver for a girlfriend who had broken her leg on her indoor staircase – a woman I later lived with, as amazing as that prospect seems in retrospect – I was absolutely lousy at it. I have yet to view any "reality TV," but I imagine tapes of our interaction would have gotten high ratings among voyeuristic types hungry for images of people even more screwed up than they are. She was absolutely impossible to be nice to, the vixen!

You would think that people would be at their best in situations like this, but my experience is the opposite: nurses, candy stripers and other professionals aside, the average amateur caregiver or receiver, no matter their degree of nobility and empathy in momentary social interactions, become hateful people over the timeframes necessary to give or receive meaningful degrees of care and attention.

But the days of my broken legs were long gone, and I have lost touch with the woman with the broken leg, although I understand she overcame the scars of our relationship and went on to make something of herself. I was ready to minister to Pete in whatever fashion my considerable talents were needed. I could drive, cook, run errands, lend an ear, make phone calls, and kibbitz about nothing with the best of them, and I was rested and ready for the ordeal.

OK, We’re Back.
At the appointed hour, when the approximately 3,000 healthplan-approved minutes necessary for the various medicos to prep, cut, suction, stitch, and wheel him out front like so much laundry were up, I was there for him. It took me awhile to realize that he had in fact survived the operation: no doubt these professionals were required to certify his survival as a condition of billing the health plan for whatever pre-negotiated fee is associated with such a procedure. On the other hand, my mind raced with considerations of what kind of liability I might suffer if, on the way home, his official internal life status changed in a manner reflecting his outward countenance. As I was saying, "Pete, great to see you, man," I was staring at his accompanying nurse’s aide with a look meant to inquire, "He IS alive, right? You’ve checked recently?" No one I had ever been near – and this includes a friend in her hospital bed only hours from her cancer death - had had a more "stove-in" look than that poor man right there in that wheelchair.

Surely there was some "Good Samaritan Law" that covered me here. No, that was probably for accident situations I might encounter on a dark rainy night. I was standing in sunshine in the lobby of a huge hospital…..I clearly saw what I was getting into.

This was one of those situations that recalled the perfect solution for the health care crisis in this country. Just reduce the health benefits now enjoyed by those who are responsible for their quality, regulation, and application – I’m talking political representatives here – to a level enjoyed by "the least of us," and we would see universal health care coverage faster than you can say "single payer system." If the mobbed-up millionaires passing for elected legislators suddenly found their health plans equal to the 45 million of their constituents who have NO coverage, we’d see some changes ‘round here. And in Pete’s case – he actually HAD what in most circles is considered damned good coverage – just substitute his HMO’s Board members for legislators and I think you get the idea. No more drive-by surgeries. Righteous anger in that moment was my self-prescribed antidote to the fear I felt in Pete’s presence.

Our first order of business was to schlep up to the pharmacy to get a prescription for painkillers filled. God forbid someone would have thought of this ahead of time. On one hand, the pharmacy wait was interminable, like they all are. On the other hand, I figured the longer we were still on hospital property, the better – I doubted Pete was going to live through the trip home. The aide and I gabbed about drugs and withdrawal and books and god knows what. Pete was not exactly in on the conversation, because talking required more breathing than was absolutely necessary and he could not afford that particular luxury right then.

Finally we are back downstairs and wheeling out toward my car. I pushed Pete and the aide carried his prescriptions, a fat file folder, and a couple of potted plants and helium balloon arrangements that pass for sympathy these days – hot air either way you look at it. My fairly large sedan seemed quite small all of a sudden. The aide stuck with us until we were headed down the driveway, in retrospect I suppose to be able to report back the moment we were officially off the property. As we escaped, I reflected that one of the most effective purposes served by hospitals is to make non-patients feel glad they aren’t the ones being visited. All the way to Pete’s house and for the rest of the day, I felt glad.

Pete directed me to his house with a minimum expenditure of precious breath. We drove within moments from a curving six-lane suburban boulevard punctuated by massive driveways leading to gated communities, shopping malls, and glass-wrapped office complexes to a two-lane country road sporting hazard signs ventilated by bullet holes. Dirt roads led to hoary, unkempt properties littered with shacks and rusted out cars where it looked like an even bet as to which of the two was the human domicile. This is what an urban growth boundary looks like. Finally we came to a signalized "T" intersection with a high-speed spur road, the Clackamas Highway. Most everybody at that point could turn either right or left onto the highway. I say most everybody, because there was in fact a third choice for those more ill-fated among us – a trip directly across the highway led into a private driveway: The Gateway to Riverbend Mobile Home Estates.

Digression Again….Oh, Never Mind
Now, as I view the property on Google Maps (such a thing did not exist when I was caring for Pete), there IS very clearly a BEND in the Clackamas River adjacent to this place. And like all satellite pictures available on the site, there are rooftops, lots of them, defining the various curves of the lanes that make up Riverbend Mobile Home Estates. But you really have to get down there at street level to see the wonder that is Riverbend.

Since my adventures I have on occasion spoken with various people about Riverbend Estates. It has a reputation. Until I crossed the Clackamas Highway that day, though, I had never heard of the place or its reputation. Upon subsequent mention to people who know of it, though, I invariably get a chuckle and "Oh, THAT place…..yeah I know it." My brother in law the contractor has done work there (building and repairing stuff – which is what contractors do) and a County Sheriff’s deputy has also done "work" there of a different sort (arresting people and checking out crime scenes – which is what law enforcement types do). Riverbend seems to offer loads of opportunity for both professions, a quality readily in evidence on my first drive-through.

Remember how I mentioned Mississippi earlier on? I have never been there, any more than I have been to the places pictured in the movie "Deliverance," but both places take up space in my mind as platonic ideals of poverty, crime, white trash, ignorance, and just generally hell on earth. No doubt I am being unfair here, but this is my mind we are talking about and I don’t claim fairness for a lot of it. It is chock full of hard-earned ideals and portraits and images of concepts which come in really handy for imagining and dreaming, which aren’t necessarily the same things. My inner territory makes no sense most of the time. On that day, I added Riverbend to the inner collage depicting the lower ideals listed above. It has the distinct advantage of being relatively near at hand, unlike Mississippi, should I ever feel the urge to visit depravity, as opposed to just looking at its rooftops on Google Maps. Kinda like a hospital, if I ever need a real emotional boost.

As we enter Riverbend Mobile Home Estates, my delicate sensibilities are overwhelmed and I am suddenly aware that both Pete and I are unarmed. In his shape, he will be no help in a struggle. And the truth is that HERE we have things of value in this car. This is a low place. There is rust, dust, mildew, moss, dirt, and people with sunken cheeks and substandard dental plans. And homes. Mobile ones, although their wheels, if they have them, are hidden by skirts displaying the ravages of rising damp. We are vulnerable, Pete and I. The speed limit is 10 mph and there are lots of speed bumps. Signs tell us that there are "Slow Children At Play." Poor babes.

One of the pathetic perversities in life is that so often in places you really want to move quickly through, to get it over with, there are really low speed limits. 10 mph at Riverbend Mobile Home Estates, and at most of your better trailer parks, RV campgrounds, drive-ins, drive-throughs, airports. Can we please get out of here real quick? Yet out there in the high Oregon desert country, for instance, where the vistas are awe-inspiring even to an indoorsman like me, you can drive as fast as you dare and no one cares.

I mention rust. Neil Young averred that "rust never sleeps." Here, not only does it not sleep, it has hobbies. It lies waiting. Waiting to slink out and grab small children, pets, and those too old or too tired to fight back, from their slow-moving cars. As we drive through Riverbend I am cognizant of the need to keep moving, the speed limit notwithstanding. As Pete directs me to his little piece of manufactured heaven, I am looking around for the bald kid with the banjo like in the movie. I am resigning myself to coming here lots of times over the next few weeks. This is grim. I cope by doing what I do a lot when I am feeling put upon. It could be worse. I could be sitting next to me with serious parts of my lungs gone and looking forward to recovery at Riverbend Mobile Home Estates, relying on the kindness of relative strangers and prompt delivery of my oxygen by disgruntled minimum wage ne’er-do-wells. (More fun images from the psychic library…..billions and billions served…..no waiting…..no late fees…..results not typical.)

I mention meth. As I drive, I wonder that Our Organization, the drug treatment agency, didn’t just set up a shop here. 24/7. Here, where the bulletin board – strategically located near the mailboxes, a juxtaposition driven by the assumption that people who would be collecting mail were also capable of reading that mail, and also the notices posted thereon – advertised the advantages of having your own home lab. "Teach your children chemistry!" "Cooking meth brings families together!" "The family that cooks together……" "Study home dentistry at your own pace…." You get the idea.

We find his place. I practically carry him into the house, then offload the frozen food we had picked up on the way to paradise. He paws through the mountain of paperwork he was discharged with and finds the number for the oxygen delivery people, whom he calls and wheezes through his address with. They will be right out.

I put away the stuff and we agree on a sort of schedule for future visits. What kind of food does he like? Not spicy. Lots of pasta and starches. Vegetables. Chicken is fine, less beef is good. Tuna noodle casserole (my specialty)? He loves it. Where is his cat? Don’t know, hope he comes home. Not if he is smart, I am thinking.

Will he be OK? Yes, his girlfriend is coming down from The Mountain to help him buy a new recliner, because he won’t be able to sleep in a bed for awhile. He deposits himself, ensconced in a blanket, in a comfy chair within remote’s distance of his beloved television and his computer, phone nearby, and assures me I can take off. I do. Quickly.

On my next visit, a couple of days and a few phone calls later, I learn that: his cat has returned; and he has mesethelioma (Pete, not the cat). Pete explains in a most ironically labored fashion what that is. After they had removed the offending portion of his lung, the docs’ normal procedure would have been to sort of duct-tape his remaining lung to his rib cage, to spread it out like a sheet drying in the sun, so as to maximize the remaining surface’s ability to do what lungs do. But they couldn’t do this because apparently the tissue surrounding his lung was rotten due to asbestos exposure at some earlier point in his life. This was apparently a surprise to the surgical team, so they patched him up as best they could and sent him home.

Turns out Pete had done some shipbuilding in his earlier life, and was exposed to asbestos in the bargain. His Girlfriend From The Mountain, upon hearing this, urged him to join a class action lawsuit against asbestos manufacturers. She had done some research on this, and hooked Pete up with some East Coast law firm, which, upon hearing of his fate and his work history, was MORE than ready to include him in the class and could they send a team out right away to depose him and collect whatever relevant paperwork he had? He was almost sure to win Six Figures, with them taking Only Half.

Pete asked for my reaction, and I told him how sorry I was to hear of this latest challenge to his longevity, and asked how he felt about participating in the lawsuit. Just at that moment, Pete opened his newspaper and confronted a top story quoting George Bush as saying that we really needed tort reform in this country to stop all these "needless lawsuits."

"Good for Bush," Pete said. I thought he was kidding.

"But tort reform would mean that you and your other new "class members" likely would not be able to bring the very lawsuit you are participating in." (Or gain Six Figures from, I thought.)

"That’s OK. He is a good man and he has the right idea."

Pete is clearly delusional, and Rust is out there right now surrounding my car and I want to go home. This whole thing is a Bad Idea.

We work out a schedule for my next visit. Pete and the phone and the remote control find a hole in the New Recliner, and I leave. The Rust doesn’t get me and I get home OK and forget about the lawsuit thing, mostly. But still I wonder about this guy.

The weeks come and go, the weather turns chillier – which slows the Rust to a crawl, figuratively speaking – and The Holidays grab us by the throat. Hallowe’en decorations –redundant here in this most naturally ghoulish of settings – come and go. By the notices on the Riverbend Community Bulletin Board, which I peruse as I pick up Pete’s mail on way to his Estate each time I visit, I gather that the annual Holiday Meth Cook-Off and Recipe Faire was both hugely anticipated and well-attended by all.

Pete gains strength and my visits are less frequent. The Girlfriend From The Mountain helps Pete find, via the computer, his long-lost daughter in Pennsylvania and a Christmas reunion is planned. The grown daughter has married some political bigwig in state government and the whole family traipses out so they can see each other and Pete’s "new" grandchildren can load him up with all kitschy things "Grandpa." No new lung, though.

One day, a preacher visits while I am there. He met Pete while trolling the Riverbend Community LaundryMat for potential converts. He is a finely-built, ebullient, moussed-up pastor of some local Foursquare Pentecostal Assembly Of God Holy Roller Endtimes Rapture Heal Me New Hope Glory Of God Evangelical Come To Jesus You Sinner Unless You Are Gay Pro-Life Church Nestled In The Green Sheltering Hills Of The Lord. They get along fine: for one thing, they both love to watch The Big Game on TV. All the time. This gives me an excuse for an early out. Drop off the new food, pick up the old Tupperware, how are you, I am fine and is that my imagination or did Rust just set off my car alarm? I better go check and nice to meet you, Reverend.

I am pretty much thinking I have done my job here. Pete can hobble down now and get his own mail, he is off the Big Gulp-size oxygen containers, the lawsuit is proceeding nicely, The Girlfriend is around more and more, and the dust on all the "I Love You Grandpa" chatchkes is verging on ripe. The days are getting longer and warmer, Rust Season is upon us, and I am content to view The Finals from home.

On my next visit, I bring in some food and find Pete in his recliner. Watching a game, or some interlude in a game. I open the paper and remark on some story I see.

Pete erupts. "Do you MIND??!! I am trying to watch a GAME here!!"

I hate this guy.

That is Pete. He has gained, I decide, sufficient strength to resume his true behaviorial identity. Pete is an asshole. I have been driving all the way out to this fucked-up, godforsaken, white-trash trailer court, for weeks on end, to help this fuckwit regain his strength out of some obviously misdirected sense of wanting to help out a person in need. Who wasn’t a person in need anymore. I had been driving ten miles per hour through a fetid human swamp, an above-ground cesspool populated by ignorant gun-toting reprobates whose only hopes in life were big endorsement deals resulting from their Gold Medal Finishes in the International Spouse Abuse/Projectile Vomiting/Phlegm-Carving Triathlon. Pete was no longer in need. He is better. But he is a better asshole - who wants to watch The Game now.

I refrain from saying what I am thinking, in a herculean feat of self-restraint.

"Well, I guess I’ll be heading out. Looks like you are pretty well set. Give me a call if you need anything. Take it easy, good luck on the lawsuit, and I’ll look for you back at work."

So, driving home (keeping to ten MPH while in Crap City), I muse. There’s a lesson here, I just know it. What the hell happened back there? What a fucking jerk. Did I fail in my goal to "be a friend in need?" Well, yeah, if "failing" means I am pissed at Pete for not appreciating what I did for him. Hey, I did my part. I helped a guy out. He is better. I can’t control how – or even IF – the guy is going to react to my efforts. End of Story.

Pete never came back to work, our little agency was eaten by a bigger, better-funded fish, and I left. I imagine Pete is dead by now. I don’t hope it, I just imagine it. I wonder if he ever won Six Figures.

Four years later now. I still help people out, I am just better at recognizing why I do it, what’s in it for me, what my expectations are. So what have I decided? About personal virtue, selflessness, helping others? What do I want out of it?

A nice "Thank-you!" maybe. Is that too much to ask?