The roomful of diners at Ardovino's on Cincinnati couldn't help but overhear
the thunderous voice of Ed Patrykus as he reviewed his life.
"I was born a blue baby on a cold day in 1934 on the outskirts of a
little town in Wisconsin. My parent's house was oppressive as my mother was
a strict Catholic, and after her father committed suicide, she blamed my father
for her social comedown. They battled for 65 years, about everything.
"I left high school in my senior year in 1951 and went in the army.
I was sent to Germany and got in trouble. I was on guard duty and I threw
in with some guys who were black-marketing gas and I ended up in prison. They
shuttled me out of the army in New Jersey and they gave me a suit, $20 and
a bus ticket to Milwaukee.
"I got home in disgrace and returned to the Catholic Church but that
didn't last. I had freed myself from that dogma, but I was troubled and looking
for answers, so I was drawn to literature and philosophy. I spent a lot of
time in the library between dozens of jobs as I wandered and worked in Florida,
California and all over the Midwest.
"I
wanted to fit in in rural Wisconsin but something always told me not to, so
I drifted to Milwaukee and made my first efforts to become a writer. I signed
up for the Famous Writers School but I began to drink a lot, became ill and
ended up in the county hospital. I had a sister who was living in El Paso
and I stayed with her the last half of the winter. I went back to Wisconsin,
but when the Canadian winds started blowing, I returned to El Paso and it's
where I've been since 1965.
"El Paso was my salvation. The open spaces and isolation, the loneliness
and rawness of nature, the wind and dust, the empty railroad tracks, the cemetery,
the down at the heels cantinas, even the poverty was liberating. The sad and
tragic side of life in Mexico, the intensity and impermanence reduced life
to its foundations. Despite El Paso's defects, its isolation and provincialness,
when I step across the Rio Grande into that earthy life in Mexico, I'm free
of myself, and the sensuality of the Mexican women is very satisfying to me.
"Carmen and I were married in 1966. She worked as a saleslady downtown
and I was a janitor at UTEP which allowed me to bear down on writing. We traveled
into Mexico and we drank and quarreled a lot but we had wonderful times for
24½ years until 1990 when she was struck and killed by a car.
"All I've ever cared about was literature and sex. I was writing stories
and reading Chekhov and Hemingway, Melville and T. E. Lawrence, and I read
and re-read the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer. My views on life began to
coalesce and I felt I'd been deceived. My writing was motivated by rage, and
it was taxing because I don't have a natural talent but I do have a need to
express myself and take a crack at telling the truth.
"I came across a quote from Schopenhauer in which he said that it's
the courage to make a clean breast of it that makes the philosopher, and that
while seeking enlightenment and considering his terrible fate, he will pursue
his inquiry even when he divines that the answers will be appalling. All of
my stuff was based on that quote, and I found out that I could tell the truth.
If I was going to produce anything in literature or philosophy, it would need
to burn burn burn burn, destroy destroy, tear it down, wipe it out, burn it
down and burn it, burn it, burn it. That's easier said than done, but I made
serious stabs at it, and that was the spirit in which I wrote Funeral Arrangements
and Huevos con Chorizo, about my wife Carmen and me.
"I'll never get over Carmen's dying, but in Huevos Con Chorizos
I told her story and my reactions to her life and death. It's the aftermath
of a loving and doomed marriage. We had glorious days together and I loved
her deeply, but I also found sexual satisfaction with a neighbor named Yolie.
I thought I could have a loving relationship with Carmen and sex with Yolie,
but I was naive in the ways of human nature. After Carmen died, I married
Yolie, but when I found out that she had performed brujerias against
Carmen, I had to leave her because I understood how my weaknesses had contributed
to Carmen's death, and I hated myself and everything that led me to effect
the lives of others. After I left her, I couldn't help but go back a few times,
and even now I'm drawn to bed her.
"I don't have the passion to write anymore. I didn't expect to live
so long that my writing would empty itself. I still get an occasional idea,
but I don't have the drive, the spark, that burn burn burn, but I'm not sad
that I had it and I'm not sorry that it's gone.
"Sometimes I get a terrible urge to just go get drunk again. I want
to get me a bottle and go under a bridge and get loaded. I haven't been blind
drunk in a year, and the last time I was, I ended up in the Sierra Blanca
jail. I used to drink tequila or brandy or beer or wine or whiskey or anything,
anything as long it was alcohol.
"The pleasures of life attracted me greatly. I love sex, women, booze,
literature, philosophy, food, I love that, but I'm suspicious of it. Happiness
and contentment are a gift, but the real thing is the pain. Like Melville
said, 'It's all beautiful coloring over a charnel house', and I find that
it's all allure. The only real joy is in the alleviation of suffering.
"We cling to the notion that we are in a real world, and if we play
the game right and use our talents and do the right things, we'll make a success
of it, but that's bullshit.
"I've seriously been considering suicide. I admire anyone who can call
it an end when they want, not just when nature comes along. To kill oneself
is an act of will that is divine. It makes us exceed the weaknesses of human
nature. All of my life I was a weakling, a defective, and if I could pull
it off, that would be a victory. I didn't succeed in literature as I would
have liked, so maybe I can succeed in dying. I hope I have the courage to
stand up one day and say 'Take back another of your defectives, you goddamned
Nature, and be cursed for all time'," Patrykus howled, holding a slice
of meatball pizza that had long since grown cold in his hand.
©Richard Baron 2002
reprinted from Stanton Street Weekly -- www.stantonstreet.com