ONE MAN ARMY - Part Six: Naked

Things began to deteriorate. Because it happened slowly over many years, it wasn’t noticeable. His madness was a continental shift. One day we noticed he was somewhere else. Things had just gotten real ugly. Jackie was no longer the carefree hippie signing songs barefoot up and down the street. There was a darkness enveloping him.

I was maybe thirteen. Jackie had come back from one of his visits to the hospital. This time he brought with him a fellow patient. No one knows if she escaped or was released, but she seemed deranged. She uttered obscenities and spit randomly. She would constantly kick her shoes off, put them back on, and kick them off again. She was ornery and oblivious and constantly scratching her arms. She had dark eyes and a giant cloud of black hair.

One morning I came out the back door to find Jackie and his new friend humping butt naked in his backyard. The sun was a spotlight on them. I stood at the chain link fence watching the tangled limps. There was so much flesh. Her legs were in the air and Jackie was between them. It was very ritualistic.

For a week or two they were inseparable. They wandered around the yard holding hands and fondling each other. I never saw Jackie so happy. He showed her off to any one he could. She would grunt and spit and say nonsensical things. He would look at her adoringly and pull out one of her tits.

Then one day she was gone. Jackie never said what happened. He would give vague, mysterious answers. He turned a darker shade after that. His bouts of sadness seemed to last longer. He withdrew. He spent more time in the house or the garage and didn’t bother the neighborhood as often, at least face to face.

My little sister and her friends would have to endure Jackie and his new found anger with the world. They would be hanging out and would hear a bang from Jackie’s window. They would look up to find Jackie naked, masturbating. My sister and her friends would scream and run off leaving Jackie alone at the window holding himself.

It appeared he completely stopped taking his medications and crawled up inside his illness. He became even more fatalistic, which didn’t seem possible. He seemed tired a lot and would constantly say things like “what’s the point” and “it’s no use”. He would walk around hunched over, his hands in his pockets, staring at the ground. He was no longer out going and charming in his unique way. He was more like a shadow than a human being.

He would often ring our doorbell in the middle of the night to ask my mother or father for a cigarette. When one of my irate parents started to scream at him for his inappropriateness, he would tell them it was going to his last one. He was going to kill himself. My parents would tell him to not talk stupid and then hand him a cigarette, until the next time he was going to die.