I moved into the ground floor apartment at 77 Laxton with Al one floor above me and his son Mark one floor above Al; without incident.
After a few days, fears of running into Al faded into the distant foggy memories of past experiences.
I settled into a routine of shift work and Candice once or twice a week. She had a weird habit of calculating dollar value whenever we had sex. After she shared this tally with me the third or fourth time, I asked.
“So, you want this to be a hooker/john type relationship?” Then, the Candy experiences faded with Al into the mists of the past. Mark shared more Al stories with me, but I never saw much of either of them after that. I was asleep when I heard Al’s voice coming through my ceiling.
“I brought you into this world, and I can take you out! I will rip your throat out with my bare teeth!”
He repeated this a dozen times before I got up, dressed, went out my door, climbed the stairs, and kicked open Al’s front door.
Al slowly turned to face me. He was barely able to stand. Red faced in his underwear, drunk, and raged. He was holding a quart bottle of half consumed spirits. I walked towards him slowly, wagging my finger towards him and yelling. I stopped when I was right in his face.
“Al! If you don’t shut the fuck up and let me sleep I’m going to rip out your throat with my bare teeth… do you understand me Al?
Al’s eyes began to water. His arms shot out in an attempt to give me a hug. I stepped aside.
Finally, he said, ‘Dennis! Where you been?’
I burst out laughing and left. In that moment, Maltese Al was the loneliest man I had ever seen. I saw the price he’d paid for being a narcissistic abusive bullying cunt…
I moved somewhere soon after. I can’t remember the details. Wherever it was, it wasn’t with Maltese Al.
Mark seemed resigned to his fate. He cleared his throat…
“I was 4 and my sister was 18 months when Mom caught Dad fucking the 14 year old babysitter. She hit him over the head with a cast iron frying pan and gathered us up and took us over to our grandparents’ house.
“Mom went back to gather up some things between 2 and 3 in the morning when she was sure he’d be passed out from drinking. She was right. Al was unconscious in his underwear on the sofa.
“After she packed up what she needed, she went to the kitchen and got the easy-off oven cleaner. She pulled down his underwear and applied the chemical cleaner over Al’s cock and balls. She left the container on the table beside him. Al didn’t wake up for hours. By the time he did, his junk was swollen up to 3 times its normal size.
“Al drove himself to the police station… stood in the middle of the precinct… dropped his pants and screamed.
‘Look what that bitch did to me! Look what that bitch did to me!!’
“He told me he couldn’t have sex for over a year. He sold his part of his business for $750, 000.00 and fucked off to Malta. He bought into a Limousin business, and that lasted 18 years until someone cut his brake lines and almost killed him. He left Malta fearing for his life. The word was that his taste for young girls hadn’t gone away.”
“There’s something wrong with my father. There was something wrong with his father, too. His father lived in a cave in Malta for the last 20 years of his life. My grandmother delivered him a tray of food every morning until he died in that cave. This is my legacy. I don’t know if I have what they have or not.
“Wow! I don’t know what to say… but I do know that I can’t spend another minute with Al.”
“I get it. The bad news is that room I said you could have tomorrow… won’t be ready until next week.”
“Fuck!”
“I do have an alternative… There’s a 2 bedroom on the first floor. You can take it for $800/month.”
Mark was sitting having coffee at his kitchen table in his modern styled 3rd floor flat. He looked tired yet still managed a smile.
His Asian girlfriend answered the door, allowing me entrance.
“My apologies for dropping by so early.” I spoke while I approached him. He checked his watch.
“No problem. It’s after 9. How did you sleep?”
“I’m guessing about as good as you.”
“Al was in rare fine form last night… I only hear it if I sit here. In the bedroom; nothing.”
“Lucky you. I could hear it just fine from 3a.m. on… none of my business, but you guys don’t talk?”
“He’s my father. Nothing more. He left when I was 4. Me and my Mom and my little sister. He sold his part of his auto body business for $750,000.00 and showed up here 25 years later… broke and needing a place to stay. I’m not gonna see him homeless; but I don’t have much time for his brand of bullshit.”
“I get it… I don’t know if I can deal with Al for another day. I need sleep. I have to go to work. I’m just beat for sleep.”
After my work shift, I returned to find Al watching television. He seemed glad to see me.
“I’m going to bed. Didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“Strange bed.” Al offered.
“Yeah, that’s it.” I answered and slept through to Sunday morning without incident.
Al was home, and after I showered, I decided to go digging.
“So you and your son Mark don’t get along?
At first, there was just silence and a distant glare. Then he confessed. It appeared that it had been some time since Al had anyone to talk to…
“I was fucking the babysitter when Mark’s mother came home unexpectedly… She was 14 and sweet! She hit me over the head with a cast iron frying pan. I saw fucking stars man! It was just like in the cartoons!”
I sat in silence, unable to contain my grin. Al continued with no persuasion.
“She was the only woman I couldn’t control.” He shook his head. “I loved that woman.”
Later in the afternoon, Mark filled in the rest of the story…
Candice called herself Candy. She was blonde and slightly plump, 30, I guessed. Candy dragged her eyes from Al and smiled my way.
“I’m not interested in Al.” She purred, leaning over, whispering in my ear. “I know all about Al. You? I know nothing about.”
I introduced myself and bought Candice a drink. I began weighing Al’s mood as no one came his way.
The bouncer known as Tiny Tim made his way to our table and looked us all over. Tim was about 6’4″ and weighed roughly 300 pounds. He exchanged pleasantries with Al and glanced at Candice and then me. I guessed that I was the unknown that he was trying to guage.
After he left, Candice asked. “Do you think he’s tough?”
I answered honestly. “Haven’t a clue. Looks tough enough. “
“I went to his place once. He lives with his parents in the house he grew up in. In the bedroom he grew up in… He still has the wallpaper from when he was a boy; cowboys and Indians. His bed is still a single bed from when he was a boy! I couldn’t fucking believe it! Both his legs from his knees down are like jelly. Some kind of weird disease I don’t know. If you touched him in the shins, he would just crumble… He’s not tough at all… do you think you might like to fuck me.”
“Sure. If you don’t think Al or Tim would mind.”
“Let’s go to my place. I’m close.”
I looked at Al. “I’ll see you in a couple of hours. Either here or at the house…”
*******
I made my way back to Al’s before midnight and went to bed. I heard strange noises. It was a little after 3. I peaked out the bedroom door, and Al was standing in his underwear in the kitchen. He had a quart bottle of rum clutched in his right hand. He was half talking, half screaming with a guttural sound that came from his throat. He was staring at his ceiling. I would later find out that on the other side of his ceiling was the floor of the area where his son Mark sat listening to his father. Al kept repeating the same drunken mantra over and over and over again:
“I brought you into this world… and I can take you out… I will rip your throat out with my bare teeth…”
Then he would pound his fist with his left fist and repeat after swigging from his bottle.
“I brought you into this world… and I can take you out… I will rip your throat out with my bare teeth…”
I tried to go back to sleep with little success. I heard that mantra until sunrise.
It was a Friday somewhere in a 1980s, murky, distant past-darkness. I was 28.
I met Al’s son Mark through an ad in the paper. We agreed on rental terms for an apartment he was renting. However, it wouldn’t be ready before Monday.
I said, “It’s probably not going to work. I need a place now.”
Mark was a young and ambitious 28 year old man with a medium build and 5’8″ tall. He was one of those who seemed to have a solution for anything and everything.
He smiled. “Not a problem. My father has a spare bedroom, and I’m sure he’ll rent it out for a couple of days until your unit is available. “
We went to his triplex, another of Mark’s properties. He lived on the 3rd floor. Al lived on the 2nd floor, and I didn’t know it at the time, but the 1st floor was empty and available.
Al and I agreed on terms, and he invited me out for a beer at some local dive down at Lansdowne and Bloor.
Al was from Malta, and he was about 60 and barrel chested. He told me he was once one of the most powerful men who ever lived. That was before all his teeth fell out with gum disease a couple of years previously.
“A month was all it took for them to all fall out… I’ve never really recovered. My once great looks gone like that.” Al snapped his chubby short fingers and took a swig from a bottle. He grimaced for a second and then smiled. “You’re still young and good-looking… We could make a great team, you and I. The women will come over to see you, and I’ll just take the leftovers.”
I was having a difficult time keeping a straight face. So I decided to just go with it.
“So, I’m like the bait?”
“Exactly!”
Al’s smile seemed genuine this time. Not reptilian, like before. I couldn’t believe that he thought that I was going to be ok with this arrangement . Never had I met a man so full of himself; and so in love with his past. I began to weigh the possible dangers and inconveniences of such an arrangement against the potential entertainment value. I decided that it would be only 2 days when the first of the bar-flys came to the table and sat down and introduced herself to me. I could see Al smile through my perifrial.
It’s well over a year now since I published Look Them in the Eyes- and several things have happened since…
My father’s family found me after my Aunt Joan saw my name on the cover of the Look Them in the Eyes on Facebook.
There are no sales figures that could top this personal success for me.
Also, I found out through DNA testing that a community where I lived for many years thinking that I was not related to any of them, that in fact I am related to most.
When she is still sleeping and I am energized with time to write in the darkened quiet; and after I have gotten all the attention and love, I could possibly stand, without pain or worry, or fears of death, for I am pleased with how it has all turned out and now I can give a recap.
In Act 1, they generally left me to my own devices without the tiresome old tried and true teachings of the elders; like some kind of social experiment meant for future reflection on what will happen if we let him stew in confusion and chaos? “Maybe he will become one of those artist types.” I knew it was a lie; that I wasn’t,”jerked on a stump and hatched in the sun.”
When I couldn’t take it anymore, I found the magic transformative elixir and went somewhere else when I was 15…
During Act 2, I spent maybe too much time with the elixir. However, the thought occurred to me that the very thing that I felt was saving my life, might be killing me. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I stopped. I was 45.
Act 3- Sobriety is a trip. I sought wise counsel and advice and learned to listen. The voices in my head went quiet. I tried to have a healthy relationship. I worked hard. I prayed to God for guidance and developed faith… I became a father. My greatest teacher became my child because watching her grow, I began to understand my own life and childhood. I gave up on having a healthy relationship and began to understand the phrase: ‘If you want to hear God laugh, just make plans.’
I am 20 + years sober and 66 years old. I am in a relationship with a younger woman who makes me feel so very much alive. I am blessed to have been allowed to experience so much life.
I don’t know what the future brings. However, I will attempt to accept it with a glad and open heart.
To those of you that I pissed-off along the way; please try to get over it. I was just trying to survive.
Dennis Mantin 
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