No. 619 – The One Thing

Performer: INXS

Songwriters: Andrew Farriss, Michael Hutchense

Original Release: Single, Shabooh Shoobah

Year: 1982

Definitive Version: Live Baby Live, 1991

This was the one song I wanted INXS to play when I saw them in 1991, but they didn’t. Fortunately, they included it on their live album, which came out later that year, so they did play it at some point, just not in Detroit. That’s the way it goes.

It also doesn’t quite fit the timeline of what I’m about to relate, but I certainly knew the song at the time. There’s an 800-pound gorilla in the room that I’ve been ignoring until such time as I no longer can. Now is that time.

I heard an incredible interview of Mike Neismith of The Monkees many years ago on Steve & Garry, where he was talking about Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon and how each constantly was fretting about the quality of their music. The message was that it’s far easier to have a clear vision of something when you’re not too close to it.

And so it was between me and Mom. I don’t know which summer it was—1984 or perhaps 1985, most likely, but certainly before 1986. But Beth nailed it on the head one day, and I’ll never forget it.

We were at the Condo, and I can’t remember whether Mom was gone, which I seem to recall, or just asleep in her bedroom. We were sitting on the sofa in the living room next to the staircase and opposite of the fireplace, which in itself was unusual. The TV was in the den, so that’s usually where we were.

But Beth had something on her mind and wanted to ask me a very serious question. It was so serious that she got up from the sofa and walked towards the dining room just in case her question offended me. She spun around and asked, “Is your mom an alcoholic?”

Until that moment, I would never have associated that word with Mom. I mean, alcoholics were big-time boozers who had a flask of hooch in their back pocket and were constantly stumbling around drunk. Mom never drank anything besides beer and she didn’t seem to be constantly stumbling about.

That said, she slept all the time and kept odd hours when she was awake. Increasingly as time distanced us from the divorce, her hours got odder. We would go a week or more and not see her at all. Dinners were infrequent, and Scott and I had to fend for ourselves quite a bit. That was no problem because I was often with Beth and Scott was with friends. Or we were at Dad’s.

Also, Mom didn’t have a job and seemed to have no interest in getting one. Taking care of us kids, she would say, was her job. She also seemed to have no interest in anything aside from watching TV, reading her paperbacks and smoking, of course. It got so about the only time we’d see her is when she came out of her bedroom or we went in.

She also wasn’t much for cleaning and her personal appearance had gone down the tubes. She drank only beer, true, but she drank a TON of beer. She’d buy three cases a week and be done with them by the next. (She drank Busch, and to this day, I’ve never had a Busch beer and never will.)

In high school, I was part of a carpool with three friends. Mom was always an afternoon pickup driver, and one day she was late—exceedingly late.

Usually, class ended and the parent awaiting to pick us up would be there, gather everyone up and be gone by the time the buses pulled out of the parking lot. This time, the buses were long gone, everyone else was long gone, and the four of us still were standing around.

I went inside to call Mom from the pay phone and got no answer. I went back out and still no Mom. It was at this time that I heard one of my friends say derisively, “Willie’s Mom …” I didn’t hear the context of the conversation (and yes, I was known as Willie when I was younger), but I knew that Mom—and by extension, I—was being mocked. At that moment, I was so embarrassed by the fiasco that I didn’t feel up to defending her. I went and called again … nothing.

We then called one of the other moms, who came over right away. When I got home, Mom was still in her bedroom. She was awake, sitting at the end of the bed as if she were finally about to leave only to find out she didn’t need to. She apologized for screwing up and said she was sick. Well, Mom got “sick” a lot back then; this was just the most memorable.

I knew the nature of her illness instinctively, but it took Beth’s question to bring the clarity to the situation, and the effect hit me like a stinging slap across the face. Of course, she was an alcoholic. That’s why she acted the way that she did. She wasn’t sick; she was drunk and passed out.

“Oh my God! She is!” I cried at the sudden realization and my complete lack of clarity, and Beth, seeing there was no offense to be taken by her serious and personal question, returned to comfort me.

Obviously, the follow-up question must be: What’s to be done about this? Well, I’d be damned if I knew. I suppose the first order of business was to talk to Jin and Scott about it.

Jin, of course, lived with Dad, so she wasn’t affected by it much. By this time, she didn’t have much of a relationship with Mom. Scott, however, still lived at home, although after Matt was born in 1984, he started spending a lot more time at Dad’s, too, when I wasn’t around.

Scott was so laid back that Mom’s alcoholism didn’t seem to affect him, or at least I wasn’t aware that it did. (I was gone most of the time even when I was home.) However … he had more or less taken over the rec room in the basement. It had a bed, and Scott used it. It was as far as one could be from Mom’s bedroom and still be in the same home.

That wasn’t a coincidence, as I soon found out.