The Life of Martin

Martin held onto these days because his life depended on them. He wasn’t a dramatic personality, but he recognized how important it was to spend time with his children. He recognized that he needed it, they they needed him, and this made him feel valuable for the first time within distant memory.

Jon was six and Kenny was eight. Martin put them to bed at 8:30 and poured a glass of milk. He reflected on his life and thought about how lucky he was to be here now, drinking innocuous drinks, living with food in his cupboards, thinking abstract thoughts about his children: their future, some vacations, reading books and playing ball.

Life hadnt been easy for Martin and it took a lot of hard work and focus to become a recognizable variation of a normal father and working man. The lifestyle in the new Midwest had become hectic in the beginning of the 21st century, as an influx of professionals from the east coast had changed the prevailing attitudes and the landscapes from Indianopolis to Omaha. Things were different than they had been, and Martin, for a long time, was caught up in the mix of it all.

He started using serious drugs after college. It was 2123 and America was experiencing a dangerous reincarnation of the 1960s. War had exhausted the population. The Bush-era conservatism finally sprouted a backlash, and it was finally fun again to be promiscuous, swear, and push the limits of public media. Not only did the FCC of the early part of the century destroy the progress made by the sexual revolution, but, worst, it warranted another.

Different this time, however, was the technology of chemistry. Instead of pot and acid, college students demanding more freedoms and government transparency were taking cobalt, a risky mix of new pharmaceuticals and cocaine. It was highly addictive and more dangerous to make than crystal meth, but became the drug of choice for kids with an agenda of global change and unimpeded sexual adventures.

Fully gone on this ultra-speed, students performed violent stunts and protests. Wide-eyed kids, awake, alert and reckless for days to come, overcame weak-minded security guards in state capitols and hospitals, insisting on reforms and fairness. They highjacked government radio stations, reading political rants over the background noises of endless orgies.

St. Louis was the center of this new revolution, and Martin was attending college there. He found what he was looking for in this society – girls and drugs. He participated in the revolution because of both, but not because of politics. He had no aspirations of economic or artistic success, so when things began to change and his peers got jobs, bought cars and moved to the fancy suburbs along the Mexican border, Martin stuck with what was working for him.

It wasn’t long before he was looking for places to sleep in between days, weeks, months in lockup for possession, loitering, minor theft. He floated from city to city to keep his face fresh and the beat cops unbiased towards repeated beatings. Eventually he moved to Buffalo, a city that lost out on the westward progress and was just a void between the massive naval ports on the eastern seaboard and the sprawling modern metropolis along the Mississippi and in the cities further west. Buffalo was true squalor, a haven for in-betweens and limbo artists. But Martin found a job there at an old hotel on Delaware Avenue cleaning rooms. It was a flophouse, and it was hard for Martin to stay clean, but he managed for a while.

He met Vanessa at the peak of his sobriety, which was bad luck for both. They got married, honeymooned briefly at Niagara Falls, and started a family. That’s when Jon and Kenny happened. It worked for a while but the pressure of having to provide for three fragile people proved too much for Martin, and he left one night while they were asleep.

He didn’t get far. He had found a connection from the hotel and ended up in county lockup by noon the next day, shaking and screaming in a full-on cobalt overdose. They had ways to combat this in lockup – they injected him with a counter drug, which left him cold and numb. In retaliation, he mustered enough energy to sucker punch a guard during daily exercise. He broke the guard’s jaw before he was beaten into submission by the rest of the crew.

This was the law’s last straw with Martin. He was sentenced to 25 years for felony assault and was shipped out to the state-of-the-art prison facility in Saratoga Springs.

But like all 21st century prisoners not sentenced to life or death, Martin benefitted from massive prison overcrowding and was released before he had served five years.

Martin was a changed man. The first thing he did was go to the airnet library to find out where his children were living. Prison had made him gay and it didn’t have the stigma it had just 20 years before, so he made no apologies about not trying to get Vanessa back. Regardless, Martin wasn’t thinking much starting a relationship with anyone but his children.

The prison bus took him directly into downtown Albany. He carried his duffle bag full of new clothes and the $250 dollars on his prison-issued cash card. He found a library near the governmental buildings and started his search.

For the first time in five years, he allowed himself to visualize seeing his children again. He pictured driving across the state in a rented convertible loaded with stuffed animals and baseball bats. Then he was riding the train, humming along, feeling the almost absent vibration of the electromagnetic core, sleeping soundly for once, his forehead against the window, dreaming of pizza parties and vacations at the beach. Bedtime stories, waiting for the school bus, driving to the mall, giving advice.

He flipped through Buffalo’s citizen history listings and found his boys. They were living with their mother and someone named Anthony in cul-de-sac home in Williamsville, 10 minutes outside of downtown. They had Anthony’s last name.

- posted by seanmh @ 9:05 AM