“Right after my boy drowned, I let it all go to the wind. I ran off to the southwest. I had some friends there, and they offered me a place to stay and try to heal and recover. All I did was get fucked up, day in and day out. Mainly out there in the Saguaro Desert, in that dry heat. That shit will drain the life from you, and leave a man weak and confused.”

“I recall being naked in somebody’s backyard pool, in Mesa, Arizona, 1984, the wrong pool, the wrong house. Tripping my ass off on gobs of peyote mescaline and good Mexican tequila and Negra Modelo beer.”

“From the next house over—the place where I belonged, and the pool I was supposed to be in—the stereo was deafening. Cyndi Lauper’s ‘She Bop’ was telling me, as I struggled to hold my head above the water and not drown; a fear rose in me of being found dead and naked in the neighbor’s pool, the fear that everything I’d ever known or been told about right and wrong, the rule of law and the rules of being a man was wrong.”

“It somehow felt right that I drown, like the boy did, sucking all that warm water into my lungs. By rights, I should have drowned, but I didn’t. All I did was float there in that water, face down, listening to that goddamn song, thinking about my dead boy. Not a day goes by, Shug, I don’t wish I’d died in that pool.”

—Charlie

The Truth is in the Water