The Chronicles Of Luke Warm

The Overwhelmingly Embellished And Altogether Unverifiable Chronicle Of The Previously Untold Events In The Life Of Luke Warm

A poorly written serialized tale

By Joe

Chapter 1 – An introduction of sorts OR “Let’s Get This Over With…” 

My name is Luke.   Luke Warm.  Yeah, I know.   Let’s just say a bad sense of humor, a case of Schlitz, an Ernest Hemingway quotation, and a pregnant woman who’s last name so readily lends itself to parody make for a poor combination.

My father, I’ve been told, was a drunk.  He left when I was young.  Or died.  I’m not too sure.  Either way, he never even bothered to send me a birthday card.  My mother was a drunk too, but I didn’t have to hear it from anybody.  My mom was….   How should I put this?  You know the kind of mom who buys you a carton of cigarettes for your 13th birthday, 8 weeks late,  and then smokes half of them herself?  I never doubted that my mom loved me, she just had a funny way of showing it.  But then, she had a funny way of doing just about everything. 

I’ll never forget what my told me on my 15th birthday.  She had taken me to her favorite bar to get me drunk for the first time.  14 shots of rail whiskey later, as I was head first into a trash can, losing my dinner, my mom told….

She said….   um…

something about…  “Don’t do anything…”  No, thats not it.  

“We don’t” or “We can’t”

“We can’t have what we want…”  no, “…what we need”

“We can’t get what we need because of who we are.”  Something like that.  Anyway, it’s not important.  She died two weeks later.

 

Chapter 2 – In Which Luke Hits the Road OR “Consider This Join Blown!”

My mom was dead.  Who would have thought a life of binge drinking, chain smoking, and occasional drug use would end so abbruptly.  She never even saw that bus coming….

 So there I was, 15 years old, and without a family.  I mean, I had a family, sort of.  My mom’s family.  But as it happend, my mom hadn’t spoken to her family in almost 20 years.  She left home at 17, and never looked back, which ment I didn’t know how to find them, and they didn’t know I existed.  I was an orphan now, and likely to stay that way. 

I was never what you would call a studious…. well, student.  But I had a feeling that after a month or so me not showing up to class, they would get wise, and call child services.  And then I’d be off to foster care.  Fuck that.  That ment I had only one choice… get the hell out of town.   But how?

Now a 15-year-old kid hitch hiking is a bad idea for just sooooo many reasons, but as my mom used to say: “Bad ideas and alcoholism run in our family.”  Maybe not the best words to live by, but you make due with what you have.

I don’t know if you’ve ever hitch hiked before, but taking rides from truckers, drug dealers, old hippies, and one fella with multiple personalities (he was a great bunch of guys) is way more education that you could ever hope to get at school.  The details of the trip are probably better saved for another day, but I will say this:  As a general rule, the people who are willing to pick up a stranger on the road and drive them around for a few hours are generally not the people you want to spend a few hours with. 

Anyway, three months on the road later I found myself in Baltimore, where I managed to get a job bussing tables at an old dive bar.  I guess the bar tender, a one-legged fell called ‘Dodge,’ felt sorry for me, and lucky for me he was just irresponsible enough to let me work at the bar instead of turn me in.  And better yet, he had a small apartment above the bar with an extra room.  So I had a job now, and a place to stay.  Not bad for a kid who didn’t even shave.  I was on top of the world.  A dirty, seedy world full of addicts and low lives.  But at least I was on top.

What could possibly go wrong?