UNTITLED

UNTITLED
I woke up while walking across the floor of what looked like a motel room, wearing a pair of jeans, leather jacket and nothing else. As I looked around the room, I noticed it was littered with several empty whiskey and beer bottles, an empty pizza box, and what appeared to be pizza on the walls and ceiling. I heard noise outside my room, and upon peering out the window, saw a cleaning lady walking away with her cleaning cart. Did she wake me up? What city am I in? And for that matter, what is my name? Who AM I? I walked to the mirror, and looked at my reflection. I did not recognize myself. I did not know who I was. Just then, I noticed money on the table, beneath the mirror, by the television. I began to count and when I reached $1,900.00, I threw it down, looked at myself once again, and said "man, whoever I am, I have money".

My name is Joseph Lee Lake. I was born December 30th, 1957. What I described above, happened in the year 2009. We have all heard about amnesia, but very few of us have actually experienced it, unless we were suffering from a hangover, and have had a black out. That is what happened to me. Something that had happened to me hundreds of times previously, and something I was used to. Something I normally shook off. But this time was different. Not only had I forgotten what had transpired for the 4 days I was locked in that hotel room drinking, but I had forgotten who I was. I did not know what I looked like. The money that was on the table under the mirror, which reflected a stranger back into my eyes, scared me. Did I rob a bank? Did I kill someone? I looked under the beds for a body, but they were none to be found. I felt my wallet and took it out of my pocket. I looked at my drivers license, read my name, spoke it aloud several times, but it didn't ring a bell. My knees were buckling beneath the weight of my body, and I was shaking quite badly. I sat on the bed, gathering my mind the best I could, picked up the phone, and pushed zero for the front desk. The man answered the phone, and I asked him how long I had been at the motel. "you've been here for 4 days Mr. Lake", was his reply. I then asked when checkout was, and he told me eleven am, but also informed me that I was paid up until tomorrow. My head was swimming as I hung up the phone. A second later, the piercing sound of the phone ringing blasted me out of my thoughts, and I looked at it, afraid to pick it up. It stopped ringing, and I felt a little better. The ringing started again, but this time I picked up the receiver, put it to my ear, and listened. After a brief bit of silence, a woman's voice said "dad?". Dad? Did I have children, I asked myself? I said hello, and the woman asked me what my room number was. I responded to her, asking who she was, and she replied "it's me, Jamie, your daughter".

While I have been known to enjoy pulling a good prank on people, I have never found much pleasure in having one pulled on me. This surely must be a joke, I thought. I can play along. So I told told her to hold on, walked to the door, opened it, looked at the room number, walked back to the phone and told her. She hung up, and a few minutes later, there was a knock on my door. I remained quiet. "Dad?" a voice called through the door. "Dad, it's Jamie. Let me in". Who are you, I asked. "It's me, Jamie, your daughter". I put the chain on the door, opened it a crack, and saw a pretty woman intently staring back at me. She looked somewhat familiar. Actually, she looked a lot like me. She explained that I had called her the day before, and had asked her for help, but had not given her my location. Apparently when we were done talking, she had called the number on her phone via caller i.d., and the front desk answered, telling her they could not confirm wether I was there or not, but did give her the address of the motel, which about 30 miles from away. She told me she was sorry it took so long for her to get there, but she could not find a babysitter until this morning. I was informed in a matter of a few minutes time, that not only did I have a daughter, but a grandson as well.

There are four things I can recall of my early childhood. The first, and most vivid, most real to me, was when I was three or four years old. I was in our living room, in our house, which was shared by my parents and I. Mom and dad were in the kitchen, and I heard strange, angry whispering voices, the words "sick bitch" repeated over and over again, ending with a thud. My father left the kitchen, and I went in to see what was happening. My mother was standing there, holding her face, which was partially covered by her hand, and quietly sobbing. "What's the matter, mommy," I asked her. She turned to me, and I saw the white skin around one of her eyes was darkening. It scared me. She explained that while opening the cupboard, she bumped herself with the door. Just then, my father came back into the room, and began doing something that I can't recall, and I found myself pushing between their legs, holding onto both of them at knee level the best I could, and crying the words, "please stop mommy and daddy, please stop. I love you". And they did. They stopped. And they embraced. And I continued embraced them as well, but this time my little arms hugged them with a gut love. The kind of love we are all born with, that is natural and all encompassing, that is forgiving and unconditional. Not the unconditional love we are taught about via a counselor or twelve-step group, or a movie, but a love that is inert in us all when we arrive in this world. One that we all know, until it is turned into a memory, and quickly fades away.

I figured I would believe this woman named Jamie. I would play along. She was very pretty, about 25 or so, slender, 5'7" with dark hair and dark, beautiful eyes, which looked vaugley familiar to me, but I could not place. She looked so familiar. "Lets go dad", she said. Go where, I asked? I'm going to take you back to Jackson. Mom's watching Jayshawn, and she's gotta be at work." Mom? Jayshawn? This was getting too deep too quick. I found a pair of leather sandals, put them on, and tried to stand, but my legs were too wobbly, and I fell back onto the bed. Jamie, noticing the cash on the table, asked me what it was. "I don't know", I told her. "It was there. That's all I remember. I stopped counting at $1,900.00. Wanna get a pizza?" She suggested we count it together, and she put in into an envelope, with the amount written on it, and I agreed. I asked her to put the envelope in her purse. She then put my clothes and things into my bag, and told me to pick up my guitar, and we proceeded to leave. I had to move very slowly, as I was having a great deal of difficulty walking. When we got into the car, it was literally like sitting in the cockpit of a jumbo-jet to me. It all seemed so foreign. Then Jamie disappeared. I was sitting, alone in the parking lot of a motel, in a town that had no name, in someones car, which I thought somehow reminded me of an airplane, and had been abandoned by a woman claiming to be my daughter.

The second memory I have from my early youth is crying. The kind of crying that kids do that sometimes gets out of control, and turns into hysteria, with the snot pouring out of my nose, and gulping for air. This always seemed to happen whenever I was left alone, away from my mother, in a strange place. My parent's owned a jewelry store in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the year was somewhere around 1960. Dad made handcrafted wedding bands, which were his money-making specialty, but also carried a wide variety of imported goods from Africa, China, India and the like. They started the store, which was named Lakes Art Shoppe, the year I was born, as a mom and pop sort of business. One that would not require any employees, other than my parents. At first, I stayed with the Kholoffs, who lived in the only house within walking distance of the deserted location of our home, which was several miles out in the country, and sat on 26 acres of land. At some point, right around the time that I recall my parents fighting, I began to act out when left with the sitter, screaming and carrying on until I would vomit. The next memory, my third most vivid, was going to work with my mother, but instead of going to the shop, stopping at a big black house along the way instead, which turned out to be a children's day-care in Ann Arbor. I didn't scream when I cried anymore. Things were somehow different this time. I seemed almost subdued. Drugged. And I noticed, all of my baby-teeth were missing.