The Kings of Manitou

Andrew Warren

Hertzog CCR 092

9/17/2014

The Kings of Manitou

Some people look at me now, and they think I have it all together. They think I am just a normal, clean cut, blue collar citizen. I don’t drink. I don’t party. I work all the time and barely go out. That’s what they think anyways. If only they had known me a few years ago. It would be a whole different story. You see, I was a senseless, out of control, raging alcoholic. I pulled the strings of people and manipulated them like puppets. I lived a fantasy life style and Manitou was my kingdom. And what I thought was fun and not a problem, was actually destroying me.

December 31^st, 2010, it was 11:45 pm, at a very rowdy New Year’s Eve party at the Ancient Mariner in Manitou Springs, Colorado. The place was packed! People were shoving and pushing, and making their way towards the bar to get their drink of choice for the New Year’s countdown toast. They looked like a bunch of rabid piranhas all cooped up in one tiny wooden barrel. I had just got off work late that night and had begun to swim towards the bar as fast as I could to get a much needed drink myself. Getting the bartender’s attention was near to impossible. Then out from the far right hand side of the bar, I hear a guy yell “We need shots! I’m buying!”  Those two phrases were music to an alcoholic’s ears. I rushed right over to that guy and yelled back, “You’re my boy blue!” He starred right at me, paused, and said, “You’re the only one who can call me that!” “Get this guy one too!” He was a very skinny looking guy, with small black dreadlocks tied up on top of his head. He had a face like Groucho Marx, with big bushy black eyebrows, thick black reading glasses, and a magician like goatee. He then began to pass out a tray of shots to everyone, like Santa clause throwing candy out to a pool of hyper kids on a Macy’s Christmas Day Parade float. The countdown had begun. 5…4…3…2…1 HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! Everyone yelled out in unison. We all drank and slammed our glasses down onto the bar and yelled really loud. That was the day the devil bought me a shot.

            Now, a lot of us can go out and have a few drinks, have fun, and go home. No problem right? Well, it was a problem for me. And my problem was about to get worse. Alcoholics like myself can’t have just a few drinks, we drink until the money runs out or the well has run dry.  After that night, I woke up the next day and the crippling hangover was streaked with sunlight. My mouth was dry, and screaming for water. I looked at the long ash on the now extinguished cigarette still between my fingers and wondered, how the hell did I survive that night? I flopped out of bed and checked my pocket. There was a little crumbled up bar napkin in it, with a phone number scribbled on it, and the word, “Blue”. Ah yes, my memory seems to be coming back now. I never called Blue. The writing was hard to read on the napkin. I did see his face in a few bars from time to time. He would stop by and say hi, he would chat for a bit and walk off. We made each other laugh. You know how someone really gets your humor? Well he did! He would say something completely “off the wall”, and while others would look at him puzzled, I would burst out laughing. It was like he was saying out loud what I was thinking. I remember one time at one of our favorite watering holes, there was this girl who we were talking to that had a mousey face, and talked very fast with a valley girl lingo, in a high pitched voice. She would say words like, “for sure”, and “totally” a lot. She reminded me of a drunken chipmunk. As soon as she walked away, Blue turns to me with his two front teeth protruding from his mouth and quickly repeated the words, “For sure! For sure! Totally! Totally!”  And I lost it! I almost had my drink come out my nose! I knew right then that we were going to be best friends. Later that night, Blue had explained to me that he was moving away to Wisconsin and it was fun hanging out with me the past few weeks. I was kind of bummed out. This was the first time I had found a good friend in a long time.

            Winter was long and boring. I missed hanging out with Blue. But time went on, and in the spring I moved to old Colorado City. There was this liquor store a block from my house which, a Seven Eleven, and a new Deli opening soon. When it became closer to summer, I went to the liquor store and as I was stepping out of the car, I hear a faint voice yell from across the street, “Shaggy!” (That was my nickname, due to my long hair, long beard, and 70’s style clothing I wore a lot.) I looked up, and there was Blue! I excitedly yelled back, “You’re my boy Blue!” I ran across the street to the Deli and high fived my best friend. He told me he had moved back and he was working at the Deli. This was awesome! But this would be the beginning of a sinister downward spiral that any poor bastard could easily get trapped in. Guess who was about to step foot in that trap?

            Blue and I hung out that night at my new place as soon as he got off work. I was living with a girl whom I was dating at the time who was also a very wicked alcoholic. And every time Blue and I would hang out there and get intoxicated on the “magic brew”, she would get really frustrated and yell at us a lot. It got so bad, because I would never spend time with her. I choose my drinking buddy over her. He said to me, “Move out man, you would be so much happier without her.” One night while sitting alone with her, we got really drunk and everything was fine until I said “Why don’t you like my friends?” “You never let me have any fun”. Then she got really loud with me, and violent. And she told me that if I wasn’t happy then just go! So I grabbed a backpack and stuffed it with clothes, a change jar, and a tooth brush. I went into another room and called my friend Tommy to come pick me up. I walked back into the room, sat down quietly and waited. Tommy honked his horn and I grabbed my gear and headed for the door. She said, “Where the hell are you going?” I looked at her and said quietly, “I’m leaving you”. And before she could say a word, I left. Tommy was in a band and was living in a tiny band space. I had to sleep in his van for 3 days, because the floor of the band space was so uncomfortable. A girl at work had heard about my situation and insisted I stay at her cabin in Manitou. She was never there and I agreed. I was working at the Craftwood Inn at the time, and Blue had called me a week later looking for a new job. I got him a job working with me, it was nice to have a good friend in the kitchen, going to war with the servers and cooking on the line of fire and hot grease. I told him that I finally left my girlfriend, and I almost had enough money to get my own place. I went to go look at this apartment that was a small hobbit hole of a place. It had one room, kitchen and bathroom on one side, and a bed room on the other. It was perfect for me. And dirt cheap! I didn’t have much, no car, no other bills; I lost almost everything during the break up.

            The day finally came, I got the apartment! I was so happy! I felt free. I felt like I just came out of a long stressed induced coma. I ran to work and as soon as I got there, before I could say a word, Blue looked at me and said “You got the place!” He could always tell by my facial expressions. I said, “Hell yeah!” We were bouncing around that kitchen like two idiots that just won the lottery. The next morning, I got up early. Noon is early to a drunk by the way. I went to some of the local shops and bought this cool Alice in Wonderland tye dyed tapestry, some incense, Christmas lights, groceries, a huge jug of sangria wine, and a bunch of assorted micro brews and shots. I called Blue, and told him that our clubhouse was all set up. It looked like a perfect man cave if I ever saw one. He came over immediately after work. We celebrated and drank ourselves silly, played video games, and went bar hoping later that night. Blue decided that since we both had the next day off that he would just spend the night. I had a chair that would fold out into a one person cot, so that became his spot. It was the most fun I had in years. We both had the next day off and we decided that once we got up the next day, we would go get some lunch and hit the bar scene. And we did. We would eat, then have what’s called “The hair of the dog”, which is basically a nice hard shot of liquor to kill that hung-over feeling. Our poison was Jager bombs. It would just get us going. People always say, “Drink responsibly”. Our first drink of the day had the word “bomb” in it. If that isn’t pure irony, I don’t know what is. This became our daily routine. He worked with me and now he was practically living with me. We did not have cars. We did not have any bills, other than my rent, which was really low. Our work was right up the road in walking distance, including the bars, shops, general stores, and of course the most important, the liquor store. We had it all. This began, “Shag and Blue’s excellent summer extravaganza”. And that is exactly what we called it. 

            We tore up the town every night. They had turned us loose into the streets of Manitou, two liquored up hippies with no cares in the world. Our routine of constant bar hopping to the same bars at the same times turned us into “predictable” regulars. There were bars that as soon as we walked in, they would immediately start pouring our drinks without us having to tell them what we wanted. One bouncer at the Townhouse Lounge would say to us, “Look who it is, it’s Jesus and Moses, the kings of Manitou!” and he would proudly open the door for us. And Bartenders loved us. We spent so much money and tipped enormous. Our first week out we spent over $500 a piece on just going to bars. We bought people shots, and made people laugh. We could walk down the street, and people would shout out our names. We walked proudly with our heads high, or stumbled in most cases. And Blue was a silver tongue devil. He could talk me into anything. If I wanted to take a break from drinking, he would say, “You will be fine man, we are warriors”. If I was running low on money, he would find a way to get it. We occasionally stayed at my apartment and just hung out there. I remember once he said, “Let’s try shrooms!” And I was feeling a little weird about that, but he talked me into it. And we were tripping a lot. So now on top of drinking, we were getting into psychedelics. I could write a whole book on the crazy trips we had, but that’s another story. I remember one trip we had where Blue was sitting in front of the television, which I had set up to play CD’s and show a kaleidoscope of colors. There was dub step style music playing, while Blue was air drumming to the beat. He started to look like a little demon. His dreadlocked head looked spikey like a giant pinecone. I kept yelling at him to turn off that music. And he just kept his back turned and kept ignoring me. It was though he was in some sort of malevolent trance. This caused me to panic and yell, “Stop it”! He finally looked back at me and gave a devilish smile, and put on some Grateful Dead, and that seemed to calm me down. I think that may have been the last time I did that wicked drug.

            As the summer went by I started to notice that our appearance was rough. We looked like two scruffy, dirty, hippy zombies. It was affecting my work. It got out of control. There were times I almost got fired. And he would try to justify everything. He would say things like “It is fine man, we are functioning alcoholics”. “We get our jobs done and we don’t hurt anyone”.  I would bring home groups of strangers after the bars closed. We would have after parties, and I had stuff stolen from me. My best friends and co-workers would tell me I was a mess. And I would just brush it off. Many months went by and it was New Year’s again, and I was at the Ancient Mariner where it all started. I remember a friend of mine walked in, she was a bartender there, and she had a friend with her who I was very interested in. It was like a movie when I saw her, time had stood still and everyone in the bar faded in the background. She was the most beautiful and most classy woman I have ever talked to. We talked for a bit, and I told her to friend request me on Facebook. The next day I was kicking myself because I didn’t ask for her number. When I went to check my Facebook, there she was, and there was her phone number. I asked her out and she agreed to go on a date with me. She told me she was bored and had nothing better to do.  We started to spend a lot of time together. Blue, didn’t like it; I started to see less of him. He eventually quit the Craftwood. I felt like a new man, except one day while I was on a date with her, we went to the Manitou Mardi Gras, and she got to see the drunken master side of me. I made a complete jack ass of myself. And she didn’t like it. She was the first person in my life that clearly said, “It’s either me or the booze”. And I agreed that I needed to quit drinking, she meant a lot to me. It was substantial to my health. I even shaved off the crumby old beard. As we were dating I would sneak a few drinks here and there, and she would catch me, and there she would get upset. So I went about 4 months sober, I was doing great! When out of the Blue (no pun intended) called Blue. He said to me, “Come home to Manitou, you don’t belong there.” “Have a drink, one won’t hurt”. And as my girlfriend was going to work that day, she kissed me and told me she loved me. And I gave her a hug. And as soon as she left, I went to the liquor store, got all buzzed up, packed up my stuff in my car, and drove to Blue’s new apartment and stayed with him. I won’t get into all the details, but I was there for about a week. We spent all my money. He was getting eviction notices. I felt like crap again. It wasn’t the same happy fun time anymore. This was dark. And one day as I lay rotting on Blue’s couch, I said “Give me a sign God, give me a sign that I’m not supposed to be here.” She texted my phone 5 minutes later, “I am pregnant.” I packed my bags and quickly got the hell out of there! I’m damn lucky she even considered taking me back. But we were still a new couple, and I didn’t want to mess this one up. When I got home I erased and blocked Blue from any way of contacting me. He was toxic. And that’s when I truly realized, what we thought wasn’t hurting us, and what we thought wasn’t bad for us, was really killing us.

 the person on the left is "Blue" ...