Keep the Door Open

A story of poor choices and their consequences.

Summer 1995, late evening, with recent-graduate high school theater kids from all over Philly in a castle filled with liquor. 

Well, it was basically a castle. A rich people house. You know, one of those families with perpetually absent parents where the kids did whatever their under-developed morals and raging hormones desired.

R.E.M., Dave Matthews Band, Pearl Jam, Indigo Girls, and Green Day made up the soundtrack. A smoky haze hovered 3 feet above the backyard as smokers congregated (outside) as well as abstainers (inside), and couples found dark corners and empty rooms (inside or outside or … wherever).

Everyone planned to have a great time then crash there for the night so no one got on the road drunk. We had some sense of responsibility, or at least an awareness that anyone who got pulled over might lead the cops back to the house and who wants to deal with the implications of all that alcohol and all those minors being in the same place.

I knew the plan but decided not to drink, especially when I had to drive to work the next morning. Others made different choices.

My good friend Mark, who was about my age (that is, not yet 21) came to the party with a bottle of Jack Daniels. He had two options for obtaining it: an older sister (the safer bet) or stealing it from his dad's liquor cabinet (risky but not off the table). 

Normally when you go to a party like this you bring drinks to share. But Mark got there, uncapped the bottle, and started sipping.

And it stayed attached to his left hand all night. 

At about two in the morning, I found Mark on an armchair, draped like a rag doll, every muscle floppy and loose, except for those gripping the now half-empty bottle.

I had no experience with whiskey back then (experience would come later with a vengeance, I assure you), but I knew this was bad. I'd only ever seen people drink shots of this stuff, not nearly that much. And I saw Pulp Fiction. You know, the scene where John Travolta stabs Uma Thurman in the chest with that giant needle, and I did not want to do that shit.

“Hey, Mark? You okay?” 

His eyes made lazy circles trying to find me.

“Frank, I fucked up," he slurred. "I have to get out of here. I have to go home. Can you call my dad?”

I only met Mark's dad a couple of times, and I feared him. I never saw him raise his voice, but I never saw him smile either. And Mark got grounded enough times for me to know his dad didn’t screw around. In my mind, calling his dad meant I would never see Mark again.

But I also knew he had a lot of whiskey coursing through his veins. So, at shortly after two in the morning, I went to the kitchen, grabbed the corded phone, and called Mark's dad. 

“Hello,” he grumbled. He answered quickly so he must have had a phone right at his bedside.

“Hey, Mr. Lehmann, this is Frank. I'm here with Mark at a party and he … he’s had way too much to drink.” I made no mention of the Jack Daniels that may or may not have been missing from his liquor cabinet. “He's in really bad shape. He asked me to call you to pick him up.”

A moment of silence. Then he asked for the address and said calmly, “I'm on my way.”

Mr. Lehmann arrived 20 minutes later with a ring of the doorbell, prompting everyone to grab the evidence and other paraphernalia and scatter into the empty rooms and dark corners with the couples because, well, cops. We scooped Mark out of the chair, threw out the bottle, supported his wobble across the yard, and poured him into the back seat of his dad's car. Mr. Lehmann even thought to bring a trash bag. Like he had personal experience with this kind of thing.

I shut the car door and before I walked back to the house, Mark's dad put a hand on my shoulder, squeezed, and said, “Thank you for calling me, Frank.” I watched as he drove off into the darkness with his drunk underage son.

I heard from Mark a few days later, happy that neither the whiskey nor his father killed him. “I’m not even grounded,” he said. “My dad told me that the next two days were punishment enough.” 

I learned a couple things. First, as a friend, keep an eye out for people, and don't be afraid to call for help. Second, as a father, always keep the door open. The fact that Mark instinctively told me to call his dad, even knowing the potential consequences, tells me his dad was tough but fair and Mark trusted him to stay that way, even after such a bad decision. 

I have modeled my own actions as a father on his example, telling Indy before they went away to college, “Call me any time of day or night. I don't care if it's two in the morning. Call me if you need me. I will never yell. I will never berate you. I only want to make sure you are safe.”

P.S. - Generation X has it made, being the last generation whose teenage years were not documented on the internet. There is no evidence. So.... 

This could be a work of fiction based on actual events that may or may not have actually happened and the world will never know...

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