Lee Paul Stark: That Damn Toilet

"As it was in the Beginning, so shall it be in the End."   - Matthew 24:37

It was all because of that damn toilet. None of this would have happened if not for that damn toilet backing up into the bathtub. The opening scene consisted of an old home, old plumbing, and well-seasoned motel manager muttering profanities under his breath every time he flushed. 

His name was Lee, and for weeks he woke up every morning hoping, praying, and finally cursing the problem to work itself out. Plumbing by profanity is a universally applied useful tool, which has a 100% failure rate, but maybe, just maybe, this time it would work. Predictably, it didn't. However, this particular persistent plumbing problem and the distinguished foul-mouthed gentleman name Lee constituted my miracle.

He was aggravated and impatient as he made his way across the parking lot to employ a more cooperative toilet for his morning constitutional. That's what Lee was looking for a more cooperative toilet. What Lee got instead was me. 

I'm somehow drawn, almost led to aggravated and impatient people. That's my superpower which directed me to Lee. 

"What's wrong, brother?" I asked.

"I've got a damn toilet that backs up into my bathtub every time I flush." Lee growled back.
"Well, I can fix it for you if you let me take a look."

Three hours later the problem was remedied, and five years later here I stand telling you about one of the most significant people in my life. One of the very few who not only helped me escape homelessness, but also facilitated me helping others still trapped behind. Like I said, "Lee constituted my miracle."

A toilet is a firm foundation on which to build a relationship, and so we built. It turned out that Lee and I had much in common: both of us raised in large cities, being instinctively argumentative, extraordinarily opinionated, and generally right about everything almost all the time, just to name a few. 

Then, there were the uniquely precious parts that were all Lee. He was a Jew from the Bronx raised in a kosher home. His lineage traced back to the Tribe of the Levites; Priests to the One True God.

His father was a hard-working man who wanted a better life for his boys. Lee's mother was a loving woman who loved her family more than anything else in this world. 

Lee had an old-school American childhood in the archaic days before cell phones. He told me how mothers in his neighborhood would communicate by shouting out the window, then relaying the message from building to building, down the block to its intended recipient. This old urban telephone network was called "Ma Yell". 

Back in these days of real community, if Lee or another child were caught doing wrong, any parent within sight had the obligation to tan the kid's hide as a down payment, then send them home to their father where the principle and interest on the beating came due upon receipt. Lee covered the cost on a number of these, almost always with good cause.

Lee was my mentor, my friend, my surrogate father, and a reminder of my own father because they told the same jokes… repeatedly.

I can count the fights between Lee and I on three fingers. All of them middle ones. All of them laid to rest long ago because none of them really mattered. None of them ever do. Between us and God there is only Eternity. That is what matters. That is the distance each of us will cross. Everything else is meaningless in comparison. Everything else is but ashes and dust.

Lee was one of the good ones. One of the dwindling The Greatest Generation few. One that I was not ready to let go, but now we all must because Lee has crossed Eternity. There Lee remains with our God. Here we remain for just a while longer. 

So, good-bye for now my friend. Until we meet again... you'll have to fix your own damn toilet.

Amen.

Lee is a Star

Andy, I'm sorry.

I never really liked the kid.
I suppose, I never took the time to like him.
He wasn't the kind of kid that was easy to like.
He had problems.
We all have problems, but Andy’s problems were different;
more extreme, less tolerable, more numerous, and less solvable.
So, he never put effort towards solving them. Life isn’t fair, so what’s the use?
Victim or victimizer… those were his choices.
Andy made a choice.


I never liked the kid or his choices.
He had a way of making his problems the problems of others.
If someone wronged Andy, he would complain bitterly to any who would
offer a shoulder to cry on.
A shoulder placed him within reach of his next victims throat.
That was Andy's indirect method of problem distribution.
His direct method was far more insidious and destructive to his victims.





Andy lacked empathy.
Empathy is the natural whisper within that urges us to,

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Empathy allows us to feel another sentient being's pain, joy, loss, sorrow, and victory.
Without shimmering empathy, people like Andy are very hard to like.
We “speak” empathy on the spiritual, social network Nepesh.

(Go ahead and click it or you'll miss the whole point, just like Andy. Remember, it's an action, not a thing!)

Empathy was gibberish to Andy.
The whisper from deep within 
which restrains us from barbarism 
and all other valedictorian studies 
at the Serpent school fell silent. 
His sins became more egregious, 
more irritating, and without a doubt, 
less forgivable in the world of the Living. 
He was a corpse. 

Someone planted a feral seed 
in Andy the victim. 
That crooked sprout tormented the boy 
in which it took root. 
Given darkness and time, 
rage and age metastasizes like cancer. 
Changing victim into victimizer.
Before the Bitter harvest could reach maturity, 
some tried to intervene 
by battering, disciplining, or transforming 
the foul maturing fruit. 
Others tried to sweeten the nectar 
from within and through Nepesh, 
but Andy’s isolation fire-walled intimacy. 
Love finds no safe harbor, 
only embargo by a swift and strong unnatural Defense. 
Strength through Power projected, fabricated Strength.

Down, down the spiral, 
a victim steps into the skin of perpetrator 
to seize a crown by force.
Force through fabricated, overrated Strength.
Power; his lost crown.
Down, down into Darkness go.
Into battle go.
Pierce the flesh below.
Hunted is now the hunter.

A veteran blooded by his own… blood 

and of those who lingered near his cold, dark hollow.
A forlorn bunker home once made of flesh.
The space where he was armored 

and invulnerable to all those alien feelings. 

Feelings not his own.
His castle had been like ours, 

just more sullen, ever thinning, and dimming.
Isolation is a mindset, 

and his mind was set in twisted iron and jagged concrete long ago.

He was a castaway 

and sole survivor of a tragic shipwreck 

He began as crew and eventually took the helm.
But his vessel had taken on water, 

tattered sails, and an empty galley.
He was weighed down, dragged down. 

He couldn’t catch a following wind 
with his best attempts.
He was always hungry.
Starved ravenous to the point of madness.
Nothing could fill that breach.
Everything could not fill that chasm.


I never really knew the kid, 
and I never made the effort to know him.

If I had, would it have made a difference 
in the course he set?

I will never know, 
because he took his own life the other night.
That was the last choice he made 
and my first regret 
concerning Andy.

No one spoke his praise,
No one bore his tears,

and no one noticed that his cold, dark hollow
was empty. 

Andy, I'm sorry.