Fault Lines - John Knoop

one of them. I was a sailor having a drink in a bar on the Barbary Coast; someone asked
me if I was thinking of going back to fight for the Union. I said, “Not a half a chance.” I
was struck lucidly in the dream by the emphatic ring of the a’s surrounding the ‘half’. I
saw myself as tanned and strong, wearing denim sailor pants. The rigging of tall ships
hung over that portside saloon. The liquor was flowing freely, and I was clear-headed
and sober, though I had a shot of whiskey in my hand.
This rather happy dream revealing me as a successful maverick is a clear contrast to
the semi-waking nightmare that haunted me when I was eight or nine. I’d be trying to fall
asleep and I’d hear a witch-like voice talking about me in very cynical tones. I never saw
her and didn’t identify the voice as belonging to anyone I knew. But she was clearly a
surreal force that had power over me and menacingly echoed the disapproval of my
mother and grandmother. The voice was angry and ugly and seemed to be telling the
world at large about my miserable performance. It tormented me quite regularly during
that period of my life. I tried not to take it seriously but it made me very uncomfortable
and probably heightened my rebellious opposition to authority. I think I emerged from
that time of extreme vulnerability when I began to have some victories as a swimmer on
the high school team and as a race-winning sailor and tennis champion during summer
vacations in Michigan.
In high school I liked to drink. Once I had my driver’s license it was simply a
matter of crossing the Ohio River and going to a liquor store in Newport, Kentucky
where putting down the money was the only requirement for purchasing a bottle. I made
it a macho point of honor to keep a pint of gin in my locker at school and cautiously but
proudly shared it with friends. On New Year’s Eve that year I drank most of a fifth of
Beefeater’s straight from the bottle at an all night party. I drove home without a problem,
but when I got up around noon I had red blotches all over my body and no certain
memory of whether it had been worth it. I shifted my attention to relatively moderate
amounts of bourbon after that night.
The senior year at Walnut Hills High School was like a holiday. The new principal,
Dr. Howe, an urbane and civilized import from Boston, had initiated a program of honors
classes for eligible seniors. Dr. Edwin Sauer, lured away from the University of Chicago,
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