Life at 17

An adventure awaited me in August before my senior year began. It was the sort that one would never chose; one that would leave imprints on my psyche forever.  The night began innocently enough. Liz was in my room and we were watching old movies on an old black-and-white TV I had bought for $10 at a pawn shop. It was around 11 when we heard pounding at the door. Everyone else was in bed asleep. I went to the door, and though I don't remember the words exchanged the gist of it was there were two men who were hunting Dad. They didn't identify themselves, but they were huge menacing looking guys. I told them the truth that he wasn't there, and they accused me of lying. I made the mistake of cracking the door open a bit, and they seized the opportunity to kick it open and rush into our apartment. I started swinging and connected with one, but they took me down with a punch to the neck and then the big blow, a boot to my balls. I was in agony screaming as I heard them rush into every room, cursing at my grandmother, mother and brothers and sisters demanding to know where he was. After every bed was looked under, every closet was opened and they were empty-handed, they realized that i had been telling the truth, so on their way out they profusely apologized by kicking me in the ribs, calling me a "punk motherfucker."

What I didn't know then but was soon to learn was they were bounty hunters for a local bail bond company. Seems when Dad left town he conveniently avoided his court date for the DWI back in January, so the bond company was on the hook for the full amount they put up unless they could bring him in. None of that mattered to me though; no explanation would cure the pain of my physical and emotional injuries I received that night. My swollen testicles eventually normalized and my rib stopped hurting, but my shame at not being able to protect my family was long-lasting. We called the police, and they took a report but once they understood that it was a bail-jumping situation they literally looked at me with disdain as though I somehow deserved it. To this day, I don't like cops or bail bondsmen, and this was the starting point of that antipathy.

The next night, I couldn't sleep and I sat on the sofa fixated on the door with a butcher knife in my hand, determined to kill them before they did it again. They didn't come that night, but the next day Mom could see I was nearly having a nervous breakdown. My solution was that I would drive to Memphis to find Dad, since he again was not answering phone calls, and demand in person that he come back to make the situation right. She was against it of course, but my grandmother who, secretly dying of cancer, was beyond exhausted with our struggles, agreed with me and gave me $20 she had squirreled away so I could buy gas. I took off mid-afternoon, with one address that hopefully I could find him at. Just a bit past Little Rock, flames started shooting out under the hood of the Impala. I pulled over and though the fire quickly died I wasn't going to try to drive it, so I walked a mile to the next exit and found a gas station mechanic who agreed to come tow it. He diagnosed a bad fuel pump and said it would be $60. Of course, I didn't have that and asked if I could leave it parked to the side of the lot until I could figure something out. With that I took off, not knowing I would never see my Impala again. I had never hitchhiked, but had heard Dad tell tales of it and didn't know what else to do. I couldn't get in touch with Mom since we had no home phone. I had no relatives I was close to. Dad wasn't answering, and I had about $12 in my pocket.

My thumb stuck out in the air, I began a 12 hour odyssey that would take me over 100 miles, with four different car rides and about 30 miles of walking through the night; some of it, I was to find out later, through neighborhoods in Memphis where white people didn't dare show their faces at any hour of the day. Before I got there, I nearly died by falling off the Mississippi River bridge, had a gun stuck in my face by a truck driver who I mistakenly thought had pulled over to pick me up, and at some early hour of the morning had walked past the exact motel Dad was at that moment sleeping at in West Memphis, just across the river from where I thought he was.

(As a sidebar, you can take the following as you will. Dad claimed to me that he was awakened that night by a feeling that I was in danger. He began praying fervently according to him at an hour which in my memory coincided with my being just a few miles to the east, walking across a narrow pedestrian gangway of the river bridge. There were rail bars at about 4 feet height guarding one from accidentally falling in but I was at some point leaning over these as I was sick. I climbed on the lower bar so that my vomit would fall into the river below, and at that moment an 18 wheeler came by at fast speed, and the wind gust propelled my body where I was balancing half-over the river. I fought to transfer my weight to my lower, and for just a moment felt that I was about to go over, but somehow recovered from this near-death episode. Divine intervention?)

I finally made it to the address, a first floor apartment building and after knocking got no response, collapsed against the door. The neighbor across the way saw me when he came out to get a paper, and seeing that because of my age that I likely wasn't a hit man targeting Toby, and being good enough acquaintances with him to have his number, he called him and within a hour he appeared.

The fallout from this isn't worthy of note. I was sent back by bus the next week with some amount of money to float us through a few more weeks of peril. When I returned, the bail bond/police/prosecutor matrix came into full display. I went with Mom to the district attorney's office to follow up on our complaint. The assistant DA, a young guy, acted appropriately shocked when I related the story and promised to pursue charges against them. This of course, was nearly the last I heard of it. It was years later  that Mom sent me a clipping from the local paper. The young DA was caught taking bribes from - drum roll please - THE VERY FUCKING BAIL BOND COMPANY! He had protected them for years apparently while they went on their merry way beating the shit out of any who dared oppose them with no recourse.

Senior year began, but my attention was elsewhere. I had found a job at a local fast-food place called Minute Man and was working over 40 hours because so many people would call in or quit. A fork in the road was crossed in the first few weeks of school, though. My first kiss from a girl whom I desired to kiss me (subtracting mothers, aunts, sisters and assorted other family relics) happened. It occurred on a choir bus trip, on our way back from a competition some 100 miles away. I was seated on an aisle seat near the back of the Greyhound charter, observing the usual teenage bus trip hijinks around me – a flask of Southern Comfort being passed around; the couple across from me writhing under a blanket; the haze of smoke from a joint billowing from behind. In all, this was standard fare for a 1975 high school bus trip chaperoned only by a nearly-blind, past-retirement age choir director who never ventured more than 10 feet from the driver. 

But this ride would tell a different story. A girl walked down the aisle seemingly toward the port-a-potty, but instead she stopped and stared at me. That in itself was out-of-the-norm, but the person doing the staring made the situation even more remarkable. It was Cindy, the girl I had had a crush on since 10^th grade, doing the staring. 

“I have to kiss you”," she said without expression. My mind raced to come out with some kind of reply, but all I could generate was a “Whaa ...” 

“It's truth-or-dare, I took the dare, so I have to kiss you”, still without any effect to her face. 

By then I could hear the giggling of other girls several rows up, and grasped the situation. My genius reply was then “it takes two to tango, ya know." She stared at me like I was a complete idiot, which of course I was as it represented the antithesis of my feelings. She shrugged her shoulders and turned to go. “Wait” I exclaimed “it's okay."  She turned and in the most workmanlike fashion I could imagine leaned in and placed a 0.7 second press of her lips against mine, before just as quickly turning away and returning to her friends spouting “ewwww” and squealing. My mind kept attempting to replay it, to reproduce the moment over and over like a tape loop, since it happened so quickly there was virtually no sensation in the first place. But ask yourselves: how many 0.7 second slices of your life do you remember? Any from, say, 46 years ago? Thought so.

Maw-Maw was in the last stages of her fight with breast cancer. We developed a routine where I would come home late from work and go to her room while she was still awake. I would sit and listen to her stories from her childhood growing up in Oklahoma. One night she in essence was saying goodbye to me and I argued that she could get well. She shocked my by raising up her nightgown, lifting up her breast and exposing the open cavity under it wherein I could see her viscera as though it was a dark hole drilled in her body. "There's no getting better from this" and I cried but knew she was right. Days later she was in the hospital and then died within 24 hours.

I had lost the person who functionally been my mother and I stopped giving a shit about any aspect of life. I would skip school for days and work overtime hours. Dad had gone his merry way yet again and though I was making more money than ever it was never enough. So I sat down with Mom in November and laid out the situation, saying that my boss at Minute Man  would make me an assistant manager if I could work full time days, but that would mean me dropping out of school. I still remember her looking off to the side, unable to meet my eyes, and agreeing that we needed the money more that I needed to finish school. So that's why it was in November 1975, I dropped out of Northside High School and was unable to graduate with my class the following May.

I threw myself into the job to ease the pain. I was a natural at driving work, but was so immature and emotional that I would let small issues consume me and couldn't control my mouth. I had several verbal fights with patrons who challenged me or a member of the team about food quality or performance. It was as though I had lost everything I valued, so I placed all of my value in this ridiculous minimum wage job. Things were only more heightened when the manager of the store on the south side of town quit, and I was pressed into replacing him. At 17, no one has the experience or wisdom to handle the pressures of full responsibility for an enterprise like that, and I certainly didn't transcend this truism. I tried to substitute raw work for ability, putting in 80 to 90 hours a week and not taking any days off, but still there were huge gaps. Employees were either stealing or were too stupid to give correct change. The store had failed its previous health inspection, so one night after closing I stayed up all night cleaning and was able to barely eke by the next inspection.

Then there was one employee, Debbie, who had apparently been a pass-around of all the guys in the store since she was pregnant and didn't know who the father was. And of course, I fell for her. For her part she seemed to like me somewhat but was taken aback by my more romantic approach than those she was used to. After a few weeks of surreptitious hugging and kissing (I at least had some experience at this point as I had found that working late night shifts at my original store with flirtatious girls often led to making out), I professed my love and told her I would be a father to her child. She then did one of the noblest things I have been a part of. In her situation, I would have been thrilled to have someone rescue me. But she told me that it wouldn't be fair to me, that I was smart and had a future outside Fort Smith and she and her baby would tie me down. Though it stung, I knew intuitively she was right and she soon left the picture. Ever since, I have often considered that promiscuous girls are wiser and perceptive than their more prudish cousins. Yea, sluts!

As usual, Toby reemerged, and his involvement led to my losing the managerial job. He had showed up at Minute Man late one night near closing, spinning a story of how he had to get to Tulsa the next morning but had no cash, and could I cash a check for him out of the restaurant's safe? Of course, he assured me it was good. Good enough that two days later the general manager showed up with the bounced check demanding to know why I had done it. He immediately demoted me and sent me back to the north side store. I was humiliated and angry, and to put the cherry on top of this shit sundae a few weeks later I was arrested for non-payment of a traffic ticket I had received weeks before. 

Since my pay had been cut by $50 a week and the rest was supporting the family I didn't have the ability to pay it nor could anyone else come to the jail to pay the ticket off. So, I was placed in a cell with a thief, a robber, a rapist and a killer. Fort Smith law enforcement were not very enlightened circa 1976. I spent three days there until my debt to society was paid off, but an interesting education it was. I had never seen illegal drugs of any kind before, but in that cell I saw marijuana, pills of some kind, and what was purported to be heroin. As well, having to do one's ministrations in front of four other guys was an unusual and thankfully never again repeated experience. My takeaway is this: jails are inhuman artifices that in some limited cases is necessary but in the main they are breeding grounds that either start or finish the corruption of a young mind. Options, you ask? Put to death murderers, child abusers and physical assault rapists; have all other crimes paid with victim restitution and community service. Goodbye untold hundreds of billions spent on incarceration.

I had been fired for no call/no show, obviously because I was otherwise occupied in a jail cell. I begged my old boss for my job back, and she hired me once again. I was to last all of three weeks. A girl named Darla who worked at both stores started both flirting with me, writing notes professing her attraction to me and as well telling me how the new manager of my lost store on the south side was dealing drugs from his office. The former led to intense make-out sessions whenever we were alone at closing; the latter to a buildup of anger that culminated in me demanding to be allowed to "save" my store or else. The else saw me being fired for the final time, and in the process I also lost my torrid three week romance with Darla who wasn't turned on by unemployed guys I suppose.

I tried to ignore graduation week, but I spent a good deal of time crying in my room about how unfair life had became for me. Enter Toby once again, who this time swooped in as a savior. He took me back to Memphis to stay with him and his new love Joan, a person who turned out to be exactly that for the rest of their lives together as they were married soon after his divorce from Mom was finalized in the fall.  Joan was an intimidating presence with a genius level IQ whom I wanted to dislike but whom I became fairly close to over the years after a sputtering start.

I went back with him, and I enrolled in summer school in Memphis to cover the only three credits I needed to finish high school, junior and senior English and World History. The courses were a breeze as the teachers were far from demanding, and interestingly I went to one of the night classes with my to-be stepsister Lori, who also lived with the three of us. Lori was pretty in a bitchy way and though I wasn't attracted to her I was very attracted to her best friend Jodi who stayed over all the time. Jodi was lithe with dark hair and had a distaste for bras so her assets were on full display to my eyes.

One night, the girls were partying, dad was out of town and Joan was working midnight shift. They knocked on my door and asked me to party with them. I took a few swigs of beer and they offered a joint which I had not tried before. So, I did a Bill Clinton and pretended to inhale, while they were going full-throttle. Teasing became handsy-ness which became oh my I think I know where this is going. Stupid 17 year old me bolted like a rabbit to my room, saying that I didn't feel good, but the truth was I was terrified at having to cross that mystical boundary between boy and man. They never offered the chance again, and over the nearby years I would often psychically kick myself for being such a pansy. My advice to young men the world over is this: when two beautiful young women offer you a threesome, EFF'ING DO IT! Sometimes you get one and only one shot, know what I mean?