Life at 22
After a few weeks together, Terry flew back to Pennsylvania for a week of vacation. That week, I not coincidentally had three women offer their goodies to me. What is it about someone being technically non-available that turns women on? That question may never be answered. The old Bob would have added three notches on his belt. The new "lost in love" (to quote a title of a popular song of that time) Bob turned each and every opportunity down, though I did try to give them (of whom 2 were in committed relationships) soft landings for their egos. When I drove in Terry's black Mustang to the Mobile airport to pick her up, I saw her flight land just as Firefall's "Love That Got Away" was playing. I took this as a sign that my sexual infatuation was more than that. Pro tip: Some things in life are just coincidence.
Terry had broken up with her boyfriend there, so the decks were cleared for us. We decided to move in together, renting an apartment farther from base but newer and with central air conditioning - not a small factor, since the brutally hot summer of 1980 with only box fans to cool us had almost done us in. Liz was happy to take the other bedroom, and we had a merry troupe of three. That is, until Liz had to start a tryst with her boss, and he left his wife for her. An odd reunion happened during this stretch. Our usual source of pot had dried up, and I was forced to turn to my old flame Vicky who was now married to a guy named David, as he had some connections. At one buying rendezvous, she told me that she had decided to marry him not because she loved him, but because she couldn't stand to do to another what she had done to me. Her admission was a pyrrhic victory, but at least better than never hearing those words.
I took terminal leave, which allowed me to leave work 52 days before my enlistment was up. On my final day, I wore my dress blue shirt and allowed everyone to sign it and do graphic designs. People drew marijuana leaves, giant penises, boobs, any and every anarchic anti-military thing they could think of. I walked down the steps of the medical center for the last time, savoring the shocked expressions of people as I passed. It was so out of the norm, no one accosted me and I took a long leisurely walk through the east gate of Keesler, symbolically ending my military career. Of course, I would be on base dozens of times after that, but only as a free man not subject to military rules.
And then, all of the drama ceased. It was as if a light switch had been flipped. This was solidifying evidence to me that no matter the benefits of being in the military, the personal cost to me was too great. All of the risk-taking behaviors I had exhibited over the past year rather abruptly stopped. I was domesticated and happy about it. I half-heartedly looked for a job, but since I had 13 weeks of unemployment benefits coming my way I wasn't exactly enthusiastic about pursuing work. I set my sights on beginning college in January, and took a five month hiatus of smoking pot, drinking beer and working on what pitiful tan I could achieve. It was flat-out hedonism and I was unapologetic about it. Terry and I were still in the first flush of relationship, so everything flowed nicely with us through the summer and fall.
As mentioned, Liz's life was a bit more chaotic. She had began hanging out after work with her assistant manager Steve, who was married at the time. The two of them lived in the same complex we three had just moved to. One hot night in August, his wife caught Liz and Steve together at the playground, and a very rowdy brawl broke out between the two girls which may have involved weapons judging from the damage to Liz's arms. The upshot of it was his wife filed for divorce and Steve moved in with us. Terry and I barely knew him, but he was an easy-going enough guy with us at least that the rhythm of life didn't change. They did the "up all night, sleep all day thing" so we would go days without seeing them.
Two humorous things happened in October. The first: Toby had somehow got in touch with us and came for a one-night visit (as a sidebar, exactly how the frick did that happen before the era of cell phones when the people involved also didn't have a home phone? I guess we used telepathy, because I cannot remember the mechanics of such contact). Since Liz had just turned 17, we hid the fact that Steve was staying there and he spent the night with a friend. My father, who had often railed against "dope smokers" now suddenly was an enthusiastic advocate of it, having been turned on by his stepson Ricky who was married to Joan's daughter Valerie. "You got any of that "maximillian?" he asked, confusing the name of the medieval Holy Roman Emperor with the term for the flowers of non-fertilized female cannabis plants, "sinsemilla." Sure, pops. And for the first, and what would prove to be the only time, I got high with my dad. It proved to be revealing in other ways as well. Once properly stoned, he admitted that he had also done cocaine with Ricky, and that for the first time in his life he understood what it felt like to be free from depression. Sigmund Freud would have been proud of this anecdotal evidence that blow is indeed a magical cure-all. Only for 20 minutes though, and then you'd better re-up or the walls come tumbling down. The latter wisdom was earned through personal experience several years later in my own life.
The second was substance related as well. A plane that was smuggling weed from South America was being pursued by D.E.A. aircraft and had ditched it's cargo, many 40 pound bales of the mighty green, into the Mississippi Sound just a few miles offshore. The word must have gotten out through the grapevine, as there was a break in evening programming and the county sheriff gave a brief speech and stated that anyone who went to the beach looking for it would be arrested. Now, the beach between Bioxi and Gulfport was over ten miles, so anyone could do the math and know that he didn't have nearly enough manpower to back up that threat, so we three along with every other stoner in Harrison County, Mississippi made a beeline for the sands. It was like a comedy circus, people with flashlights stumbling around mostly silently searching the surf, this only punctuated by screams when some late arrival walked their bare feet over the prolific sand burrs that were endemic in the dunes.
We went home empty handed after a few hours, but some friends who will go nameless fared much better. They nabbed one bale wrapped in a tarp and carried it to their truck, eventually selling it all for $22,000. This money funded a year's rental of a top floor of an old industrial building in Biloxi, plus purchasing a ton of musical equipment to allow them to pursue their dream of music. Alas, that didn't work but the parties there were epic.
The local NFL team that the locals rooted for was the New Orleans Saints. When in Rome as the saying goes, so every Sunday the four of us would watch the inept franchise on their way to a 1-15 record. In December, the Saints played San Francisco, and somehow a miracle happened - they led 35-0 at halftime. We exulted about the complete destruction of the 49'ers during the break. Suddenly, I received as clear of a clairvoyant vision of the future as ever before or since. The Saints were going to give up this should-be insurmountable lead and lose 38-35. I tried to convince the others of the tragedy about to befall our team in the second half, but they derisively pooh-pooh'ed me. Until, that is, San Fran began their inexorable comeback, and with every score my three roommates got quieter and quieter until with seconds left a field goal won the game for the 49'ers at, you guessed it, 38-35.
I wasn't looking for a praise, just an admission that something clearly supernatural had happened; to wit, foreknowledge of a future event that was so specific and unusual (the greatest comeback in NFL regular-season history) that it couldn't be dismissed as coincidence. But I received the silent treatment. Liz got a waiver for being too young to care about the deeper strata of life, but Steve and Terry were in denial about any data that challenged their straight-forward view of the world. I trace the roots of my discontent with Terry to this day: her unwillingness to expand her horizons and accept the miraculous meant to me that the same lack of curiosity would only become more entrenched over time, and that was not what I wanted in a long-term partner.
In January, I started school at Gulf Coast Community College. I found it mostly underwhelming even though I had been out of school for almost five years. I took 15 hours, but it was so non-taxing I could have done 20. I still had no overall notion of what to do with my life, so I vaguely declared myself pre-med and pursued the foundational classes. I began receiving $342 a month in G.I. Bill money, a benefit from my four years of service (Now, the rate is over $1700 a month PLUS tuition is paid for. I was born way too early!) Spring break came in short time, and Terry and I drove to Florida, first to stop in the Tampa area to see Steve, since he had received an early discharge from the Air Force, and then on to the Keys. This week was the first sign of trouble in paradise, as we fought often and she was distant almost all of the time. I was coming to the conclusion that with her what you see is what you get, and it was not long after this that I considered the boundaries of the game to be much more flexible. I'm sure I don't need to further explicate to readers about one's experiences when straying from the monogamy lane on relationship highway.
In late March, I suffered a loss that pained me greatly. Sometime in the night thieves had stolen my Honda. Liz told me when she woke up that she heard sounds like a garbage truck in the night, but had not investigated. I had no insurance on it, so I had to accept the loss but it was a bitter pill. Though I owned a few more cycles in the following years, nothing replaced that laid-back 360CB-T in my heart.
The next week after this, the four of us were having a go at one of our favorite pastimes - weighing and bagging several ounces out of a half-pound of Columbian we had all pitched in to buy. In the midst of this, we heard a quick pair of raps on the door, and then a key jiggled in the lock and in walked the maintenance man, an older guy who was the husband of the apartment manager. He had a full view of our activities, then declared "changing filters" and headed to the back. There was no hiding what had already been seen, so we sat there frozen until a few minutes later he slithered back out without a word or another glance. As soon as he had enough time to clear, we freaked out and knew that our time had come to an end there. We immediately started calling "For Rent" ads, found a 2 bedroom house on the edge of the North Bay, and within 24 hours had cleared out even though it was mid-month.
This added a level of complication to my life, since before my commute to school was less than a mile, and now it was over 7 miles to walk. The spring semester ended, but in order to keep my veteran's education benefits coming in I had to enroll in 2 classes each 5 week term. One of the classes I chose was weightlifting, and it was memorable only because of a friend I made in it. Nancy was cheerleader beautiful, no make that leading-actress beautiful, and for some unknown reason she gravitated to me, though it was then and always remained platonic. But it became a common occurrence that she would stop and offer me rides as I was making the long walk to school, and I gratefully accepted. One weekend Terry and I were walking downtown and Nancy pulled up in her convertible yelling "BOB!" at the top of her lungs. There was no convincing Terry that I wasn't cheating on her after that encounter, and God knows then I wished it had been so, but all I got for my troubles that this created at home was brief friend-zoned hugs.
We had a tabby cat we had named Terrance, and he was one of the most self-contained felines I had ever been around. One night, Toby magically materialized again, and decided as per usual that he would go get some beer, which required a trip over the bridge to a northern suburb. When he pulled back into the street, I saw too late that Terrance had climbed on top of his van, and was about to go for a ride with dad. I chased him down the street to no avail, and I waited praying he would stay put on top. No dice - Toby returned sans cat. We drove back and searched all over the lot and surrounds of the grocery store, but the cat had vanished. Terry and I repeated the mission the next morning after sunrise, with the same empty hands. One day about three weeks later, we were grilling in the front yard when bounding down the street nonchalantly as though he was out for a stroll was a none-worse-for-the-wear Terrance. We all decided to re-christen him "Super Cat" in honor of his adventures.
Near my birthday, Terry began agitating with a list of grievances against Steve and Liz, To be true, they were lazy as most young people tend to be and they spent most of their waking hours not in bed smoking and drinking. It was apparent that there was no talking her out of her mood against them, so we told them we were moving out. They weren't happy since they felt they couldn't make it financially with just the two of them. This led to a schism between us for several months. We moved into a new apartment across from the mall and blocks from the college, and though the environment was more pleasant our one-on-one communication did not improve. The death knells of our pairing could be distantly heard, but I still wasn't ready to listen.
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Terry had broken up with her boyfriend there, so the decks were cleared for us. We decided to move in together, renting an apartment farther from base but newer and with central air conditioning - not a small factor, since the brutally hot summer of 1980 with only box fans to cool us had almost done us in. Liz was happy to take the other bedroom, and we had a merry troupe of three. That is, until Liz had to start a tryst with her boss, and he left his wife for her. An odd reunion happened during this stretch. Our usual source of pot had dried up, and I was forced to turn to my old flame Vicky who was now married to a guy named David, as he had some connections. At one buying rendezvous, she told me that she had decided to marry him not because she loved him, but because she couldn't stand to do to another what she had done to me. Her admission was a pyrrhic victory, but at least better than never hearing those words.
I took terminal leave, which allowed me to leave work 52 days before my enlistment was up. On my final day, I wore my dress blue shirt and allowed everyone to sign it and do graphic designs. People drew marijuana leaves, giant penises, boobs, any and every anarchic anti-military thing they could think of. I walked down the steps of the medical center for the last time, savoring the shocked expressions of people as I passed. It was so out of the norm, no one accosted me and I took a long leisurely walk through the east gate of Keesler, symbolically ending my military career. Of course, I would be on base dozens of times after that, but only as a free man not subject to military rules.
And then, all of the drama ceased. It was as if a light switch had been flipped. This was solidifying evidence to me that no matter the benefits of being in the military, the personal cost to me was too great. All of the risk-taking behaviors I had exhibited over the past year rather abruptly stopped. I was domesticated and happy about it. I half-heartedly looked for a job, but since I had 13 weeks of unemployment benefits coming my way I wasn't exactly enthusiastic about pursuing work. I set my sights on beginning college in January, and took a five month hiatus of smoking pot, drinking beer and working on what pitiful tan I could achieve. It was flat-out hedonism and I was unapologetic about it. Terry and I were still in the first flush of relationship, so everything flowed nicely with us through the summer and fall.
As mentioned, Liz's life was a bit more chaotic. She had began hanging out after work with her assistant manager Steve, who was married at the time. The two of them lived in the same complex we three had just moved to. One hot night in August, his wife caught Liz and Steve together at the playground, and a very rowdy brawl broke out between the two girls which may have involved weapons judging from the damage to Liz's arms. The upshot of it was his wife filed for divorce and Steve moved in with us. Terry and I barely knew him, but he was an easy-going enough guy with us at least that the rhythm of life didn't change. They did the "up all night, sleep all day thing" so we would go days without seeing them.
Two humorous things happened in October. The first: Toby had somehow got in touch with us and came for a one-night visit (as a sidebar, exactly how the frick did that happen before the era of cell phones when the people involved also didn't have a home phone? I guess we used telepathy, because I cannot remember the mechanics of such contact). Since Liz had just turned 17, we hid the fact that Steve was staying there and he spent the night with a friend. My father, who had often railed against "dope smokers" now suddenly was an enthusiastic advocate of it, having been turned on by his stepson Ricky who was married to Joan's daughter Valerie. "You got any of that "maximillian?" he asked, confusing the name of the medieval Holy Roman Emperor with the term for the flowers of non-fertilized female cannabis plants, "sinsemilla." Sure, pops. And for the first, and what would prove to be the only time, I got high with my dad. It proved to be revealing in other ways as well. Once properly stoned, he admitted that he had also done cocaine with Ricky, and that for the first time in his life he understood what it felt like to be free from depression. Sigmund Freud would have been proud of this anecdotal evidence that blow is indeed a magical cure-all. Only for 20 minutes though, and then you'd better re-up or the walls come tumbling down. The latter wisdom was earned through personal experience several years later in my own life.
The second was substance related as well. A plane that was smuggling weed from South America was being pursued by D.E.A. aircraft and had ditched it's cargo, many 40 pound bales of the mighty green, into the Mississippi Sound just a few miles offshore. The word must have gotten out through the grapevine, as there was a break in evening programming and the county sheriff gave a brief speech and stated that anyone who went to the beach looking for it would be arrested. Now, the beach between Bioxi and Gulfport was over ten miles, so anyone could do the math and know that he didn't have nearly enough manpower to back up that threat, so we three along with every other stoner in Harrison County, Mississippi made a beeline for the sands. It was like a comedy circus, people with flashlights stumbling around mostly silently searching the surf, this only punctuated by screams when some late arrival walked their bare feet over the prolific sand burrs that were endemic in the dunes.
We went home empty handed after a few hours, but some friends who will go nameless fared much better. They nabbed one bale wrapped in a tarp and carried it to their truck, eventually selling it all for $22,000. This money funded a year's rental of a top floor of an old industrial building in Biloxi, plus purchasing a ton of musical equipment to allow them to pursue their dream of music. Alas, that didn't work but the parties there were epic.
The local NFL team that the locals rooted for was the New Orleans Saints. When in Rome as the saying goes, so every Sunday the four of us would watch the inept franchise on their way to a 1-15 record. In December, the Saints played San Francisco, and somehow a miracle happened - they led 35-0 at halftime. We exulted about the complete destruction of the 49'ers during the break. Suddenly, I received as clear of a clairvoyant vision of the future as ever before or since. The Saints were going to give up this should-be insurmountable lead and lose 38-35. I tried to convince the others of the tragedy about to befall our team in the second half, but they derisively pooh-pooh'ed me. Until, that is, San Fran began their inexorable comeback, and with every score my three roommates got quieter and quieter until with seconds left a field goal won the game for the 49'ers at, you guessed it, 38-35.
I wasn't looking for a praise, just an admission that something clearly supernatural had happened; to wit, foreknowledge of a future event that was so specific and unusual (the greatest comeback in NFL regular-season history) that it couldn't be dismissed as coincidence. But I received the silent treatment. Liz got a waiver for being too young to care about the deeper strata of life, but Steve and Terry were in denial about any data that challenged their straight-forward view of the world. I trace the roots of my discontent with Terry to this day: her unwillingness to expand her horizons and accept the miraculous meant to me that the same lack of curiosity would only become more entrenched over time, and that was not what I wanted in a long-term partner.
In January, I started school at Gulf Coast Community College. I found it mostly underwhelming even though I had been out of school for almost five years. I took 15 hours, but it was so non-taxing I could have done 20. I still had no overall notion of what to do with my life, so I vaguely declared myself pre-med and pursued the foundational classes. I began receiving $342 a month in G.I. Bill money, a benefit from my four years of service (Now, the rate is over $1700 a month PLUS tuition is paid for. I was born way too early!) Spring break came in short time, and Terry and I drove to Florida, first to stop in the Tampa area to see Steve, since he had received an early discharge from the Air Force, and then on to the Keys. This week was the first sign of trouble in paradise, as we fought often and she was distant almost all of the time. I was coming to the conclusion that with her what you see is what you get, and it was not long after this that I considered the boundaries of the game to be much more flexible. I'm sure I don't need to further explicate to readers about one's experiences when straying from the monogamy lane on relationship highway.
In late March, I suffered a loss that pained me greatly. Sometime in the night thieves had stolen my Honda. Liz told me when she woke up that she heard sounds like a garbage truck in the night, but had not investigated. I had no insurance on it, so I had to accept the loss but it was a bitter pill. Though I owned a few more cycles in the following years, nothing replaced that laid-back 360CB-T in my heart.
The next week after this, the four of us were having a go at one of our favorite pastimes - weighing and bagging several ounces out of a half-pound of Columbian we had all pitched in to buy. In the midst of this, we heard a quick pair of raps on the door, and then a key jiggled in the lock and in walked the maintenance man, an older guy who was the husband of the apartment manager. He had a full view of our activities, then declared "changing filters" and headed to the back. There was no hiding what had already been seen, so we sat there frozen until a few minutes later he slithered back out without a word or another glance. As soon as he had enough time to clear, we freaked out and knew that our time had come to an end there. We immediately started calling "For Rent" ads, found a 2 bedroom house on the edge of the North Bay, and within 24 hours had cleared out even though it was mid-month.
This added a level of complication to my life, since before my commute to school was less than a mile, and now it was over 7 miles to walk. The spring semester ended, but in order to keep my veteran's education benefits coming in I had to enroll in 2 classes each 5 week term. One of the classes I chose was weightlifting, and it was memorable only because of a friend I made in it. Nancy was cheerleader beautiful, no make that leading-actress beautiful, and for some unknown reason she gravitated to me, though it was then and always remained platonic. But it became a common occurrence that she would stop and offer me rides as I was making the long walk to school, and I gratefully accepted. One weekend Terry and I were walking downtown and Nancy pulled up in her convertible yelling "BOB!" at the top of her lungs. There was no convincing Terry that I wasn't cheating on her after that encounter, and God knows then I wished it had been so, but all I got for my troubles that this created at home was brief friend-zoned hugs.
We had a tabby cat we had named Terrance, and he was one of the most self-contained felines I had ever been around. One night, Toby magically materialized again, and decided as per usual that he would go get some beer, which required a trip over the bridge to a northern suburb. When he pulled back into the street, I saw too late that Terrance had climbed on top of his van, and was about to go for a ride with dad. I chased him down the street to no avail, and I waited praying he would stay put on top. No dice - Toby returned sans cat. We drove back and searched all over the lot and surrounds of the grocery store, but the cat had vanished. Terry and I repeated the mission the next morning after sunrise, with the same empty hands. One day about three weeks later, we were grilling in the front yard when bounding down the street nonchalantly as though he was out for a stroll was a none-worse-for-the-wear Terrance. We all decided to re-christen him "Super Cat" in honor of his adventures.
Near my birthday, Terry began agitating with a list of grievances against Steve and Liz, To be true, they were lazy as most young people tend to be and they spent most of their waking hours not in bed smoking and drinking. It was apparent that there was no talking her out of her mood against them, so we told them we were moving out. They weren't happy since they felt they couldn't make it financially with just the two of them. This led to a schism between us for several months. We moved into a new apartment across from the mall and blocks from the college, and though the environment was more pleasant our one-on-one communication did not improve. The death knells of our pairing could be distantly heard, but I still wasn't ready to listen.
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