Life at 24
After the summer term was over, I had a few weeks free, so Terry and I decided to go camping for several days on the beaches at Fort Morgan, a beautiful sliver of a peninsula to the west of Pensacola. Our companions were interesting - they were my ex Vicky, whom Terry had once again become close to at work, and her husband David. I still felt uncomfortable around both of them, but was not allowed any veto power. There was still an undeniable attraction for her, at least on my part. On the third day, the tension broke in an interesting way. I had four hits of the blotter acid left, and we each did one. Terry and Vicky went off to explore, while David and I body surfed. Since there was a storm brewing off the coast, the normally mild waves reached 4-5 feet in height, and once the Vitamin A kicked in the experience became surreal and sublime. I felt my heart open up and experienced the joy of being a child again, which was profound for me since so much of my actual younger years had been afflicted by the various traumas previously discussed.
We finally collapsed exhausted after hours of being tossed by the mighty sea, and a sense of peace came over me - I felt as though I was finally healed from my resentment toward Vicky for breaking my heart so cruelly. In fact, after this when I was around her I never again felt the tension that had kept me off-balance for so long. I hugged David and told him I loved him and he did the same. This experience validated much of the research material I had processed about the hallucinogen - in the proper therapeutic context, it can do wonders for re-aligning a damaged psyche.
Back in Biloxi, I had a quandry. I had accumulated over 60 semester hours, and had planned to go back to Gulf Coast College for at least one more semester until I could figure out how to afford going to a four-year school. My friends James and Jackie from our Air Force days were as it happened in the same boat, and they stopped by to ask if I wanted to come with them to tour the University of South Alabama in Mobile. Having nothing better to do that particular day, I went along for the ride. After several hours of full-court press by admissions and some logistical talk among the three of us, I decided to join forces with them and enroll there. Terry was surprisingly not upset when I told her, since with the distance of 55 miles to drive and with no transportation of my own, commuting was not possible. Instead, she seemed somewhat happy, which should have been a warning flag. Unbeknownst to me, she had already started a flirtation with a guy at the base hospital that would later become much more.
J and J rented a house in married student housing, and I moved in with them, ostensibly for during the week and I would then go back to Biloxi on the weekends. But without a ride, I had to rely on hitchhiking and after one bad day where I was hung out to dry for almost 8 hours barely outside of Mobile with no success, I searched for another option. James had an older Suzuki 185 that he rarely used so he offered to sell it to me and I had wheels once again. I didn't tell Terry, wanting to surprise her on her birthday a few days later, so I drove there around her arrival time and went to open the door. The key didn't work - the locks had been changed. Hmmm, said I to myself. I found an open window and climbed in and waited. And waited. Since there was no cell phones then, I had no way of contacting her so it was agonizing hours later and dark when her car along with another pulled up. She was with Vicky and David, and another guy with red hair. She was shocked to see me, and not in a good way, yelling at me for breaking into "her house."
"But it's my house too," I protested and by now the other three had slunk off because of the uncomfortable situation. "No it's not anymore," she replied but she wouldn't explain herself. I stayed the night and slept in the bed but she wouldn't let me touch her. Red flag #2 should have alerted me, but I remained oblivious. I stayed that way through several more weeks of lengthy phone calls and one more visit until friends started to prompt me that I should cut my losses and move on. But I had to hear it from her, yet she, the person who had begged me to stay with her just a few months before, was fundamentally incapable of saying the words I need to hear in order to move on. Though it hurt to not have resolution, I began to let go and waited for her to contact me.
In the midst of this relationship angst I had managed to do well in classes. A girl who was in my biochem class asked me to tutor her outside of class and I agreed. When she nonchalantly greeted me at her dorm room door wearing a nightgown at 7 pm, I should have know the fix was in. Patricia was pretty, funny, smart and had a voracious sexual appetite along with a ridiculously high level of performance at same. She sort of ruined me for the next few years as it seemed pointless to engage in said activities with people who were vastly unskilled at these compared to her. It was a brief several week fling, and the postscript to it was she came out as a lesbian the following year. I have often joked when relating this tale that either I was the last straw in making her give up men, or (my preferred take) that my level of reciprocation was such a high bar that no future male partners could hope to reach it.
Halloween offered a brief respite from my troubles as Kurt and Patti threw a costume party. Out of any good ideas, at the last minute I took a paper bag, made eye and mouth cutouts, and memorized about 30-40 one-liner jokes from a book I conveniently owned. Voila! I was the Unknown Comic from "The Gong Show!" This night offered perhaps the most fruitful insight into the female psyche I ever garnered before or since. I had been around many of these people for years, yet the covering of my face made me anonymous. I had women literally chase me around the party begging for me to expose my face, and the more I refused the more intense their pursuit became. I had disguised my voice to sound like a New Yorker, and this apparently was a turn-on for southern women as well. One girl begged me to go outside in the bushes so she could give me a blowjob, saying "Don't take it off, it's hotter that way."
I finally got too hot and made a big production of taking it off, surrounded by six expectant drunk girls. As my face was revealed, there was an audible "oh" as if it were a disappointment. Yep, it was just me, just Bob, which apparently was not what they were looking or hoping for, and just as suddenly as my following had formed, it dissolved. You don't need a Ph.D in psychology to make this connection. Postscript to the evening: I still got the BJ. In the bushes. To be 24!
Mom managed to get my number from Terry and called me with a new crisis - my brother Billy had been diagnosed with kidney disease: his were failing and he need a transplant, and the doctor wanted all of the family worked up for this. Billy had always been undersized and sickly, but without routine doctor visits which we of course could never afford, this diagnosis which should have been made many years before was left hanging. Between my heartbreak with Terry and this urgency, I lost interest in school. I'm sure I would have been diagnosed with depression had that been common currency in those days, but in 1982 such things were dirty secrets that no one asked about or spoke of. I decided to drop out of school and go back to Fort Smith to aid in this situation, but I first accumulated some funds by working full-time day and night at a local deli and bar, making sandwiches by day and pouring drinks by night.
The nights at the bar were an education. I learned to jump the counter leveraged on one arm grabbing baseball bats kept under the counter whenever a fight broke out since we operated double duty as bouncers. I never had to use them, because the threat of imminent pain dissuaded most drunken brawlers. Bartenders are popular go-to's for gossip and drugs, and I had my fair share of both, being turned on to some of the highest-quality MJ I had ever smoked.
To address my physical condition prior to what I understood was an imminent need to possibly give Billy a kidney, I relied upon an Asian discipline called "Macrobiotics" which Scott had turned me on to back in Biloxi. There, I played at it for occasional meals; now, I went after it with religious zeal. I whittled down my eating for two weeks, eliminating meat and sugar, then I dove into the deep end of the strategy: a 7-day brown rice fast. Seven days of brown rice with a sprinkling of gomasio , a sesame seed and salt blend. After three days, a remarkable thing happened - I began to crave the brown rice, and since your body becomes the judge of when and how much you eat, I had several bowls of it a day. Remarkable things happened: weight dropped off, my skin cleared up, and I was sleeping just four hours a night yet had fantastic energy to work 60 hours a week. On the last night of the fast, I poured what I thought was a glass of water from the bar's mixer manifold, but instead it was Sprite. I took a big gulp of the drink, and just as quickly spat it out because it set my mouth on fire. Ohsawa, the creator of the dietary regimen, had written that after cleaning one's body and taste buds out, our innate wisdom about what is good and bad for us would prevail with no need for external guidelines. This was unintentional proof of the concept.
The night was even better for me. I had put in my notice, and only had a few days left. A pair of regulars there who were married and had taken a liking to me asked to come to their car after closing and they turned me on to some of the best Cannabis I had ever consumed. I walked merrily back to the house, but was sidetracked by sounds of night birds trilling in the woods. As if it were my normal modus operandi, I walked out into the dark trees, found one with limbs that could be reached and climbed about 15 feet up to a sturdy limb where I spent the next several hours in glorious conversation with my avian cousins. I can predict the looks of "What the Fuck?" on my reader's faces, but I would be holding back the truth by not relating this episode. It happened; it was real; it was amazing. Hey, the only way to disprove me is to go on the brown rice fast, smoke some incredible bud, then take a nighttime stroll through the woods. You might be amazed too.
Two days later, this now in early December, I packed my bags, strapped them to the cycle, said my goodbyes to James and Jackie who had been incredibly kind and understanding friends during this time, and headed toward Arkansas. Like a typical masochist, I stopped in Biloxi to say goodbye to Terry but she wasn't having any of it, refusing to be civil or compassionate in any way about my needing closure. What I didn't know was that she was already in the throes of a relationship with the other red head, Paul, and in fact was at that moment likely pregnant with their first of what would be three children, and presumably a relationship that has survived these three and one-half decades since. My 60 year old self understands why she wouldn't let her guard down. My 24 year old self was devastated, finally giving up without any emotional resolution and continuing my journey.
I stopped in Baton Rouge where Dad and Joan were then living, and though he wasn't there she was, and we spent a delightful afternoon killing three bottles of wine talking of, what/who else, Toby. This was the first (and weirdly enough, would prove to be the last) opportunity I ever had to converse with her one-on-one as an adult, and her genius level IQ was on full display. I wish I would have had a better relationship with her, but Toby made that mostly impossible. With her master's degree in psychology and over a decade of experience as a psychiatric nurse, I gave credibility to her opinion that dad suffered from manic depression and had schizophrenic tendencies as well. In vino, veritas (In wine, there is truth), indeed!
Without The Weather Channel or smart-phone forecasts to warn me, I drove straight into a freak frozen rain/sleet storm 40 miles outside Shreveport. I hadn't intended to stop there, but the pain of getting pelted with the wintry blast was too much to overcome. My entire outer garb turned into a solid frozen sheet of ice. I stopped at a motel on the outskirts and could barely function with my hands to open my wallet to pay. In the room, I ran a tub of hot water and stayed soaking in it for hours, shivering to raise my body temp, until finally I could bury underneath the covers and I stayed there the entire night, not willing to brave the cold to get food.
I finally made it to Fort Smith and found the family ensconced in low-cost housing apartments on the north side. I slept on the sofa for a few weeks and went to Billy's next medical appointment. The doctor, who was previously gung-ho about doing the transplant immediately, now wanted to back off and see if treatment would work over the next 6-12 months. I was confused and angry. The most compelling reason I had to stop my classes was that this was an emergency situation, and now that it was put on hold I felt stupid and lost. I had nowhere to go, and staying in Fort Smith was something I would not countenance. I contacted my old buddy David via Janet's number, and he gave me a new direction - come to Monroe to be his roommate and go to school there. I was out of options, so I grasped at this outreach, and again much of my future was heavily influenced by this seemingly random decision.
On my way to Monroe just after the new year, the engine on the Suzuki seized up. There was a catastrophic loss of oil through the tailpipe which I hadn't noticed until it was too late. What would have been a fairly simple fix of new seals now became a new engine, which would have cost more than the bike was worth and certainly much more than I had. I called Dave since I was within an hour of Monroe, and he drove to pick me up, putting the cycle, which was small enough to fit, into his trunk.
Thus began my Monroe era. I look back fondly on this 15 months even though it held much trauma and bad decisions on my part. But it was all part of the learning curve. My first hurdle was getting admitted to my new school, Northeast Louisiana University, and this took my full rhetorical skills as appeals had to be made to the head of financial aid and ultimately to the dean of the school. But my efforts paid off, and I quickly got a student job delivering mail on campus. I remember little of that first semester of classes, but I do remember well my work. I had a route that covered the outer rim of the campus, and it just so happened that the biology building bordered the western outskirts where there was a daiquiri shack strategically positioned. For those of you who have never been to Louisiana, it is a very alcohol-friendly state (at least it was until my most recent knowledge of it) where one could walk in and order a frozen mixed drink as easy as if it were a milkshake. My norm became starting my route with a 32 oz pina colada, making the two-hour circuit, then picking up a second one before returning my bag to the office, accompanied by a major buzz.
I had no transportation of course, so I hoofed it everywhere, and ran quite often so my weight was still at a very fit range. My experience of spontaneously climbing the tree at night in Mobile created a sort of fetish for me, as with my now-thinner frame I could easily scale heights up to 30 feet, and so I spent many long nights laying on limbs pondering the vagaries of existence. Once, I fell asleep seated against the trunk of my tree du jour, some 25 feet up and awoke startled, momentarily losing my balance and having a few scary seconds when i thought I was about to die before righting myself. This near-tragedy sobered me up on tree-climbing, and thereafter I confined this activity to daylight when, I reasoned, I was unlikely to have a repeat experience.
I gained a new set of friends through Dave, and when this circle grew into six guys and four girls we branched out into group activities like touch football and softball. One fantastic March afternoon as we were practicing the latter since we had joined a league, it came a torrential downpour which lasted about 5 minutes. Instead of seeking shelter we just played through it, and hilarious outcomes ensued. We would slide, and the mud would allow us to keep going for many feet beyond the norm. Eventually we were all covered in the muck and decided to have a wrestling battle royal on the field. It was all innocent and non-sexual and was marked with a sense of freedom that people secure in themselves and relationships can have. I never was part of such a positive group of friends like that since, and I am often nostalgic for the vibe of those days.
One person who kept the general state of affairs in a happy space was Toni, a slender girl who was engaged to Jeff, a guy who among the group I felt most akin to in terms of worldview. Jeff was a geophysics major with immense talents: I discovered just a few years prior to writing this that in later life he became the CEO of an Australian oil exploration company before retiring to raise greyhounds in Perth on Oz's western coast. Good on ya, Jeff! Toni would always include me in whatever they were doing and I was grateful, but I often tried to beg out because I was developing quite a crush on her and that was a "no-go" zone for obvious reasons. Dave was a disaffected student and he would do any and every thing to avoid actually going to class, usually trying to enlist me in playing hooky and occasionally succeeding, but in all I kept my eyes on the prize.
Jeff's brother Jimmy came to hang out with him for a few weeks. He and I hit it off and we became good smoking buds. Jeff worked at a small kiosk gas station, the kind with only a window to pay for gas. We were out of pot one day, and Jeff had some on him at work, so we stopped and he passed us a joint which we smoked along with a cigarette as per usual protocol to have plausible denial if pulled over. Jimmy drove us across the bridge from Monroe into West Monroe and stopped at the first light. A long-haired bearded man dressed in everyday clothes suddenly came up to our window, reached in the open driver's side window, reaching for the keys and screaming at us to get out of the car, claiming he was a cop. In his other hand was a pistol pointed at Jimmy's head! In the midst of chaos, Jimmy kept his aplomb and turned sideways toward me while appearing to comply with the order. "You have to eat it" he said in a whisper, referring to the charred remains of the doobie we had smoked. As Jimmy blocked the undercover narc's view, I slipped my fingers into the ash tray, extricated the evidence and slid it into my mouth undetected.
Other police cars appeared as he roughly searched us spread-eagled against the car and continued to demand for us to produce this mythical large quantity of pot we did not have. Since he belonged to the Monroe department and was technically out of his jurisdiction when he pulled us over, the West Monroe police shifted to our side since there was no visible evidence, especially when we told them that his first interdiction with us was to point a gun at Jimmy's head. Though my throat tasted like charcoal as I subtly swallowed the last of the evidence, it was sweet revenge to see them chew him out for unprofessional behavior, and watch him basically pitch a temper tantrum that escalated into his losing his cool and shoving one of the WM cops, which led to them getting several licks in on him as well before he left in a rage. The savior cops asked us if we wanted to file an official complaint, but even then I knew about the asinine "blue code" and how even if a complaint was justified it would end with us being targeted and harassed in the future, so we declined.
As the semester came to a close my grades were in good shape, at least until finals rolled around. Sabotage came in the form of a bad case of strep throat the night before two of my tests. I intended to soldier through, but my body wouldn't let me get out of bed. By the next day, I had recovered enough to take remaining finals, then I went to find the instructors of the previous day to explain the circumstances. The tennis teacher (yes, tennis!) refused to do anything since it was a skills final so she told me I'd have to take the class over. Ok, a pain in the ass but not a tragedy. The second was the real problem. It was a zoology lab final taught by a Brazilian grad assistant, and she had already left for the summer. The department told me I'd have to take it up with her when she returned. Problem was, when I dutifully went back in August to meet with her, they told me she would not be coming back, and there was no records left for the head of biology to overrule the grade of "F" she had entered, so this remained on my transcript like a noose around my neck. Over the years, I have had to explain to multiple professional schools I was trying to gain admission to why I made this "F" and in one specific case - my application to UT Southwestern P.A. school - when I challenged their refusal to admit me as age-related discrimination, the lawyer they sent to the appeal hearing actually cited this one specific blemish as a rationale for refusing me admission. Word to the kiddies: everything you do in life can and will be used against you, and in my specific example can bar you from desired opportunities, even though you may be otherwise fabulously qualified to do it.
We finally collapsed exhausted after hours of being tossed by the mighty sea, and a sense of peace came over me - I felt as though I was finally healed from my resentment toward Vicky for breaking my heart so cruelly. In fact, after this when I was around her I never again felt the tension that had kept me off-balance for so long. I hugged David and told him I loved him and he did the same. This experience validated much of the research material I had processed about the hallucinogen - in the proper therapeutic context, it can do wonders for re-aligning a damaged psyche.
Back in Biloxi, I had a quandry. I had accumulated over 60 semester hours, and had planned to go back to Gulf Coast College for at least one more semester until I could figure out how to afford going to a four-year school. My friends James and Jackie from our Air Force days were as it happened in the same boat, and they stopped by to ask if I wanted to come with them to tour the University of South Alabama in Mobile. Having nothing better to do that particular day, I went along for the ride. After several hours of full-court press by admissions and some logistical talk among the three of us, I decided to join forces with them and enroll there. Terry was surprisingly not upset when I told her, since with the distance of 55 miles to drive and with no transportation of my own, commuting was not possible. Instead, she seemed somewhat happy, which should have been a warning flag. Unbeknownst to me, she had already started a flirtation with a guy at the base hospital that would later become much more.
J and J rented a house in married student housing, and I moved in with them, ostensibly for during the week and I would then go back to Biloxi on the weekends. But without a ride, I had to rely on hitchhiking and after one bad day where I was hung out to dry for almost 8 hours barely outside of Mobile with no success, I searched for another option. James had an older Suzuki 185 that he rarely used so he offered to sell it to me and I had wheels once again. I didn't tell Terry, wanting to surprise her on her birthday a few days later, so I drove there around her arrival time and went to open the door. The key didn't work - the locks had been changed. Hmmm, said I to myself. I found an open window and climbed in and waited. And waited. Since there was no cell phones then, I had no way of contacting her so it was agonizing hours later and dark when her car along with another pulled up. She was with Vicky and David, and another guy with red hair. She was shocked to see me, and not in a good way, yelling at me for breaking into "her house."
"But it's my house too," I protested and by now the other three had slunk off because of the uncomfortable situation. "No it's not anymore," she replied but she wouldn't explain herself. I stayed the night and slept in the bed but she wouldn't let me touch her. Red flag #2 should have alerted me, but I remained oblivious. I stayed that way through several more weeks of lengthy phone calls and one more visit until friends started to prompt me that I should cut my losses and move on. But I had to hear it from her, yet she, the person who had begged me to stay with her just a few months before, was fundamentally incapable of saying the words I need to hear in order to move on. Though it hurt to not have resolution, I began to let go and waited for her to contact me.
In the midst of this relationship angst I had managed to do well in classes. A girl who was in my biochem class asked me to tutor her outside of class and I agreed. When she nonchalantly greeted me at her dorm room door wearing a nightgown at 7 pm, I should have know the fix was in. Patricia was pretty, funny, smart and had a voracious sexual appetite along with a ridiculously high level of performance at same. She sort of ruined me for the next few years as it seemed pointless to engage in said activities with people who were vastly unskilled at these compared to her. It was a brief several week fling, and the postscript to it was she came out as a lesbian the following year. I have often joked when relating this tale that either I was the last straw in making her give up men, or (my preferred take) that my level of reciprocation was such a high bar that no future male partners could hope to reach it.
Halloween offered a brief respite from my troubles as Kurt and Patti threw a costume party. Out of any good ideas, at the last minute I took a paper bag, made eye and mouth cutouts, and memorized about 30-40 one-liner jokes from a book I conveniently owned. Voila! I was the Unknown Comic from "The Gong Show!" This night offered perhaps the most fruitful insight into the female psyche I ever garnered before or since. I had been around many of these people for years, yet the covering of my face made me anonymous. I had women literally chase me around the party begging for me to expose my face, and the more I refused the more intense their pursuit became. I had disguised my voice to sound like a New Yorker, and this apparently was a turn-on for southern women as well. One girl begged me to go outside in the bushes so she could give me a blowjob, saying "Don't take it off, it's hotter that way."
I finally got too hot and made a big production of taking it off, surrounded by six expectant drunk girls. As my face was revealed, there was an audible "oh" as if it were a disappointment. Yep, it was just me, just Bob, which apparently was not what they were looking or hoping for, and just as suddenly as my following had formed, it dissolved. You don't need a Ph.D in psychology to make this connection. Postscript to the evening: I still got the BJ. In the bushes. To be 24!
Mom managed to get my number from Terry and called me with a new crisis - my brother Billy had been diagnosed with kidney disease: his were failing and he need a transplant, and the doctor wanted all of the family worked up for this. Billy had always been undersized and sickly, but without routine doctor visits which we of course could never afford, this diagnosis which should have been made many years before was left hanging. Between my heartbreak with Terry and this urgency, I lost interest in school. I'm sure I would have been diagnosed with depression had that been common currency in those days, but in 1982 such things were dirty secrets that no one asked about or spoke of. I decided to drop out of school and go back to Fort Smith to aid in this situation, but I first accumulated some funds by working full-time day and night at a local deli and bar, making sandwiches by day and pouring drinks by night.
The nights at the bar were an education. I learned to jump the counter leveraged on one arm grabbing baseball bats kept under the counter whenever a fight broke out since we operated double duty as bouncers. I never had to use them, because the threat of imminent pain dissuaded most drunken brawlers. Bartenders are popular go-to's for gossip and drugs, and I had my fair share of both, being turned on to some of the highest-quality MJ I had ever smoked.
To address my physical condition prior to what I understood was an imminent need to possibly give Billy a kidney, I relied upon an Asian discipline called "Macrobiotics" which Scott had turned me on to back in Biloxi. There, I played at it for occasional meals; now, I went after it with religious zeal. I whittled down my eating for two weeks, eliminating meat and sugar, then I dove into the deep end of the strategy: a 7-day brown rice fast. Seven days of brown rice with a sprinkling of gomasio , a sesame seed and salt blend. After three days, a remarkable thing happened - I began to crave the brown rice, and since your body becomes the judge of when and how much you eat, I had several bowls of it a day. Remarkable things happened: weight dropped off, my skin cleared up, and I was sleeping just four hours a night yet had fantastic energy to work 60 hours a week. On the last night of the fast, I poured what I thought was a glass of water from the bar's mixer manifold, but instead it was Sprite. I took a big gulp of the drink, and just as quickly spat it out because it set my mouth on fire. Ohsawa, the creator of the dietary regimen, had written that after cleaning one's body and taste buds out, our innate wisdom about what is good and bad for us would prevail with no need for external guidelines. This was unintentional proof of the concept.
The night was even better for me. I had put in my notice, and only had a few days left. A pair of regulars there who were married and had taken a liking to me asked to come to their car after closing and they turned me on to some of the best Cannabis I had ever consumed. I walked merrily back to the house, but was sidetracked by sounds of night birds trilling in the woods. As if it were my normal modus operandi, I walked out into the dark trees, found one with limbs that could be reached and climbed about 15 feet up to a sturdy limb where I spent the next several hours in glorious conversation with my avian cousins. I can predict the looks of "What the Fuck?" on my reader's faces, but I would be holding back the truth by not relating this episode. It happened; it was real; it was amazing. Hey, the only way to disprove me is to go on the brown rice fast, smoke some incredible bud, then take a nighttime stroll through the woods. You might be amazed too.
Two days later, this now in early December, I packed my bags, strapped them to the cycle, said my goodbyes to James and Jackie who had been incredibly kind and understanding friends during this time, and headed toward Arkansas. Like a typical masochist, I stopped in Biloxi to say goodbye to Terry but she wasn't having any of it, refusing to be civil or compassionate in any way about my needing closure. What I didn't know was that she was already in the throes of a relationship with the other red head, Paul, and in fact was at that moment likely pregnant with their first of what would be three children, and presumably a relationship that has survived these three and one-half decades since. My 60 year old self understands why she wouldn't let her guard down. My 24 year old self was devastated, finally giving up without any emotional resolution and continuing my journey.
I stopped in Baton Rouge where Dad and Joan were then living, and though he wasn't there she was, and we spent a delightful afternoon killing three bottles of wine talking of, what/who else, Toby. This was the first (and weirdly enough, would prove to be the last) opportunity I ever had to converse with her one-on-one as an adult, and her genius level IQ was on full display. I wish I would have had a better relationship with her, but Toby made that mostly impossible. With her master's degree in psychology and over a decade of experience as a psychiatric nurse, I gave credibility to her opinion that dad suffered from manic depression and had schizophrenic tendencies as well. In vino, veritas (In wine, there is truth), indeed!
Without The Weather Channel or smart-phone forecasts to warn me, I drove straight into a freak frozen rain/sleet storm 40 miles outside Shreveport. I hadn't intended to stop there, but the pain of getting pelted with the wintry blast was too much to overcome. My entire outer garb turned into a solid frozen sheet of ice. I stopped at a motel on the outskirts and could barely function with my hands to open my wallet to pay. In the room, I ran a tub of hot water and stayed soaking in it for hours, shivering to raise my body temp, until finally I could bury underneath the covers and I stayed there the entire night, not willing to brave the cold to get food.
I finally made it to Fort Smith and found the family ensconced in low-cost housing apartments on the north side. I slept on the sofa for a few weeks and went to Billy's next medical appointment. The doctor, who was previously gung-ho about doing the transplant immediately, now wanted to back off and see if treatment would work over the next 6-12 months. I was confused and angry. The most compelling reason I had to stop my classes was that this was an emergency situation, and now that it was put on hold I felt stupid and lost. I had nowhere to go, and staying in Fort Smith was something I would not countenance. I contacted my old buddy David via Janet's number, and he gave me a new direction - come to Monroe to be his roommate and go to school there. I was out of options, so I grasped at this outreach, and again much of my future was heavily influenced by this seemingly random decision.
On my way to Monroe just after the new year, the engine on the Suzuki seized up. There was a catastrophic loss of oil through the tailpipe which I hadn't noticed until it was too late. What would have been a fairly simple fix of new seals now became a new engine, which would have cost more than the bike was worth and certainly much more than I had. I called Dave since I was within an hour of Monroe, and he drove to pick me up, putting the cycle, which was small enough to fit, into his trunk.
Thus began my Monroe era. I look back fondly on this 15 months even though it held much trauma and bad decisions on my part. But it was all part of the learning curve. My first hurdle was getting admitted to my new school, Northeast Louisiana University, and this took my full rhetorical skills as appeals had to be made to the head of financial aid and ultimately to the dean of the school. But my efforts paid off, and I quickly got a student job delivering mail on campus. I remember little of that first semester of classes, but I do remember well my work. I had a route that covered the outer rim of the campus, and it just so happened that the biology building bordered the western outskirts where there was a daiquiri shack strategically positioned. For those of you who have never been to Louisiana, it is a very alcohol-friendly state (at least it was until my most recent knowledge of it) where one could walk in and order a frozen mixed drink as easy as if it were a milkshake. My norm became starting my route with a 32 oz pina colada, making the two-hour circuit, then picking up a second one before returning my bag to the office, accompanied by a major buzz.
I had no transportation of course, so I hoofed it everywhere, and ran quite often so my weight was still at a very fit range. My experience of spontaneously climbing the tree at night in Mobile created a sort of fetish for me, as with my now-thinner frame I could easily scale heights up to 30 feet, and so I spent many long nights laying on limbs pondering the vagaries of existence. Once, I fell asleep seated against the trunk of my tree du jour, some 25 feet up and awoke startled, momentarily losing my balance and having a few scary seconds when i thought I was about to die before righting myself. This near-tragedy sobered me up on tree-climbing, and thereafter I confined this activity to daylight when, I reasoned, I was unlikely to have a repeat experience.
I gained a new set of friends through Dave, and when this circle grew into six guys and four girls we branched out into group activities like touch football and softball. One fantastic March afternoon as we were practicing the latter since we had joined a league, it came a torrential downpour which lasted about 5 minutes. Instead of seeking shelter we just played through it, and hilarious outcomes ensued. We would slide, and the mud would allow us to keep going for many feet beyond the norm. Eventually we were all covered in the muck and decided to have a wrestling battle royal on the field. It was all innocent and non-sexual and was marked with a sense of freedom that people secure in themselves and relationships can have. I never was part of such a positive group of friends like that since, and I am often nostalgic for the vibe of those days.
One person who kept the general state of affairs in a happy space was Toni, a slender girl who was engaged to Jeff, a guy who among the group I felt most akin to in terms of worldview. Jeff was a geophysics major with immense talents: I discovered just a few years prior to writing this that in later life he became the CEO of an Australian oil exploration company before retiring to raise greyhounds in Perth on Oz's western coast. Good on ya, Jeff! Toni would always include me in whatever they were doing and I was grateful, but I often tried to beg out because I was developing quite a crush on her and that was a "no-go" zone for obvious reasons. Dave was a disaffected student and he would do any and every thing to avoid actually going to class, usually trying to enlist me in playing hooky and occasionally succeeding, but in all I kept my eyes on the prize.
Jeff's brother Jimmy came to hang out with him for a few weeks. He and I hit it off and we became good smoking buds. Jeff worked at a small kiosk gas station, the kind with only a window to pay for gas. We were out of pot one day, and Jeff had some on him at work, so we stopped and he passed us a joint which we smoked along with a cigarette as per usual protocol to have plausible denial if pulled over. Jimmy drove us across the bridge from Monroe into West Monroe and stopped at the first light. A long-haired bearded man dressed in everyday clothes suddenly came up to our window, reached in the open driver's side window, reaching for the keys and screaming at us to get out of the car, claiming he was a cop. In his other hand was a pistol pointed at Jimmy's head! In the midst of chaos, Jimmy kept his aplomb and turned sideways toward me while appearing to comply with the order. "You have to eat it" he said in a whisper, referring to the charred remains of the doobie we had smoked. As Jimmy blocked the undercover narc's view, I slipped my fingers into the ash tray, extricated the evidence and slid it into my mouth undetected.
Other police cars appeared as he roughly searched us spread-eagled against the car and continued to demand for us to produce this mythical large quantity of pot we did not have. Since he belonged to the Monroe department and was technically out of his jurisdiction when he pulled us over, the West Monroe police shifted to our side since there was no visible evidence, especially when we told them that his first interdiction with us was to point a gun at Jimmy's head. Though my throat tasted like charcoal as I subtly swallowed the last of the evidence, it was sweet revenge to see them chew him out for unprofessional behavior, and watch him basically pitch a temper tantrum that escalated into his losing his cool and shoving one of the WM cops, which led to them getting several licks in on him as well before he left in a rage. The savior cops asked us if we wanted to file an official complaint, but even then I knew about the asinine "blue code" and how even if a complaint was justified it would end with us being targeted and harassed in the future, so we declined.
As the semester came to a close my grades were in good shape, at least until finals rolled around. Sabotage came in the form of a bad case of strep throat the night before two of my tests. I intended to soldier through, but my body wouldn't let me get out of bed. By the next day, I had recovered enough to take remaining finals, then I went to find the instructors of the previous day to explain the circumstances. The tennis teacher (yes, tennis!) refused to do anything since it was a skills final so she told me I'd have to take the class over. Ok, a pain in the ass but not a tragedy. The second was the real problem. It was a zoology lab final taught by a Brazilian grad assistant, and she had already left for the summer. The department told me I'd have to take it up with her when she returned. Problem was, when I dutifully went back in August to meet with her, they told me she would not be coming back, and there was no records left for the head of biology to overrule the grade of "F" she had entered, so this remained on my transcript like a noose around my neck. Over the years, I have had to explain to multiple professional schools I was trying to gain admission to why I made this "F" and in one specific case - my application to UT Southwestern P.A. school - when I challenged their refusal to admit me as age-related discrimination, the lawyer they sent to the appeal hearing actually cited this one specific blemish as a rationale for refusing me admission. Word to the kiddies: everything you do in life can and will be used against you, and in my specific example can bar you from desired opportunities, even though you may be otherwise fabulously qualified to do it.
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