Life at 33

 

My birthday was the final breaking point of my first marriage. For some reason I have no recall of. Denise and I had fought the entire day. Around 7P Scott called me and asked what I was doing. Impulsively, I asked him to come pick me up to go to a bar. She was incredulous at the notion that I would actually go without her, and doubled-down on the mental torture. I felt an amazing sense of calm and for the first time in seven years had absolutely no emotions about her. I literally left her with jaw dropped realizing that her hold over me had effectively ended.

That evening was of no consequence; I don't remember even drinking to excess. But it signaled the turning point for the rest of my life. I coldly told her the next day that I would be moving out for good as soon as I found an apartment, and that we should get divorced. She held her composure around me, but I saw signs during this transition period that when I was gone she was having her typical emotional breakdowns. Before, I could not have felt okay with this, but now my resolve and indifference was surprising even to myself. It took a few weeks to find a place, this time much closer to work than my previous escape to east Dallas.

After getting settled, I embarked on what would end up being a seven month swim in the pool of pure hedonism. Nearly seven years of every decision being predicated on responsibility had bottled up my emotions and libido, and I no longer saw any reason to hold anything back. I can briefly summarize this stretch in one word: necessary. Without getting this pent-up rebellion out of my system, I don't think I would have been ready to be a positive part of a healthy relationship short or long-term.

Being free offered excitement, variety and not the least some great memories that I was to experience. The first addition to my story came just a week after I moved into the apartment complex which was located just south of DFW airport. There were a large number of single residents and the pool was an ongoing parade of the delights of human flesh. This one late night I worked out at the onsite gym and stopped by the hot tub to relax. Two girls were occupying it and before long we had engaged in a fun convo which led to them inviting over to their place to smoke. I learned they were 20 and 18, and though I was a bit more attracted to the former, she exited stage left after awhile since the latter had apparently claimed dibs. This began a month-long series of hookups which saw her become clingy and hinting toward relationship, and this prompted me to break things off. She asked me to go with her to the store about a week later, and I innocently assumed this was platonic and functional, but instead in the freezer section she launched a dramatic profession of love complete with teary emotion. For once, I had to be the cold one and let her know that there was no chance of us being what she wanted so we could either be friends or stop being together completely. After an embarassing scene, she chose option 2 and I couldn't transport her back to the apartments fast enough.

That bullet dodged, I met Denise the following week to sign the final divorce documents, It seemed very straightforward until she asked me to talk with her in the car. More drama ensued as she begged me to reconsider that she still loved me and wanted me to tear the papers up. Though it was a highly charged moment, and I shed tears myself, I was steeled to the inevitability and preferability of this choice, and so I left her again a heaving wreck of emotion. I drove down the road looking for a bar as I truly needed a drink as much as I needed oxygen at that moment. The first sign I saw was ironically a gentlemen's club but at that moment the need to drown the pain was too great.

The bar offered the alcohol I needed at that moment and it also offered a virtual hurricane who would cause stormy conditions in my life for the next few months. Jennifer was just a touch over 5 feet, with an inviting face and body. After I saw her on stage, she stopped to talk to me and several tequila shots later for both of us she accepted my invitation to visit later that night. She was living a nomadic life sleeping at friends or lovers abodes, the ranks of which I entered. It was in many ways exactly what I would have imagined about a relationship – if you could call it that – with a woman who danced provocatively sans clothing for a living. She would disappear for days then reappear as if nothing had happened and would in her words “recharge her batteries” with me. We shared a love of older movies and her incessant chatter helped fill the void I sometimes felt being alone after so many years. There were no ground rules for either if us; one night it was me not coming home after meeting someone at a club and going back to their place. It was cute that she acted just a bit jealous when I came back the following morning.

I already had purchased a weekend trip to Las Vegas so I left my keys with her and took off. I stayed drunk through much of the time and had not payed attention to my finances. I discovered I was down to my last $50 and all my credit cards were tapped. Looking for cheap thrills, I hailed a cab and asked the driver to take me to the best cheapest bar he knew of. I ended up in far northern Las Vegas at a bar that was everything he had promised – stiff cheap drinks and second-tier yet still pretty dancers. I staggered out of there hours later realizing I didn't have enough for a cab and so I began my odyssey back to my hotel through what I didn't know at the time but now am aware was the most dangerous part of a dangerous city. God must truly have had a plan for my future because after several hours had passed and blisters on my feet had erupted, I made it. The only memory I have of the in-between hours is of stumbling zombie-like through a park with a pond. I took off my wedding ring which for unknown reasons I was still wearing and called the final symbolic close to my past – I threw it in the water. Somewhere at the muddy bottom of that pond, that ring still resides.

When I returned, my downstairs neighbor came to speak with me. The weekend had apparently been torment for them as there had been a non-stop party going on. I may have been many things then but I was respectful of others so I talked with Jennifer when I saw her next. She was angry that I was trying to impose rules on her, and after a brief fight she gathered up her few things and exited my life. It was in the main a relief although I would be lying if I said I didn't miss her presence and, when she wasn't drunk, her vitality and warmth which was such a contrast to Denise's reservation and coldness. I would only see her a few more times, the last one when I took her to a concert at the Dallas Fair Park amphitheater. Coming back, I was more than a bit buzzed, and something happened that convinced to dial back my flamboyant approach to life. She had asked me to stop at a 7-11 to get a 12 pack and I complied. When I got to the counter, the cashier rang the sale up and asked for the money. I reached in my pocket and held out what I thought was a $20 bill. His laughter as well as those behind me told me otherwise and I looked down at the contents of my hand to see what the problem was. In my state, I had instead grabbed 2 rolled joints that hadn't been smoked and was seemingly offering thise as payment. “If you're offering thanks but I'll still need you to pay for the beer” he said and I complied as quickly as I could. Just at that moment a police car pulled up two spots away and my stoned paranoia went into overdrive. I probably averaged 15 mph the rest of the journey home.

Now that I was completely free of attachment I went full-tilt on the party matrix. Friends from work would accompany me at times, but often I would just go alone. It was a kind of therapy, one I would not recommend to others, but it seemed intuitively that it was what I needed. Cocaine had always been around the periphery, and the happiness albeit-brief that it gave me started to be more of a regular requirement for me. A younger woman at work became my confederate in this regard. She and I would sneak off on the weekends at work, find an empty office and have our little pep-me-up sessions. She was unique for me in that we remained platonic even though we were often in highly charged situations when lines could have easily been crossed. I had a sort of protective big brother feel with her and though she was crazy tempting, and at times I'm sure she wondered why I didn't try to move in that direction, I remained hands-off. Her cocaine use was far more prodigious than mine though, so we drifted apart and I often wondered what her fate was and hoped she had moderated her life to some extent. (Postscript: since originally writing this I discovered she passed away at 55, wife to a doctor and mother of two children. RIP Mary Kerrie)

A week before Christmas, I flew to Orlando to spend five days in Lakeland with my family. Billy and Mom had by this time been living with Liz and Lem for almost two years. Billy had experienced a late growth spurt with my donated kidney and was finally starting to look his age. He was working as a busboy at the steak house that Liz was a server at. This was a well-known exclusive place with expensive prices and corresponding good tips so the money situation for all – except for me as I literally spent every penny I made – was trending upward. The week was full of partying and good times, capped off by a wild Christmas party at the home of the restaurant's manager. Much craziness, most of which I will not divulge to keep my promised rating at a soft “R”, went down and by 2 am five of us piled back into Liz's Ford Fiesta. Since I was deemed the most sober of the group – a highly relative term – I guided us back the 45 mile journey. Just outside Lakeland, Liz demanded I pull over at a convenience store so she could get some beer. The limit for sales had already passed, yet she did her verbal magic as she emerged with her prize. The hangover the next day was of epic proportions, enough to make me swear off drinking forever. If I had only known how this was just a shadow of what was to come a few weeks later.

After returning, I did my usual seven days on of work, ending the last one on New Year's Eve. Bad timing, because this convinced me that going out with friends was a good idea. I had bought a fifth of gin earlier, and somehow that was polished off and then a bottle of tequila entered the fray. I was not driving my car ( I had bought a lovely little Chevy Cavalier Z24 a few months before); instead my friend Doug agreed to be DD and he transported us to multiple clubs before we ended at 1 am at a house party. I have just pieces of memories, but I do recall speaking to, and quite probably hitting on a very cute girl who seemed somewhat amenable to my advances. What I didn't know was this was in the main a lesbian party, and her “man” was none too thrilled about my pursuit of her woman. Somehow things became physical, and I was too drunk to put up a struggle, but in the process I ended up outside in the rain, face down in the mud. Readers Digest version: I got my ass kicked by a lesbian.

The next morning I came to lying on Doug's kitchen floor, my keys and wallet beside me. Suffering a hangover that not only rivaled but I think surpassed that of my wedding day in 1984, I literally crawled to my car to get back to my apartment. Several people came by to see me and though they tried to make light of things my retching body was having none of it. And that was it sports fans, I got the memo. Though in the ensuing 27+ years since then I have certainly drank alcohol, I have never poisoned myself to that extent nor will I ever again. Inebriation can be and often is great fun, but there is now a cut-off mechanism within me that I cannot do do I want to violate.

That period of debauchery was in essence a purging of my system preparing me for the next phase of my life. I had a brief relationship with a girl that I found very attractive, but whom I failed to connect with on any level intimately. I began to wonder if there was something wrong with me as the sex drugs and the rock-and-roll lifestyle I had dove into was no longer enough. By early February, I was ready for my life to slow down and have structure.