tales from my misspent youth
 

I have been boring many of you with my tales from GD tour, and I would like to hear your stories, too.


Give it.

This is a tough one Jim. I've had about 14 unrelated occupations so there's no shortage of source material but where to start and would anybody care.

1.Sphagnum moss tosser/packer
2.Curtain fabric warehouse assistant storeman
3.Full time hitchhiker/intrepid adventurer
4.Circuit board electroplater
5.Encyclopaedia salesman
6.Department store roving salesman
7.Process worker
8.Mobile door repairs
9.Freight forwarding warehouse storeman
10.Spa pool installer
11.Professional snooker player
12.Rabbit culler
13.Door to door salesman
13.5 Amway
14.Welder
15.Trawler deckhand
16.Gyprock fixer
17.Navy

Misspent? From the summer I was 9 until I married at 19, I went to school or worked, (or both) every day. Through Jr High, High and Tech School. The only exception was 7 days vacation with my parents each year, between 9 and14. That's it, 35 days off in 10 years. I didn't work all day sometimes and other days were 16 or 18 hrs. And my boss can't understand why I'm tired of working.:)

I would say that sad tale defines mis-spent.

Not sad. Just the way it was. Another lifestyle in a different time and place. Sometimes I kid my brother who is 10 years younger, how easy he had it. His standard reply is "I can't help it if I was born to older, wealthier parents". :haha:

sounds like you should be writing fairy tales. evil step mom's, and such.....

what i was really looking for was a specific adventure or situation laid out in detail. tell us how you wound up in the tub with the duct tape, for example.....

Hmmm...

Winter 1995: I was 19 at the time, and in college at Southeast Missouri State University. My roommate's brother came down for the weekend. We went to Applebee's that Saturday night and proceeded to drink...a lot. I didn't want his brother driving us home b/c he was drunk...and the campus was about 2 miles from Applebee's. So, I decided to walk. My roommate joined me. We stopped at a gas station on the way back and bought more alcohol...and proceeded to drink that up as we headed back to campus. We got back to campus, and IIRC, my roommate proceeded to roll down Cardiac Hill (a large hill/walkway on campus that is on a 45 degree angle). We got back up to our room and discovered that our friend's parents were also down for the evening. Several of us on the floor were a pretty tight-knit group at the time, so if you came down to spend time with your child, you wound up with 6 or 7 more hanging around. My roommate said his hellos and quickly went to bed. I decided to hang out for a bit.

Melissa's mom (in that mom voice): "Terry, were you guys drinking?"

Syc (looks guilty): "Ummm...yeah."

Melissa's mom (still in mom voice): "Now you weren't driving too, were you?"

Syc: "Oh no! We walked all the way home from Applebee's! I swear!"

Melissa's mom: "Okay then."

Then there was the time we drove 30 miles just to get alcohol, but I'll save that for another post. :)

Ok, this one time I arrived in New York for a sales conference. En route to the Marriott Long Island we asked our driver to make a detour so we could get some beers. He obliged a little too eagerly and cut off an 'A-Team' style van. The van driver pulled alongside pointed a pistol at our guy, swore and took off leaving us all (6) stunned but kinda scared/excited.
We found a bottleshop, piled in for supplies and exited the store to be confronted with the sight of a homeless guy on fire. Naturally he was upset so we knocked him over, rolled him about , gave him a beer then hightailed it out of the neighbourhood.
Next day is a freebie so we hit the tourist traps. First was the world trade towers observation deck. I've never forgotten how the lifts registered 10 floors at a time.
No visit is complete without visiting the Empire State Building.
The queues are long going up and down so being a clever clever bastard I decide to one up my friends and run down the stairs.
Being as i'm from a place where tall is 15 stories I have no comparitive concept of how many steps this involves. So many. many steps.
45 minutes later I arrive at the bottom to find i've been abandoned. There's a bar at the entrance of the building and I NEED to sit down. I tell the bartender i'm an 'Ossie' with an interest in trying some of the local concoctions.
I woke up on a train in Jamaica and, for anybody that's been there, I felt a little conspicuous. I found a cab, jumped in and witnessed my first and last genuine double-take in the rear view mirror.
After three uneventful days of conferencing and we vacated the Marriott and moved to the Madison Hotel on the corner of Madison and 42nd to get a 'handle on the vibe of such a huge city.
And here it was all on the one block, beer in every deli, genuine leopard skin tights clad NY ho's, pimps, drug vendors, genuine Rolex's for twenny fi' dollar, actual steam coming out of sidewalk vents just like in the movies and a busy-ness that never slowed.
I'm pleasantly drunk leaning on a US Post box soaking up the atmosphere. An old guy comes up and offer sexual favours for beer ( I politely decline ) followed soon after by the screeching of car tyres. A huge convertible pulls over , four guys in stetsons leap out and attack a guy in pimp uniform with baseball bats.
Nothing is said and it's all over in seconds. The guys leap back in the car and burn rubber. No-one even blinks, people are physically stepping over the guy to carry on their way. He's not moving.The cops arrive surprisingly fast and immediately call an ambulance. One of them notices me and wanders over.
He asks me what happenned but all I remember clearly is the stetsons. He nod and grunts something about a gang calling themselves "Rednecks". They do it for fun, it's indiscriminate except for the victims being black.
The sun comes up so I head back for a couple of hours sleep before our last day in town. We hold a referendum and it's overwhelmingly decided to go see the Statue of Liberty.
The ferry line is inundated by street performers of a far higher standard than most of us have previously paid to see.
The skyline is awsome from the ferry but the river looks like shit.
We arrive at the base, pay the fee and enter the lobby. I say "where are the lifts?". There are no lifts. A few days ago I descended approximately 2200 steps. Fuggeddaboudid. I go outside and sleep on the grass while my friends make the climb.
Close enough to count I figure.
I arrive back in Australia the next day exhausted with a feeling of surreality about the whole trip. Nearly all my luggage arrived with me. The missing case turned up 3 days later. And yes, I have to agree, Austria does resemble Australia when your tired and overworked.

Jesus Christ...you fucking wound up in Jamaica, Queens? Eeek!

Well, at least you had fun and didn't get hurt. :)

Hey yeah, Queens. Cheers, I'd forgotten the district.
I'm only a medium size guy and far from intimidating so I think people figured I was either plumb crazy or packing. Apart from the pistol encounter no-one even spoke harsh words my way.

How long ago was this?

1st thru 7th Juli '91.
I forgot to mention the "distinctive sound" of automatic weapons on July 4th.:D

Wow...and that was when NYC was still considered really bad. If you liked it then, you'd probably love it now...the city has really cleaned itself up since the mid-90s.

Maybe it was rough as guts but aside from the work I spent most of my time wearing rose coloured beer goggles so everything was as good as good can be. The irony is, now, I wouldn't be half as daring in downtown Sydney after dark. Or Melbourne for that matter.

Why? Is crime becoming a serious problem down there?

Homelessness, unemployment, whatever it's called when an ethnic group huddle in an area, asian drug gangs, xenophobia, indigenous folk all mixed up with laws that see recidivists constantly released. I guess those are the major players. Kindof experiencing the multicultural growing pains NY went through already.
Oversimplified, I know, but the long answer is, well ...looong and far too complex for this shallow water wader.

Depends on how you're referring to it...either enclave or ghetto. Ghetto means "a section of a city occupied by a minority group who live there especially because of social, economic, or legal pressure." (dictionary.com) I sense that this is the word you are looking for.

Well they're both gooders but not the one i'm after. The word i'm thinking of is more pc and, if I recall correctly, almost serves to create the impression the people choose this way of life.

This one time, whilst unemployed in sunny Queensland, I answer the phone. It's my long lost pal John who, at the age of 26, has had some kind of epiphany. He's quit his job, bought a bus ticket and is coming to stay with me for a bit, "if that's okay".
Sure.
After two weeks we're both scheming. He's had an offer to go coal mining, i've had a similar offer for gold. We compromise and set off for the sapphire mining town of Sapphire in the heart of Queensland. The alluvial gemstones are, at most, 50 or less feet underground as opposed to the others which are often kilometers deep. Discretion is the better...etc
5 days of hitch-hiking later and we're standing outside the general store. (it says this on the sign and they weren't trying to be quaint.) Youse may refer to this as redneck country.

We ask about camping and fire rules. The nice lady tells us we can camp next to the dry creek bed and fires are okay as long as we get a permit. "where do we get a permit?" "From the fire warden" "Where is the fire warden"' I'm the fire warden"
This is to become a recurrent theme.
We set up camp next to the creek and light a fire. I dash to the local bottleshop for a box of red wine ($10).
A local, drawn by the firelight, wanders down to say g'day.
He happily guzzles our proffered wine and spills the good oil on the area, the who's who so to speak. The wine runs out and he makes to leave then offhandedly says" keen to sleep here lads. I seen a 17 foot wall o' water run through here and it weren't even rainin'. We laugh and glance at each other rolling our eyes. Crazy old fool.
After moving our tent to higher ground we slept like logs.
Following his mud-map we found a place to set up a semi-permanent camp. Prior to leaving we had sewn together a bunch of cheap tarpaulins making a dwelling 20 feet long, 15 feet wide and 6 feet high. John is 6 foot 3 so there was much bitching but we soon learned it only rained there in one particular month per year. We cut longer poles and raised the height a foot. The side walls were rarely lowered as we had a two man tent erected under the main canopy. This, thank christ, was bug proof.
The critter crisis was so extreme we had to dig a moat, line it with plastic and keep it surfaced with a thin film of petrol.
Occasionally border checks would reveal opportunistic ants using fallen leaves and twigs to construct bridges, such was the allure of our pantry.
Our nearest neighbour had a small but efficient mining operation, offering rough and cut gems for sale, equipment hire, free advice and general good cheer and helpfullness. http://sapphires.bizhosting.com/
They held our hands through the start up of our International Sapphire Cartel then consoled us through the reality period.
We did, after much digging, arguing, swearing, equipment sharpening, water fetching and changing of venue, finally discover gem quality sapphires.
Having proven our many detractors wrong and established that a couple of enterprising lads could, through blood, sweat and abject hardship, turn a profit, we congratulated ourselves incessantly during the 5 hour bus ride back to Townsville

Don't forget involuntary disarming of the populace ... crime rate has gone up dramatically (4-5X for certain categories of crime, including rape, assault, robbery, and home invasion) since then.

There's no doubt in my mind you know more about this than I do Wolf.
I wasn't kidding about being a shallow water wader.

I learn fast if i'm interested and i'm slowly refining my google skills so I can keep up with you folks but at the end of the day I prefer to keep my ig'rant mouth shut about things I know little about.

This topic is one of those things. Also include politics, relationships, religion, finance, geography and, of course, computers.

You fit right in, mate ... we don't know anything about any of those things either, we just talk and talk and talk and talk ....

:-D

Sounds like hard work, Novice. I've done some gold panning and fossicking sounds very similar. The joys of living under the stars, communing with nature, getting down with mother earth, are highly tempered by things that creep, crawl, slither, fly, bite, sting, gnaw and bore.:D

Cheers Wolf, I'm a verbal as anyone I guess but for the sake of others I make an effort to confine my yak (here we go) to things I have a little knowledge of.
That is not to suggest anyone here doesn't;)
Yeah Bruce, the bugs were shitty but it just meant we had to be smarter. You'd think that would be easy huh. Right.
I really condensed that yarn as it spanned 8 months but for a while there we were just prospecting. (specking, as the locals call it)
This was simply walking about bent over looking for shiny stuff. Most often it would be sapphire.
If we stuck at it we generally found enough to trade for a carton of beer. The search time averaged out at about three hours. At one stage it was a daily regime. Life became pretty simple but good. The search would sweat out the previous days beer and give us a mean thirst for those to come.

Come to think of it, that sounds like the panhandlers in the city. Work (panhandle) until you have enough to buy a bottle of wine and when you wake up, do it again.:haha:

I could argue that we're all panhandlers. Only the wine bottle metaphor varies and the complexity involved in obtaining it.
But I won't. I have to sleep off my bottle of wwwine before the cycle starts again in the morning.:D

Okay, I gots a tale
 

Last night, Dagney and I are snuggling and watching The Sopranos. Dog wants out, with a litle urging from Dagney "I hate cold noses there" so out he goes. We go back to snuggling and generally being teenagers.

Thirty minutes later, he barks to be let back in. Dagney repairs to the bedroom to read a new book. I approach the back door and encounter the odour of rotten garlic. Those of you who "commune" with nature know where THIS is going. Yes, Junior has encountered the first skunk of the year (his first, and hopefully, last). So he gets a (traumatic) bath. Dagney and I make a late-night trip to Wal-Mart to discover that despite the area, they do not stock skunk shampoo. Side trip to the grocery aisle for three big cans of tomato juice. Back home and give Junior another (traumatic) bath. Now, he looks and smells more like a tomato than a woebegone, skunked dog.

Next, my house, which DOES smell like a woebegone, skunked dog. I liberally apply carpet deodorizer/freshener/flea killer (allegedly, not proven yet). Also, spray a LOT of Febreze on the bed, blanket, pillows (he ran onto the bed when he got in the door) and sofa. A little more on the sofa. One more squirt for good measure. Banish dog to living room (only place we have for him other than the bedroom which was OURS)

We slept fairly well, knocked boots a few times despite the lingering smell and awoke this morning to a house that didn't smell as bad as it did last night. I guess the odour settles overnight. Junior doesn't look or smell quite as bad now, but he's still going to get one more bath after I wash his towel.
The blankets and sheets are in the wash now, and pillows will follow. The sofa slipcover is with the sheets, as is Junior's collar and harness.

This is NOT how I envisioned the weekend going, believe you me. I can only hope that Junior has learned to avoid the black cats with a white stripe and funny smell. But I doubt it...he's the dumbest dog I've ever had.


I'm thinking of renaming him Sir Stinksalot, what do you think?

Brian

The Backstop

I've reached an age where the word "perspective" has taken on a whole new meaning. When I
look back in my life, spanning periods of time that not so very long ago would have seemed
unimaginable, I become severely contemplative. "Nostalgia" has also achieved new stature in my
vocabulary, by dint of the same aging process that redefined perspective.

With a few years of exception, I now live in the same house in which I grew up, at least, for my
junior high and high school years. Therefore, it follows logically that my glory days played out
against the backdrop of this same neighborhood, the site of the family home which I inherited
when my mother passed some 14 years ago. Being in the same place for 33 years makes for some
interesting memories, and some rather startling comparisons when I hold up those memories
against the views I see day to day in my familiar old stomping grounds.

Of late, I have taken to walking the dog past what was the nexus of my mannish youth, the local
neighborhood ball diamond. No bat has met horsehide there for at least 15 years, and even then
it was a shadow of its former self. But in my youth...oh my. In my youth, it was hallowed
ground, the place where boyhood fantasies and conflicts were played out, the place where we spat
on our hands, rubbed them in the dirt, and got down to seeing who was who and what was what.
Ask any mature male, and he's probably got a similar site in his past. Our local pickup ballyard
was the first piece of ground for which I learned to care on a personal level; more than the family
yard, more than any other hunk of real estate I had ever known. This was no planned, contracted,
constructed recreational site. This was a carved-from-the-land,
we're-gonna-play-ball-here-or-else baseball field. I have mowed its grass, filled its holes, carried
its rocks away. I have sat atop railroad ties with spikes embedded in them as they were towed
around and around, a sheet of chain link fabric bringing up the rear, grinding the dirt into smooth
perfection. I have mended the backstop itself, weaving muffler wire back and forth, patching the
damage lest an errant foul tip pass through. I kissed my first girlfriend on the benches, and
dreamed of hitting a long one over the distant fence demarcating the backyards of the nearby
houses. I have known this place...I have loved this place.

For those who are unfamiliar with my neck of the woods, the scene is set thus: My house backs
up on a large vacant field. Our neighborhood is surrounded on two sides by large parks, and so
the field is rife with nocturnal deer, flocks of birds, opportunistic squirrels, timid rabbits, tiny voles
and all manner of creeping, flying beasties. In the early days of Grandview suburbia, signs stood
in this modest expanse, proudly proclaiming "New Shopping Center Coming Soon!" In fact, the
signs stood so long that they rotted, were replaced, and rotted again. Alas, the only thing that
ever got built there was a Quik Trip. That operation long ago pulled up stakes for more
prosperous highway siting, leaving the building to be reopened as a generic convenience store
operated by an Iranian family. Convenience shopping excepted, the field has stood blessedly
empty, 30 or so acres of blessed rolling pasture, dotted by a few trees, some piles of dumped dirt,
a couple of kid-dug trenches...and the backstop.

It is the only easily visible vestige of our former field of dreams. The backstop rises some nine
feet above the mud hole that was once home plate, a three-faced, overgrown, cheesy fence fabric
construct, standing as rusting testament to better days. If you stand and look very closely, you
can still see the depressions in the ground that were the base paths, although they are now faint
indeed. Behind the backstop are hunks of old telephone pole still buried deep in the earth, across
which boards were once placed; one row on each side - home team side, and visitor's side, of
course. I remember when those poles were sunk, courtesy of the neighborhood middle-aged
health freak who determined that he was going to organize our ragtag pickup games, and install
himself as shortstop, despite the fact that he was fully 20 years older than the rest of us. It was he
who refurbished the dragging equipment which had lain there in the high grass for longer than any
of us kids could remember; it was his old Dodge sedan which towed it in dirt-churning circles
with three of us punks atop it for weight.

I have lately found myself standing at the backstop, leaning up against its oxidizing upright, falling
back in my mind across the years, and watching the images of another day play out against the
screen of brown, dormant grasses. There are erstwhile, shirtless youths driving metal fence post
foul-poles into the ground in preparation for the mounting of our homemade distance signs;
distances which are hopelessly optimistic, meant to indicate the distance required for a home run.
My aged yellow German shepherd trots carelessly across the game in progress to lie at my feet at
second base, eliciting catcalls and complaints from the other competitors. There's Ronnie
Aldridge, standing on the pitching board, catching a smartly-struck comebacker with his testicles,
freezing in a hunched-over, grimacing posture, then falling, sideways, stiff as a board to the
ground. He clutches his groin, unable to speak, making only tiny wheezing noises. We carry him
home, and his mom makes us help him hold the ice pack on his crotch, all the while lecturing us
on how someone was going to get really hurt up there some day. I see clearly the time I turned
the perfect double play, taking the feed from the shortstop and pegging to the first baseman. I
hear the 'thwap' of the ball hit his gloved palm, and watch him shaking his reddening hand as he
trots back in to take his next ups.

There were countless games, endless hours; a litany so full that it exceeds the capacity of my
memory. The guys from the neighborhood across the way coming in, challenging us...and
whipping our asses. A few weeks later, we had skimmed off the best of their number, becoming
supreme amongst the other ragtags that drifted in during the long summer, and got assigned to team
up with the loser kids. They played the Generals to our Globetrotters, and victory was no less
sweet for all the shady team assignments. No day was too hot, no wind was too gusty, no sunset
too dark for a game to be completed. We would play until our faces were burned, our fingers
blistered, our bodies sore.

It was a temple of ritual; rites of passage from boy to youth; a stopover on the way to manhood.
Some of us drank our first beers there under cover of darkness. Rumor even had it that, if you
found yourself there of a dark evening with Sally Jean, you might even get more than you'd
bargained for. It was meeting place and social hall, grapevine and joke resource, all wrapped
up in a comforting blanket of baseball. Through it all, there was, and is, the backstop,
unintentional monument, silent sentinel, guardian of my youth.

Instead of stopping baseballs, it now keeps my cherished memories from rolling too far away.

Re: tales from my misspent youth
 

Some have been a bit long but they have pics with the stories and they are interesting.

Great thread topic.

Elspode, why in hell are you wasting your life on insulation? You could clearly write for any major publication.....or a book. The great American Novel is within your grasp.:)

Strangely, no one has been terribly enamoured of my writings. Well, no one who wants to pay me for it, anyway.

Thanks much for the kind words. I write best when I write from the heart.

Damn Splode !!!!! I agree with Bruce ,You are one eliquent MoFo !!!!
Serciously you have a way with the printed word .

Great reminiscence, great photo.

There is a quality to the description that brings life to this tableau which is usually very hard to capture.

Write, man, write!!

i was so high from age 14-age 16 i don't remember much. i've been working since age 14. i was a doorgirl ("hi, would you like to see a menu?...hi, would you like to see a menu?..hi..) i was a cashier at a grocery store, i worked at a dollar store, mall customer service, housekeeper at a cheap hotel, pizza hut in texas, coffee shop, chi chi's in virginia, selling $2000 photography packages to navy -scam...this is all before age 18. i've also been an animal care technician, veterinary technician, pet store clerk, nursing home food server, telemarketer, waitress.

ooh, here's a story i just thought of- my first marriage. i was 18, just graduated and i was accepted into 5 good colleges i applied to- but my family would only help pay if i stayed in RI. i chose to get a $2000 loan from the bank and move to virginia to be with my sailor boyfriend of 3 years. STUPID. then we decided to get married so he could make extra money. we didn't tell anyone and the minister had to bring his wife to our apartment to be the witness. just me, him, the goldfish, and the minister and his wife...then, after we got married, we walked to BURGER KING, and he bought me a 99 cent whopper. THEN, the next day, he left on a 2 month deployment, leaving me with $5, no keys to his car, no job, and a cabinet stocked with ramen noodles. i had to walk up a highway everyday to find a job and we didn't have a phone, either. oh, oh, and guess how this idiot paid for the ramen noodles and the wedding- he had a store credit card for montgomery ward- kind of like a sears...he used to charge VCRs for over $100and sell them to his friends for $50. this is how he got cash...he never paid the credit card bill.....my youth was definately mispent. excuse my all-over-the-place ideas. i just woke up with a huge hangover. karaoke last night:o

My favorite line of the whole thread.

Re: tales from my misspent youth
 

Hrm..ok. Back in 1986, during the Monkeemania revival (yes, I did say The Monkees!), two of my galpal friends and I decided to go to a convention in New Jersey for the weekend. We were all excited, since this was like our first "real" adventure away from home, without parental supervision (we had to be around 16-17 at the time). Unfortunately, we had to have my best friend's much-older-methadone using-sometimes violent boyfriend to drive us up there from Baltimore (I found out a year later he had been abusing her off and on during their two year relationship). He and I had had a couple of "run-ins" with each other, but he would say he was sorry and all would be well again (which is the pattern of abusive men...alienate the friends).

At any rate, we get to the hotel, check in, and decide that we want to go to NYC for dinner. We drive up there, and stop at some pizza joint to eat. Everything is going great up until the point where the b/f is paying the check. "Best friend" decides to try to flirt with another guy that has just come in, and she thinks that her b/f doesn't see it...but he does. Now he's furious, and the ride back to Jersey is a nightmare. He's cussin' and fussin' the whole way, "best friend" is trying to explain herself and the other friend has just put her chewing gum on the back of his seat...and he's wearing a sweater (don't ask...she was weird like that). Mmm, nice and sticky. Now he's REALLY mad as all hell. At this point, I'm just praying that we get back to the hotel in one piece and that he doesn't kill us all and leave us in Central Park to die or something!

Eventually, he drops us off and leaves us to go back home. He says he'll call "best friend" later to let us know when he'll come back to pick us up on Sunday (he came back up on Sat., and another incident ensued). Basically, we never got the phone call. We waited and waited...she tried to call him, but no answer. The bastard left us stranded in NJ!!! I had to call my Dad to wire us some money for a bus ticket! We had to make our way into NYC to catch the bus, and THAT was a big ol' mess! This was back during the "scary" days when the NYC subway was much more run down than it is now (IMO). And I'd never ridden any subway car in my life, so I'm terrified. As if things couldn't get any worse...it did. We had no idea that when riding the NYC subway, you'd better make sure that you are near those doors, because they open and close with lightening speed. Here we were with suitcases (oh, and two guys decided to help out, and of course we're praying that they don't rob us blind), and we're trying to board the train. Everyone made it in except one of the guys and the other gal-friend. The doors closed before they had a chance to get on, and so the train took off without them! Oh lord! I'll never forget the look of sheer horror on her face as the train pulled away!! Eventually, we reached the train station, and about maybe 10 minutes later, so did the other two. She jumped off of the train and hugged us like she has been gone for a year! :haha:

Hours later, we arrived home safe and sound, but boy oh boy, that was a hot mess!!!!

Boyfriend turned out to be a raging asshole who was abusing "best friend" off and on for the two years that they were together. He disappeared after they broke up. Hopefully, he's six feet under somewhere...

Quick tie-in: At the end of this relationship (when she finally got a clue to leave him), she wanted me to help her move her things back to her Mom's house from his apartment. Long story short: He put up a fuss for me being there, he attacked her, I ran to the kitchen to find a weapon, grabbed the biggest knife I could find. Things calmed down for about 5 minutes, then back to the abuse. This time, I grabbed the knife sharpener (blunt object), and proceded to beat.the.living.fuck out of him (as he was beating the living fuck out of her). The joke later on was that she was going to bronze the sharpener (and she still has it to this day!).

And "best friend" is still dating the wrong men, except she gave up former dope users and trading them in for married men *shakes head*.

Tales of misspent youth eh...man oh man, you don't really wanna know!!! :D

A Work in Progress...
 

I don't have a photo of her anymore. All I have is a picture in my mind, a crinkled and discolored synaptic eight by ten glossy of a young woman, short in stature, five-foot-nothing, with jet black hair, gleaming blue-violet eyes, hourglass figure, and a curiously gap-toothed smile that took me weeks to figure out. In the completely candid and innocent picture which resides in my mind, she is smiling slightly, looking for all the world like a lost child, a beautiful lost little girl who will forever be waiting for someone to take her home.

I now know that of all the simpler sins of omission, the failure to obtain and keep a photograph of someone you love can be one of the deepest regrets you will ever have to bear. As the years pass, and the memories of my youth blink out one by one, I know that even the dim and faded image which is etched into my neurons will eventually be gone, and then I'll be left with nothing but a name, a name for which I will have no face. So I sit here, on the verge of tears, wanting to remember, to make permanent my memories. What follows is my attempt at the preservation of the memory of a friend who has been dead these twenty-five years.

In the summer of 1974, my best friend Bruce and I took that first defiant step into adulthood; the step which all high school Seniors ponder with what is inevitably ill-informed speculation...moving out. In spite of a lack of appropriate funds or foresight, we rented a one bedroom apartment, moved our meager posessions from our parents’ homes, and prepared for the great adventure of doing whatever the hell we felt like doing. The 60's drug culture and free-love society were still strong in the minds of my peers, and we were going to make damn sure we had our own little Midwestern version of the Summer of Love.

Our tiny apartment had only one bedroom, yet there were two occupants. However, this was not the impediment that one might suppose, because, by hopeful mutual assent, we designated the bedroom specifically for sex. After all, finding an appropriate place to have sex is the one thing that is ridiculously difficult to do when one lives in their parents' home. If all the room was supposed to be used for was sex, then there shouldn't be a problem with who slept where. Of course, there were many times when the room was not actually being used for its primary purpose, yet I slept on the living room floor. This was due to the fact that Bruce had paid the deposit for the apartment, and also because we had no couch, so he got the bedroom whenever he wanted it. Ultimately, I felt this arrangement to be reasonable since, (A) I was poor, and (B) Bruce was gay, even though he hadn't really admitted it to himself yet, and as such, was still attempting to engage in relationships with women, a practice which I encouraged. I didn’t care if he was gay or not, I just wanted him to figure it out before it drove him crazier.

When you are as young as we were then, having your own apartment is a great attractor of women who are just beginning their own experiments with booze, sex, drugs and rock and roll. I'd known quite a few of those young women before I moved out of my parents' house, but my relationships with those girls were mostly set before I actually occupied the apartment. In other words, the ones who were ever going to have sex with me had already done so for the most part, and they actually began hanging around the apartment in order to find new people with whom to have sex. Therefore, I had to meet some new women, and I had to meet them soon, if I ever wanted to use the bedroom at all.


Lorraine, the girl in my mental picture, lived across the street in the somewhat classier townhouse section of the apartment complex where our miniscule debaucherie depot was located. She lived with her aunt and her family, a handsome group of blondes of Italian descent; gregarious people who filled their home with extended family, frequent parties, loud music, and the largest drug-dealing operation in the history of South Kansas City. I first encountered Lorraine when one of my friends, who happened to be on his way to visit us, drove past a group of three very attractive young ladies walking down the street (heading toward that disreputable townhouse across the way), as young girls are wont to do in the hot summer months. He stopped, backed up, and persuaded them to hop into his Volkswagon convertible, and to come over and party with us (Larry persuaded a lot of young ladies to do a great many interesting things over the years, something which one might expect from a guy who actually streaked his own high school variety show, but that is another story entirely).

When Larry walked in with the three young beauties in tow, Bruce and I were sitting on the floor, preparing some sort of mind-altering concoction on the giant wire spool which served as our sole piece of legitimate furniture. Larry didn't usually deem to share his good fortune with the ladies with us, most especially not when he happened upon such good fortune in such ample quantity and quality. On this particular night, he was rather proud of himself, and in light of that, we were appropriately grateful. Let's face it - even when you have a room specifically and optomistically designated solely for sex in your apartment, it isn't every day that someone brings in three apparently perfect specimens for your consideration. Still, we suppressed our raging hormones and tried to present ourselves as gentlemen and sophisticates. I'm sure we failed miserably.

As the mildly stoned afternoon wore on into a positively afflicted evening, we all talked and told each other of our backgrounds, sharing those little bits of history and opinions which allow us to know whether or not the people we've met are of any substance whatever. It was then that we first learned learned that Lorraine was actually our neighbor, and that the other two were her friends who had moved to other parts of town the previous year. As we chatted, the friends, Christy and Nancy, often seemed a bit standoffish. Although the other two were somewhat cool and distant, Lorraine glowed with genial personality throughout the evening (Note: despite my first impression of Lorraine's friends, I soon became involved in a torrid and tortuous relationship with one of them, a relationship that ultimately led to my first marriage to someone else in a roundabout way, but again, that's another story).

As our talk became deeper and less constrained by sobriety, Lorraine became positively effervescent, laughing easily and often, batting her long lashes and tossing her hair like a gypsy fortune teller in search of a mark. It was impossible not to fall immediately and hopelessly in love with this elfin creature. Not a "let's get married" sort of love, you understand, not that sort of "I'll be yours forever" brand of love, but the kind of love which you might feel when you first gaze upon a wonderful work of art, a type of love like the feeling you often find you have for people who dance into your life when you least expect it. It is difficult to avoid over-romanticizing things that you view through a veil of hazy memory, but there was no denying that Lorraine was something special.


Over the following months, Lorraine and I became confidantes and pals. We spent hours together, making bad jokes and playing endless games of Spades. We listened to music, we walked to the store, we cooked dinners, washed my car. I played my guitar and she applauded. We did nothing together and we did everything together. We dreamed up profound futures out of the buzz from Tequila Sunrises and fat Columbian doobies, and then promptly dismissed them in lieu of more practical and profitable tomorrows. We were utterly comfortable together, Lorraine and I, but then Lorraine was comfortable with everyone. She was the sort of girl who never met a stranger, the kind that made everyone want to be her friend. If she had any ego about her beauty and facility with people, she never showed it. She seemed natural and free.

In retrospect, her lack of ego probably stemmed from the fact that Lorraine had not exactly had an idyllic childhood. She had never had the opportunity to become full of herself, because her life had been one of adversity up until a very short time before I met her. As I came to learn during our walks and talks together, she had not come to live with her extended family by choice. Her childhood had been neither safe nor happy, and she bore the scars of sexual abuse and abandonment deep within her. She rarely let the wounds show, but once I came to know her well, I couldn't be with her without being aware of the welts on her psyche. For me, Lorraine was the first of what would eventually become many women whom I met and befriended that had endured sexual abuse as children. It was an awakening that I needed, but one which I wish I'd never had to experience.

(More to come, one of these days...)