November 29

One of my favorite memories from this time was a concert.  I had been to lots of Christian concerts over the years, but the vast majority of these were very sedate and very low-energy events.  I had never been to an honest-to-god rock concert.  Well, ok, there was this one time Deeanne and I had, for some reason, attended a Chicago concert but this was when the group was almost completely in the ‘classic rock’ phase.  My brother and his friends were all big Motley Crue fans.  Bobby had a big poster on his wall.  I liked some of their stuff but Vince Neil’s voice just didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the group.  But I did like Whitesnake.  Their music was the soundtrack of my life at this stage.  So when my brother invited me to join him and his friends at the Motley Crue/Whitesnake concert at Reunion Arena in Dallas I did not hesitate.  September 25, 1987.  We caravanned to Dallas.  Jakey did not disappoint and celebrated old times by riding in the back of a pickup and mooning us and other traffic.  We were all high by the time we arrived.

Whitesnake opened, and they got the place rocking.  They were getting a lot of airplay at the time and by the time they finished their set I was thinking that they might have upstaged the main act!  I would go home happy no matter what.  And then the Crue got started.  They owned and used more of the stage, which gave them a bit of an advantage, plus they also had the nasty habits dancing which didn’t hurt at all.  And then that magical moment happened, the one where the crowd becomes a force that interacts with the band.  The lights went low, a rumbling sound began filling the arena, the unmistakeable sound of a motorcycle engine revving up.  The spotlights hit a giant inflatable motorcycle which was growing behind the stage, eventually towering over it.  And the band kicked into Girls, Girls, Girls and I was persuaded that maybe, just maybe, this Crue thing wasn’t so bad after all.

And then there was the break.  The band left the stage, but Tommy Lee stayed at his drums.  He was in some sort of crazy chair with straps and buckles as if he were going to take off.  He chugged an entire bottle of Jack Daniels, holding the bottle with one hand and thrashing the drums with his other hand and both feet.  The stage foled back away from him and his drum platform began to rise.  He was on some sort of pneumatic lift!  It raised him in the air until he was almost on top of the front rows.  He played a riff as the drums tilted to one side and stopped.  He riffed again as the platform tilted back to the other side.  He then took off on a powerful beat and the platform spun and then stopped with him upside down!  The crowd was going wild by then.  He proceeded to do some serious mother-fucking kick-ass drumming while the platform spun and I was won over.  The Crue just rocked, no doubt about it.

It was a great night, and since it was my first bonafide true rock concert I don’t think I will ever be able to top it.

At times I enjoyed solitude.  It was such a nice contrast to the almost constant arguing and the perceived pressure of being responsible for so many others.  But most of the time I enjoyed having someone else around.  And I truly hated to miss out on an opportunity to party, or to hang out with a hot chick.  So when Tammy knocked at the door after midnight on a work night, I groggily opened the door.  She showed me a small bag containing white powder.  I was sincerely pleased that she thought of me.  Perhaps it was a thank-you for the time she had spent sleeping over, or perhaps it was just the odd friendships that sharing drugs produces.  I stayed up all night that night, although I don’t remember how long she stayed over.  I was just glad she had thought of me.

But I never slept with her.  And it isn’t as if I didn’t want to have sex!  But I was in no hurry to get into a new relationship for once.  And for some reason I caught the attention of the neighbor in the apartment below me.  Her name was Beth and she had curly, slightly red hair and freckles.  She drove a blue Suzuki Samurai and one day asked me some questions about it.  I think it was making a noise and so the next thing you know I was under the car looking around.  I don’t remember finding anything significant but I probably offered up a few things she might need to have checked.  It didn’t matter.  Once again my naivety failed to notice that she just wanted an excuse to get to know me.  To repay me for looking at her car (since I was such a top-notch mechanic) she invited me for dinner that night.  It was a genuinely good meal, and her kid was nice as I recall.  After he went to bed we watch TV for awhile, and talked.  Shortly she went to her bedroom and a few minutes later she came back in a thin robe.  THAT is when I knew I was getting laid, not one minute before.  We did a lot of kissing and groping and then finally went to her bedroom.  That night ended a rather long drought and did a lot to restore both my confidence and my self-esteem.

I went by her place of work the next day and chatted for a bit and then she invited me over again.  This time was a bit different.  I think someone else was watching her kid so we talked and drank a bit and then she gave me a lap dance.  It wasn’t a strip-club kind of lap dance, but it was very sensual and wild.  I was appropriately mesmerized by her grinding on me and gyrating.  Then we made love.

And that was basically it.  I really didn’t expect anything to come of it, primarily because of my crappy job.  I wasn’t particularly good mating material.  But I completely and totally understood that I was just a bit of a fling for her, and I was fine with that.  The first time she brought someone else over I was, of course, a bit jealous.  I was jealous that I couldn’t have more.  But it was a brief envy exacerbated by proximity and the fact that I had nothing else to do but sit around and think most of the time.  Within six months my opinion of the whole episode had gelled in my mind and has never changed.  If I ever run into her again I will explain to her what I did not then, that her actions meant a lot more to me than she could have known.  I will always be thankful to her and hold her in high regard in my mind.  Whether she was acting out of pure lust or sympathy or just curiosity matters not.  I am grateful to her.

Paula was different.  I sometimes wonder if I didn’t just imagine her.  I have tried and tried and can never come up with how I met her.  Perhaps she was a friend of a friend, but I don’t remember hanging out with any other people while I was with her.  She wasn’t particularly churchy and neither was I at the time so it’s very unlikely we met at church or through some acquaintance there.  I remember hanging out at her house a few times, I remember her daughter Krystal.  And I remember she had a pink bass guitar.

One night we did a little jam session at someone’s house, a friend of hers.  It was in Lake Worth, oddly enough.  I played jazz riffs on the drums, and it was generally fun.
Paula was Native American, so maybe I met her through the guys I worked with but I couldn’t swear to it.  She would go to events and learn history and dances.  I thought it was pretty cool.

One night I accompanied her to some bar in some part of the Fort Worth area but I couldn’t tell you where.  It was a very typical bar, and she was known there.  It was country, and I was comfy being in a country bar.  I’m Texan, after all.  But I wasn’t a boot-scootin’ kind of guy so I was not in my element completely.  But that night it was all good, and I felt even better after the band spotted Paula and called her up for a song.  So she went up and did a fine rendition of something by Patsy Cline.  So now I was the dude with the chick that could sing.  It was a fun evening.

It may have been that night or some other night but as should be obvious by now the details have completely departed my mind about much of this period of time.  Paula was dropping me off at my apartment and we saw someone standing outside on the sidewalk.  It may have been Beth, it may have been Linda’s sister, I’m not sure.  But Paula seemed to think they were giving us looks so she decided to give them something to look at and pulled me over for a kiss.  I’m not sure whether it was based on sympathy or whether she just wanted an excuse, but I never got the impression she saw me as more than a friend.  Then again, there is my renowned naivety to take into consideration.  I will probably never know.

Speaking of Linda’s sister, her entrance on the scene marked the beginning of the end of this phase of my life.  She was separating or divorcing from her husband, James.  It seems that James was a nice enough guy but things just weren’t working out.  He was in the Air Force and was doing M.P. Work at Carswell Air Force Base on the south side of Lake Worth (both the lake and the city).  I met him once or twice when he came to visit his kids while they were all living with Linda.  Needless to say, this put a bit of a crimp in my brother’s sleepover schedule and I started seeing a lot more of him.  I liked Linda’s sister and made feeble attempts to get to know her better but I ended up being the friend not the lover.  I even babysat for her one night when she went on a date.  I didn’t really mind since her kids were just typical kids and I enjoyed playing with them, but it wasn’t a role I wanted to play on a long-term basis.  But the strange thing is that I actually ended up hitting it off pretty good with her ex, James.  He and I started hanging out together as we shared a common affinity for speed.  But James wasn’t just a snorter, he was a slammer.  The funny thing is that what I remember the most about my time with him is how much we sat around wishing we had some.

James lived on the western fringes of White Settlement in the ground floor of a little four-plex apartment building.  Perhaps one of the oddest memories I have of that time is this one night when we had both had just a bit of speed left.  Well, I say both but when it comes to speed users get very protective of their stashes.  So I can only speak for myself when I say that I didn’t get very wired this one night.  After any other friends and acquaintances had left James and I split the last of any remaining speed we had on us, and it wasn’t much.  He wanted to slam his, but he asked me to help him.  I had no clue what I was doing, but I was game.  So he did all the prep work and then tied off his arm, popped up a vein and I hit a vein and gave him a nice easy plunge.  He shuddered as the effect started hitting his system.

We talked about me doing the same, but I was generally against the concept.  He didn’t try to talk me into it, but we did discuss it for awhile.  Finally we came up with an acceptable alternative.  So we flushed the syringe with very hot water and I think we sterilized the needle with a match.  I then took a syringe full of liquid meth and squirted it into the back of my throat.  It was very nasty and bitter, and it absorbed quickly and made me happy.  Now that we were both wired we made the most of it by finding something to focus on.

It is the one thing I remember the most about speed.  I was very happy the first time I used speed while driving.  I drove from Georgetown back to Fort Worth and never once yawned or got tired or started falling asleep, which was a most definite first for me.  The act of driving was a focal point for my mind.  Other times I would grab a twelve-pack of Dr. Pepper, a few fruit pies, a crossword puzzle book and a carton of cigarettes and that would take me through the entire weekend, most of it spent on the couch.  But what James and I found to focus on that night was the promise of even more speed.

A couple of the people that had been at his house earlier that night were some true, serious thugs.  Not particularly smart, but dangerous.  Ex-cons, most certainly carrying weapons.  For reasons that I’ll never know they had supposedly stashed a bag of meth there at James’ apartment.  So we focused on where they might have hidden it.  We very systematically and thoroughly searched that apartment from top to bottom.  After the first time through, we talked again.  We reconsidered.  We started in on some less obvious choices.  We removed faceplates from light switches and wall plugs.  We checked the fireplace flue.  We pulled up loose corners of carpet, we pulled appliances out and looked behind and under them.  We literally left nothing unsearched.  We would touch base every now and then to avoid overlap and multiple searches of the same place, but we would forget if we had searched it yet or not so we did it again.  As we came down off the buzz the paranoia set in and we began to see unmarked police activity in every car that slowed down nearby.  Speed was like that.

Eventually the thugs returned and went straight to the fireplace, opened the flue and retrieved a large quantity of meth.  We couldn’t believe it as we had looked there several times during the night.  Or at least we thought we had.

Of course, since I thought of myself as one bad mo-fo I wanted to help these guys in their life of crime, especially if it would score me some speed.  I once attempted to abscond with some dealer tag license plates from work.  Unfortunately someone found them missing and we were all asked to look for them. I ‘found’ them in the trash barrel next to my work area and tried to pass it off as an innocent mistake.  I’m not sure they ever believed me.

The last time I spent the weekend at James’ apartment we had more friends and acquaintances than usual hanging around.  One guy actually had some speed, a monster bag full actually.  It was probably worth more than I knew.  In retrospect, I will guess that the street value was around five-thousand dollars worth.  But he wasn’t giving any away for free and I was basically broke so I just hung out hoping for handouts.  I believe I called up Debbie to see if she was in the market.

Debbie was the sister of one of my brother’s best friends.  The last time I had seen her was when I left for college and she was just a skinny little kid.  After I moved in with my brother I found her to be a very attractive young lady with long legs and luscious lips.  It was probably creepy to see me in action around her but I couldn’t help it, she was pretty hot.  We spent some time together off and on for awhile.  I hung out in her bedroom once while she was calling around to score some meth.  We almost drove my brother crazy one night when we were both wired and talking ninety miles an hour.  I thought it was hilarious.

So I thought of Debbie that night and she came over to James’ place.  My naivety again kicked in as she and her friend were invited into the back bedroom where business was being conducted.  I imagined a normal business transaction being conducted when it may have actually been more of a barter or exchange going on.  She didn’t stay long and I was left hanging out still.

At some point the thugs came by and then left again.  One of them was showing off a gun if I remember correctly.  Later that night we were sitting around doing not much of anything when the kitchen window disintegrated explosively and I looked over to see a shotgun barrel where the window used to be.  The voice behind it yelled for everyone to get down on the floor, so we all jumped up and ran for the back bedroom.  Someone opened the window only to find another shotgun and another person yelling for us to get down.  So we ran back to the hallway.  We somehow felt protected by a double layer of sheetrock.  I asked James about what weapons he had in the house.  I had seen his BDU’s and presumed he would also have at least a sidearm but no, he said he had nothing.  In hindsight that is probably a good thing.  Soon we realized that the person in the kitchen window was threatening to kill someone if we didn’t go unlock the front door.  As it turns out he had caught someone in the kitchen who was now lying on the floor right in front of him.  Somehow I ended up being the designated unlock-ee and I unlocked the door and we all got on the living room carpet face down.  We followed instructions and removed our shoes and pants and covered our heads with jackets or shirts.  I took the fact that they didn’t want us to see their faces as a good sign.  If they didn’t care about being identified it meant they probably didn’t expect us to live long enough to talk.  Besides, what were we going to do?  Call the police?

They walked around for awhile, occasionally running the barrel of a shotgun along our backs for emphasis, or perhaps just for kicks.  Finally they had several of us get into a small closet, one at a time.  We kept our shirts on so we couldn’t see.  One by one they pulled someone out and we could hear some shouting and what sounded like someone getting beat up.  Oddly enough I was calm the whole time.  I think that maybe I was reminded of my cub scout campout initiation.  I was skeptical that these guys were seriously hurting any one.  Besides, I really did not know anything, so I wasn’t going to be much use to any one.  One of my closet mates got a little freaked out at one point and we had to talk him down before he did something stupid.  But then it got quiet in the house.  We waited for what seemed like forever and then cautiously snuck out of the closet.  We heard an engine start and tires squealing down the road and we knew they were gone.

After we sorted our clothes out and got dressed again we pieced together the story.  The guy holding the large bag of speed had evidently attempted to flush it down the toilet.  I will presume that he thought these thugs with shotguns were undercover cops because I can think of no other good reason to flush the drugs.  But that is what these guys were after and fortunately it clogged up the toilet and they were able to reach up in there and retrieve it.  That’s what they were after so they left.  Everyone finally left, including myself.

Of course anger and bravado soon replaced fear, directly proportional to the amount of time that passed.  By the time I got back to my apartment I was ready for revenge.  I got my brother’s pistol-grip shotgun and put it in my car.  I half-expected the thugs to track us all down and attempt further robberies, but I never saw them again.  I suspect they are either dead or rotting in some prison cell.

You would think that this would scare me right out of this lifestyle, but it didn’t.  I kept partying until one Tuesday when I went in to work.  I had taken Monday off due to being way too sleep-deprived to function, and upon my arrival Tuesday I was called into the boss’ office.  They were going to basically bust me down to grease monkey private until I shaped up.  I said ok, and told them I needed to get my tools out of my car.  I got in the car and drove off and never looked back.

I spent a week or two half-heartedly looking for work, or at least thinking about it, and as I was broke I stayed pretty sober.  I finally had some time to think straight and I decided enough was enough.  I knew I could make more money than the crappy automall, three times as much or more.  I just needed to hit the temp agencies again.  But I also knew that it was time to become a more productive citizen in general, and perhaps get back in church.  I made a phone call and soon I was living with my parents again.  I spent a couple of weeks making phone calls and sleeping a lot.  I couldn’t stop napping.  My body was catching up.  I gained some weight too.  But I felt like the fog was clearing and I had half a plan to put my life back together.

A couple of weeks later I got bored and called James up.  I went to see him to see if I could at least score some speed, even just a bump.  I wanted to party and hang out.  He had a friend come over, supposedly with some speed, but I never saw any of it.  I ended up more bored than I was at my parents and left and never went back.

A week later my brother called.  James was dead.  The story was that he was at his parents’ house and got a bit out of control and attacked his mom.  I doubt that he was seriously physically hurting her, but to his ailing grandfather it might have appeared that way.  So his frail alzheimer’s riddled grandfather grabbed a shotgun and blew a hole in him.  This story seemed so implausible.  I had been at his mom’s house before and met them briefly.  I wasn’t buying it.  Paranoia still ruled a corner of my brain and I decided that he might have gone into some sort of witness protection program.  I didn’t even attend the funeral for fear of FBI types wandering around looking for known associates.  I had made it out and I was going to stay out.  I never looked back.

At this point in my life I literally turned a new leaf, but it was hard.  I had experienced life in the fast lane.  Loud rock, drugs, crazy people.  So it was a bit of a culture shock when I started going back to my dad’s church.

The people were even more small-minded and picky and insignificant than they had ever been, or at least from my perspective they were.  I was bored and perpetually horny.  Somehow getting back out into the work force and making decent money had renewed my interest in sex as well, at least to the level it had been before.  Hymns just did not do a damn thing for me.  But I was still a bit naive when it came to women, and I was definitely a bit on the desperate side, and that is how I came to start dating Bobbie.  When I tell people about it now it comes across as a bit sensational.  But at the time, I only learned about her gradually.  The fact that she was interested in me was obvious from the smile on her face and her body language.  That counted for a lot in my book.  A couple of dates is harmless, so we did that.  We both smoked so that was no big deal.  And she had an active libido.  What’s not to like?  I spent one night at her house.  After her teenage son went to bed she came out to the couch where I was supposedly sleeping.  She left to freshen up a bit and then returned in nothing but a t-shirt.  But since we were both in church we had the moral hangups to deal with.

Fortunately we weren’t virgins so some things just happened and we didn’t bother with asking or permission or forgiveness.  It just happened.  But what hooked me was when I first put my hand between her legs.  Moist isn’t the word.  More like dripping.  It was something I hadn’t experienced before and that always counted for something in my book.  And it turned me on like crazy.  Before the night was over I was in  bed with her.  The good news is that since I had been vasectomized I no longer had to worry about pregnancy.  The bad news is that to fill her with semen would have been over the ‘moral’ line, so we settled for some intercourse and then I finished up in the bathroom later.

Now the version I normally tell people doesn’t include all those details.  She is just the one I dated that was scatterbrained, a single mom, and on Lithium.  The rest is just filler.