I Was Not on TV.
Spring break with Larry wasn’t quite the same as the prior year with Bonnie.
I did not go to Chicago. I didn’t go to flashy wild after-hour clubs. I didn’t sleep with any extraneous men or pretend to be blind just for fun. I didn’t meet any legendary rock stars or party with The Firm.
Instead I went to Florida, where the wildest of Spring Breaksters traveled during the wildest time of the year. I’d wanted to go to Florida since my sole trip to Disney World in 1982; Florida was the ultimate in cool Spring Break destinations.
I had expectations of what Florida entailed. Here’s what I envisioned for my Spring Break:
- Young, vibrant college students throwing frisbees on the beach
- Scantily clad males and females splashing in the ocean 24/7
- Loud music playing and synchronized on all the boomboxes on the sand
- Hundreds of kegs, always allowing the beer to flow, dug into sand pits to keep them constantly cool
- Sunshine and sunbathing and insanity and free food and parties everywhere
- Fun and frolick, day and night, all week long
In fact, when I was in Florida in March of 1986, MTV filmed – and broadcast – the insanity of Spring Break. The parties were savage!
Somehow I was not on TV.
My mission was substantially less interesting but, according to Larry, very important.
Larry had a house in Florida, and we had to go there and make sure it was still standing.
Larry and I fully intended to move to Florida after I graduated from college. But Suzy, Larry’s ex-girlfriend, still lived in Larry’s house in Saint Petersburg.
Larry and Suzy had split up only a short time before he met me at that gas station in Pittsburgh. Larry told Suzy she could stay “as long as you want.” But since we were planning to move into Larry’s house in a two months, he thought he should tell her in person that she needed to find somewhere else to live.
Suzy lived with two guys, Dave and Joe, who were possibly paying rent and, I guess, the mortgage. I never quite understood why Suzy, Dave and Joe all needed to live in Larry’s house when he moved out.
I did not want to meet Suzy, but I did want to go to Florida. I surely did not want to spend the week in our hellhole at the Pitcairn Motel. So I planned for my wild week in the Sunny South.
We did not fly to Florida; the truck would’ve never made the trip. So most of my Spring Break was me on the Harley, riding from Pittsburgh to St. Pete and back. Larry had to drive the entire way – both ways.
When asked what I should do, Larry said “Enjoy the ride, Baby!”
Since Larry was driving, he wasn’t drinking. This was not always the case, but he apparently made exceptions for multiple-hour drives. He had a few beers at our halfway hotel, but that was all.
For me, this was a complete waste of time. I didn’t have to stay sober; I wasn’t driving. So I drank as much as I could when we stopped for lunch – at a bar, of course – and drank way more at the crappy hotel.
The second day, I didn’t drink anything at lunchtime; we didn’t even pick up beer to take to Larry’s house. We just drove right on over there.
When we finally arrived in St. Pete, I was practically detoxed. I was hot and grouchy and mean.
In fact, it’s possible that I’ve never been meaner in my life.