I Was No Longer Distracted.
After my bar fight in Tampa, I was not allowed to go across the bridge and play pool until 3 a.m. anymore.
“We gotta wait for them to forget who we are,” Larry said. He figured this would take a month or so.
Meanwhile, I had realized that I was pissed off most of the time, underneath my fun-loving exterior. I kept myself busy with smoking, drinking and sex, but whenever I stopped doing stuff, my default mode became anger.
While I was waiting to be allowed back into my favorite bar, we needed to find a new bar in Tampa. That extra hour of drinking was paramount, so we found a place that stayed open until 3:00 and had a live band, even though the band stopped playing at midnight and the bar was the size of a shoebox.
Sometimes Larry would wander off to the bathroom and someone would whisper in my ear, “Wanna do a line?” And I’d sneak off to the ladies room with the guy, do a couple of lines, and then return to my seat.
I’m not sure how they knew I wanted cocaine. Did everyone want cocaine?
The other thing the new bar had was “regular” people – meaning, non-bikers. They were all old, like Larry, but not all clad in leather.
As I gazed around the room, I saw my parents just like my parents … and I would want so badly to get out of there, believing strongly in my independence. I was almost sorry the bar stayed open until 3:00.
But when we were home, it was worse. I was starting to realize that my time in Florida was being wasted. Ed had been a beautiful distraction, but now he was just … beautiful. I was no longer distracted.
Work was not enjoyable. “That’s why they call it work!” laughed Larry, entertaining himself. I was not amused.
I’d go off in the mornings to the dark office in the giant warehouse where I saw no one and talked to no one – except my mom, who had that toll-free number.
I would answer the phone a dozen times a day, write down messages on little pink pieces of paper, and then I would go home. I had no mental stimulation.
I would smoke one cigarette in the stifling heat at 10 a.m. and another at 2 p.m. My half-hour lunch (a bologna sandwich and generic sugar cookies) gave me enough time for three cigarettes.
Larry would drop me off and pick me up half a block away from work, to avoid the ground glass and nails in the industrial park. At home I’d change immediately into jeans and grab a beer, then plop myself down on the couch until after “dinner” (more bologna or leftover pizza). Then we’d maybe head to the bar.
We did not watch television. We did not talk about anything of any significance. We ate garbage. We drank 12-pack after 12-pack of Miller Lite. Larry did not sit around and sing, like he had in Pitcairn. He just sat and smoked and drank and talked about motorcycles.
I was bored. I was bored with my job, with Larry, with the heat, with Florida, with my life. I saw absolutely no future for myself and it was starting to sink in that something needed to change.
But I never said a word to Larry about my dissatisfaction. Instead I drank more, did shots of schnapps at the bar, did some coke when he wasn’t looking, and started looking diligently for someone else to save me.