When it started to get cold outside, which happened in early fall, Larry and I got cold, too.
We had no choice. We had no car.
Once we were riding in the middle of nowhere and passed an old stone pub off the side of the highway. We were so cold, Larry actually pulled over. I thought we were there for heat but Larry wanted a drink.
“Brandy warms ya up!” he taught me. It was my first taste of blackberry brandy.
While there was probably one heat vent in our apartment, there was no way to get warm during the hundred-mile motorcycle ride between my two homes. I had my thin leather jacket and Larry bought me a pair of thin leather gloves. There is nothing warm about leather. It may look cool, but it’s cold.
If I’d been drinking (which was always) my body temperature dropped below a respectable level even before I got on the bike. I rarely wore socks so my feet were like ice cubes; I’m lucky I didn’t lose a toe. My hands were so cold they regularly turned blue. Every time I rode the motorcycle I froze.
Larry froze, too. Of course he was used to it, having grown up in Pitcairn.
Larry actually had a home in Florida – something he had not forgotten – and he was only supposed to be in Pittsburgh for the summer. Then he met me, and I was still in college, so he got a job and he stayed.
This wasn’t really what he’d planned to do. He’d come with a week’s worth of clothes and a pack of cigarettes. He’d planned to go back to Florida when it got cold. But that didn’t happen.
As time passed, it got colder and colder and colder. In the mornings, it was brutal.
“Fuck this shit,” he said regularly, stepping into the under-40-degree weather and rubbing his hands together. “Fuck this fuckin’ shit!”
Sometimes I would try to re-create songs in my head using my teeth as they chattered rhythmically while we puttered down the highway. Sometimes I would suck on a cigarette, my hands barely able to hold on, believing I had conquered some kind of primal beast. Sometimes tears sprouted without sadness, in response to the cold air. Sometimes I would actually cry, I was so cold.
“We’re fuckin’ moving to Florida,” Larry would say. “We’re fuckin’ movin’ as soon as you’re fuckin’ done with college.”
“Okay,” I would say.
“Okay,” he’d agree.
Then he’d start up the bike, wait for the sputter to turn into a roar, pat me on the knee, and we’d freeze our way to wherever we were going.
We were always going somewhere. There was nothing in our apartment. If we weren’t riding the bike to buy a case of beer, we were walking three doors down to Barry’s Bar for a burger and a draft.
I preferred the latter, since walking was warmer and “a draft” usually meant two drafts, or 12 or 35. If we didn’t have anywhere to be, I could drink until I fell off the bar stool.
On cold days, there was no reason to leave Barry’s Bar. It was substantially warmer than our shoebox apartment. Sometimes Larry would disappear to the gas station down the street to buy cigarettes, but only for the six minutes it took to walk there and back.
As the semester went on, I didn’t want to see Larry on weekends any more. It was too cold.
Larry didn’t care for that idea so he hatched a plan.
As a Communications major, I had an important decision to make during my senior year: what would I do for my internship?
I enjoyed everything about media. Radio was my favorite thing, but after my disastrous attempt at being a Sunday morning disc jockey, unable to pronounce even one classical music legend’s name, I thought I should consider television – behind-the-scenes.
I’d have been happy doing anything and everything in television. But Mount Union didn’t have a TV station – even though the department head told me they would soon and “might even have one before you graduate!” … that didn’t happen. From my research, Mount Union didn’t start broadcasting student shows until this year.
Fortunately creative writing really sparked my interest, but I thought journalism was the only way to go to start a “career.” I’d thoroughly enjoyed election night at the radio station, and I loved working on the campus newspaper. So I considered working for a newspaper.
Everyone knows – now especially – that internships are vital to having a successful career right after graduation. It’s got something to do with having experience on the resume, instead of no experience. People hiring employees generally appreciate some form of experience.
But I was a biker chick. My experience was three weeks at The Gap and two summers at Kennywood. I’d had three years’ worth of classes providing me with virtually zero practical knowledge, and I certainly wasn’t using the wisdom of my elders to help me build a career path.
While other Communications majors were building their portfolios, working campus jobs in marketing and admissions, talking about careers with their professors, and interviewing and interning at local media outlets, I was drinking myself into oblivion every single day.
I was a drunk. I’d transformed from being Dean Davis’ problem drinker two years prior into a full-fledged alcoholic. I’d stepped over that invisible line. I was a daily drinker with no interest in doing anything, let alone work. I wanted to drink, get drunk, fall down, pass out, wake up and do it again. That was the extent of my ambition.
Fortunately for me, Mount Union College did not care if I did an internship. The college “encouraged” it by saying (probably frequently): “Everyone should do an internship!”
But they gave me an option, and that option was by far the easier, softer way.
In order to graduate, we needed to do an internship … or take a special class.
So I took the special class. I don’t remember the name of the class, nor do I know the subject matter that was covered. I don’t know when that class took place, or for how many hours of my week. I just know that the class was taught by Chuck Morford, the Communications chair and the man who had once promised me a TV station.
And while I hate to speak ill of the dead, all of Chuck Morford’s courses bored me. Listening to him instead of working actually made interning seem fun, even for a student who didn’t want to get out of bed in the morning.
I had a friend in that non-internship class, Marti, who was very, very, very funny. As she’d done in most of the classes we had together, Marti helped keep me awake and made those hours bearable. Sometimes I think Marti is the reason I stuck with Communications. It certainly wasn’t Chuck Morford.
That class was dreadful. I just dragged my butt into a seat, sat there, and then left. I learned nothing; I did nothing.
A lot of people want to know: why didn’t you just say no? If you didn’t want to do it, why would you consent? Why wouldn’t you speak up? Why did you say nothing?
This is a question that took years of therapy to unravel but the short answer is: I thought sex was love.
My confusion between sex and love may have started when my “friend” had sex with my “boyfriend.”
I wanted to save myself for marriage and my boyfriend was a normal 16-year-old boy. He had no interest in saving himself for anything. So when I repeatedly refused him, he had sex with my friend, ending both my “relationship” and my “friendship.” She got pregnant at 17 by another guy, so I figured that was karma.
After 40+ years, she found me on Facebook and I was still furious – but she was flabbergasted.
“You never said anything,” she said.
I never said anything…?
To be fair, any human with a functioning brain knows not to have sex with someone else’s boyfriend. But maybe I really never told her how I felt.
Maybe I said nothing because I had learned this: boys don’t like me as a friend or a girlfriend. Boys only want to have sex with me.
This added to my belief that something was inherently wrong with me. I believed in my soul that I was weird and unlovable. I thought I needed to be someone entirely different. It never once occurred to me to be self-respecting or to love myself as me.
I believed men were responsible for all the love. (No pressure for them, right?)
What I wanted more than anything in the world was a man to save me, to make me cool and smart and funny and attractive. I wanted a man to make me the person I wanted to become.
I expected this as if it were a reality, as if young men weren’t human at all, but unnamed Disney princes just waiting for me to hop onto their white horses and ride away. In the castle, I’d be transformed.
I believed The One was my one and only true prince. We dated for a month. He didn’t want me, but I obsessed for decades believing he could have made me the person I’d imagined I could be.
I didn’t know that having that kind of relationship wouldn’t save me from myself.
Also I had a few truly wonderful boyfriends who fit into my dream, who treated me well, who gave me everything I thought I needed. But when I didn’t get whisked away on that white horse, when I realized that those guys were mere humans, I moved on to keep searching for that one who would magically transform me into … something better.
The guys who got to know me didn’t change me into the lovable, un-weird person I thought I needed to become.
And most guys preferred to have sex with me rather than get to know me.
So with my head down, my eyes closed, and my teeth clenched, I chugged a ton of beer and had sex with guys who didn’t know me because I thought that’s what men wanted. And having some male attention was better than having no male attention. I did as they asked and waited for them to go away.
I believed that sex with strangers was the best substitute for self-love that I could ever have.
Physically and biologically, I was quite capable of saying no. But to do so would have left me, emotionally, with no love at all.
The guy wearing the Bruce Springsteen sweatshirt was good looking in a macho-dude sort of way. He and his friends, who were all Springsteen fans, had stopped at The Hood on their way through Alliance.
That’s where they found me and some of my friends, all willing to visit their hotel room after the bar closed.
I don’t remember the guys’ names; they were young like us. Their hotel room was huge with at least three beds. The night seemed full of possibility.
I should have known better when the cans of beer were doled out only to those who agreed to play strip poker.
My friends and I joined, not everyone willing to fully undress, and we played until people randomly started passing out on various beds.
I wasn’t willing to give up, though, since there was still beer left to be drunk.
As the others slipped into oblivion, I started making out with the guy with the Bruce Springsteen sweatshirt, which had been tossed aside during the poker game.
By then I’d realized “Bruce” was kind of a jerk, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t yet passed out, so this was the logical next step. It didn’t matter that it was creeping up on 4 a.m. and that almost everyone else was snoring.
Bruce and I were rolling around in a bed when he noticed that one of his friends was still awake. The guy was sitting on the edge of another bed, staring at us and masturbating. It was beyond creepy.
“Hey Bud,” said Bruce, nudging me slightly. “Ya want some of this? C’mon over!”
This was not okay with me.
But “Bud” took a big swig of beer and sashayed up to our bed. He stank of booze and sweat.
This was the kind of “not okay” that still haunts me in nightmares – the kind of “not okay” that violently churns in my gut decades later. This is in my Top 10 list of “not okay” life stories.
The guys were bigger than me, stronger than me. They were rough and smiling, and the combination terrified me.
I didn’t want to wake my friends. I didn’t consider screaming. I didn’t even shake my head. In fact, I silently consented to this thing that I never, ever wanted to do.
To say that Bruce and Bud had their way with me would be an understatement. I was twisted and prodded and squeezed and shoved in gag-worthy, unimaginable ways.
Eventually everyone passed out.
Chilled and coming down, I donned that navy Born in the USA Tour shirt and, momentarily, I treasured it.
I was quite cold.
But that night was so scary and humiliating and horrible that I never told anyone about it. If no one knew what had happened, I reasoned, then it just didn’t happen.
Someone woke me in the morning at checkout time, which felt like ten minutes after I’d fallen asleep. I don’t remember how we got back to the dorm but I’d never been so happy to leave a hotel.
At the dorm, I took off the Springsteen sweatshirt and threw it on the floor. Then I crawled into my own bed, trying to forget. When the sun was almost down, I got out of bed, ate something from the school cafeteria, and started drinking again.
Since it represented a phenomenal worldwide event, the sweatshirt was probably quite expensive but I hated it with every ounce of my being. Still I was glad I’d taken it from him, even after I tossed it into a dumpster.
Football is a huge deal at many colleges, and Mount Union is no exception. In my first two years of college, I went to many games, screaming and clapping and stomping along with my friends. I didn’t understand football then, but I enjoyed being part of the crowd.
By junior year, I skipped football games because I’d started drinking all night long. I would sleep until afternoon, missing out on most daytime occurrences on campus, including breakfast and lunch.
So when it came time to go to one last football game – the last game played during my college career – I really wanted to go. I felt like I’d missed way too many games already, and I didn’t want to miss this one.
I woke up parched and heaving, as always. I crawled to the refrigerator, opened the two-liter bottle, and drank as much Diet Coke as I could. This did very little to quench my thirst, so I crawled to the water fountain down the hall and drank until I could barely breathe. Still, my head hurt, my body ached and the dryness would not cease.
But I was going to that football game. In fact, everyone was going to the football game. My friend Micki offered me a ride, which I gladly accepted.
The football stadium was approximately a three-minute walk from our dorm, and I needed a ride.
When the car stopped, though, no one got out. Micki’s friend pulled something out of his pocket. I’d never seen anything like it – a black chunk of wet grass, maybe.
“What is it?” I whispered.
Micki laughed loudly. “Haven’t you ever done opium before?”
“Nope,” I said. The only thing I knew about opium was that Edgar Allen Poe did it, and I’m not even sure that’s true.
“It’s incredible,” she said. “You’ll love it.”
I didn’t want to get high; I had no idea what I was doing. But my head hurt, my throat hurt, my hair hurt. Sitting in that parking space barely able to function, I assumed anything would make me feel better so that I could enjoy the football game.
So I tried opium. There was foil involved, and a lighter and smoke. I was told to inhale the smoke as the opium burned.
It smelled bad but I did it.
Then we all piled out of the car and walked into the football stadium, where I immediately and consistently wanted to die.
It was a glorious day outside – perfect weather for football – but I was suffocated by people.
Opium made me feel like a pea floating in the ocean. Small and dark and lost, I could do nothing but sit, feeling the ruckus of fans like waves trying to drown me.
There was no game for me; there was no screaming and joy. I wanted to sleep but I was in a state of oblivion. I had no interest in the game, the people, the world around me. I felt like I’d become a chunk of that black, wet grass.
I hated myself for wasting this day, this weather, this event, this moment. There was nothing I could do to regain this time, to rejoin the excitement and fun with my friends.
My day – maybe my life – was over.
At some point I got up, pushed my way through the people, and dragged myself back to my dorm and bed where I slept until nightfall, missing everything.
When I woke up, it was Saturday night. I was missing a party somewhere, so I rolled out of bed and went to find some beer.
I was at The Hood one day when I noticed her: a woman who wasn’t a college student, who didn’t work at the bar, and who sat in the corner from before my arrival until after I left.
I can’t remember what year I noticed her. I can’t remember how many years she stayed.
I only remember the day I saw her – really saw her – and could never look away again.
Her name may have been Diana or Sharon or Cindy; I can’t recall. I’ll call her Grace, even though I’m certain that wasn’t her name.
Grace had a short, boyish haircut and a round face that belied her age. She looked young, but not young enough to be in college. She looked old, but not old enough to be a grandparent.
Grace was always sitting on the same bar stool, in the same corner where I’d once kissed Sam, the one furthest away from the front door, the one near a wall that doubled as a place she could lean.
Sometimes Grace smiled; other times she frowned or cried. Sometimes she chatted with Karen, the bartender; sometimes she sang along loudly with the jukebox. Sometimes she was so quiet, I thought someone in her family had died.
It was when I realized that she might have a family that my perspective suddenly changed.
It was then that I really saw Grace, there on that bar stool, quiet or singing, smiling or frowning. I saw her and I thought quite suddenly: That could be me.
This thought was followed immediately by another thought: I don’t want that to be me.
Grace was at The Hood a lot. She was there, drinking, during the daylight hours. She was there during the evening hours. She was there on weekdays and weekends. She was there all the time.
I know when she was there because I was there all the time, too.
I don’t want to become like her, I thought. I don’t want to spend my life sitting in a dark bar after college, growing old with no windows. I don’t want to spend my life chatting with bartenders and singing with the jukebox. I don’t want to be her. I don’t want to be anything like her.
And as I thought these thoughts, I knew in the exact same second: I am going to become her.
I didn’t know, when I was in college, why I was going to become her; I didn’t understand that it had anything to do with my drinking. I thought bars were fun, that people at bars were fun. Hanging out at bars was my favorite thing to do in the whole world.
I didn’t know that my only reason for being there was to drink. I liked to drink, sure, but I could drink anywhere. I could go to parties. I could go to concerts. I wasn’t going to stay stuck in bars for the rest of my life.
But there I was, in the bar, sitting on a bar stool, playing songs on the jukebox, playing darts when it was a wild night out. All I wanted to do was be in that bar – any bar – so I could drink non-stop.
And I knew I was doomed to spend my life in a dark corner of a bar if something didn’t change, but I didn’t know yet what that “something” might be.
So I watched her, and detested her, believing deep-down that Grace was my destiny.
I never liked the taste of alcohol. As a serious alcoholic, I had to work around that.
My first drink was at the age of 8, after a brewery tour. Kids got root beer, which was delicious, but my dad’s friend, Fred, offered me a sip of his beer. So I tried it.
The rancid smell that permeated the entire building filled the foamy glass, and I hated that smell. The fact that I remember that tiny sip of beer should have been some sort of clue.
The alcohol inventors knew all about people like me, though.
Blackberry brandy tasted awesome. I had my first shot to “warm me up” when it was freezing cold outside. I’d just walked into a bar, practically frostbitten from the motorcycle. If I were ever forced to drink alcohol now (as if someone might do that to me), I would choose blackberry brandy.
As a sober person, I realize my favoritism is because I really like blackberries.
I loved rum mostly because it mixed with Coke. If I could have gotten drunk on cola, I would have done it.
Sometimes I used peppermint schnapps in place of toothpaste. I loved the way I could combine the taste of chewing gum with the ability to get roaringly drunk in mere minutes. Spearmint schnapps was equally delicious.
Sloe gin was so sweet, it actually made my stomach hurt. Even though it’s made simply from a plum-like fruit, I had to give it up.
Ken, my summer love from Kennywood, introduced me to a wine that tasted just like strawberries. I loved it and yes, I also love strawberries.
Bonnie introduced me to kahlua; it was like a teeny chocolate milkshake. I loved the creaminess and chocolate aftertaste but I rarely drank kahlua because, like chocolate milk, I often got sick from drinking it before I got drunk enough for my liking.
What I really wanted from alcohol was candy and fruit.
I drank tequila because I wanted to prove I was tough. I drank whiskey because I knew I was tough. And I drank gin, scotch, vodka, sake, grain alcohol, wine, wine coolers, vermouth, sherry and champagne because if there was nothing else around, it would have to do.
Beer was the absolute worst. I hated the taste of beer with every ounce of my being. And I drank it nearly every day for almost a decade.
I almost never drank “fancy” drinks – not shots nor beer – and I had no bar at home. Cases of canned beer were cheap. Draft beers at the bar were cheap. I was very, very poor since it takes a ton of money to stay drunk 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
So I drank beer – the cheaper the better.
I drank Busch, Schlitz, Miller and Miller Light, Budweiser and Bud Light. I drank Rolling Rock, Iron City and IC Light. I drank Natural Light because they’d deliver it to my dorm room. I drank Coors Light because it had a pretty silver can. I drank Pabst because of its blue ribbon and I drank Lone Star because it made me believe I was in Urban Cowboy. I drank Old Milwaukee and Olympia. I even drank Schaefer – many times – and I swear, it tasted exactly like someone had pissed in the can.
I drank whatever was on tap and rarely asked what brand I was drinking. But I was a beer drinker because it was cheap, and it got me drunk at the perfect pace.
What I remember most about the Pitcairn Hotel is that everything was dark.
The entrance was dark. The hallway leading to the stairs was pitch black. The stairway was dark enough that I couldn’t walk up a stair without kicking my foot out to feel for the next step, and walking was tough enough since I was drunk all the time.
At the end of the stairway was another pitch black hallway. When I reached the door to the apartment – mostly by feeling my way down the wall until I got to the first door on the left – I felt for the keyhole, shoved in the key, unlocked and opened the door ….
Of course it was black inside the apartment, too. It’s not like we had a lamp.
The ceiling light didn’t turn on with the switch on the wall and the bathroom light never worked, either. Everyone showered – when we showered – in the dark. The tiny window wasn’t far from the bathroom, so in daylight we could see well enough to locate the toilet paper rolling around on the floor – when we had toilet paper.
At least the kitchen had a ceiling light that worked. When the dim light blinked on, illuminating all the dead bugs inside, one could almost see the roaches scatter. But the kitchen was Danny’s bedroom, so we didn’t spend much time in there.
Mostly we spent our time at Barry’s Bar.
I was only there on weekends anyway, at least until holiday breaks rolled around, so I didn’t really need to do anything except drink.
Our new apartment, though, had one huge bonus over our former apartment: the Pitcairn Hotel had a restaurant.
If I would get out of bed before noon – and Larry often insisted that I do just that – he would take me to breakfast at the restaurant. We’d walk out of our dark apartment and into the dark hallway, down the dark stairs and into the next dark hallway … and there, right in our very own building, was a tiny little diner with people inside smoking cigarettes and someone behind a little counter making eggs, bacon and toast.
There were three stools at that counter, where I always wanted to sit. They reminded me of my youth, the days when Daddy would take me to breakfast at the Twin Kiss and let me get whatever I wanted for breakfast.
Since breakfast with Daddy was a special occasion, I was allowed to get chocolate milk.
So when Larry took me to that diner, and I sat on one of those stools right there in our very own dingy, disgusting, roach-infested building, I asked Larry: “Can I get chocolate milk?”
“Sure you can, Baby!” he said, dropping his cigarette into the tin ashtray on the counter. He called to the bedraggled cook/waitress: “Gimme a cup of coffee and a chocolate milk!”
She stared at him for a moment, then went over to the fridge, got out some milk and chocolate syrup, and made me a cup of chocolate milk.
I was genuinely amazed. I could hardly wait to have chocolate milk every day for the rest of my life.
But as a full-blown alcoholic, drinking chocolate milk from the Pitcairn Hotel after a night of downing a dozen beers wasn’t a great idea. It made me sick to my stomach and I wasn’t yet smart enough to vomit up the toxins in my system.
So I drank it every, single time I went to that little diner – a vain attempt to reclaim my childhood while continuing on my adult path of destruction.
Blackouts happened to me frequently during my senior year of college. So when I went home to explore my new abode and started that exploration at Barry’s Bar, I blacked out before I ever saw my new apartment.
When I woke up, I was in a twin bed three feet from the front door, and that door was opening. Larry walked in, cigarette dangling, jangling loudly with keys and wearable chains.
My head felt like a boulder. I had no idea where I was, let alone where I might find my cigarettes. Or my clothes.
I looked around.
Other than the twin bed where Larry and I slept, there was a pile of clothes on the floor – ah! there were my jeans! – and a two-drawer nightstand that doubled as a place for an ashtray. The door opened into a two-tier wire shelving unit that looked large enough to maybe hold a loaf of bread.
A black and white TV with rabbit ears sat there; we’d moved up in the world. We had a TV.
The toilet flushed from somewhere nearby. But Larry was standing right next to the bed. I sat up, naked, and startled as a complete stranger walked out of the bathroom at the foot of the bed.
There was no door on the bathroom – just an open doorway. He just appeared.
The stranger held a cigarette between stubby fingers, which he waved briefly as he dipped his head beneath wavy black hair, averting his eyes from my bareness.
“Hey,” the man grumbled. He was a brooding type, barely older than me. But his face was hard, his hands calloused, black oil under his nails. Still, he was the youngest person I’d met in Larry’s world.
Larry laughed when he saw my jaw drop. “That’s my brother, Danny,” he said. He called after the man: “Danny, Kirsten; Kirsten, Danny.”
Larry used my name.
But I couldn’t see Danny anymore. He’d disappeared around a corner into a place I mistakenly believed was another room.
From the bed I could see the door-less bathroom to my left and a “hall” straight ahead, about eight feet long with a 24-inch window’s worth of sunlight. At the end of the eight feet, there was a two-person fold-out chair, folded out with a pillow on it.
Apparently that fold-out chair was Danny’s bed.
Danny came back around the corner, grumbled something, and blithely ducked out the front door, a cloud of cigarette smoke trailing behind him. The hallway was blacker than my boots.
After Danny left, I checked out the very, very tiny bathroom. As I moved away from the toilet, Larry slid past me into the bathroom, dropping ash onto my nakedness and snickering as he brushed it off.
I begged: “Diet Coke?”
“In the kitchen!” Larry announced, as if I would know where a kitchen might be.
I wandered into the space where Danny had disappeared, my head pounding. Around the corner was a rusty sink, a two-burner stove with crumpled clothes piled on top, and a dorm-sized refrigerator underneath.
Danny slept in the kitchen.
I opened the dorm-sized refrigerator. I found a nearly empty jar of mayonnaise and a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke lying on its side.
I guzzled my caffeine straight from the bottle, ignoring my surroundings. Once I got my head cleared and un-parched my throat, beer was sure to follow.
At some point while I was partying with my friends at college, Larry moved. He escaped the one-room studio apartment with lice in the mattress and moved to Pitcairn, a tiny old railroad town nestled in a valley on the east side of Pittsburgh.
Larry had grown up in Pitcairn – meaning sometime before 1986, he’d lived there. I didn’t know if he’d lived there for 30 years or two, but he sure knew his way around Pitcairn.
“It’s the only place in Pittsburgh that has more bars than churches!” he told me gleefully. I’m not sure if he was proud of his knowledge, or excited that he’d chosen a borough I’d truly appreciate.
I never did count the bars and churches.
I was a bit concerned that Larry’d moved out of our one-room apartment without consulting me, although I didn’t mention this. Wherever Larry went, I went.
But I’d never heard of Pitcairn.
Larry called our new home the Pitcairn Hotel, so I got excited. I envisioned a long roadside motel with chairs outside the rooms where we’d chat, smoke and drink with other residents. I’d been admiring these types of hotels as I zipped past on the highways for nearly all my life, and wondered what it would be like to stay there.
The thought of living in a roadside motel was almost as exciting as living on the beach and eating raw potatoes or – my other dream – living in a trailer park with my own little patch of land. (I’m still trying to get that trailer.)
But Larry said only that he was staying with his brother, Danny, who was 23 years old. I didn’t even know Larry had a brother, and now I’d be living with him.
And Danny was practically my age.
So one weekend Larry rode me “home” to see my new apartment and my new hometown.
We leaned around a corner and it loomed ahead: a two-lane road with buildings on the left, a single gas station on the other, and a patch of gravel where Larry pulled over into blackness.
I didn’t see any ranch-style motel; in fact, I didn’t see anything resembling lodging at all. There were a couple of buildings, brick or cement – it was hard to see in the dark – and – hallelujah – Barry’s Bar.
“Welcome to your new home!” Larry smiled. “This is Pitcairn! Ya ready for a drink, Baby?”
I was busy lighting a cigarette. “I’m always ready,” I told him.
“You can leave your brain bucket on the bike; Pitcairn’s the safest fuckin’ place in the fuckin’ world.”
I put my helmet on the back rest and followed his gallumph across the street.
Barry’s Bar was small and dark and reeked of stale beer and cigarettes. My boots stuck to the floor as I walked toward the bar and its handful of stools.
Larry threw his leather jacket on the stool, and flopped on top of his jacket. I did the same.
“Hey Man,” Larry said, rubbing his hands together for warmth. “Two Miller Lites pleeeeease!” Larry smiled as if adding “please” was just plain silly.
Barry’s Bar didn’t look like the kind of place where people often said “please.” It looked more like the kind of place where people often said “shit.”
“You got it,” said the bartender, an old man of 30 or 60 whose name, I learned later, was Barry.
Larry slid me a quarter. “Play us some songs, Baby.”
