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.”
While Larry and I may not have been kindred spirits, I adored listening to him sing. Larry was a master of old, funny songs. He knew them on the guitar and sang every word beautifully – but he rarely sang them on stage. Instead he sang these songs to me, to Bonnie, and to anyone else our age who would listen.
Though the songs were decades old, we’d never heard them before.
He sang, “I’m gonna hire a wino to decorate our home….” about turning a house into a bar. I thought, brilliant! It was especially funny when Larry sang about installing a pay phone in the house “for when your friends can’t find their car.”
Ignorantly, I credited Larry with all the songs he sang. The first time I heard them, Larry sang them. So I gave Larry credit for being a brilliant, funny lyricist – even though all he did was memorize and perform songs.
It didn’t hurt that the songs were occasionally older than I was.
The Kingston Trio’s song, M.T.A., was about a man who got on the subway and couldn’t get off. “Did he ever return? No, he never returned….” That was true hilarity. … in a 1959 kind of way.
It is not, however, as funny as the incredibly unfortunate animals featured in the song, Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road. Loudon Wainwright III apparently knew how to make people laugh in the seventies – and Dead Skunk, as far as I was concerned, was his crowning achievement: a song about road kill. In addition to the poor skunk, “You got your dead cat, you got your dead dog; on a moonlit night you got your dead toad frog.”
This went right up with Fish Heads in my list of funny songs although I am 100% animal lover; go figure.
The legendary David Allen Coe song, You Never Even Called Me By My Name, was also brand new to me. It taught me that country songs should all include lyrics about trains, trucks, Mama, prison and getting drunk.
Crediting writer Steve Goodman, Larry sang: “I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison….” and I would hoot with laughter. Well, there’s no way to explain the genius of this one; it must be heard.
You Never Even Called Me By My Name specifically mentions superstars like Charley Pride and Merle Haggard who, I now know, are icons of country music. But when Larry sang this song to me the first time, I’d never heard those names before.
Many of “Larry’s songs” depicted the simple life in such a way as to make me appreciate the world in which I suddenly lived – especially songs by Merle Haggard, including one of my favorites: I Think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink, where “drink” somehow rhymes with both “blank” and “bank.” Rhyming fun was also something I enjoyed about country music.
Eventually these songs became “my” songs, too. I even purchased a Willie Nelson album.
I remember Larry playing guitar and singing his repertoire of funny songs in the dorm. Specifically I remember Bonnie’s laughter – it was forced, more of a giggle, and not a laugh I recognized. I wonder if she was trying to endorse my new lifestyle, accepting through music the man she didn’t want to accept into her reality.
Sometimes I think my connection with Larry was, like many of my drunken relationships, developed solely through my ability to connect with his music.
It wasn’t until years later that I considered that my relationship with Larry was really a complete sham.
I have a vision in my head of Larry at Mount Union that, no matter how old I get or how hard I try to forget, I cannot erase from my mind.
It isn’t the cool, leathered version who slid off the motorcycle like Peter Fonda in Easy Rider. It also isn’t the guitar-playing country star version who rocked my world in Pittsburgh. It’s not even the one whose presence lit up the bar as we walked in, friends flocking to him on all sides.
It’s a picture of Larry wearing long white thermal underwear on his legs, accented by black cowboy boots. On his top half, he’s wearing matching white thermals with, of all things, an overlay of black suspenders. His suspenders are clipped tightly to a pair of plaid boxer shorts, worn over the thermals.
The boxers were the required clothing item for Alpha Chi Omega’s annual Boxer Bash. Larry was my date.
Shortly after his 37th birthday, Larry was holding his red-cupped beer over his head and saying, “I’m in a sorority!” with the same enthusiasm he’d had for being “in” college.
I didn’t want Larry in my sorority. I didn’t even want him to visit. But on weekends, if I didn’t visit him at “home,” Larry had nothing better to do than to ride his motorcycle a hundred miles and visit me. And the weekend of the Boxer Bash was a special one, indeed.
I remember being so excited for the party. I was excited for most parties, of course, but the Boxer Bash was extra fun because everyone wore boxers and paraded around in very comfortable attire. My sole purpose was to get obliterated, and the comfortable attire was much to my liking for that goal.
I loved flirting with the guys, having a brilliant reason to drink, and being so enmeshed in college.
When I found out Larry would be visiting – whether or not I wanted him there – I said, “But it’s a sorority party! I’ll be with all my friends!”
And Larry said, “Well I’m one of your friends!” He never questioned this.
To be fair, I never gave him any reason to question this. For me, he was a means to an end: a place to live, someone to ensure that I could stay drunk whenever I wanted.
For Larry, I was a really fun young thing he’d snagged as his “Old Lady.” He owned me.
I wanted very badly for Larry to forget I existed while I was in Ohio, but Larry wanted to be part of every waking minute of my life. So Larry went to the Boxer Bash.
The outfit he chose was entirely of his own making.
The rest of the guys at the party – dates and random frat boys – wore boxers and sweatshirts and sneakers, like twenty-somethings would do. Like college kids did. We bared our knees proudly and drank even more proudly, and nobody thought it was unusual or exciting to be drinking inside a sorority house.
But Larry did.
He spent all night being proud of himself for holding his own with the young folk, chatting it up with the local dudes, believing he was every bit the college student he imagined himself to be (minus acceptance, enrollment, classes or a degree).
And every time I saw a cute guy, or wanted to make out with someone in the corner, there was Larry, smiling that broad smile, utterly unsuspecting that I was living any kind of double life.
All women do not desire the same kind of person as a partner. Sure, everyone thinks certain symmetrical superstars are good looking, but even that is subjective.
I often refer to Gary from ThirtySomething as my ideal man, because he checked so many of the boxes. Someone who appreciated literature and actually tried to save the world. Of course, he was fictitious – which means that my “ideal” man simply never existed. But my ideals were fairly consistent over my lifetime.
In my youth, I liked guys with long unruly hair who were tall and thin. The hair was the important thing.
As I got older, I quickly determined that what I wanted most was a man who saw the world as I did, with the ability to laugh at its ridiculousness. I wanted someone with a sense of humor, who appreciated the irony that I saw everywhere. If a man didn’t think my jokes were funny – as they were often too dry to notice they were jokes – then it was unlikely they’d truly appreciate me.
Then I learned that the people who understood my jokes were, more likely than not, intelligent. This didn’t mean that I was intelligent, but the people who understood me – and the people who made me laugh – frequently seemed to be much smarter than me. [Side note: I married such a man and he is definitely more intelligent than I am.]
Someone who appreciated music, literature and the art of making movies, and someone who cared about saving the world … well, that would have been an added bonus.
So as a drunk, I was looking for someone smart, someone funny, and someone with long hair. Again: Gary from ThirtySomething. (And he wasn’t even a concept at the time.)
What I found in Larry was someone with long hair. And to be honest, his hair wasn’t all that long. It did stick out of the back of his helmet, so that intrigued me.
But as I was going to learn the hard way, Larry was not quite the level of brilliance that I wanted, and his sense of humor and mine were wildly divergent.
This doesn’t mean that everyone wouldn’t have wanted to date Larry. After all, Larry believed that anyone would be lucky to have him. And there is someone for everyone; I truly believe that.
I just also believe that his idea of “funny” and “okay” were unlike any of my ideas of “funny” and “okay.”
Larry did not make me laugh. He did not understand my jokes. He did not get me. And the more I got to know Larry, the less I liked him.
But I had nowhere to go, nowhere else to live. College wasn’t going to last forever, and I didn’t want to crawl back to my parents. Plus, I could drink freely with Larry.
And I was incredibly interested in his world, in the biker lifestyle, in the culture. I found biker life to be absolutely fascinating. I wanted to be free, which Larry promised, from all the angst caused by whatever was causing the angst. Larry assured me that the angst was caused by authority – the government especially – and that we would be “free” because we didn’t need to care about anything except being free.
He was also deathly afraid of being arrested, so he became friends with all the local police and tried not to do anything illegal. Well, except drugs.
And I had no idea at the time that the angst was actually caused by me.
And that the “man” I was seeking was actually myself.
After my encounter(s) with Todd, it became obvious that I didn’t care at all about the sanctity of marriage. I felt very guilty for going out with Todd behind Bonnie’s back, but I thought almost nothing about Todd’s wife. In fact, I didn’t even ask if he was still married because I didn’t care.
I cared that I was bored that night, and that someone offered to spend time drinking with me. I sure wasn’t studying. Drinking was everything.
Going out with Todd to get drunk for free seemed like a no-brainer.
But when Larry showed up one weekend with his colleague and band member, Leo, in tow, marriage was suddenly the most important thing.
Larry pulled up on his bike outside the dorm, but this time there was Leo, the bassist, standing there, too. I couldn’t figure it out.
“Hey Baby,” Larry beamed. “I brought somebody for Bonnie!” He waved his arm at Leo, who smiled coyly under his thick black mustache.
“You really didn’t need to bring someone for Bonnie,” I said.
“Yeah,” Larry laughed. “But I told Leo about them fuckin’ tits!” He laughed again.
I giggled along. My job, as sub-human female, was to giggle along.
This was funny? Did Leo really ride 100 miles on a motorcycle to see some young girl’s breasts?
Leo wasn’t laughing. I got the feeling that Leo wasn’t planning to ogle anyone’s tits, and that he actually showed up because he enjoyed riding his motorcycle.
I went inside without the guys and told Bonnie that Larry’d brought his friend, Leo, “for” her.
“I don’t want someone for me!” she said. Then, realizing she was stuck: “What’s he like?”
I said, “He’s really nice, and he’s funny, but he’s old. And he’s married with two kids.”
“Kids?!?” Bonnie nearly shrieked. “I don’t want anything to do with him!”
Bonnie was planning to become a teacher; we both adored kids. We weren’t going to do anything that might hurt a child.
“Let’s just go out and get drunk,” I said. “Larry can hang with Leo and we can do whatever we want.”
“Fine,” Bonnie said. “What choice do I have?”
We had lots of choices, but neither of us realized that. We just went out and got drunk.
Fortunately, Leo wasn’t the slightest bit interested in cheating on his wife, wrecking his marriage, losing his children, or even flirting with Bonnie. He was a forty-something man who’d matured lightyears beyond Larry, possibly because he’d found a reason to grow up and chosen a reasonable life partner.
Larry had chosen me.
And for some reason I was already beginning to forget, I’d chosen Larry.
Years later, Bonnie and I went to a Marriott to drink. We guessed that we’d find more interesting clientele at a hotel than at a shot-and-beer joint. Probably we were also looking for cocaine.
Not coincidentally, there were men with money at the Marriott. And we quickly found two guys who wanted us to go to their rooms with them. As usual, Bonnie and I chose to stay together in one room to be “safe.”
Both men were married, but “my” guy insisted upfront that we would not have sex. We could fool around, he said, but he didn’t want to cheat on his wife. Then he laughed.
By then, I knew this wasn’t funny at all.
But I was very happy about not being forced to have sex in order to drink. In fact, I suggested that playing drinking games might be a better use of our time.
In the eighties, sexism was widely accepted by society – meaning, most women just put up with it. Any episode of 1980’s television will provide multiple examples of the commonplace sexist slurs and innuendos that were barely questioned.
Though the “Me Too” movement lifted one eyelid to see what’s been here all along, I doubt that any progress has been made in biker culture, even in the 21st century. There’s an understanding by all biker chicks that, upon taking one’s place on the back of your “old man’s” motorcycle, it’s okay to be treated by men in a sub-human fashion.
For me, this started with Larry’s inability to use my actual name. Larry introduced me to other people as “my old lady.” And for everything else, Larry called me “Baby.”
So I originally thought “Baby” was a term of endearment. And with Larry, that term of endearment rolled off his tongue like Italian in Italy.
Larry’s gravelly “Baby” sounded beautiful. I felt appreciated, special, loved. No one had ever nicknamed me before.
Deep down, a part of me worried about the implied reference to an infant. Larry was old enough to be my father, and sometimes I questioned his reasoning for calling me by the same word that, I’m sure, he likely once used to refer to his daughter, who was almost my age.
But I squashed that thought every time it surfaced.
Then I started to notice that I wasn’t the only person Larry called “Baby.”
When he talked to his male friends and colleagues – heck, even when he met guys at Mount Union – Larry always said, “Hey, Man.” Sometimes this was followed by “How ya doin’?” in a jovial manner. Men were always called “Man.” Sometimes they were called “Buddy,” but only if “Man” had already been used.
But women were never called anything but “Baby.” Their ages were irrelevant. All the women at the bar were Baby, including the owner. All the women requesting songs from his band were called Baby.
To the cashier at the 7-11: “Gimme a pack of Winstons, Baby, and a beef jerky.”
To the gas station attendant: “Ten bucks on seven, Baby, and I’ll be back for the change.”
To the bartender: “Gimme a Miller Lite, Baby, and one for my ol’ lady. And keep ’em comin’!”
We ate breakfast out nearly every day. I thought eating breakfast with Larry was the cutest thing I’d ever seen, his communication techniques unique and adorable. I’d never been with someone so self-confident or self-sufficient, so I had no idea he was often just arrogant.
The waitress would come to our table and she’d say, “What can I get for you today?”
Larry would say, “Number two with bacon and hash browns.”
She’d say, “How would you like your eggs?”
And Larry would say, “Lookin’ right at me, Baby.”
Then he’d smile broadly, as if this were the singularly most brilliant description of eggs ever.
He did this every, single time we went out for breakfast: Lookin’ right at me, Baby.
Interestingly, the waitresses all seemed to know what he meant. If they didn’t, he would just repeat it with the word “up” included.
“Two eggs up. Lookin’ right at me, Baby.” Then the smile.
I am not sure what would have happened if we’d ever had a male take our order at a restaurant. He may have been forced to order pancakes.
The night that Bonnie’s ex-boyfriend came to visit campus was … memorable.
After Todd called her, Bonnie shrieked, “He’s coming to see me!” nine billion times.
Todd was sexy, rough and dark. Bonnie had adored him since she’d met him, years prior in her hometown, and he similarly adored her, but they’d never officially been a couple.
That’s because Todd was married.
Bonnie was thrilled that he was coming to visit her at college, so she spent all day getting ready. She did her five-hour hair and makeup routine while I sat in her room smoking cigarettes and drinking beer, waiting.
Todd showed up three hours late, with some guy named Tim.
Bonnie jumped on Todd, kissing him intensely for about five minutes. Tim and I stood there awkwardly, two redheads waiting for the brunettes to finish.
Bonnie and I were bombed before they arrived; the guys were also rather drunk upon arrival. We went to a bar for a few minutes but didn’t waste any time in finding a place to settle down for the evening.
We saw a sleazy hotel with peeling paint and a red awning over the half-lit vacancy sign. It had cheap rooms and a night clerk who kept reservations on a carbon copy notepad.
He asked: “All night or by the hour?”
None of us knew how to answer that.
“All night!” Bonnie decided – so we started counting cash, trying to figure out how much we had for this adventure.
While we counted, the night clerk spoke again. “What name for the room?”
Todd started to give his full name: “Todd ….”
“No!” Bonnie interrupted. “Don’t give them your real name!” He was married, after all.
Todd was not the brightest bulb. “What name should I give him then?”
The night clerk waited.
I started laughing and couldn’t stop, watching the stoic night clerk. Bonnie started laughing, too. Todd and Tim stared at us.
Tim said, “Just use my name!”
At the same time Bonnie yelled, “Dodd! Use Dodd Smith!” Then acknowledging Tim, she hooted: “Dodd and Dim!”
Todd turned to the night clerk. “Dodd and Dim,” he said seriously. “Dodd and Dim Smith.”
Bonnie and I wailed with laughter; nothing ever said had been as funny as “Dodd and Dim.” Tears poured from our eyes and we could barely stand.
The night clerk never smiled or blinked. “How do you spell that?”
“D-O-D-D,” Todd began.
Screeching with laughter all the way down the hall, we reached our room in hysterics. “DODD AND DIM!” we screamed. “DODD AND DIM!” Getting the key into the door was all but impossible and when the door finally swung open, it smacked into a cheap dresser, knocking off several drawer handles.
This was nearly as funny as Dodd and Dim.
Bonnie and I literally fell onto the floor, rolling around on disgusting red shag carpet, crying and laughing until Bonnie finally stopped long enough to say: “I need a beer!” – bringing us back to our senses and calming us enough to crack open four new cans.
I don’t remember if we stayed all night.
I do remember, though, weeks later when Todd called again.
Bonnie was out with a guy named Joe – but Todd asked for me.
“Ya wanna hang out?”
I did.
Todd and I went back to that same motel, this time paying the hourly rate. He again used the name Dodd Smith, but there wasn’t anything funny about it this time.
It took me years to forgive myself for that second visit – not because Todd was married, but because Bonnie loved him with all her heart.
My dad made a career working in public relations for colleges and universities. So when it came time to take Public Relations at college, I was excited. I thought I knew all there was to know about the subject.
I am not sure how I acquired that belief. As a youngster, I frequently visited my dad at his office and determined that he talked on the phone a lot. I had no idea to whom he spoke or what they discussed, or why anyone paid him to do it.
So if anyone had asked me to define public relations, I would have said that it had something to do with relationships with the public. But I knew literally nothing about the field.
When I took it, Public Relations was a night class. I remember this forty years later because I instantly determined that I could squeeze in a quick Hood burger before going to class every week.
By this point in my college/drinking career, I was drinking every day – so a burger and a beer seemed like a reasonable way to prep for night class.
Every Thursday, I would go to The Hood and order my Hood burger and a draft beer. The beer would be gone in two minutes. I did not wait for a waitress to bring me another one; The Hood was not that kind of bar.
I simply stepped up to the bar and refilled my glass – so that by the time the burger arrived, I’d had three or four beers and could barely eat. I would shove down the burger, though, along with another beer or three, because that was “dinner.” Then I would stumble across the universe – always late – and climb the steps to my classroom where I would fall loudly into my seat, reeking of alcohol and barely able to sit up.
My professor, Harry Paidas, supervised my dear friend, Debbie, during her on-campus job. Debbie was responsible and never drank. So after weeks of my tardy, disastrous night class appearances, Harry asked Debbie about me.
“She should be great at PR!” Debbie said, always enthusiastically supportive. “Her dad does PR for colleges.”
Harry thought for a moment. “Moore…” he said, and then startled. “Her dad is Keith Moore?!?”
“Yep,” Debbie said.
Harry nearly fell over. “THE Keith Moore. That’s her dad?”
“Uh-huh,” Debbie said. Then she looked at Harry, who seemed suddenly pale and queasy. “Sorry,” she said.
I’m not sure if she was apologizing for me, my dad or herself.
In class, Harry never let on that he knew about my dad, and he never made me feel like an idiot. He watched me week after week, barely able to function, and probably shook his head with silent disappointment. Some days I didn’t show up for class at all; I simply couldn’t get out of the bar on time. It got worse as the weeks passed.
In spite of my drinking, I think I turned in my work mostly on time. I got mostly passing grades on tests.
And at the end of the semester, I actually knew what the term “public relations” meant. For those who are interested, it’s now often called Corporate Communications. That’s a bit easier to understand.
Somehow I passed Public Relations in spite of myself. It was the only night class I ever took.
My dad continued to excel in his field, becoming even more legendary in higher education. And I went on to drink even more fervently, widening the gap until it was a chasm.
