When I wasn’t at the bar with no name, I would drink at a bar called Tubby’s. Gregg’s friend, Tubby, was the bartender, and Tubby was always bartending. The only time he wasn’t was when he was in the hospital for an emergency appendectomy and, rather than being empathetic, I was pissed off about his absence. I don’t know if I ever knew Tubby’s real name.
Tubby’s had a bright red phone on the wall that served as a jukebox. I would pick up the phone and say, “Play Break on Through by The Doors!” And the person on the phone would say, “Okay, it’s on the turntable!” And then I would wait – or forget about it – until it played. It was like an early version of Spotify.
Tubby served flaming shots, which I dearly loved. He’d pour alcohol into a shot glass and light it on fire. I sat mesmerized, watching it burn, until Tubby doused the flame and demanded that I quickly down it.
This was my idea of great fun. I couldn’t afford flaming shots very often, but I would purposefully go across town to Tubby’s just to watch that tiny fire, as though they couldn’t be served anywhere else.
One drunken night I ran to the bathroom, barely in time to puke my guts out in the stall. This was not a new thing for me; I’d been vomiting in order to drink more for years.
But on this night, I puked for ten minutes then went back to the bar and said to Tubby, “Okay! I’m ready for my flaming shot!”
“You just drank it,” Tubby told me.
“No I didn’t!” I said. “I just went to the bathroom!”
“You drank it before you went to the bathroom,” Tubby said. “Look! Here’s your empty shot glass!”
There was, indeed, an empty shot glass, but I had no recollection of drinking that flaming shot. I had to pony up and buy another one, so that I could drink it while not in a blackout.
One night I was sitting at Tubby’s, wasted as usual, and a guy walked in to pick up a 12-pack. He waited next to me at the bar then, quite suddenly, exclaimed: “Kirsten!”
“It’s me!” I replied. The man looked vaguely familiar and oddly happy. I looked closer, completely befuddled.
“Robert!” he said, pointing to his chest. “From Seven Springs!”
I nearly fell off the barstool.
This was the man with whom I’d spent a beautiful night after nearly being gang-raped by his friends. Robert – my love – who’d dropped me off after Larry had left without me at Seven Springs ski resort.
I’d never expected to see Robert again, and I didn’t know what to do with him now that I had. I had adored this man and he was standing here, alone, next to me.
But Gregg was at Tubby’s that night, on the other side of me.
I glanced at Gregg, then back at Robert, who was wise enough to recognize that he was – again – a third wheel.
And again, this made me very, very sad. But what could I do? I was stuck with the person with whom I was stuck. Again.
I gave Robert a quick hug and felt my body flash back to rolling in the sheets, laughing all night. Suddenly I missed him like he was a dear friend, a long-lost love, even though he wasn’t.
I let Robert go and never saw him again.
I was so far beyond repair, I couldn’t even feel sad about it. Just empty and lost and utterly alone.
Again.
Through all of my job searches, life failures, and desperate attempts to manipulate the world according to my flimsy attempts to “do better,” I recognized that my life was starting to fall apart around me.
My friends from various jobs disappeared with every position. My high school friends had dipped their toes in the water of friendship and gotten scorched. I tossed Gregg around like a baseball, not really wanting to be alone but not wanting a liar in my life. And Gregg’s friends – including Barry and Kim, who lived next door – were part of what I considered to be the Loser Clearance Bin.
So once again, I was completely and utterly alone – just like I’d been in Larry’s world. Except this time, I’d created the life I thought I wanted. With no responsibilities, I had a very flexible schedule and I used all of my free time – which was all of my time – to drink and do drugs.
I spent a lot of time at the dark bar at the end of the street – the one that served me my first drink after months without any alcohol. The one with the broken screen door and the tiny glass block window glowing through the solid brick wall. The one with a handful of bar stools and a jukebox in the corner. The one with no name, no theme, no identity, no way to distinguish it from any other bar in the entire world.
I drank with people who, like me, drank solely to escape reality.
At this bar, no one talked about current events, about politics, about the weather, about their families. No one talked about anything. We sat and smoked cigarettes and stared at the ashtrays and guzzled our beers and didn’t say much to one another, except to declare loudly, as needed, This is a great song! or Who played this fucking song? or Gimme another one, will ya?
Nothing outside the bar mattered.
I drank at this bar because I felt safe there. Once in a great while someone would strike up a conversation but I knew I would be leaving there alone, just like everyone else.
A dozen times a night, I’d stumble into the bathroom and toss myself onto the toilet, resting my head against the sink with the rusty drain, cooling my forehead. I’d spend a moment there, trying not to think.
But then I’d stand and have no choice.
I looked into the mirror.
I saw a face I vaguely recognized, hair askew. My unsmiling face stared back at me.
I leaned in closer to the mirror and zoomed in on my eyes: hard, cold, unblinking and lifeless, a void of blackness that bored into my core. There was no sparkle, no color. My eyes were dead.
I stared harder, begging there to be something inside – anything – but those cloudy circles were painfully, excruciatingly empty. I stared until I was sure: Yep, I thought, nobody’s in there at all.
I did this every time I stepped into the restroom alone, testing myself, looking for some sign that I was still alive, that my soul had not been permanently eradicated.
And every time, I found nothing in those eyes, in that mirror, on that wall, in that restroom.
Eventually I would tire of staring; I’d blink once or twice.
Then I’d turn the loose knob and open the door, enveloped immediately by smoke. I’d walk back into the dingy room, sit back down at the bar and order another beer.
After my journalism career ended, I went back to the temp agency to get more work. It was perfect for me. I only had to work a couple of days at a time. Long-term jobs meant “three weeks” instead of “three years.” I didn’t care for commitment. And whenever I didn’t like a job, I would just ask to be reassigned.
One day, I got assigned to work in a factory. I have always been intrigued by the inner workings of factories; it was one of the reasons I’d been happy to work at the window-selling place in Florida. But there I was removed from the action; I’d been a lowly secretary. I was going to work in a doll factory – and would be right there on the factory floor with the other factory workers!
I was going to make dolls! This felt meaningful.
Unfortunately when I arrived at the doll factory, I was somehow assigned to create tile boards, meaning I would be sticking little pieces of tile onto a piece of hard wood. Four pieces of tile per board. White in the upper left corner, cream in the upper right corner, reddish brown bottom left, dark brown bottom right.
I was bored to tears after making six boards. But the worst part was my co-worker, who seemed to think that board making was challenging and productive. Our conversation fell flat after two minutes.
We were all allowed to have a smoke break after two hours of work; I thought it had been six hours and we’d only been working for 12 minutes.
I asked the temp agency if I could make dolls the next day, but it they couldn’t guarantee that.
I begged: no more factory work, please. One day in a factory was enough.
Instead, I surveyed people at the mall. I worked for home security, a credit union, and the buyer’s division for J.C. Penney I worked in a trailer for a construction company, in an apartment complex, in a senior center and – one of my favorites – at PAT transit, where I spent my day in the break room talking to bus drivers.
Sometimes I took smoke breaks every half hour. Sometimes I worked very, very hard doing data entry and making sure my charts were 100% perfect. Sometimes I played video games all day. I was a good worker, when I had work to do. And I showed up on time.
One of my favorite data entry jobs was evening shift, 4-12. We chit-chatted through our evenings, so I made a few friends. One night we all went to lunch together, at my request, at a bar in downtown Pittsburgh.
We ate burgers and drank a few beers and then, when it was time to go back to work, I convinced everyone to stay with me at the bar.
“We’ll just go back tomorrow!” I said. “They’ll never even notice!”
Only one person went back to work that night. The rest of us stayed and got plastered.
I had sex with one of my coworkers and woke up in Northside, nowhere near where I lived. I had no idea how to get home. I left the guy still asleep, took a bus into downtown, then took the bus from downtown back to my apartment.
I never went back to that job, nor did the guy. I loved that job, but one liquid lunch was too many.
I had another job within a week.
I kept drinking, kept paying the rent, and thought nothing of my behavior.
I liked working night shift, so I quickly got a job selling hot dogs at The Original Hot Dog Shop – otherwise known as “The O” in Oakland, Pennsylvania, home to Pitt and The Electric Banana. I’d often eaten there after a long night of drinking and couldn’t imagine a more fun place to work.
I was mistaken. I slipped and slid on floor grease for three long nights, and then I simply disappeared. Night shift wasn’t as fun at The O as it had been at The Pennysaver.
So I bought a Sunday paper and typed dozens of cover letters and envelopes. My degree in communications (with no internship) was useless, but I typed 90+ accurate words per minute which, before computers, was a highly marketable skill.
I was hired by a local temp agency. I could choose which jobs I did, each lasting only a few days.
But I wanted to write, and the only way I knew how to get paid to write was to become a journalist. So I sent my resume to The Gazette, a local newspaper, and was thrilled when they called.
My interview with the Gazette editor was very exciting. I showed up and did my best to convince her that I’d eventually become a star reporter if only she’d give me a chance.
“What sentence would you write about a group of people at a courthouse rally if there were 20,014 attendees?” she asked. “Say you wanted to let readers know how many people were there without giving an exact figure.”
I considered the odd question. “I would say, ‘More than 20,000 attendees rallied at the courthouse.'”
“Oh good,” she said. “Too many people use the word ‘over’ instead of ‘more than.’ It’s just not right.”
“Oh, I can’t stand that,” I said.
We bonded over the misuse of “over” and I was hired as a news reporter for The Gazette.
I couldn’t believe my good fortune. All I had to do was show up in the newsroom, check the wire, and write. I would use older articles from my drawer as “background” for my story, and usually only had to draft a couple of paragraphs to create a full “new” story.
The news was dreadfully dull. I went to council meetings to cover city budgets and building renovations. Sometimes I’d unearth community outrage, and sometimes I interviewed people about their jobs for “feature” articles.
Features were my favorites. I could barely stay awake for the council meetings, but I sure did have fun being a reporter.
It was a bit challenging to get used to the schedule. Unless I’d scheduled a morning interview, I was at The Gazette from 9:00 to 5:00. Every day! Sometimes I would pretend I had an interview so I could sleep late and show up as though writing a feature.
No one caught on.
After three months of this incredibly fun job, I slept too late and didn’t get to work until noon.
When I arrived, the office was abuzz with excitement.
I headed for my desk but the editor directed me into her office.
“Where were you?”
Uh-oh. “I was interviewing someone but they never showed up.”
“For three hours?”
“I was supposed to meet him at 11….” I said, trailing off.
“Then you should have been here at 9,” she said. “There was a bank robbery this morning in your territory. It was your story.”
“Oh!” I said. “I’ll go right now and….”
“Someone else covered it,” she said. “You’re fired.”
The following week, I was back at the temp agency begging for work.
After losing my job at The Pennysaver, I was despondent. I couldn’t understand why, after my abhorrent behavior for two years, they’d suddenly decided to fire me. I’d thought my colleagues were my friends. My job was fun. My boss let me get away with everything … until suddenly, he didn’t.
So I was alone. I had no money.
“Can you pay the rent this month?” I asked Gregg, “just until I find another job?”
“Of course!” Gregg said.
Fortunately I had two weeks’ worth of pay coming in, so I could afford to keep drinking and drugging.
It was summer and the construction industry was booming. I was glad I’d been fired at a convenient time for Gregg to take over payments.
Gregg would wake up early, pull on his dirty jeans, and head out. I would roll over and go back to sleep until noon. Or 2 o’clock. Or 4 o’clock.
And eventually, Gregg would come back. His jeans and shoes would be splattered with drywall or paint or mud, and he’d leave his shoes outside the door on the porch. Whatever he was doing made him utterly filthy every day.
But he didn’t bring a change of clothes, so he didn’t bother showering. We just went right to the bar whenever he got home.
One day I called him at work. “Is Gregg there?”
“Gregg who?” said the female who’d answered the phone.
I gave his last name.
“He doesn’t work here anymore,” she said.
“He doesn’t work there?” I asked incredulous. “Are you sure?”
“Quite sure,” she said. “He got fired about eight months ago.”
I hadn’t even known Gregg for eight months. And I was very sure this was the only company he’d ever mentioned. Every day, he’d gone off to work and ….
“But he comes home dirty every day,” I told the woman. “Is it possible you just haven’t seen him?”
“I do the payroll,” she said. “He hasn’t worked here in eight months.”
“Thanks,” I said, hanging up the phone.
Then I waited approximately four hours for Gregg to come home “from work.”
I met him on the porch, and gaped at his newly splattered jeans.
“How was work today?” I asked.
“Good,” he said. He leaned in to kiss me. I turned my head away.
“I called you,” I said.
“Oh I don’t work there anymore,” he said, before I’d told him who I called.
“Right,” I said. “So where do you work? And are you making enough to pay the rent?”
“I still work construction, just a different company,” he said – again, without knowing who I’d called. “Somebody my brother knows.”
He had five brothers. I considered asking him which of his brothers, but decided not to follow him down this rabbit hole.
“You don’t have a job, do you?” I asked.
Suddenly Gregg hung his head in shame. It was the same reaction he’d had when I’d realized that he’d stolen my life savings from the underwear drawer.
“I can’t find a job,” he said. “I go out every day and look! But there’s no work right now!”
Having just been fired, I suddenly felt bad for Gregg. I hugged him from where I sat on my stool.
He nuzzled his head into my shoulder. “I didn’t know what to tell you,” he choked. “I don’t know if I can pay the rent.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
It was so not okay.
But someone had to pay the rent. “Keep looking,” I said.
“Okay,” Gregg said.
“I’ll get a job.” I said.
And I did.
I was still working at The Pennysaver after almost two years. Once I arrived I was an amazing employee, but I still showed up late every day. In fact, I’d gotten progressively later as time went by.
At age 29 my supervisor, Dave, was way older than the rest of us. And he’d promoted me to shift supervisor shortly after my European trip and (brief) sobriety.
But I was still just playing a version of Concentration for my job; I didn’t really supervise anyone. I was still riding around getting high at lunchtime with my colleagues. I loved my job so much, I stole two of the Pennysaver stools from work so I could also sit on them at home. (I still have them in my kitchen; they are quite solid as counter seats.)
I guess Dave was still doing all the supervisory work. Even though he didn’t do LSD at my Memorial Day extravaganza or get high at lunchtime, I considered him my party buddy. Sometimes he had a few beers with us, so I figured we were pals.
But one day Dave pulled me aside and said, “You weren’t here at 5:00. You’re a supervisor now, so you need to be here on time.”
“Okay,” I said.
He hadn’t explicitly said this before.
I guess Dave expected something more from me. He didn’t seem to realize that I was drinking again and mistakenly assumed I would continue to be responsible and helpful at work.
Two weeks went by, and I showed up at around 5:45, or 6:30, whenever. I was drinking after work, sleeping much later than I expected. Plus nobody really seemed to care.
Dave pulled me aside again, this time as I was walking into work. It was 7:15. He waved me over to where he was leaning on a wall. As I got closer I noticed that his face was all wrinkled up; it wasn’t his usual serene countenance.
“We needed you here at 5:00,” he said. Dave looked like he might vomit.
“Oh sorry, Dave,” I said. He started chewing the inside of his left cheek. He was gnawing it so hard, I thought he might tear a hole in the side of his face.
“What happened?” he asked, as if genuinely concerned.
“Well I slept in I guess,” I chuckled. “And then I had to get gas in the Volkswagen and there’s only one place that sells the kind of gas I need.” I started to ramble. “I have to use the premium stuff or I guess the car won’t run. Do you know anything about VW Bugs?”
The gnawing continued. Dave’s face was contorted into a shape that was almost not a face anymore.
“No,” he said. “There was no other reason?”
“Not really,” I giggled.
The gnawing stopped. “I have to let you go,” Dave said.
“Let me go where?”
“I have to fire you,” he said. “You’re a supervisor and you haven’t shown up on time even once in two weeks. We can’t count on you to be here on time, so I’m letting you go.”
My stomach lurched and fell to the floor.
“I’m fired?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He rattled on about the expectations of his supervisors and blah blah blah. I heard nothing.
I hadn’t even started my shift. “So I should just go now?”
“Yeah,” he said. He bit his cheek again.
I didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye to my friends.
Sometimes I wonder what’s wrong with other people. I have noticed that not everyone has trouble stopping. For me, though, if something is good, I inhale it, then live and breathe it, until it simply runs out.
In my lifetime, I have been addicted to – and given up – alcohol, drugs (a wide variety), cigarettes and caffeine. But I am addicted to non-consumable things, too. My general rule is: if it’s good, I can’t get enough.
Music, to me, is a kind of addiction. A lot of people love and appreciate music, but not everyone has a problem with this.
For example, a friend of mine posted on Facebook about his top three favorite songs by The Beatles. Afterward, every day, he posted his three favorite songs by different artists, and friends would post their favorite songs, too.
This happened early during the pandemic, so it had an added benefit for me: nothing else in the world was happening. I got addicted to these posts. I would wake up, brush my teeth, then run to check Facebook to see which artist’s songs I would be considering for the day.
After posting every day for a full month, my friend stopped posting. When I messaged him in a panic, with no reason left to live, he said that he thought 30 days was enough. And for everyone else, I’m pretty sure it was enough. But for me? Nothing is ever enough.
I spent the rest of the day making a list of every artist whose songs I had liked in the past 50 years. The list went on and on … page after page … and when I was done, I had a list that included every artist I’d known in every genre for my entire life.
Then, randomly (using a computer-generated number), I selected one of those artists. And I made a list of my top five favorite songs by that artist. (I found five to be even better than three, since sometimes three was insufficient, and sometimes I still had to list Honorable Mentions.)
The next day, I brushed my teeth, then randomly selected another artist. I did this every day for another seven months. This list kept me going until really, there were no other artists to consider.
Similarly, when I started reading Stephen King decades ago, I started with The Stand, which I couldn’t put down, and then I refused to read anything by any other author until I’d read all the Stephen King books I could read.
This lasted for about two years, since I’d read zero Stephen King books previously. There were so, so many Stephen King books to read! Then I read Thinner, which was a huge waste of my time, and I stopped reading Stephen King books altogether for decades.
I do it at 1,000% or I don’t do it at all.
This may not be typical of every addict, but it is how I am. And I am much worse with foods than books or music.
One fine summer day, I force-fed my husband a half-ear of corn. My husband said, “Why would I eat that if I don’t want it?”
I said, “Because it’s August and it’s corn! And it’s grilled!”
I couldn’t imagine anything more devastating than discarding a freshly grilled half-ear of corn on the cob.
My husband ate the corn, but he didn’t want it. And I guess that’s the part I don’t understand: the not wanting it.
When something is good, I want it.
I don’t know if that’s because I’m a very good addict, or if that’s just me.
To my knowledge, Gregg had two friends, both of whom were drug dealers.
Steve was a rail-thin wrinkly guy who looked like he’d been dragged out from behind a dumpster. He had filthy blond hair, two rows of top teeth and very few teeth on the bottom of his mouth. Steve occasionally showed up at my apartment with marijuana and sat there for hours while we passed joints around.
Steve’s brain appeared to have rotted from all the drugs. He had nothing interesting to say, ever, and he provided nothing – other than the marijuana – to add to my day. Steve laughed at things that weren’t even there. He did not take a hint when I wanted him to leave my house. He’d drink the last beer, then sit there saying nothing, smoking cigarettes and staring into space, too high to move.
“I’ve got to get more beer,” I’d say, but nothing would happen. Nobody would leave. And I wasn’t leaving Gregg and Steve alone in my apartment. Nor would I send Gregg and sit with Steve. We’d all just be high. We did nothing. Eventually Steve would roll another joint and we’d sink further into the muck.
I wanted Steve to leave and never come back. I think Gregg begged Steve for pot – but Gregg likely owed Steve a whole bunch of money. Steve’s awful presence was Gregg’s way of providing the marijuana for some of our evenings.
Pot was good for a hangover, but as an evening of entertainment I found it more than slightly lacking. And now that I was drinking and doing LSD, I didn’t need it.
And the LSD was newly awesome, which is how Gregg’s other “friend” emerged. Al lived in an attic room in his parents’ house and had a consistent supply of LSD available.
Al often traveled with us during our all-night walks in the woods, laughing when I bumped into a big rock, or demanding I keep moving, even after a raccoon came screaming down the trunk of a tree, whooping and screeching and making such a fuss that I was unable to take another step forward.
The three of us walked hundreds of miles, tripping our brains out, consuming the night as though it were a giant bowl of pudding. We’d start in the suburbs and walk miles into the city on park trails, feeling like warriors and explorers and creatures of the night.
On cold nights, we’d sometimes trip inside Al’s attic and listen to Frank Zappa until I thought my head would explode. I’d run down the dark stairs and out into the streets of Wilkinsburg, Al’s neighborhood, where I thought I was safer than I’d been in the attic.
One night I did LSD and watched Platoon, which was a bit too realistic for my state of mind. I left Al’s house convinced that I was actually being hunted. Every noise sounded like a gun shot, every random shout a war cry. In the middle of the night, I raced down the sidewalks, sidling up to houses, diving behind bushes, crawling on my stomach on the sidewalk, terrified the whole way home that I was going to be shot. I wholly believed that I was being chased by fictional soldiers.
I didn’t even realize at the time that Wilkinsburg has one of the highest crime rates in the country, with violent gun crimes always on the rise.
I didn’t particularly like Al or Steve. And I remember thinking that Gregg needed some new friends.
It never occurred to me that they were the only people I knew, too.
I had a couple of friends from high school who reappeared in my life, usually when Gregg wasn’t around.
One was Cherie, with whom I’d roamed the streets of Oakland in our younger days. But Cherie had gotten married, didn’t do drugs, and didn’t go out much anymore.
Our high school friend, Matt, however, had nothing better to do with his life than hang out with me. Matt would come over with one beer in his hand, knock on the door, and come inside. He’d drink the one beer and wait until we found a way to get more beer – usually, me buying a 12-pack or a case, or walking to a bar together where I would buy the beer. He would offer to drive but I would decline.
Matt had a crotch-rocket motorcycle on which we rode only once together. He went a hundred miles per hour on the highway and almost as fast in my brick-street neighborhood. We screamed up and down those Pennsylvania hills, flying up into the air whenever we hit a bump. I spent the entire ride begging him to take me home while Matt laughed and screamed, “Just hang on!” There was no backrest. I was sure I was going to die.
But it was him showing up with only one beer that bugged me. It wasn’t a gift, either. Matt drank it.
Matt brought George over once, another friend from high school, who carried in a whole 12-pack. George knew how to arrive at someone’s house! Also George was exceptionally hot. He’d had a girlfriend in high school so George had not paid much attention to me then.
We all got obliterated and then, after Matt left to continue drinking somewhere else, George and I had sex. He stayed at my place for the night, then showed up the following week at The Pennysaver with Chinese food. For the first time in my life, I was being courted by a hot young guy.
George and I actually dated for a few weeks – meaning, we went out to places to do things. We went to movies and out to dinner. We watched the sunset from atop a mountain in his car. He showed up at my place with flowers and beer and took me spontaneously to a concert. George was the man of my dreams.
Then George just disappeared. He didn’t call or appear for two weeks.
But Matt did. Matt came over with one beer and knocked on my door and we got drunk on my dime and I said, “What did I do wrong?” Because I knew it had to be me.
Matt and George were good friends, so Matt knew.
After I had agonized long enough, or after Matt had gotten drunk enough, Matt finally said, “I think George’s problem is Cindy.”
“Huh? Who’s Cindy?”
“Cindy’s been his girlfriend for two years,” said Matt.
My gut lurched and fell. My first romantic relationship in years and I had been … the other woman.
I didn’t see George again.
Shortly thereafter, Matt showed up with one beer and we ended up getting plowed at a nearby bar where I railed on him for showing up with one beer.
“Who does that?!” I screamed. “Bring a 12-pack or don’t show up!”
Matt’s face fell, then he screamed back at me. “Well if you weren’t such a lush you wouldn’t give a shit about how much beer I brought!”
I stormed out of the bar and never saw Matt again, either.
The last of my high school friends disappeared, leaving me alone again.
My grandmother gave me her 1972 Volkswagen Beetle.
When I was a little girl, I’d bounced around in the cargo area behind the backseat on our way to church. As an adult, I saw this area of the car as sacred and adorable. It was barely big enough to hold my snow scraper, but I’d been transported in there as a child.
This made the car even more special to me. I loved my Bug.
And the fact that my grandmother had driven it to the grocery store and to church once a week before I owned it made it even more valuable, because it only had a few thousand miles on it.
I plastered my car with peace-and-love bumper stickers, making it my very own. And I tooled around town in my VW Bug whenever I wasn’t walking – although I was often walking, since I was often drinking and I really did try not to drink and drive too often.
The car was a stick shift, which I did not know how to drive.
I’d once borrowed my cousin’s manual Triumph TR7 – with her knowledge, I swear. I’d driven it to my high school, about a mile away from my house. When I got to a stop sign on a hill, I could stop but I couldn’t get the car to go again. Every time I tried to shift gears, the Triumph would stall out. In the TR7, I drifted backwards until I found a place wide enough to whip the car around in the middle of the street, and the gears caught going downhill – which was just enough to get me back home.
So learning to drive the Beetle took awhile. But after awhile I not only learned to drive it, I mastered it. I could drive on all those Pennsylvania hills with a beer between my knees and a cigarette in one hand. When the engine revved unexpectedly at a stoplight, I would hop out and open the engine hatch in the back of the car. Then I’d flick a little metal switch that needed to be flicked, and the engine would rev properly again.
I have no idea what I’d fixed, but I figured it out and fixed it all on my own, so I felt proud. And I “fixed” it 6,000 times, so I believed I was as good as any mechanic, as long as I was fixing my own VW Bug.
I loved peeling into the parking lot at work. All of my Pennysaver friends came out and admired my new car, implying that the rusty old racing-striped Camaro was actually a hunk of junk.
I gave my VW the special premium gas every time I filled up, even though I had no idea why – or even if – it was required. I paid substantially more for the premium gas and I was poor, but I thought it deserved it.
One time I let Gregg drive the car and he got a flat tire at a stoplight. He left the car – literally, got out of my Bug and walked away – leaving my beloved car in the middle of a major intersection. He walked a mile away to his dad’s house and called me to let me know the car was there.
I didn’t wonder then if Gregg even had a driver’s license, but I do wonder now. Gregg and I broke up “for good” (at least a month) that time.
Gregg didn’t drive my car again; nobody did. I treasured it completely.
My grandmother’s car was the most amazingly wonderful vehicle I ever owned.
