Sitting on the side of the road in the dark, I started to panic. I was as far out in the country as I knew how to go, and I was beyond lost.
Briefly, angrily, I prayed.
I decided I should try to sleep. Things would be better in daylight, I presumed, so I pushed the seat back and tried to take a nap.
I passed out almost instantly. I may have slept for three minutes or three hours; I have no idea. I awoke to sounds – a crunching or howling or snapping or wailing … sounds that faded in and out … in the distance, in the back of my brain, right next to the car….
I snapped awake. Had I been dreaming? Hallucinating? All I heard were crickets.
The sky was turning blue. I sat for a moment, shivering a little, watching the sky brighten. I recognized pre-dawn from the many, many times I’d seen it before after long, hazy nights.
I lit a cigarette and turned on the car. Still empty.
With no clue, I started to drive again. I noticed things I hadn’t before: a humming sound in the engine, a burning rubber smell that could have been psychosomatic, gaping holes in the floorboards beneath my feet.
Those holes had always been there, but I imagined myself stepping through the holes and touching the highway, my leg wrenching beneath me and pulling me to certain death as my bare foot touched the ground below.
I considered shoving my foot through anyway. Not yet, I thought. I’m not giving up yet.
Just as that thought settled into my brain, I rounded a bend and saw it. A thousand yards ahead sat a gas station, lights brightly glowing like a beacon in Middle-Of-Nowhere, Probably Pennsylvania.
I pulled in, stopped by the gas pump and went inside, nearly in tears with relief.
I threw my one dollar and change onto the counter.
The guy stared at me as I stood there, bedraggled and teary, and broke.
“It’s all I have, I don’t know where I am, I’m completely lost and I’ve been driving for hours and I can’t find my boyfriend. I thought I was in Ohio but then I wasn’t where I thought I was and now I’m here and my car is totally out of gas and I’m out of cigarettes and I don’t have any idea what I’m going to do even if I get gas because I don’t know how to get home. But I have to get gas and this is all the money I have in the world, I just don’t know if it’s enough to get me home because I don’t know where I am.”
The guy behind the counter regarded me, wide-eyed, as I blathered.
Without warning, then, a man holding a cup of coffee reached around me and put a five-dollar bill on the counter.
“Get her some gas,” said the world’s kindest stranger.
I hadn’t even seen him walk in. “Really?! Thank you so much! Thank you!”
“No problem,” he said. I did not have the audacity to also buy cigarettes. I put everything I had into the tank.
As I pumped life-saving gas my savior asked, “Where’s home?”
“Pitcairn,” I said.
“Where’s Pitcairn?”
“Um … near Pittsburgh?”
“Get back on this road,” he said, pointing left. “Head east. You’ll get there.”
“Thank you so much,” I said again. “I’ll try.”
He hopped in his car and drove away.
I followed the road east and improbably, eventually, I arrived.
Larry – who came home the next day – never even knew I was gone.
One day after our bar-burger lunches Larry suddenly said, “Let’s go!”
“Where?”
“Camping, remember? I told you yesterday.”
“But I’m happy here,” I said. Blackouts be damned; I would have remembered if we were going camping.
“Suit yourself,” Larry said, and he left.
“He won’t leave without me,” I told the bartender, even as Larry’s bike revved outside. “He knows I love camping.”
I took another sip of my beer, waiting for Larry to come back inside, but he did not. Instead, his bike revved up and roared away.
I chugged the rest of my beer and went outside in time to see Larry’s bike rounding the corner and leaving town.
“Fuck!” I said. I stomped and fumed, but the Harley roar dimmed until I could no longer hear it.
I had three dollars in my pocket, so I walked across the street to the gas station. “Virginia Slim Menthol Light 120s,” I said to the guy behind the counter, putting down my $1.25. “And do you have any fucking idea where someone might go camping around here?”
The cashier raised his eyebrows then slid the cigarettes across the counter. “Nope,” he said.
I stormed out. I’ll fuckin’ find him, I thought. I went home, grabbed four beers and a two-liter of Diet Coke out of the refrigerator, and hopped in the car. I shoved my AC/DC 8-track into the player, blaring Highway To Hell at full volume.
I wasn’t as drunk as I wanted to be, but I was not as sober as I should have been. The tires squealed as I peeled out, furious at being left behind, with no idea where I was going.
I made a left at Main Street – the way Larry’s bike had gone when I’d last seen him – and started driving into the country, hoping to stumble upon a campground. Furious and chain-smoking, scream-singing the angriest songs I could find, I drove and drove. I drove out of Pitcairn and out of its nearby suburbs. I drove until I didn’t see houses anymore.
I started to calm down when I realized I was amongst the trees and fields and nature that I so adored. I started to enjoy the drive, the music, and my mission to find Larry, though I had no idea which way to go.
Sometimes I aimed for the sun – as it set. I followed roads with alluring tree canopies. As it got darker … and darker … and darker, I kept driving. I didn’t see a single sign for camping anywhere.
I drove through the night until I saw a sign that said “MOUNT UNION” with a little arrow. I couldn’t believe my good fortune! I’ve driven further than I thought! I thought. I might as well go see my college!
Newly elated, I followed the arrow toward Mount Union. I drove and drove, but didn’t see anything familiar. After many miles, I finally drove right into Mount Union … which, apparently, is not only a college in Ohio. Mount Union is also a very small borough in Pennsylvania.
Dejected, I drove through the Pennsylvania countryside. In the dark, I could see nothing.
Then, quite suddenly, I noticed that the Camaro’s gas gauge was dangerously, precariously close to the letter E.
I had absolutely no idea where I might be, or where a gas station might be, or how I might find one in the dead of night.
So I simply pulled over onto the side of the road, as lost as a lost person can be, and lit a cigarette.
On the morning we were leaving Sturgis, there was some hubbub outside of the world’s worst port-o-johns. Larry didn’t come back to our “camping” spot for a long time.
“What’s going on?” I asked when he finally returned.
“Somebody got shot,” he said.
“Who?”
Larry shook his head. “No idea,” he said, and lit his cigarette. “But he’s dead.”
Good thing we’re leaving, I thought. I don’t want to get shot. We were on the bike only minutes later. Ronnie was in his truck, following us.
We stopped at a gas station to fill up the tank before making the several-day-long trek home. As usual, we wouldn’t be taking the highways because we couldn’t afford the tolls.
Larry was paying for the gas when a guy with a huge camera walked up to me. I was sitting on the back of the bike, waiting for him and not smoking, so as to avoid causing the gas pump to explode.
“Can I take your picture?” the guy asked.
“Sure,” I said. Just as I started to lift my shirt to give a tit-shot to the giant camera, Larry appeared out of nowhere.
“Not this time,” Larry said, gently moving my hand back to my lap. He stepped back.
I was wearing the SHIT HAPPENS t-shirt I’d acquired from the horrific experience of topless begging. I hadn’t bathed, showered, brushed my teeth or brushed my hair in a week. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want a picture of me.
But the guy took a photo of me just sitting there on the back of Larry’s bike.
“Thanks!” he said, with a big smile, and walked away.
“Never give a tit shot to a guy with a camera like that,” Larry said. “You don’t know where it’ll end up.”
I couldn’t have cared less where it would end up. “Okay,” I said, as though guys with giant cameras constantly took my pictures.
Larry and I rode a couple hundred miles before I tired of sitting on the back of the bike. I switched at a rest area so I could ride the rest of the way home with Ronnie in his truck. We chatted and listened to music and I went barefoot and drank beer and had a blast. The truck was so much more comfortable than the motorcycle!
After Sturgis and two full years with Larry, I was tiring of biker life.
Months later, Larry came home from the gas station where he’d picked up the latest copy of In The Wind magazine. In The Wind was an offshoot publication of Easy Rider, the biker magazine devoted to Harleys and American biker lifestyle.
The magazines weren’t exactly journalistic pieces. Easy Rider magazines were chock full of caption-less photos, which meant bikers loved “reading” them. Half-naked chicks and pimped out Harleys could be browsed at their leisure.
Larry bought all the biker magazines.
It was late fall when Larry walked in and said, “Lookee what I found!” He tossed a magazine down in front of me with a used coffee stirrer sticking out of the top like a bookmark.
I was bored.
“Open it!” Larry said excitedly. “Open to where it’s marked!”
I opened it. On the right, there were several photos of amputees – a guy with no leg, a guy with no arm…. On the left, there were photos of people wearing SHIT HAPPENS shirts and stickers.
And in one corner was the photo of me, taken at that Sturgis gas station after seven days without a shower.
It was the proudest moment of my biker life. I was finally published.
In addition to huge, non-stop musical performances on an enormous stage in the campground, pop-up events happened everywhere. This included the ever-popular hot dog pull where chicks were beaten in the face by strung-up hot dogs, beauty contests which were obviously popularity contests for women with very large breasts, wet t-shirt contests, and vendors selling pasties and sex toys.
I gave tit-shots every few minutes without giving it a second thought.
Biker life was full of fun for women who wanted to be objectified and/or humiliated. In spite of my blasé attitude and overwhelming alcoholism, I had enough self-respect to avoid these events like the plague … except for one.
There was a guy with a microphone standing on a box announcing, “Ladies, get a free SHIT HAPPENS t-shirt right here!”
There is honestly very little in the world that makes me as happy as a free t-shirt. And “Shit Happens” was the latest, greatest bumper sticker craze; I loved the hopelessness and humor embodied in that phrase.
Oh, how I wanted that shirt!
I tugged at Larry and squealed. “Can I get one?”
“Sure, Baby,” Larry said. As we headed toward the guy with the mic, we noticed that he wasn’t alone. There were dozens of men in a circle nearby, and a half-naked woman dancing around in the middle of that circle, wiggling for all she was worth. When we arrived at the circle, the guy said, “The lady gets a t-shirt!” and all the guys hooted and hollered.
I did not understand. So I watched. Another woman ripped off her shirt and danced around with a hat in her hands. Guys shoved money into the hat. Within two minutes: “The lady gets a t-shirt!” More hooting and hollering.
“I don’t want to dance,” I said to Larry.
“You don’t have to fuckin’ dance,” he said. “You just gotta get money.”
I watched more carefully with the third woman, who took off her shirt and walked around with the hat. Her boobs hung down to her stomach, bouncing as she walked. Whenever she got close to a man, he shoved money into her hat. Minutes later: free shirt, hooting/hollering.
“Okay,” I said. “I can do that.”
So I did. I got the hat from the guy and tossed my black t-shirt onto the ground.
“As soon as you get ten dollars, you get a shirt!” the guy announced. “Go!”
I stood topless and frozen in the middle of a circle that suddenly seemed ominous. I had no idea what to do with myself.
I was naked, exposed, and not nearly drunk enough for this.
I walked around the circle believing I was strutting, holding out the hat, hoping someone would have pity on me. “I want a free t-shirt,” I murmured. “Will you help me get a shirt?”
I was not a performer. I did not smile. I had tiny breasts and felt incredibly shy in spite of the booze.
I walked and held out the hat but no one gave me money. Guys took one look at me begging like a homeless person, and shook their heads. One guy turned and walked away, dissing the whole event.
Eventually someone gave me a dollar. Another guy threw in some change. After what seemed like an hour but was probably less than ten minutes, the guy with the mic said, “Here’s your shirt, young lady!”
No one hooted or hollered. It was just finally over.
“Thank you,” I said, nearly in tears.
I pulled the SHIT HAPPENS shirt over my naked breasts and didn’t take it off for days.
My dear friend Ronnie had followed us to Sturgis, appearing in his truck at the Buffalo Chip Campground to hang out and take pictures of all the festivities. He took all the pictures I have from Sturgis. Since I didn’t shower for seven full days, I have no idea if they were all taken in the same day or not.
For me, this meant that I had someone to talk to, and for Larry it meant I had someone to keep an eye on me whenever he wasn’t around.
But Ronnie didn’t care what I did, nor did he want to babysit. Ronnie was having the time of his life, surrounded by insanity and music. So I roamed around freely and did what I wanted to do, making sure to check in with Ronnie every few hours. We had a meeting place by the fence for those check-ins where we’d laugh and goof around like we were siblings. There was no “checking in.”
When Larry and Ronnie weren’t around, I became attached to a young biker named Jose from Azuza, California.
Partially I liked him because he came from Azuza, California. First, I believed that everyone from California was the epitome of cool, and wildly progressive. (This is not true.) Second, in the movie Mask, the Sam-Elliott-and-Cher biker movie that I loved, the main character says the word “Azuza” in a specific way that made me remember it distinctly.
So when Jose said he was from Azuza, I felt like I was somehow touching greatness. I begged him for a Harley t-shirt from Azuza which he provided, and I gave him one of mine from … somewhere else.
Jose started showing up at the fence when I was supposed to meet Ronnie. At the fence, far from the crowds, it was easy to make out without any concern that Larry might find us. Jose and I would make out like mad, stopping only to smoke and drink and breathe, then start up again.
Larry never did see us. At one point, I begged Ronnie to take a picture of Jose for me, so I could have it when I got home. We argued over whether or not this was a good idea – especially after the t-shirt exchange – but eventually Ronnie caved. I have almost no pictures of Larry, but I still have this.
I don’t think Jose ever took off his sunglasses. He did drive me around the campground on his bike, looking for clean port-o-johns, but we never found any. I don’t remember holding actual conversations with Jose; I only remember asking him about his hometown.
“It’s just like any other place,” he said. “My house is there.” I remember not understanding why he wasn’t overtly excited about this.
Jose didn’t understand my California dreams, based entirely on television and film stereotypes.
I couldn’t see the stage, so little Jose lifted me onto his shoulders. When he got tired, some other guy put me on his shoulders.
I remember music and sunshine and sleeping in dirt.
With as much alcohol as I consumed during those seven days, I’m surprised I remember anything at all. I saw some great concerts but I had to find out online that I saw Country Joe McDonald, Mitch Ryder and Canned Heat.
I only remember the crowds, music blaring into the sunshine, hordes of black t-shirts, and the blistering heat. I remember kissing Jose, laughing with Ronnie, seeing Mount Rushmore, and sleeping in the dirt.
Oh, and I remember the t-shirt debacle. Because I do tend to remember the worst things that happen.
While my Bike Week in Daytona was spent inside a single dark bar, Bike Week in Sturgis, South Dakota was the complete opposite. We were outside every moment of every day for an entire week.
We stayed at a place called the Buffalo Chip Campground. Larry and I slept outside on the ground in a dusty sleeping bag next to our broken pup tent. Other than one nighttime storm that sent us frantically crawling under cover and hoping we didn’t suffocate, we slept until the sun got too hot to allow for sleep any longer. And passing out at night was the easiest it’s ever been – I just had to make sure I was somewhere in the vicinity of the blob of tent.
Our campground was stellar in only one way: it was the biggest biker party in the entire state, maybe the entire country. And we never had to leave the campground. Music started sometime in the late morning and went until well past midnight – not boomboxes and karaoke, but enormous stages with rock bands playing non-stop morning till night, every night.
And throughout the campground were vendors selling beer, gear, food, tattoos, and anything a biker might want during a seven-day stay in South Dakota. I don’t remember eating, though I’m sure I did. I drank morning, noon and night.
I don’t remember ever being without a beer in my hand, with one notable exception. One day, I rolled over in the dust when Larry said, “We gotta fuckin’ go! Let’s go!” He was usually up before me but on this day, it was barely daylight and he was already clamoring to move.
“I don’t wanna fuckin’ go anywhere,” I slurred, barely opening my eyes.
“We’re going to Mount Rushmore!” he said. “The bikes are already lining up! Let’s go!”
Mount Rushmore, I thought. I will never, ever have this chance again.
“Okay,” I said. I rolled over and thrust out my arm to pull my cigarettes from under my helmet. I lit one, left it hanging out of my mouth while I pulled on my boots, and stood up.
The world spun. Dry-mouthed and filthy, I stumbled toward the port-o-johns that were scattered throughout the campground.
This, by far, was the worst thing about the Buffalo Chip Campground.
There were no cleaning crews at the campground, and bikers weren’t known for their careful urination and defecation. Those port-o-johns were the most disgusting things I have ever encountered in my entire life, and that includes the wet market I visited 30 years later in China.
Somehow I emerged without incident and Larry tossed me a Diet Coke. He was already revving the engine. Sleeping bodies on the ground didn’t even flinch; engines roared day and night.
I hopped on the back and fastened my helmet.
The ride to Mount Rushmore was spectacular – gorgeous, winding roads that went on forever. I’d never seen so much of the west and I loved it. The ride back, too, was breathtaking.
I wasn’t as enamored with the destination. Seeing Mount Rushmore was a disappointment. I’d been so excited to walk on the four presidents’ heads, touch the statues I’d seen in the pictures – but that’s not how it’s done. The visitor center sits quite far from the presidents, and there is no climbing allowed – even if we could have figured out how to get over there. It looked like the pictures from my history books, which didn’t impress me.
Reality regularly let me down.
Fortunately we were back in time for lunch and more beer, and substantially more partying.
We’d only been home from our first Bike Week experience for 4 months when we tackled Sturgis, the largest Bike Week in the world. In 1987, this meant 63,000 bikers converged on the tiny town in South Dakota. (Today, Sturgis hosts more than 700,000.)
For me, this meant only one thing: Beer. 24/7. For a whole week!
But first, we had to get there. And before we could get there, we had to stop in Wisconsin for something Larry “needed to do.”
I had no idea what Larry would “need” in Wisconsin. Then we arrived at Larry’s ex-wife’s house, where Larry’s daughter also lived.
Karen Marie (named after her mom, Karen) was 19 years old.
I was 22.
I did not want to go in the house. I wanted to stand outside and smoke. I didn’t want to meet people, I didn’t want to meet these people. I didn’t want to meet his ex-wife who was probably really old. I didn’t want to meet his daughter who was definitely really young. I wouldn’t be able to relate to anyone or anything inside that house and I didn’t want to participate.
But there I was, stuck somewhere in Wisconsin with Larry, who gently insisted that I would, indeed, be going inside.
We arrived very late. The house was dark. The yard was dark. Everything felt even darker than it was. The room was wood-paneled, the furniture was floral-patterned, and the tables were heavy, dark wood. There were no windows.
I don’t remember where everyone else sat, but I threw myself on the floor. I didn’t get up to meet Larry’s former family. I barely glanced at Larry’s daughter who may have been very nice. I wouldn’t know.
Larry sat with Karen Marie and chatted on the couch while I sulked on the floor, ducking outside without a word to chain-smoke until I forced myself to go back inside and sit on the floor again. Occasionally their dog came to sit with me, which was comforting.
It seemed wrong for me to be there. I didn’t yet understand parenthood, except in my rebellion against my own. Nobody asked me anything. I was glad about that.
But it smelled funny in there. Everybody said “ain’t” as though it were an actual word. No one seemed to be surprised to see Larry, or angry that he hadn’t appeared sooner. Still, when Larry laughed, it seemed raucous. His voice felt extra loud.
I glanced now and then at Karen Marie. I had not realized until this moment that Larry was quite literally old enough to be my father. I knew he was almost the same age as my dad, and I knew that sometimes he acted more like my father than I would have liked, but I hadn’t realized how very literal it was that he was dating someone young enough to be his daughter.
See? I thought. That’s his daughter right there! Karen Marie was blonde and cute and – according to Larry later – “she looks just like her mom did at that age!”
I felt nauseous. The. Whole. Time.
After what seemed like a week but was probably a few hours, Larry and I walked back outside together and got on the Harley.
“Isn’t she great?” he asked rhetorically. “I knew you’d like her!”
I mumbled some form of agreement. Larry apparently hadn’t even noticed my discomfort. By ignoring my behavior, Larry realized I’d feel single-handedly like a jerk.
Or maybe Larry just hadn’t cared.
We spent a silent night at a cheap motel nearby. The next day, we rode into Sturgis.
One day I woke up and Larry was nowhere to be found. We’d had a bit of a disagreement the night before and I thought, “Huh. Maybe he went back to Florida.”
Honestly, I didn’t actually care. He just didn’t interest me anymore.
I waited for a couple of hours, nursing the few beers that were left in the fridge and chain-smoking cigarettes. Finally, Larry strolled in the door, a carton of cigarettes under his arm. “Hey, Baby,” he said with his usual smile.
Larry tossed the cigarettes on the table and snubbed out the one he was smoking, then sat down next to me on our two-person couch.
“Where the fuck have you been?” I glared at him, not sure if we were still fighting. I was running low on beer so I tried not to sound too harsh.
“I got a fuckin’ tattoo!” he said. “Ya wanna see?”
My first thought was: You got a tattoo without asking me?!
My second thought: You got a tattoo without ME?!
But what I said was, “You’re fuckin’ shittin’ me!” which was slang for “Are you kidding?”
“Nope,” he said.
Larry lifted his shirt sleeve to reveal very red skin with an even redder blob in the middle. It looked like someone had torn off Rudolph’s red nose and stepped on it. The squashed circle had a squarish lightning-bolt thing on the right side.
“Ya know what it is?” he asked.
Somehow I didn’t think “Rudolph’s nose” was an accurate guess, so I did not reply.
“It’s a broken heart!” Larry said, without waiting for my guess. “Fuckin’ ripped right down the middle!”
I looked again. Maybe if a kindergartener with no artistic potential had tried to make a valentine, I could see it. Yes, maybe the blob was a heart.
“Only 50 bucks!” he said.
“You spent $50 on this?” I eyed the blob suspiciously.
“I got it for you!” he said, ignoring my rhetorical question. “Because you break my heart! You’re the only chick who ever breaks my heart, so this is for you.”
I did not understand this logic. It seemed ridiculously stupid and immature. But I said “I love you,” because there’s nothing else to say when someone gets a horrible permanent tattoo of a smashed blob to demonstrate how much he was hurt and claim that this ridiculous act of acquiring a terrible tattoo was not only your fault but also a gift.
Then we had sex on the floor, which is how I knew we were no longer fighting, and went to Paul’s Place to get drunk and show everyone Larry’s new tattoo.
My mom once told me, “Before you get a tattoo, imagine what it’s going to look like on your skin when your skin is all wrinkly, because you are stuck with a tattoo for life.”
For life! I thought. It was hard for me to imagine Larry being any older than he already was, but I tried to imagine wrinkly skin and that bright red blob all wrinkled up. It would look like a red pepper after three months in the fridge.
And I knew deep down that I wouldn’t be around to see that aged red-pepper blob when Larry’s skin got that wrinkly.
Ronnie was a dear, dear friend; he was the only person in Larry’s world whose company I truly enjoyed. Larry’s band would play for four or five hours, sometimes twice a week, and Ronnie and I would sit at a table completely ignoring the band, talking about things that actually mattered.
I have no idea what we discussed.
I only know we talked; we were friends. I hadn’t had a real friend in a long time, and I trusted Ronnie with my life. Ronnie being in his mid-thirties and still living with his parents didn’t even phase me. If my parents had let me smoke pot in the basement and buy cocaine from the local drug dealer and drink whenever I wanted and live rent free … well gosh, I might have lived with my parents until my thirties, too.
A major difference between us is that Ronnie was a virgin and I had experimented a bit with sex. Other than some interesting conversations where I answered as many questions as I could, Ronnie’s virginity didn’t interest me at all. It only mattered when the guys mentioned it in front of me, and then Ronnie felt embarrassed. It broke my heart and I never understood why his own friends would be so cruel. It was hard enough for Ronnie to be … Ronnie. He didn’t need the added humiliation.
Ronnie and I spent many weekends together at the bar, but one day he showed up at our apartment with a couple of joints. It was weird. Instead of the band backdrop and the dingy bar, we were in a really quiet place with a glaring overhead bulb in the ceiling. It felt wrong.
But I ran into the kitchen and threw in a tape, fast forwarding to a song I wanted Ronnie to hear. Ronnie was open to hearing whatever I played, unlike Larry who would only listen to country.
Ronnie and Leo – Larry’s bassist – hadn’t even sat down yet when Larry mumbled something about, “Ya can’t be a virgin for the rest of your life!”
“Leave him alone,” I said. “He can be whatever he fuckin’ wants.”
“I don’t really want to be a virgin,” Ronnie said quietly, surprising me entirely. “I just never found the right girl.”
The conversation never skipped a beat. Larry looked directly at me and said, “Take care of it, will ya?”
“Take care of what?” I asked, clueless.
“Just show him what to do,” Larry said. “He doesn’t want to be a fuckin’ virgin anymore.”
My stomach churned a little. I looked at Ronnie. “Is that something you want?”
Ronnie was looking at the ground. “I guess,” he said. “Yeah.”
I looked questioningly at Larry. “You mean now?”
“Yeah,” Larry said. Then he and Leo disappeared. Larry didn’t consider this cheating, maybe? Or maybe he just wanted to be in control.
Either way, this was legal cheating. Larry requested it specifically, and Ronnie agreed.
So I took Ronnie upstairs to the attic room that I’d spray-painted with neon orange scribbles. I flopped down on the sheet-less mattress, the only thing in the room. Ronnie sat awkwardly for a moment.
But only for a moment.
If Larry had realized how much I cared about Ronnie, Larry might not have offered me up as a sex-pert/whore for this particular person. But only Ronnie and I knew how much we adored each other.
Our time was unapologetically passionate, sweet, and fun. We treasured every moment together, and then we went back to being friends at the bar, closer than ever.
I certainly didn’t expect catharsis when I started to write. In fact, I started to write without thinking about the horrific memories I’d been carrying around. If I’d given any individual flashback serious consideration, I might have run screaming in a different direction.
Instead, I started writing and kept forging forward, knowing that the end result is that I got sober.
My parents have encouraged me to continue writing, even though they’d probably have preferred to not know so many details. But friends and family alike said, “It’s your story to tell.”
So I’m telling my story. And every time I share a horrific piece, a little bit of the horrific-ness from that time leaves me. It floats off into cyberspace, leaving me feeling just a little less bad than I’ve been feeling for the past 40 years.
I’ve been awestruck by this, and sometimes I wonder what took me so long to tell this tale. It’s been the single most freeing thing I’ve done during three decades of sobriety.
Sometimes I am sure I have the timeline wrong, or I forget important details that I’d like to have remembered, but I do my best to fill in the gaps. I want to be accurate and honest, and sometimes that is impossible to accomplish perfectly, but I keep trying.
For the past couple of months or so, though, I’ve been having trouble writing. I’ve not wanted to sit down at the computer to write the particular life stories stemming from 1987 and beyond.
Instead, I’ve been finding reasons to leave the house, avoiding the blog.
I’ve been reading fiction with a vengeance. I used to read only memoirs, all the time. Now I am avoiding memoirs, even the ones I desperately want to read, because I know that those books will gouge me the way they always do, and make me think about my own life.
Lately I don’t want to think about my own life.
I’ve reached a point in my drunkalogue where it only gets worse; drinking games and fun with friends are in the past.
My pulverized young adulthood in all its alcoholic glory has taken center stage.
The things that catapulted me toward sobriety by causing me unimaginable angst … those are the memories I’m reliving now. And it’s hard to write about those. They are the stories that have lined my intestines for decades, causing nausea every time I dare to remember even a smattering of the detail that is included in my writing.
And I’ve started having nightmares – recurring dreams of being on the wrong bus, so lost, never able to get home. In others, my baby boy is in danger and I can’t save him from whatever threatens his existence. It’s been weeks – maybe months – and I can’t get through a night without waking up in a cold sweat.
Finally, I realized my real-life problem: I’m reliving my misspent youth and I’m – again – unable to save the sweet, caring child I once was – the lost little girl I’ve locked away inside me.
I don’t know if my disease tried to kill her or if, in my zeal to protect her, I shoved her into a broom closet. Even in sobriety, I’ve kept her hidden, afraid of what could happen if I allowed her to walk vulnerably on this earth.
So today, I vow to move forward in telling my story while holding the hand of my inner child. Maybe I won’t become less hardened or brash, but maybe this time, we’ll survive these things together.
