tales from my misspent youth

[xoxoxoBruce]

Elspode, why in hell are you wasting your life on insulation? You could clearly write for any major publication.....or a book. The great American Novel is within your grasp.

[Elspode]

Strangely, no one has been terribly enamoured of my writings. Well, no one who wants to pay me for it, anyway.

Thanks much for the kind words. I write best when I write from the heart.

[zippyt]

Damn Splode !!!!! I agree with Bruce ,You are one eliquent MoFo !!!!
Serciously you have a way with the printed word .

[wolf]

Great reminiscence, great photo.

There is a quality to the description that brings life to this tableau which is usually very hard to capture.

Write, man, write!!

[staceyv]

i was so high from age 14-age 16 i don't remember much. i've been working since age 14. i was a doorgirl ("hi, would you like to see a menu?...hi, would you like to see a menu?..hi..) i was a cashier at a grocery store, i worked at a dollar store, mall customer service, housekeeper at a cheap hotel, pizza hut in texas, coffee shop, chi chi's in virginia, selling $2000 photography packages to navy -scam...this is all before age 18. i've also been an animal care technician, veterinary technician, pet store clerk, nursing home food server, telemarketer, waitress.

ooh, here's a story i just thought of- my first marriage. i was 18, just graduated and i was accepted into 5 good colleges i applied to- but my family would only help pay if i stayed in RI. i chose to get a $2000 loan from the bank and move to virginia to be with my sailor boyfriend of 3 years. STUPID. then we decided to get married so he could make extra money. we didn't tell anyone and the minister had to bring his wife to our apartment to be the witness. just me, him, the goldfish, and the minister and his wife...then, after we got married, we walked to BURGER KING, and he bought me a 99 cent whopper. THEN, the next day, he left on a 2 month deployment, leaving me with $5, no keys to his car, no job, and a cabinet stocked with ramen noodles. i had to walk up a highway everyday to find a job and we didn't have a phone, either. oh, oh, and guess how this idiot paid for the ramen noodles and the wedding- he had a store credit card for montgomery ward- kind of like a sears...he used to charge VCRs for over $100and sell them to his friends for $50. this is how he got cash...he never paid the credit card bill.....my youth was definately mispent. excuse my all-over-the-place ideas. i just woke up with a huge hangover. karaoke last night

[mrnoodle]

Originally posted by Elspode
Instead of stopping baseballs, it now keeps my cherished memories from rolling too far away.

My favorite line of the whole thread.

[ladysycamore]

Originally posted by lumberjim
I have been boring many of you with my tales from GD tour, and I would like to hear your stories, too.


Give it.

Hrm..ok. Back in 1986, during the Monkeemania revival (yes, I did say The Monkees!), two of my galpal friends and I decided to go to a convention in New Jersey for the weekend. We were all excited, since this was like our first "real" adventure away from home, without parental supervision (we had to be around 16-17 at the time). Unfortunately, we had to have my best friend's much-older-methadone using-sometimes violent boyfriend to drive us up there from Baltimore (I found out a year later he had been abusing her off and on during their two year relationship). He and I had had a couple of "run-ins" with each other, but he would say he was sorry and all would be well again (which is the pattern of abusive men...alienate the friends).

At any rate, we get to the hotel, check in, and decide that we want to go to NYC for dinner. We drive up there, and stop at some pizza joint to eat. Everything is going great up until the point where the b/f is paying the check. "Best friend" decides to try to flirt with another guy that has just come in, and she thinks that her b/f doesn't see it...but he does. Now he's furious, and the ride back to Jersey is a nightmare. He's cussin' and fussin' the whole way, "best friend" is trying to explain herself and the other friend has just put her chewing gum on the back of his seat...and he's wearing a sweater (don't ask...she was weird like that). Mmm, nice and sticky. Now he's REALLY mad as all hell. At this point, I'm just praying that we get back to the hotel in one piece and that he doesn't kill us all and leave us in Central Park to die or something!

Eventually, he drops us off and leaves us to go back home. He says he'll call "best friend" later to let us know when he'll come back to pick us up on Sunday (he came back up on Sat., and another incident ensued). Basically, we never got the phone call. We waited and waited...she tried to call him, but no answer. The bastard left us stranded in NJ!!! I had to call my Dad to wire us some money for a bus ticket! We had to make our way into NYC to catch the bus, and THAT was a big ol' mess! This was back during the "scary" days when the NYC subway was much more run down than it is now (IMO). And I'd never ridden any subway car in my life, so I'm terrified. As if things couldn't get any worse...it did. We had no idea that when riding the NYC subway, you'd better make sure that you are near those doors, because they open and close with lightening speed. Here we were with suitcases (oh, and two guys decided to help out, and of course we're praying that they don't rob us blind), and we're trying to board the train. Everyone made it in except one of the guys and the other gal-friend. The doors closed before they had a chance to get on, and so the train took off without them! Oh lord! I'll never forget the look of sheer horror on her face as the train pulled away!! Eventually, we reached the train station, and about maybe 10 minutes later, so did the other two. She jumped off of the train and hugged us like she has been gone for a year!

Hours later, we arrived home safe and sound, but boy oh boy, that was a hot mess!!!!

Boyfriend turned out to be a raging asshole who was abusing "best friend" off and on for the two years that they were together. He disappeared after they broke up. Hopefully, he's six feet under somewhere...

Quick tie-in: At the end of this relationship (when she finally got a clue to leave him), she wanted me to help her move her things back to her Mom's house from his apartment. Long story short: He put up a fuss for me being there, he attacked her, I ran to the kitchen to find a weapon, grabbed the biggest knife I could find. Things calmed down for about 5 minutes, then back to the abuse. This time, I grabbed the knife sharpener (blunt object), and proceded to beat.the.living.fuck out of him (as he was beating the living fuck out of her). The joke later on was that she was going to bronze the sharpener (and she still has it to this day!).

And "best friend" is still dating the wrong men, except she gave up former dope users and trading them in for married men *shakes head*.

Tales of misspent youth eh...man oh man, you don't really wanna know!!!

[Elspode]

I don't have a photo of her anymore. All I have is a picture in my mind, a crinkled and discolored synaptic eight by ten glossy of a young woman, short in stature, five-foot-nothing, with jet black hair, gleaming blue-violet eyes, hourglass figure, and a curiously gap-toothed smile that took me weeks to figure out. In the completely candid and innocent picture which resides in my mind, she is smiling slightly, looking for all the world like a lost child, a beautiful lost little girl who will forever be waiting for someone to take her home.

I now know that of all the simpler sins of omission, the failure to obtain and keep a photograph of someone you love can be one of the deepest regrets you will ever have to bear. As the years pass, and the memories of my youth blink out one by one, I know that even the dim and faded image which is etched into my neurons will eventually be gone, and then I'll be left with nothing but a name, a name for which I will have no face. So I sit here, on the verge of tears, wanting to remember, to make permanent my memories. What follows is my attempt at the preservation of the memory of a friend who has been dead these twenty-five years.

In the summer of 1974, my best friend Bruce and I took that first defiant step into adulthood; the step which all high school Seniors ponder with what is inevitably ill-informed speculation...moving out. In spite of a lack of appropriate funds or foresight, we rented a one bedroom apartment, moved our meager posessions from our parents’ homes, and prepared for the great adventure of doing whatever the hell we felt like doing. The 60's drug culture and free-love society were still strong in the minds of my peers, and we were going to make damn sure we had our own little Midwestern version of the Summer of Love.

Our tiny apartment had only one bedroom, yet there were two occupants. However, this was not the impediment that one might suppose, because, by hopeful mutual assent, we designated the bedroom specifically for sex. After all, finding an appropriate place to have sex is the one thing that is ridiculously difficult to do when one lives in their parents' home. If all the room was supposed to be used for was sex, then there shouldn't be a problem with who slept where. Of course, there were many times when the room was not actually being used for its primary purpose, yet I slept on the living room floor. This was due to the fact that Bruce had paid the deposit for the apartment, and also because we had no couch, so he got the bedroom whenever he wanted it. Ultimately, I felt this arrangement to be reasonable since, (A) I was poor, and (B) Bruce was gay, even though he hadn't really admitted it to himself yet, and as such, was still attempting to engage in relationships with women, a practice which I encouraged. I didn’t care if he was gay or not, I just wanted him to figure it out before it drove him crazier.

When you are as young as we were then, having your own apartment is a great attractor of women who are just beginning their own experiments with booze, sex, drugs and rock and roll. I'd known quite a few of those young women before I moved out of my parents' house, but my relationships with those girls were mostly set before I actually occupied the apartment. In other words, the ones who were ever going to have sex with me had already done so for the most part, and they actually began hanging around the apartment in order to find new people with whom to have sex. Therefore, I had to meet some new women, and I had to meet them soon, if I ever wanted to use the bedroom at all.


Lorraine, the girl in my mental picture, lived across the street in the somewhat classier townhouse section of the apartment complex where our miniscule debaucherie depot was located. She lived with her aunt and her family, a handsome group of blondes of Italian descent; gregarious people who filled their home with extended family, frequent parties, loud music, and the largest drug-dealing operation in the history of South Kansas City. I first encountered Lorraine when one of my friends, who happened to be on his way to visit us, drove past a group of three very attractive young ladies walking down the street (heading toward that disreputable townhouse across the way), as young girls are wont to do in the hot summer months. He stopped, backed up, and persuaded them to hop into his Volkswagon convertible, and to come over and party with us (Larry persuaded a lot of young ladies to do a great many interesting things over the years, something which one might expect from a guy who actually streaked his own high school variety show, but that is another story entirely).

When Larry walked in with the three young beauties in tow, Bruce and I were sitting on the floor, preparing some sort of mind-altering concoction on the giant wire spool which served as our sole piece of legitimate furniture. Larry didn't usually deem to share his good fortune with the ladies with us, most especially not when he happened upon such good fortune in such ample quantity and quality. On this particular night, he was rather proud of himself, and in light of that, we were appropriately grateful. Let's face it - even when you have a room specifically and optomistically designated solely for sex in your apartment, it isn't every day that someone brings in three apparently perfect specimens for your consideration. Still, we suppressed our raging hormones and tried to present ourselves as gentlemen and sophisticates. I'm sure we failed miserably.

As the mildly stoned afternoon wore on into a positively afflicted evening, we all talked and told each other of our backgrounds, sharing those little bits of history and opinions which allow us to know whether or not the people we've met are of any substance whatever. It was then that we first learned learned that Lorraine was actually our neighbor, and that the other two were her friends who had moved to other parts of town the previous year. As we chatted, the friends, Christy and Nancy, often seemed a bit standoffish. Although the other two were somewhat cool and distant, Lorraine glowed with genial personality throughout the evening (Note: despite my first impression of Lorraine's friends, I soon became involved in a torrid and tortuous relationship with one of them, a relationship that ultimately led to my first marriage to someone else in a roundabout way, but again, that's another story).

As our talk became deeper and less constrained by sobriety, Lorraine became positively effervescent, laughing easily and often, batting her long lashes and tossing her hair like a gypsy fortune teller in search of a mark. It was impossible not to fall immediately and hopelessly in love with this elfin creature. Not a "let's get married" sort of love, you understand, not that sort of "I'll be yours forever" brand of love, but the kind of love which you might feel when you first gaze upon a wonderful work of art, a type of love like the feeling you often find you have for people who dance into your life when you least expect it. It is difficult to avoid over-romanticizing things that you view through a veil of hazy memory, but there was no denying that Lorraine was something special.


Over the following months, Lorraine and I became confidantes and pals. We spent hours together, making bad jokes and playing endless games of Spades. We listened to music, we walked to the store, we cooked dinners, washed my car. I played my guitar and she applauded. We did nothing together and we did everything together. We dreamed up profound futures out of the buzz from Tequila Sunrises and fat Columbian doobies, and then promptly dismissed them in lieu of more practical and profitable tomorrows. We were utterly comfortable together, Lorraine and I, but then Lorraine was comfortable with everyone. She was the sort of girl who never met a stranger, the kind that made everyone want to be her friend. If she had any ego about her beauty and facility with people, she never showed it. She seemed natural and free.

In retrospect, her lack of ego probably stemmed from the fact that Lorraine had not exactly had an idyllic childhood. She had never had the opportunity to become full of herself, because her life had been one of adversity up until a very short time before I met her. As I came to learn during our walks and talks together, she had not come to live with her extended family by choice. Her childhood had been neither safe nor happy, and she bore the scars of sexual abuse and abandonment deep within her. She rarely let the wounds show, but once I came to know her well, I couldn't be with her without being aware of the welts on her psyche. For me, Lorraine was the first of what would eventually become many women whom I met and befriended that had endured sexual abuse as children. It was an awakening that I needed, but one which I wish I'd never had to experience.

(More to come, one of these days...)