Pop Tarts

 

 

The blueberry harvest is coming to an end in Maine. When it is finished, all the legal/illegal migrant labor will head off to the next area in the US where another kind of crop is just about ripened. I had never known migrants went as far north as the Maine coastline to rake blueberries. To me, migrants mean forever stooping Mexicans picking lettuce heads in California’s Central Valley.

Shows you how much I know…

I’ve been to Maine twice. As a kid visiting Portland and Sebago Lake and as a young 30’s guy skiing down SugarLoaf USA out in that thick and overgrown western part of the state. In the Carrabassett valley, our little tour bus had taken a stop at a Quickie Mart on the way home and a local wanted to sell us a German Shepherd/Wolf dog hybrid. I had looked in the back of his cabbed pick-up truck to see this dog. Once it noticed me, it fixed it’s eyes on me like the targeting avionics of a HellFire missile. I read his face and I swear it said that if I put one finger into the open crack of that back window, he was going to cruelly snip it off with his crossbreed teeth.

It was in Portland as an 8 year old that I discovered rock candy and Kellog’s Blueberry PopTarts. My Dad, infuriated with driving the jammed streets bitching at the other tourists, had pulled over and we all went browsing the stores in hopes the traffic would lighten up when we got back. In some store, my brother had found a non descript box marked “Rock Candy!” He pulled out a string of huge, clear crystals of sugar. We had never seen anything like this before. After begging Dad to buy it, he relented but told us not to eat it till we got back to the car. Once back in the car, I luxuriated in the sweetness of it and it’s bizarre shapes. Candy created by NASA scientists it looked like, perfect latticed prisms on a string. Now that I remember it, we two in the back seat were quiet as church mice while we ate it and I figure my Dad’s proscription to wait to eat it made sure he’d have a quieter drive.

Today they have all sorts of flavors of rock candy and I bought some a few years ago to relive that Portland memory. It took me 10 seconds to be repulsed by it. “Ughh! Gawwd! TOO MUCH SUGAR! Auuughh!” I never finished it.

At Sebago Lake, which is shockingly cold in late July, my Mom had brought some small snack items along. I watched her open a package and hand me this square thingy. It smelled like pastry and was dry and easily crumbly. I had asked what it was and she said “a blueberry PopTart.” I had heard of blueberries but never actually had any until that day. So I bite into it.

“POWWWWWW!” My mouth lit up with this intense flavor which I immediately liked. I had never known any fruit could be this nice, as I thought most fruits sort of sucked. (As a kid, I pretty much hated anything plant based, except oranges, those I loved).

After asking a bunch of questions I learn blueberries were grown right in the state we were in but along the coastline, the good ones anyway. At 8 I learned of high bush vs. low bush blueberries...how the hell did my Mom know anything like that?

**

I’ll call him Ray as he looked pretty close to Ray Walston. He was a nurse at a facility in Pawtuxet village and he and I began to know one another after some doing on my part. 

 

Ray Walston (Mr. Hand)

 

He was raised in Aroostock county Maine, about as far north as you can get and about as far from any urban sophistication you can get as well. He had that typical New England standoffish-ness but multiplied by 10. I knew it wasn’t plain rudeness as I recognized the attitude. Add the fact northern rural New England produces these kine of people that are even more unconvinced of your authenticity. After 10 years of closely watching you, maybe then they’ll trust you and open up.

When Ray and I sat beneath a tree in the back, I would talk to him and all I got were four word responses at best, mixed with a strange accent. He’d answer my questions fairly truthfully but never elaborated on them. I wondered if he thought I was far too gabby and wished me to shut the hell up.

The breakthrough happened when I learned he got his nursing degree through the US Navy. I had a best friend who spent his life in the Navy and I could talk with some credibility on the whole experience. Once I mentioned Navy ports such as Rota, Doha or say Diego Garcia, he opened up like a book finally.

Growing up in northern Maine was incredibly insular but you didn’t really know that, he said. The only idea you had of the larger world was TV.

He had gone to the regular schools, worked on farms, froze in the winters and hunted with his Dad. After graduation, he was expected to find a full time job and do what everyone else did, work. However, he tells me there were no longer any good jobs around. There was lumbering, if you could find it, farming but that was tight as Maine’s soil totally sucks for large scale farming or some other piddly service job that paid nothing. The most coveted jobs, the ones his Dad and Grandads had, were in the paper mills. But they were leaving one by one for cheaper labor elsewhere, till they eventually vanished.

Ray tells me, “I had seasonal jobs in farming, tourism...picking crops, that sort of thing...none of them paid.”

I asked what he picked and tells me “I used to rake blueberries in August.”

I light up and tell him how I loved blueberries and he agreed but gave me a more knowing look about it.

“You ever rake them?” he asks.

“Nope...wouldn’t know how.” tell him.

“You gotta be strong, and being young helps, but it destroys your spine in time if you keep at it, never get out of it. You work 12 hours rain or shine, constantly bending over, standing up and repeating that all day.”

He goes to tell me it was in a blueberry field was where he made his decision to flee Maine and join the Navy. He had been told by some of his teachers he was smarter than your average bear and would benefit from further education. But how do you pay for it and there are no fabulous universities in Aroostock county.

But the US military would educate you if you qualified.

He signed up and left.

I asked him if he ever went back to Maine as to hear him tell it, it was the last stop before you fell off Edge of Earth.

“I have visited...relatives, friends...I miss the quiet, the very slow pace of life...but there are still no jobs there to this day...it’s the Nebraska of New England you know...so very little there. But you know what? I’ll probably retire there, everyone ‘goes home’ in time.”

“The blueberries.” I tell him.

“Yes, there are those, but you can’t pay the rent with them. When I go back home, retire, I’ll have the money this time.” 

 

South American migrants in Maine...see the cowboy hat no real Mainer would ever wear?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Low Bush variety and tiny, the best. Not those blueberries the size of  your thumbnail you get in Stop & Shop.

Probably takes a while to fill one of these, but you have a field boss telling you to "hurry it up" I bet too

 

 

Memories Again...

 

 

I’ve been on some sales job interviews back when you answered ads in the ProJo, sent in a paper resume and went through a tiered interview process. Two of those I tried for stick with me to this day. IDS Financial (now defunct) and Corey & DeWyre Insurance (also now defunct).

IDS was a firm that sold retail finance packages to anyone who had some retirement savings socked away. The trick was to convince those people to let IDS manage them. At the time, the early 90s, wasn’t such a great time to be investing in the market short term but if you were in it for the long haul, perhaps it would pay and it usually does.

Roy Halston

The guy who headed up the local IDS office in Providence, the sales manager, looked like Roy Halston, the designer. Every hair of his was in place, cleanly shaved and wore what I thought was the latest in men’s fashion for 1992. I could not identify the cologne he was wearing which was not noxious, he used the right amount. This guy’s airs tole me he knew he looked the part and played it. He oozed confidence to nearly seeming smug. You don’t get to run a sale’s office unless you’re the Top Dog in sales, repeatedly, and this guy must’ve had the interpersonal skills to read and then persuade people to make them part with their cash numerous times.

“That’s a European suit...where did you get it?” he asks me when I met him for the first interview. I was surprised he knew that it was. Euro suits have two slits in the back instead of the American single cut. I wasn’t about to tell him the truth that I bought it at a re-sale hole-in-the-wall shop in N. Providence. I didn’t know it was of Euro design till I had it tailored to fit me when the guy asked my if I knew that I had that kind of suit.

“Men’s Warehouse.” I lied as I answered the manager’s question. It was an evasion to hide how cheap I was. I wasn’t about tell him I spent a whole $50 for it.

“Really? I didn’t know that chain sold those kind of suits from Europe.” he says.

I sat there, looking around his office and was surprised at how austere it was. The desk was just, what seemed, a high quality dining room table. There were no pictures on it or piles of paper to process. Just a phone, a yellow legal pad and my resume. The rest of the office had a few plants, a small couch and just his awards and licenses on the wall. Very sparing I thought. What I was to learn later that this was a “fashion,” the office décor of successful finance types.

He goes on to tell me I would be selling $20,000 to over $2 million worth of product. The compensation would be a sliding percentage by commission. The more I sold, the higher the percentage.

“We have someone here who once sold $8 and half million dollars worth of our financial packages to one person. The company awarded him a 4% commission on that, $340,000 for two days work. That person was me.” I guess that’s one of the reasons he ran the office. When he told me that, he seemed rather proud, a bit too proud.

He goes on..

“Our process here is to throw the net out there, bring in applicants, you’d be surprise at what walks of life they come from. We hire only 2% of them. I and the home company in Chicago will decide on the final hires. Do you have any problems with taking tests?”

“No” I tell him.

“Great, let’s get started!”

I go into another room and the secretary brings me a booklet full of questions. She tells me I have a whole hour to finish it, where upon they send it off to Chicago and I’d be brought in for a second interview to discuss it and perhaps more.

I start the test and I realize it was a personality inventory. In college and at an old social work job, I immediately recognized it for what it was. What I couldn’t ascertain, was what it was measuring. You can tell what kind of test it was but not necessarily what it was assessing. The tests are designed like that and I won’t go into how they do it because it’ll take a whole ‘nother page and it would bore you. There was one test I saw, being designe, where it was looking for any psychotic personality traits and asked: “Does peach pie come out perfect every time?” Yes or No. Ah, one day I’ll explain it…

Since I know what this test is, I begin to feel annoyed that I’m being probed for something I cannot figure out and deeply too I bet. So I start purposely answering the questions in any damn way I want, randomly. All of them.

Two weeks later, Halston guy brings me back in for the second interview.

“We got your results back...they couldn’t make heads or tails of them so they put it to one of the psychologists..he says you’re “foxy and dodgy...squirrely...not easy to get a fix on.”

I sat there with my poker face saying...”Who? Me?” But I was kind of surprised that they figured out that much. That my intentionally trying to avoid an honest assessment of who I was was showing up on the test. So what, I wasn’t happy this corporation was trying to sneak a deep peek into me and purposely threw the test like a rigged mafia boxing match.

Halston goes on, with an annoyed look on his face. “We need people who, on the surface, are honest, open, seemingly free of deceit...a...”look” or “countenance” they have…that on first look engenders trust in the customer. First get the customer’s trust, then persuade them to purchase.”

He was saying I wasn’t it. No problem. I wasn’t interested when I had found out a few days after the test, had I passed, that I’d have to spend a month in Chicago for training. Training meant this in sales circles. I’d be intensely competing with others from across the country picked for those few 2% job openings. The contest can be ruthless and I’d be going up against people who had few ethics or morals. So I shook Halston’s hand off I went.

**

I saw it again at an insurance sales jobs I went to in Milford MA, the austere office with the expensive Ethan Allen like dining room table for the desk and an office with little else in it. I began to wonder why these sales guys decorated like this as  seeing this was becoming common. It spoke of Puritan restraint to me, denial of self and the world. Or that’s what they wanted everyone else to see and think.

The sales manager this time was very polite, much older guy. He too was impeccably dressed and if he had any hair, that too would be in place. We sat and spoke of my background and he lit up when he saw I went to Saint Raphael’s. How he knew it I don’t know.

“You were taught by DeLasallians? They’re brutal! You have to be well educated if you graduated. This will help with the position we have.”

“I wasn’t in the top ten of the class...I was in the top 20%...which is OK I guess. Nothing stellar.” I tell him.

“No matter, you have the background to analyze...you have to have it spending time with them…they're like the Jesuits...Nuts.” he says. Later on in life, I’d hear that from others as well. DeLasallians were Jesuit-Lite and that true Jesuits could be wholly insane in their zealotry.

The position was to sell insurance products to homeowners and small businesses. He assured me that once I got going, that within a year I’d be making $50,000 as a fresh new comer, if I had the chops. In time as I learned, it would go up. What opened my eyes were what he called “residuals.” If the customer stayed with the company for years, I’d still be collecting a cut from their policy, as long as they held it. Every year they paid the insurance premium, 2% of that would end up in my pocket. So the trick was to sell as many and as expensive policies as I could.

The interview ended well and he walked me out. In the foyer, I shook his hand and told him the date for the second interview would work. I walked to my car and I noticed him watching me from that foyer, not leaving.

As I sat in the car, he comes out, walking a bit hurriedly to my car and I roll down the window when he comes. He then asks this odd question out of the blue.

“Have you ever, in your past, ever have to deal with some pretty unfair situations, where you had to struggle...thinking there isn’t a light at the end of the tunnel? That it’s all for nothing?”

“Yeah, sure..medical problems in my family. I had to play nurse/psychologist/Dr/cabbie...only to know all these efforts will end in death due to their terminal illness.” I tell him.

“Thank you! Thank you!” he says and quickly turns and leaves.

I drive off wondering what the hell that was all about.

A day later I get a curt call cancelling the second interview w/o explanation.

Years later, I was talking to a sales manager at an Irish pub and I told him the same story.

“That was a trick question.” I was told. “He wanted to know if you’ve ever dealt with ugliness...and if you had, he knew you didn’t have that silly optimism other people have who lived an easy, charmed life. He wanted sales people who were perpetually assured of success as their lives so far, have given them that. He wanted people who never had been exposed to adversity. What you’ve been exposed to...has changed you in ways you probably can’t see and it can be a determent in sales.”

I guess he wanted unfailingly happy horseshit people who exude bright sunny, springtime mornings. That ain’t me, I know otherwise how life can be.

 

If I Get in A Goofy Mood

 

 

I stood outside of the Celtic, having a cigarette when I see his youngish women, perhaps late 20’s approach. She had disheveled but clean hair, far too loose jeans that sort of ballooned as she walked and a soccer team T shirt of some European squad I never heard of. She had come from the direction of the 95 overpass over Route 1 that leads into Attleboro and I had heard, from the firemen that used the bar as their clubhouse, that there were homeless encampments all along the highway in the woods there.

She came straight for me, making eye contact and when close enough she asks:

“Can you give me a ride to downtown Attleboro? I have an appointment at 11pm.”

“11 PM? What business has appointments at 11?” I think

I then figure this out. She’s one of the homeless from the highway that just wants a ride. I stood there, immediately disappointed by this request because my plan that night was to sip beer, chat and otherwise be left alone and be brain dead for a bit. This was “my time” and wanted to ratchet down some w/o people needing something from me. Shuttling the homeless wasn’t in my plans.

So how do I get out of this w/o seeming like a bastard?

I then put on an act that I am deaf. Since I had worked with the deaf population for a good time back in the 90’s, I can do a very good impression of them.

So I say, in a mangled, fumbling voice the deaf have IF they can speak, sounding a bit like Marlee Matlin from the movie Children of a Lesser God, and signing with my hands, I tell her this:

“I cahn’t hear any-think be-cawse I am defff thinth birth. You haf to th-speak tuh me wif thine langu-adge u-thing your handz. Do you know A eth L? (ASL)”

Homeless girl just stared at me for a good three seconds when she leaned into me close and responded like this, loudly, thinking that’s all that was needed.

“Can you give me a ride to downtown Attleboro? I have an appointment at 11pm!!”

“What?” I say and sign to her. I tried not to laugh because she thought the cure to my deafness was to shout at me. She tries again...

“Can YOU give me...Oh the hell with it…”

Off to our side was Becky and a few other girls from the bar laughing, after watching this show I put on. I then turn to them and protest, “Th-stop laffin at me! It’z not nithe or rite! I can’t halp that I’m deff!!!”

Homeless girl just looked at me and the girls like we were nuts. She finally gave up and went on her way.

“Yayyy!” I get to finish my butt and go back inside to sit down and sip my beer in peace.

**

Every summer I keep all the windows and doors in my house open. I like the breeze, fresh air and the openness. It also is a nice invitation to a few in this area who have known me to pop by if they do. The problem is that others I do not want to talk to feel I’m inviting them as well. Particularly salesmen.

One day some one knocks at my door and I go and see. It’s a young guy, perhaps 22, dressed sort of like a Mormon, in a white shirt, black tie and slacks. His hair is close cropped and he’s carrying an iTablet.

While at the door I just look at him through the screen, silent and wait for him to tell me why he’s here.

“Good Morning Sir! Have you noticed that your neighbor across the street has solar panels on his roof?”

“Oh Christ.” I think, a solar salesman.

I didn’t plan my next reaction, it sort of just came to me, quickly and out of nowhere. I then start rocking on my feet like a guy I know at work who does the same out of boredom or habit. I raise my hands and fold them together and press them against my chest and let my face relax, become almost loose. I now look half aware and dense.

“..and if you allow us to do a FREE inspection of your roof and power requirements of your home, I’m sure we can find the perfect system array for you that’ll get you off RI Energy’s grid!” The commission seeking sales kid tells me.

He ends his sales pitch and I let a good 15 seconds go by in silence when I say, as if my tongue has swollen two times the size in my mouth….

“Do you wan to meet my doggie? He ith down thtairs in da cellah….his name is Debby.”

I tried hard not to laugh to myself when I told him the male dog’s name was Debby.

The poor kid then comes to a slow realization that he’s talking to a old adult with retardation.

“Is there anyone else here…” the kid asks.

“No...juth me ‘n’ Debby...do you want to meet him? He iz a good doggie...he only bit my face once!”

I love how people’s eye contact can be sooo focused when they’re in a situation they never had before or seen. This poor kid was locked onto my face the whole time I was acting it up.

“Uhh...umm...I’ll come back...OK…?” the kid says, backing away a few steps before he turns around, lest I let my Debby “meet” him.

As the kid walks away, I open the screen door and wave to him and say...”Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye!” far too many times.

Cool! That got rid of him...now back to my audio editor to fix up the Grateful Dead catalog I stole off the internet.

**

I was fourteen when this occurred and it was more out of desperation, short temper and apparently it became real bad timing when it was over.

For some reason, we were getting sales calls all afternoon. Roofs! Siding! Built in pools! Credit card offers! You name it. This was also the time when they used real people to sell you stuff on the phone vs. the robocalls they use today.

I had been answering the phone all day and was getting sick of it. Finally, around 6pm I got a call and without ever finding out just who was on the other end I start a tirade.

“Listen you cocksucking son of a bitch! We don’t want your fucking useless wares or shit! Take your phone and shove it up your ass till it comes out your mouth ….so FUCK OFF!”

And I hang up the phone hard.

Sixty seconds later the phone rings again.

I pick it up and this time I normally say “Hello?”

“Ronnie? Is this Ronnie?” It’s Mary (my grandmother).

“I think I dialed the wrong number….Someone was yelling at me!”

I had happened to see the clock on the kitchen wall which said 6PM. Yep, every day for years Mary has called at 6PM to talk to my Mom. I stood there feeling the blood rush to my face and blush like I’ve never blushed before, hoping to God she didn’t recognize my voice from earlier. You don’t...you never...say words like that to your church-going Irish Catholic grandmother...ever. I had now done that.

I turn and say..”Mom...it’s for you” and I hand it off to her and slink out of there fast. 

 

 

Women's Intuition and How I Was Suprised By It.

 

 

I’ve prided myself, most of my life, on knowing I was right. And I was many times. I’d hear what others thought, were going to do about this, that or the other and realized they had it ass-backwards, upside down and 180 degrees the other way. When I told them to correct that, they looked at me like I was nuts. They thought they were right. Then many times I’d see them crash and burn. Quietly in my head I’d say after witnessing it, “You stupid fuck.” Add to that was my dismissiveness to anyone else’s suggestions about a problem I may have been facing. I’d listen to the first twelve words of it and I’d knee jerk react the second I felt they were wrong and reject their whole idea. Not to their face mind you, but in my head. I was polite enough not to shout them down and calling them half-wits.

**

I didn’t know Melba all that well. She was the girlfriend of my friend’s brother. I’d see her often enough around town or say at parties but we rarely ever sat down to chat and learn about one another. So be it. That happens all the time. Melba was tall with dirty blonde hair that she wore in a looser 80s fashion w/o all that AquaNet. She was one of those women who was born thin and would remain so no matter how many tacos she could choose to eat. Her packing on the weight was not going to happen. Some girls are born lucky in some ways.

She, for reasons I still don’t know, was unfortunately pegged as a dumb blonde. Her nick name was “’tupid.” I saw her face once when one of us guys said it right to her. She just took the insult, kept a poker face and let the moment slide onto the next one. I hadn’t managed to know her well enough to make any judgment about her but seeing someone say that to her face was unjust I felt. It’s also pretty loutish and typical of some of the white trash I knew around here. At that age, we crude guys knew little of the shit women had to put up with and did it w/o complaint.

In my early 20’s, like a million others, I was searching for a direction in my life. What career? Where’s that girl? Should I leave and start over in Telluride, Colorado? Every answer to those questions I came up with seemed right till a day later when I debunked them for some other reason. But I do remember feeling mildly unsatisfied with the way things were as nothing was happening fast enough. Due to my ever cautious nature (which has a very real basis as I found life can be god damned dangerous at times) I would twist and turn ideas over again and again w/o acting on them till I was assured of success, or at least not go down in flames trying. Who wants that? These reflections of then were not my sitting down thinking logically about it all, it was more of ‘feel my way through’ tactic. I know that way is more obscure and shapeless but when you don’t have hard facts, it’s the next best thing. You grope your way through the dark. I’ll know a correct answer because it’ll feel “right.”

One hot, sweaty June summer morning, I was sitting on the front steps with Mike and we were just talking. Melba was there as well. The subject shifted to what each of us was hoping to do for the summer and then even beyond that. Mike had got up to go in the house for something leaving Melba and I to talk further on what we wanted out of life.

She was straddling a 10 speed bike she loved to ride everywhere and finally looks at me, cants her head and says:

“Ronnie, you’re so close to blossoming. I can see it. You’re ready. Why not just take a shot and do it? I know you want too. It’s time to make that jump.”

“Well” she goes on, “I’m going for my ride, if you guys go to JR’s tonight, I might be there too.”

She peddles on off.

I sat there wholly stunned.

“How the FUCK does she know what I’ve been thinking about for months and months? I was never close enough to her to tell her anything of my private thoughts! Hell, I didn’t tell anyone! How could she possibly know that?” And to top it off as I thought on what she told me...she was right.

There are those moments when you finally do learn something about another person. That morning was one heavy one. Afterwards, I never thought of Melba as a dumb blond and that nickname was wholly and utterly incorrect estimation of her abilities. Ever since then, my evaluation of her was held on a much higher plain. To this day I think of that summer morning on those front steps and how she revealed to me who she really was, and how very little I knew about myself..and how much more she knew.

**

Women speak of that one guy that ruined them. I have heard of that all the time. Guys can have that too as well, a women that ruins them.

I’ll call her Shelby. She was the most fun, exciting roller coaster ride/relationship I had ever been on. I have written of her here before so there’s no need to get too deep into again. Leave it to say she was the most playful girlfriend I had ever had.

How was I ruined by her? After it all ended, I kept trying to replicate that in others, trying to repeat it again...to no avail. All women are different no matter how much you try to reshape them into something they are not. There was only ONE Shelby.

Shelby was tall, blonde and had one of those mile-wide toothy smiles that lit her face up when she did grin. Her whole countenance would change when she smiled and became immediately attractive to anyone around her. She was also took far more risks than I would and that was a large part of my attraction to her. She managed to coax me onto some of life’s carnival rides I would never have tried. I’m glad she did. I had the time of my life.

As I got to know her, I found her not stupid but pretty uneducated. She was raised blue collar in a home with no books and the parents had no aspirations of sending any of their daughters to college. In Shelby’s very early 20’s, it was low wage service jobs for her with no plans on improving her job skills just yet.

At Scarborough beach one late spring, we were sitting on the benches looking across the ocean. I had gotten up to lean on the rails that lined the boardwalk and continued watching the waves slump one after another.

Shelby breaks our silence by saying...

“Those are strato-cumulus clouds on the horizon. There’s a layer of dry air above them that stops them from growing higher.”

I turn around with this astonished look on my face. She was right.

“How do you…” and she cuts me off.

“Didn’t you know that stuff? My apartment is full of weather tech!”

It was. There were barometers on the wall. A rain gauge outside her porch in a garden. On a birdhouse near it a weather vane with a speed indicator as well. Back inside on the coffee table a hygrometer (humidity) indicator. I had thought all that stuff was just New Englandy, maritime kitch you decorate a summer vacation shack by the beach with. No, they were real instruments that worked.

She goes on. “I’ve always been into meteorology...not sure why, just so interesting ya know?”

I just stared at her. I had no idea. From the way she had acted for the longest time as we went out, how she allowed me to use her as fuck toy, as a party girl, her risky behavior...and my now learning this about her and how incongruous it seemed….I now was perplexed at who I was with. And I wondered why would she hide this from me and….what else didn’t I know about?

An hour later riding home, I had asked her this, why did she not let me in about her other sides, her other delights and interests. She smiled at me and said nothing. It was like she was keeping an ages old secret men were never to know or be told.

You grow up, you mature, you learn. I had learned then that women of depth open up like onions, layer after layer, as they feel confident to do so. As I got deeper, I had learned of more surprising, fun and cool things about her and of other women I knew in general once I was now aware and would look for this. How women are able, to completely shield their innermost aspects was an eye opener to me. It’s a talent most guys do not have. What You See Is What You Get...is mostly true for men, mostly...at least for the more open and evident of us.

That little awakening about her changed how looked at her, how I acted too. This girl was far more complicated than I knew and this previously shallow, party-time summer fling took a deeper turn where I had to mature as well if I was to navigate those deeper canyons within her.

Shelby may have come off as a Boy Toy, but she wasn’t just that at all as she proved she could stand just as high and confident I was, and in more in ways I had no clue about too.

**

At a social service job I once had, they had hired a hippy/diaphanous girl named Gloria. She was close to my age and as I worked with her, I learned she was completely fucked up in the head, a real emotional basket case. This was an awful hire but a body is a body, no matter how much they suck, but if they routinely show up for work each day, that seemed to be more important than the shitty job they did once there.

I had to bring her up to speed, train her, repeatedly on how to deal with clients with psychiatric/developmental issues and how some day to day normal responses to them would not work. You had to use other ways, that may have seemed odd, to get them to calm down and comply with living in a group setting.

Gloria barely could remember the training, she just went off on her own, not maliciously, but stupidly setting off the clients...and that made my work day harder as I had to put out the fires she was setting. She sure as hell had no idea how to extinguish them.

Fun.

I took a dislike to her and then, all of her and wrote her off as a “nothing” in my mind. “I don’t like you and I consider you ‘worthless.’ That was a pretty strong global conviction of her but I was getting sick of fixing her fuck ups.

As the months passed, we got to know one another. She was the product of the States Foster Care program as the courts stripped her parents of their right to raise her. Dad was a drug abuser and Mom just preferred to party and leave her six year old at home to fend for herself. Gloria was bounced from one foster home to another and when at 18, they deem you “cured” and the State dumps you on the streets to live your own adult life.

I had then knew why she was the way she was.

One day, we were talking and she opines...”You know...you display orphan behavior…you raised yourself...didn’t you?”

“Huh” I said, sort of shocked.

“You never listen to anyone else you don’t respect, completely writing them off... you are sooo independent, never ask for help and try to do everything on your own...you’re stubborn as hell too. You won’t change your mind because you think you’re right.” she tells me.

I took an immediate offense to that and denied it hard. It was part of an old tactic of mine to seem as normal as possible, even though I had a Mom who was in and out of psychiatric hospitals and a Dad who was permanently ensconced in his corporate job in Providence. Our family was not as normal as the ones I knew around here and tried to keep those ugly secrets buried as deep as I could. I learned at an early age that you try to “fit in” as well as you can and knew what would make the neighbors gossip...and judge. So you put the best foot forward….Image! Image! Image!

One day Gloria just quit the job. Oh well, another one flew in then flew away, it’s the nature of the occupation.

It wasn’t till a few months later when I was thinking about what she had said and then it dawned on me. She was right. She readily saw through me so easily as she had been brought up with a bunch of other waywards in the system which taught her a few things. She had seen time and time again how people act with little biological parental influence. She was so damned observant and perceptive that day when she made those comments to my face. Any personality quirks I had, their source and genesis, I thought were hidden well inside of me where they belonged. And here came this women, who I thought was wrecked by the State foster system, who opened me up as easily as a can of tuna with a can opener.

At my old age, I can still be as intransigent about what I think is right and blow off damn near everyone else’s ideas. I’m a guy, infected with that male pride that isn’t so easily doffed when it gets in the way of living life successfully. But one trick I have learned when faced with this, tell my story to a woman. The answer I can get back can be one I had never thought of.

Even now I can still be surprised

 

(After reading this again, this is soo truncated. I could expand on 5 topics i brought up here but that would take days and you'd have to read 11 more pages. Ah, I'll leave it as it is..)

 

Ah, Others Have Done Far Worse...

 

 

So I can write about anything I want. I’m old enough, close enough to retirement that maintaining an upstanding moral image isn’t really needed as much now. When younger and still trying to build a financial life, I suppose I would have to suck up, comply and conform as a reputation needs to be protected if I were to move up. Now, it’s so less of a concern. Another reason is that the more distance from adolescence you have, you lose that desperate need to belong. When you get much older, you really do not give a fuck what other’s think of you.

So I will talk of cocaine.

I was never an addict. I had probably spent, in my lifetime, less than $100 purchasing it. I did however, have an acquaintance who was one of the major dealers of it in northern Rhode Island. Crossing paths with him (who shall remain nameless) was easy. I was one of the many who hung at the “One Way” in Slater Park in my teens and very early 20s. The One Way was an open air pharmacy, much like a farmer’s market, where, as you pulled your car into that parking lot, teen dealers with every kind of substance would run to your car to be the first to sell you their wares. It became outrageous for a good year and half, perhaps two years before the local police shut it down. Why they waited so long is another story in itself. Prior to it’s zenith, it was just low level dealing that garnered no attention from any law enforcement, but it got way out of hand eventually.

**

I remember the date I first saw cocaine, December 24, 1979, Christmas Eve. I was 15 and my brother and two of his friends from the band came into the house and ran upstairs to his bedroom. I followed. They stood around my brother’s desk as one of them cut the lines onto a mirror. I sat on the bed like the hanger-on kid brother, just wanting to fit in, be part of it, but there was no way in hell would they share that expensive stuff with a 15 year old highschooler who’s never felt a girl’s titty.

“Damn, in three months, I’ve lost two pant’s sizes.” say Nick, while tugging at the waistband of his jeans. I interpreted that as coke ramps up your metabolism, a high society weight loss drug! I watched as my brother snuffed up two long lines of it, stand up with his eyes slightly bulging and smiling.

“What’s that cost?” I ask.

“More than what you have!” retorts Nick, making sure I knew my place as the kid brother. Twenty minutes later, they had left he house to hit a party on a side street next to Providence College, which, to this day, is notorious for over indulging frat antics and girls puking in the neighbor’s yards.

Now let’s move forward nearly 10 years to about 1988.

I had met P from a small bar in North Providence called “Rolls Touring Company.” It was a snug, comfortable bar owned by a 30 something couple. They sold every kind of beer manufactured in the world and for some reason, just served German snack food sandwiches like bratwursts. He once showed us the 9 inch vertical scar on this chest from a triple bypass operation he had at 32. 32? Wow! Once fully recovered, he had applied his dream of owning a place like this, figuring his brush with death was a good enough reason to start living now. I enjoyed the coziness of the place as it was more of a salon than some neighborhood watering hole.

P was biochemist. His Dad was one as well employed by one of those major biotech firms on 128 outside of Boston. P. was rich, knew other wealthy types of his age and lived in Dighton in a home that made me think mine was pig shed. He was married to sort of bland girl, Racine, who had a similar bland personality. She was nice enough but I couldn't figure out why he was with her. After the two got to know me better they admitted they were in an “open” relationship and were fine about it. I then wondered if they were toying me with an inviations. That fact didn’t want me to try Racine out for a ride as I wasn’t the least bit attracted to her, no matter how available she was.

Others I knew, along with P., hung at the bar for perhaps two years before everyone drifted away into their own changing lives. P floated away as well.

I had never had a line of coke yet. I had only seen it once years before.

2003

I had come across P. again at house party over by Brown University, where my brother was friends with an Art professor there. I found it an odd event and wasn’t entirely comfortable to be hob-nobbing with Ivy League types. I was in no way an idiot, I could keep pace with the conversations there and even fire off witty, sardonic jokes but there was an air of exclusiveness as I was not a part of it as I was a from a lower middle class upbringing. Born a pig, always a pig.

P was there and I didn’t know it till he came to me. “Ron! Wow! Haven’t seen you in the longest time.” says P. He looked different now. Older, for sure, but also red faced, fatter and w/o Racine now.

I had asked about her and he said, “Oh her? We’re divorced. She was boring anyway and only was with me for one thing only.”

I joked to him, “What one thing? Your big dick?”

“No...the coke.”

I had suspected he was into that but didn’t know the extent of it till later.

The party had shifted from Brown U. to a home off Blackstone Blvd and I got to see how some of Providence’s wealthy live. It was an eye opener as I began to realize they were just as fucked up as any white trash family from West Warwick, only with nicer clothing and a Mercedes in the driveway.

After that, P invited me to follow him home to his house in Dighton. How do I describe the house….think of an out of place hacienda stucco mansion from Sedona, Arizona weirdly located now in cold, Puritan Massachusetts. It did not fit the neighborhood of other New Englandy homes at all.

We went upstairs to his den where we was at his computer and spoke of the old times at Rolls Touring and people we had known. He then pulled the desk drawer open, takes a small packaged out and cuts two very fat lines of cocaine on the desk and says, “You’re OK with this...right?”

“Sure, I’m OK.” Free coke? Sure...I’m way ok with that.

About every 20 minutes, he cuts more lines and we snort them up. 1AM becomes 2AM which becomes 3AM and we’re still doing it. During the time I had just sipped two beers as to kill the cottonmouth I had but was fried mainly on the coke. We were talking a mile a minute about every subject that came up and then sub-referenced those as details of them made us turn a corner to another idea. What subjects? Girls. Marriages. Jackson Browne. My asking where the Civil War artillery shell that was on a table nearby came from. Anything and everything. I learned that cocaine is a wonderful drug for conversations. I just wanted to talk and talk and talk.

The sun was finally rising and I had gotten up to use the bathroom because I felt nauseous. I knew it wasn’t the two beers over 4 or 5 hours, it was all the coke that I was swallowing from it dripping down the back of my throat from my nasal passages.

I get to the bathroom downstairs and puke hard. Afterwhich I feel better and return upstairs but the sun is up and the night’s revelries are over.

There’s a hard knocking on P’s front door and he leaps up, swipes the coke, tubes and mirrors from the table and shoves them in a filing cabinet. He runs off saying something about a Probation Officer.

He finally returns with two women in their 40’s and introduces them to me as his cleaning ladies who had an appointment at that time to fully clean his house. That’s all they were. I wondered, “What probation officer?” he had mentioned. Apparently he had been busted with possession, again and had a probation officer visit him at any time he wanted too.

I drove home and the worst of luck I ended picking up a Pawtucket cop on my tail. I was one of the very few out that early in the morning and I think, if he pulls me over, he’ll see that my eyes are just slits and I’m acting weird, He tails me for a good couple of minutes before he finally turns off. I figured he thought I was perhaps an early commuter on my way to work, ran my plates to see what came up, which was nothing at all.

I get home, pull off my shirt and dump it on the floor and try to go to sleep as it’s 6AM. I can’t. I lie there, with my heart racing from the other effects of the drug as the fun part is gone now. I’me left with the residue and my body is reacting to it. I finally collapse to sleep and wake up at 3 in the afternoon.

I sit up, and reach for my shirt and put it on and there’s this weird smell. I swear it smells of my dentist’s office, medicinal. I then shove my nose into the front of it and really pick up that scent and realize that it’s the coke that had fallen from my nose or whatever and is now in the shirt.

“Holy shit! How much did we do last night if it’s in my shirt?”

For about a month in that winter of of 2003, he’d invite me to his house for overnight snorting festivities every 4 to 5 days. One night, a bunch of black guys show up, all wearing red bandanas, red silk pants and the whitest sneakers I had ever seen. P. left to go upstairs with one of them for a bit, then comes back down and we party for a hour before they leave.

“Who where they?” I ask P.

“The Latin Kings, some of them, from Providence.” he tells me.

“I’m thinking, Jesus H Christ. How many weapons were they carrying while I yakking away to them while they were here.?” P knows some too interesting people I think. Well, the coke had to come from somewhere and probably not from 128 biotech companies.

By January of 2004, he and I were at a media event he was invited to in a restaurant over by the old Last Call Saloon down by the party district in Providence. He had fed me a line before we went in and after the initial rush had come and gone, I felt an incredible crash of tiredness, mood and it felt like gravity had amped up three times the normal pulling me into the floor.

I had heard of this, the “crash” people spoke of who did this regularly. It also hit me this was the first step to addiction. In order to remove the low feeling, you do another line.

I didn’t when offered. I had reached that “point” and knew enough was enough

As the weeks of January went by , I offered lame excuses for not hanging out with him till he he got the point. That was 20 years ago and I haven’t snorted a line since. I don’t say that as a happy ex-druggie in recovery, proving he’s clean. It’s just a fact. It’s also more of a fact I’m too damn cheap to buy it anyways. This happy miser likes $ more than coke.

That’s it. My lone month of snorting a bucket’s worth of cocaine. My only longish term experience with it that lasted 30 days. I met a lot of interesting, screwy rich people over by Blackstone Blvd, learned of a major chain, semi upscale restaurant in downtown Providence where some of the waitresses were dealing it to the customers who knew (I won’t say the place, I’ll get sued). I met a few Latin Kings and up and coming 20 Something professionals of Providence’s banking, art and media types who were into this...more than a few I can tell you, all well dressed with degrees from better known colleges.