Who The Hell Is This Guy (Part 2)

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"I've always been crazy
The trouble that its put me thru
Been busted for things that I didn't do.

I can't say I'm proud
of all of things that I've done,
but I can say I've never
intentionally hurt anyone."
- Waylon Jennings-

When I left off of my abbreviated autobiography, I was getting some help with my drinking... by getting a job tending bar in Kalispell, Montana. Forty hours a week with a fully stocked bar at my disposal, plus a paycheck and tips. With just a little more help I'd have been dead! I only had enough help to find myself waking up in a holding cell the morning after the Super Bowl (Dallas 42, Buffalo 7... I think). At the arraignment the judge sentenced me to 10 days for not having insurance and set the DUI for a trial. I politely explained I couldn't do 10 days... so the nice lady told me to "just get in there and do what I could."

Ten days later (almost to the minute) when I was released, I had lost my job and was being evicted from my residence. Figuring I had over-grazed my greener pastures, I borrowed twenty bucks from someone, threw the few things I salvaged from the divorce into the back of my oil burner, and headed back to where I had family, with my tail tucked tightly between my legs. Bartending jobs were easy to come by, paid well, and I met lots of new people. I met people that helped with my drinking, people that helped with my drug use, and others that helped with my one night stands, and they always helped me find my car keys when they should have stayed lost. It's funny that with all the friends I had helping me, I never had any that helped me get out of jail.

I've always felt I should try everything at least once, and that applied to most mind-altering substances. In fact, some of them I just had to keep trying again and again... and then maybe just one more time or two. Short of sticking needles in myself, I've given most illicit drugs known to man a fair trial. There may even be a few that I grew quite fond of. As with every other time in my life when things got unpleasant, I would attempt to outrun it. This took me to the state of "boy I wish my brother was Governor" Florida. Since the only person I knew there was an old girlfriend who never did drugs, I no longer did drugs. That was simple.

Although she didn't do drugs, she could drink with the best of us. I was her drug. She'd been raised with money and trained to be proper, but craved something wild and uncultured, something spontaneous and gritty. She wanted trailer trash that could be cleaned up and presented to Mother and Father for brunch at the club. I was perfect! The literate lush. I took her to Bike Week at Daytona Beach where she got tatooed, a three day Deadhead camp-out near Orlando where she had her first (and probably last) nitrous baloon and shroom experience. I took her to a fish camp where she met her first gator wrestling, stock car racing, redneck and I showed her how to fish with explosives. I took her to back road bar rooms, strip joints and a pay by the hour adult motel. I guess I wasn't her drug, but rather her gateway. Amazingly enough, when I decided I needed to get a job so I wasn't dependent on her trust fund, she turned into a bitter, angry, bitch who threw fits when she didn't get what she wanted. After about a year of that experience, I went back to Montana where bikers, hippies and rednecks fishing with explosives weren't a novelty. They were my friends. (to be continued)