Erin’s father lived in Lafayette. One
week he went to Jamaica and left her there. She was so mad he didn’t
take her with him. Not only that, he also left her with specific
instructions not to have anyone over to his house. Of course she
asked me if I wanted to come over there. I knew she was defying his
wishes because she felt scorned to have been left behind. I left
for Lafayette immediately.
I am not sure it is possible to understand
the relationship I had with Erin. I know I said a lot of negative
things about us. If I wanted to be honest I could tell you how much
I loved her, and how much she loved me. I know that if we had been
older and more mature the relationship would have lasted a lot longer.
I am not going to talk about all the things that went wrong between us
one more time. I think I owe it to her to talk about the things that
were fantastic.
When I got to her dad’s house off of Ambassador
Caffery in Lafayette she was all dressed up. She didn’t want to go
anywhere. She got dressed up because she wanted to look good for
me, and she did. Erin was an incredibly attractive girl. In
tight jeans and a small shirt she was all curves. She liked to wear
silver earrings and necklaces, which made a sharp contrast to her black
hair and brown eyes. She didn’t wear too much makeup because she
didn’t need to, and because I never liked it. As soon as she opened
the door we rushed into each other’s arms. We professed our love
for each other and kissed for a long time. Then we undressed each
other and went into her father’s bedroom where we made love all over his
bed.
The sexual love Erin and I enjoyed was very
inhibited. I think that’s one of the reasons it was so good.
The simplest act became a naughty thing to Erin. That made all of
our lovemaking seem like forbidden pleasure. Erin also had a couple
of strange hang-ups, besides the big one about sex in general. She
liked to perform fellatio, but she hated for me to see her doing it.
That meant she had to position the rest of her body between my eyes and
her mouth. She was too shy to do sixty-nine, so it was kind of awkward.
The fact that she did that made me really want to see, and that distracted
me from the pleasure I should have been feeling. She told me it made
her feel sluttish if I could see. I have never been a very considerate
person, so I told her it was okay to feel sluttish. She didn’t like
that too much.
A few times when we made love she spaced clean-the-fuck-out.
She became like an animal driven by an instinct that was beyond her control.
This happened especially if she took control and got on top. No woman
I’ve ever been has been able to compare with her sexual ability in that
position. Thinking about it makes my mouth water. She got down
so fast and so hard a couple of times I thought sure she was going to break
me, but she never did. She made me feel like the luckiest man on
the face of the earth. If only she hadn’t been so good in bed I might
not have become obsessed with making love to her, and thereby sabotaging
our chances of growing closer intellectually.
Anyway, we made love all over her father’s
house in Lafayette. He didn’t like me too much because she and I
had gotten engaged, and he felt she was too young for that. When
he left for Jamaica he asked his neighbors to look out for my car.
As soon as he got back he found out that I was at his house the whole time
he was gone. He was furious. Erin called me in Baton Rouge,
crying. He had forbidden her to see me anymore. That worked
out to be a joke ultimatum. She wanted to be with me as much as I
wanted to be with her. We just rolled right over his wishes.
It didn’t take long for him to give in. Soon we saw each other again
with his consent.
Erin must have told him how much she cared
about me because before too long he was inviting me to do all sorts of
things with them. When he decided to move his yacht from a marina
in Slidell to one in New Iberia I was asked if I wanted to come along.
I would have seized any opportunity to be with Erin, so I said yes even
though her father made me nervous.
We took the yacht across Lake Pontchartrain.
Out in the middle you can’t see land anywhere, and the waves often swell.
I had never been on a big boat before. I was very interested in the
things that went on; I always wanted to work on a boat. Being there
with Erin made me feel very good, clean and alive.
We cut across to the Mississippi River through
a channel. We went down the river to the Intracoastal Waterway.
The trip was much too long to finish in one day, so we had to spend the
night on the waterway. Erin’s dad had quite a few drinks. He
had a hell of a time restarting the generator after it went out for some
reason. After he fell asleep it went out again. Erin and I
had our own bedroom at the aft of the yacht. We went to bed in the
heat. We were sweating, and we both figured that was a good excuse
to take off our clothes. Soon we were sweating against each other,
slipping and sliding and very aroused. At first Erin was scared to
make love, but I was very persuasive. After we began I was cruel.
I tried long and hard to make her scream, but somehow every time she reached
orgasm she kept the sound bottled up inside. All I could hear was
a whimper. She finally made me stop, and I didn’t object. We
were both satisfied. Then I made her go wake up her dad while she
still looked freshly fucked and was dripping with perspiration. I
needed him to turn the generator on. I wasn’t trying to humiliate
her. I thought the heat might make me lose consciousness.
He tried to start it back up for a long time,
but it didn’t work. It was out of gas. I spent the hottest
night of my life next to Erin, but I didn’t complain too much. I
liked being with her. It didn’t matter where or under what conditions.
The trip ended with us a lot closer than we had been before we left.
I am not going to talk about our break-up
anymore, except to say that it was more my fault than hers, despite all
of the lies I have told about it over the years. After all, she did
break up with me. I did a mean thing after she and I broke up.
I took back a ring I had given her. It was an emerald with six small
diamonds around it. I went over to her house one day and threatened
to file a lawsuit against her if she didn’t give it back. I was not
only mean about it, I was pretty much insane when I did it. I had
been using a lot of heavy dope. I wasn’t thinking too clearly.
Cocaine and crystal have always made me an asshole. I wish I had
not done that. She and I had remained friends after our break up.
We even had sex occasionally, until I took the ring back. A few years
later I gave it to Susan when we got married.
I only spoke to Erin once since then.
I told her I was sorry, but neither one of us wanted to talk too much.
The things we did to each other (I did to her) were just too painful.
***
My motivation behind writing many of these tales comes from a desire to express my dark sense of humor. The things you read that leave you wondering what the hell that was all about, and maybe a little bit sick at your stomach, are the things I am sitting back laughing about. I think it is important to tell you, lest you should read all of this thinking that I am filled with a terrible self importance and ego, that I don’t think anything about me is important, and I feel about an inch high on the run from the law. I find a lot of things out of my past are twisted, and more than a little bit ironic. A lot of it is grotesquely comedic. As you read this try to understand that this amounts to melancholic parody. Don’t read too much into my intentions.
***
I lived through a number of failed one-night
stands. You might wonder how that is possible. Once I tell
you the painful part will be understood. The first time this happened
to me was with a girl named Julie. I took her home to my apartment
behind my grandmother’s house on Highland Road. We went to bed together.
I was on a plane so totally removed from this world, but I was coming down,
all luded out. We made out. I moved up and down her body kissing
her. I tried to get on top of her to make love to her, but I was
too messed up. I couldn’t even get on top of her. At first
she thought I was teasing her. She talked about what a naughty boy
I was. I can’t remember if I responded to her, but if I did it couldn’t
have been anything too clever. Then she decided I was scared to make
love to her. She tried to convince me that it was safe to penetrate
her because she was a very chaste person. I was nearly unconscious
by that time. Then she started crying because she thought it meant
I thought she was ugly. Then I did pass out, but I can remember her
hitting me. Then she left. When I woke up the next day I realized
what had happened. I tried to call her to explain. She answered
her phone, but as soon as she heard my voice she hung up. That got
me depressed. Another night of joy ruined by killer dope.
Julie wasn’t a girl I had just met.
I had wanted to make love to Julie for a long time. She was one of
those cool punk chicks who dressed in leather and had crazy hair colors.
She was very sexy. I find it hard to believe she was as chaste as
she said. She was too fine not to get bagged. That didn’t stop
me from wanting to be with her. If anything that made me want her
more. Boy did it hurt after I ruined all of the time I spent chasing
her down and capturing her.
Then there was this total stranger I took
home one night. Her name was Jennifer, or Tiffany, or something like
that. I have no doubt in my mind that she had committed to the idea
of having sex with me. On the way to my apartment, in my car, she
was talking about the perfect torture. With my typical quick thinking
I asked her if she wanted to do it to me. All of a sudden it was
like I was no longer with the same woman. She became stiff as a board
and began to give me the cold shoulder. I tried to take the pressure
off of what I had just said by making a joke, but it was a bad joke, and
the damage had been done. She wasn’t fooled. She could tell
she was with a real freak, and she wasn’t that type of girl. She
was just an ordinary slut. A few minutes later she asked me to take
her home. Damn. Me and my big mouth.
I did have a couple of successful one-night
stands. One of them involved this girl named Andrea, who had already
had sex with a couple of my friends. I took her to New Orleans where
we went shopping and had a nice dinner. I treated her like a lady.
We had a good time together. We talked and drank beer the entire
way back to Baton Rouge. When we got back to my apartment we immediately
began kissing and taking off our clothes. We made love over and over,
all night. Andrea was a sweet young thing. She had a great
body and a pretty face. The next morning after she was gone I still
felt dirty. I didn’t love her at all. I barely knew her.
She was one of my friends’ regular lays. I didn’t even know if she
was going to tell him. I never called her. That was wrong.
We could have done it one more time, but then it wouldn’t have been a one-night
stand. That is exactly the reason I don’t look for a woman to have
sex just one time. If it isn’t good I feel bad about doing it, but
if it is good I feel even worse for not being able to do it a lot more.
The casual affairs I had, I should note, all
took place before the threat of HIV and AIDS became widespread. I
worried about contracting a venereal disease every time I had sex, the
worst of which would have been syphilis. I never used a condom.
After I slept with Andrea I had a fever for two days. That turned
out to be the flu, but it scared the hell out of me. I no longer
had unprotected sex with girls I didn’t know after that. I decided
sex wasn’t worth a disease. Today I feel lucky that I chose that
path.
***
The turbulent relationship I had with a girl
named Tara deserves at least a story. I wanted to be with her in
a very big way. She had an angel’s complexion, large breasts, a dusting
of freckles… she was as close to a Georgia peach as a Sugar Magnolia can
get. I had no idea she had already gotten involved in a relationship
with my friend Jason from Hammond.
The three of us dropped a bunch of acid and
PCP at The Bayou. We were going over to her mom’s house to party
(her mom was out of town). On the way over there Jason did about
100 miles per hour down Sharp Road. A cop coming the other way tried
to flip a bitch, but the road was too narrow between the two ditches on
either side. The cop had to back up to get it right. We whipped
out of sight around the curve, almost ditching the car. We actually
went down into the ditch, but we were going so fast that we came out the
other side. The house was in old Broadmoor, two turns and one half
mile from where we were. Somehow we made it to the garage without
the cop seeing us. That was a good thing. By that time the
PCP had blown my mind. We were all giggling and laughing. I
was seeing tracers fifteen feet long.
Tara’s mom seemed wealthy. The house
was chock full of antiques and novelties. It seemed like the house
was breathing. We ate caviar and drank wine. I kept getting
more and more loaded. I didn’t think I would ever peak. We
were already smoking weed, so the next step to chilling out was to find
some downers. I asked Tara if her mom might have some Valium somewhere
in the house. She told me there was no Valium, but she gave me some
Phenobarbital. I took it not knowing what the hell I was doing.
Twenty minutes later Jason and Tara went to
bed together and closed the door. They gave me a whole bedroom to
myself. I was in shock that they were already a couple, right in
front of me, but I had not even suspected.
When the Phenobarbital started to take effect
it felt like something was terribly wrong. My body attempted to slow
down while my mind was wide open. It scared the hell out of me.
I didn’t want to disturb the two lovebirds, so I walked out of the house
and kept on walking. I was too screwed up to know exactly where I
was, but I knew the neighborhood. I walked for about fifteen blocks
before I became frustrated. I knocked on a door to ask directions.
It was about four in the morning. The man who answered the door didn’t
look too happy. I made up a story about getting dumped, and he told
me how to get where I was going. I walked at least five miles down
Goodwood to my mom’s house. I went to sleep in my old bedroom.
In the morning I had to explain to them why I was there. My explanation
flopped. The obvious explanation was that I had gotten too loaded
and needed shelter.
After the incident with the PCP Jason and
Tara and I became good friends. They felt horrible for what had happened.
They were always so nice to me. Within a couple of weeks they had
to squat on Vicaro Street because they had no place to go. Their
squat had to be the worst place I had ever done cocaine, unless it was
the apartment they got next door to the squat. There are no good
places to do cocaine, but Vicaro Street (when it still existed) was scarier
than most. There were always people watching. That was real.
Some of them were rats for the police, and some of them were cool.
If you got lucky you would get away with your criminal drug use.
I guess I got lucky. I shot up cocaine by candlelight, with no door,
enough to know that I don’t want to do it again.
We gradually drifted apart. It is awkward
for a couple to be around a man who wanted the woman of the couple.
I think it says good things about Jason and I that we never fought over
her. I heard they got married, and that they are still together after
all these years. I wish them only the best.
***
I need to tell you more about my friend Gerald
Henthorne, the one I call Biff sometimes. Biff has always been a
year older than I have. When I was fourteen and he was fifteen he
got thrown out of his mom’s house. He came to stay with me at my
mother’s house before I left home, before he was called Biff. We
were very close friends. We went a lot of places together.
He was extremely intelligent, but he dropped out of school to live his
life.
Here is a list of the less consequential things
we did together: we tripped on acid in Hell, we ran from the police, we
sold doses together, we almost got busted together. I started in
on this for one reason only, though. I think I will call this part
of the book sandwiches and sloppy seconds.
There was a time when I looked so absolutely
disgusting it was hard for me to get a woman to go anywhere with me.
This was the tactic I picked up. First I lost one hundred pounds.
Then I waited until Biff had a girlfriend. Then I waited for them
to break up. That was how I got to know Amy, Erin, Julie and Andrea.
They were all sloppy seconds. There is a pattern emerging here.
I finally decided the reason it was so easy for me to pick up Biff’s ex-girlfriends
was because even though he was better looking than me, when it came to
personality he had no graces with women whatsoever. They started
talking to me, and a little light went off in their heads. He turned
on their bodies, but I could reach deep inside their heads and make them
wild. I was always very shy at first. After I became comfortable
I turned on the charm and that sophisticated perversion. Every time
I did that I got the woman into bed. Biff scored so often, and had
such a poor success rate for the long term, that he never became upset
when I stole his girlfriends (at least not that he showed). He used
to joke about how I got all of his sloppy seconds. I never thought
they were sloppy, or the least bit tarnished, for having slept with Gerald.
I thought they were all sweet as cherry pie.
Then there was the sandwich we made.
It was a lot more delicious than the ones you make with bread and cheese.
There was this girl named Jennifer. We knew about twenty Jennifers
at the time, and this was one of them. She got into bed with both
of us. She was such a sharing person. We had a wonderful time.
My favorite part was when I was dying to have sex with her, but she was
too busy having her eye licked to give it up. She probably felt insecure
being in bed with two men. I could have lied about it and said she
went down on me while she got hit from behind, but Gerald would no doubt
read this and wonder when the hell that happened. It could have been
beautiful, my friend. It could have been beautiful.
***
Sometimes I get beside myself because I regret all of the sex I missed out on because I was too much of a gentleman. Sometimes I was with women I didn’t know very well so I didn’t make a move on them. Now I can see they were disappointed that I didn’t at least try to get them into bed. Many of them probably would have gotten into it with me. Some of them thought there was something wrong with me. Others thought there was something wrong with themselves. I probably made a few of them feel bad. I wish I had made love to all the girls I didn’t make love to. In the future I plan to make the right choices, and have sex whenever and wherever possible. No matter how vague the opportunity might seem, I plan to try to seize upon it. It might be dangerous. I would not recommend anyone in my reading audience try anything so audacious.
***
When I was on the Drug Wing in the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison we did a lot of written material on the twelve steps. When I got to the fourth step, “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves,” I wrote over a hundred pages. It called for a list of all the people we held resentments against, and what was really wrong with our own characters to cause us to hold those resentments. I decided I held at least one resentment against every person I had ever been friends with or been close to. So I made a list of everyone. I came to understand that there was nothing wrong with everyone else. The problem was inside of me. The problem was drug addiction and alcoholism. It was my problem. It spirals out of control now and then, all the time.