Mexico Part Dos (The Cruise Part 2)

I can drink, and in Mexico after hearing some interesting news from a former lover at a tranquil resort on the beach, I began to really hit it hard. She wandered off and I sat at the bar alone for a bit, and that’s all I remember. According to a credit card bill I found in my pocket when I woke up, I had spent about $100 during my power failure. I’m sure there were some interesting conversations with the bartenders, or more likely the chairs.

I failed to mention in my last post something that stuck in my mind for years since that day, but not yesterday. The public bathrooms were absolutely disgusting in Mexico. One in particular reminds me now of my prison cell in St. Cloud without bars. Cold, hard concrete from floor to ceiling. A bare toilet, and a urinal flush with the wall. St Cloud didn’t have urinals, but Mexico did. St. Cloud also didn’t have creepy little blind kids that would stand directly behind me when I peed. The boy said nothing but held two tin buckets. Apparently he could hear when I stopped and asked inquisitively, “Fresh lime?” I think I said, “huh?” but I felt a mixture of urine and old lime juice hit my hands and general groin area. He had tossed a half of a lime in the toilet to freshen it up, probably what he considered cleaning. It was a busy day, and I wondered why there were only a few limes in there. Did he have to feel around for the old ones to discard them? There are only a few places in this world I won’t put my hands, nearly all of them are in the mouths of wild African predators, and then one is the toilet in a Mexican public restroom. I turned around to say something but he thrust his other bucket at me which had a few coins and a dollar in it. I looked into his eyes and I could see how hard his life had been on him. He could not see, and I could clearly see that now. I could see his pupils through a thick white haze. They were offset and he appeared to be staring right through me, as if he was listening for something. My heartbeat. I was drunk, but I’m a compassionate drunk. I pulled out a $20 and put it in his shirt pocket and told him to make sure nobody else got any of it. I don’t think he understood me. As I was leaving the bathroom I looked back one final time to see him reaching toward the toilet. It hit me. He was going to reuse the limes.

Back to the boat. I don’t even have a clue how I got there. I’m surprised that I even managed to find the right boat. I woke up on our bed, my head pounding. I needed a drink. I stumbled out into the hallway, and when I say I stumbled, I mean that I had lost all sense of direction and every bit of coordination I had accumulated since childhood.  I needed strong drink. I mean I needed strong drink to survive life from that point on. That was the moment it clicked in my head again that I could drink to blackout twice in a day. I didn’t think of it as a blackout, but a buzz. You see, I never once got high or drunk because I knew I would lose all of my money, self-esteem, or vanity. I didn’t smoke crack because I could blow a whole paycheck in one night. I didn’t sell drugs because I knew it would lead me to prison. I did all of that shit because I like the way it makes me feel. That’s not past tense, I know all of those things will still have the desired consequence. I loved the way alcohol made me feel while I was using it, and I knew that no matter how bad my head hurt, or no matter which direction I was facing after each step I took, I could eventually find my way to a barstool and everything would be better again.

Jobs Part 4

What started as an idea for one post has really taken off. It's bringing back a lot of memories, and I'm rolling with it. But I do have a small concern... I haven't seen or heard a comment or any feedback from anybody in quite a while, and my numbers are down. Is anybody reading this stuff anymore? I wonder if the subject matter has become boring or perhaps redundant. I don't seek constant approval, but it would be nice to know if anybody's still out there.

So, where was I? Ahhh yes, the gas station. I was let go by an employee, not the boss, because too many drive-offs were occurring on my shifts. "How could that be my fault!" I'm sure I declared. Well, it certainly was, as nearly every gas theft report was forged by yours truly (me). So off I went.

It was around that time that I was arrested for my first felony, and kicked out of the home I was living in. This is also around the time I started drinking instinctively, and had my first run-in with crack and cocaine. Needless to say, my jobs were few and far in-between for a while. I did briefly work at an Applebee’s where I never stole anything, and quit because I hated working there. I then served as a sales clerk at a Mervin’s California where I was fired for stealing, and an Office Max where I was caught red-handed stealing but never fired. I was in the warehouse there the day Gary Anderson shanked the field goal against the Atlanta Falcons in the playoffs.  I left that job to move to Richfield with my girlfriend, where I was hired as a full time employee of the Sherwin-Williams Company. I sold paint as you might imagine, and I did custom color matches which I happened to be very good at. I also forged returns, took paint and supplies out the back door, and even broke in once by driving drunk through the plate-glass front doors in hopes of going inside and stealing a paint sprayer. It didn’t happen, I was too drunk to get my seatbelt off so I simply backed up and drove back down Penn Avenue to my apartment where I probably drank more and floundered in self misery. I was a mess. They did finally catch on to my shenanigans and I was terminated for lying about my felony on my application. Again, they couldn’t actually pin anything on me, so they fired me on a technicality. Shortly after that I was arrested for attempting to burn that apartment down.

For a while I was jobless. Penniless. Homeless. All but lifeless. I went to treatment again. It failed again. I don’t have any clue how long I was lost. I do know that when I resurfaced, I was ready to give treatment a real effort, and that I did.

I went to Hazelden for four months and moved to Florida as part of my aftercare program. I can tell you that for the next four years, I did not steal a thing from anybody, anywhere. I did get fired from The Boulevard restaurant on A1A in West Palm beach for a catering mishap that was not in any way my fault. They needed a head to roll, and it was mine. I quickly applied for a job with Divosta Homes, and spent the next seven months assembling cabinets in an oppressive warehouse. I actually kind of liked it, and the plan was to work there for a while once I went back home to clear up my warrants. But that would never happen. I had to stay in Minnesota, where I got a job with a company that seemed right up my alley. A place where I would spend a lot of time, in a way, giving back what I had so freely taken for so many years. A job that I was so committed to, I moved to Rochester from St. Paul, where I ended up relapsing and going down yet another spiral of disaster. What job? You’ll just have to wait until the next post.

Stevie Tomato's (Fort Meyers Part 2)

After what seemed like an eternity of flying over the endless lights of New York City, the glow faded away and we were whisked down the East coast toward our destination, Fort Meyers, Florida. Neither Seth nor myself knew many of the lyrics to Kenny Loggin’s Holiday Road, but we certainly knew the chorus which we proudly sang over and over throughout the trip, starting on the airplanes. And with a DC-9 with at least 90% empty seats, we were probably noticed. It was time for a drink, and we ordered a couple P.B.R.’s. We were the last flight into the airport that night, something we should have paid a little attention to for later, but like anything else of relative importance, it was washed away in the excitement of arriving at our vacation spot.

We stepped out into the balmy Florida winter. It was a beautiful 71 degrees; the coolest temperature we would see that week(ish). We went to the little cab-shack, told the guy our destination, and off we went. To say we were excited would most definitely be an understatement. It was after midnight, but we didn’t have any alcohol so we asked the cabbie if there were any bars in the area of the hotel in which we were staying. He thought about it and said there was only one bar around there and our hotel happened to be right next to it. Win!

We checked into our room for the week(ish) and rather quickly made our way just across a driveway to our new bar, Stevie Tomato’s. It was 1am, and the place was quiet. We grabbed a couple chairs at the outdoor bar and commented on how this wouldn’t be trendy this time of year back home (ha ha ha ha), and we ordered a couple P.B.R.’s, our diet for daily life. We made small talk with the bartender and told him where we were from. He said it was nice to have Midwesterners here for a change. I think they have quite a lot of folks down from Philly and such. More on that later.

Sadly, just like any normal bar back home, they were going to close at 2am. We asked about buying off-sale, and I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a more bewildered look on a man’s face before, “You know, for consumption off the premises".  He had a right to be confused as they do not have off-sale in Florida, it’s purely not necessary. They sell liquor and beer roughly 20 hours per day at any gas station, grocery store, or anywhere really. We hopped and skipped our way over to the 7-11, one of which I hadn’t seen in years, and we were both absolutely amazed at the selection. Half of the store was set up with liquor. Brilliant. We chose a case of Land Shark beer, and I think a bottle of good tequila. As it would turn out, it was barely enough for the next 12 hours.

We brought our booty back to the hotel and started to celebrate…… Uh, hmmm. We started to drink, and I mean heavily. It was delicious. It was approaching 3am and we had boundless energy. We wanted to be outside because it was so nice, so we brought chairs out to the balcony and really took in the view the hotel had to offer. Directly in front of us was a beautiful sea of orange and white U-Haul trucks, covered sparsely with palm trees and a chain link fence. It was dark out, but fortunately the fine people at U-Haul had dozens of High-Pressure Sodium lights to brighten up our view. Yes, we had a view of a parking lot, but that wouldn’t bring us down that week(ish).

Sometime between 5 or 6am, after the sun came up, we fell asleep, only to be awakened by our alarms at 7. We had things to do. This was officially day one of our vacation, and we had a plan…

To be continued…