Ch-ch-ch-changes
I got back to the folks' house the next day feeling...better...than I'd felt in a long time. Lynn was a total hottie and she made me promise to come back soon. It wasn't hard to do that. I was sitting around watching TV and Mom asked me to come up to their room so they could talk to me. Hmm. Seems they were pretty concerned about my health. Since eating had become a part-time occupation I guess I had lost a bit of weight. Not that I could spare any. I was about 6'1" and weighed 145 pounds. My cheeks were sunken and my ribs were starting to show through. Mom and Dad figured the only way to get me healthy again would be to make a deal to get me to move back in with them. They promised to stay off my back if I would come home, get a job and go back to school at Northern Virginia Community College in the Fall. Now that I knew I had something nice waiting for me over in Vienna, it wasn't hard to accept.
I went back to Norfolk with a lot of confidence. I'd served my time in the vampire brigade as a graveyard shift worker and I was ready to go back into the sunlight. Mary tried to guilt me into apologizing, feeling bad, whatever. All I could picture while she talked was Lynn lying naked on a bed and beckoning to me. "Hm? What? Oh, yeah, I'm really sorry." Mary had been sleeping with one of my co-workers for a couple of weeks and I knew there had been other guys even while we "dated". So it was a less than heartbreaking departure for both of us. It had been about control for her and now I was moving on. It was the coldest relationship I've ever known.
Home,Redux
So started a two year period where I worked a lot of interesting, though not career-making jobs and went to school. I finally studied my passion: music. I took lots of great classes and got on the Dean's List. Dad looked over my report card.
"Let's see, Music Appreciation, Piano, Vocal 101, Guitar, History..."B". Good, you did well in a real class, too."
Love ya, Pops.
After just a few months of this I was going nuts again. Then I got a call from an old friend from Norfolk who was moving to the area and needed a roommate to share expenses. I jumped at the chance and moved out for good. It wasn't long before she developed health problems and had to move back, though she paid her half of the rent until summer.
Lynn and I were going at it like ferrets. Any time and anywhere. That was great while it lasted but we soon found out we had almost nothing in common except sex. Hard to believe, but we actually just burned out. The parting was amicable, though it didn't take long for me to start missing my regular nookie. But that ship had sailed...
My jobs were all fun, too, though I was somewhat capricious about my schedule. I was always drawn to hanging out with friends instead of working when the spirit moved me. When I was at work I did the job well, so I got away with this crap a lot. Jobs summary:
Shakey's Pizza
I was a pie maker, then bartender, then House Musician. Making the pies was easy work, though I had to remember not to knosh on the ingredients, as people watched us make the pies through big picture windows. Bartending was a lot more fun. We only served beer and soft drinks but we were more in touch with the customers, and that's what I liked best. We had a cool piano player named Jay who could not only play any song ever written, he could transpose tunes we brought in for "amateur night". Think a 70's version of American Idol. I sang "Joy to the World" by Three Dog Night and "Feelings" by Morris Albert. I cringe a little every time I think about that song, but it got me performing up in front of people. When Jay moved on I was a natural fit for House Musician. I sang for four
hours every Friday and Saturday night, taking a ten minute break each hour. I sang every song I could get my hands on, from Led Zepp's "The Battle of Evermore" to "You Don't Mess Around with Jim", sprinkling in my own songs from time to time. Then there was my sign off, "Margarittaville". Sounds a little sad, but maybe it had been a long night. It was a popular meeting place for all sorts of acquaintances, and I met some honest-to-goodness groupies! A good time had by all.Handleman Company
Once upon a time there were these things called "records and tapes". That's how music was recorded and brought to the masses. I worked in a vast warehouse that distributed the big, clunky things to stores and then took back the ones that didn't sell. Round and around they went. My work day:
Get there - get stoned
Work
Break - get stoned
Work
Lunch - Eat - get stoned
Work
Break - catch a buzz
Go Home get stoned
I counted the getting stoned part as one benefit. The other was all the "free" music we got. I once walked out the door with no less than 12 cassette tapes hidden in my clothes. One day my buddy (Name deleted by Request) and I decided to get a really great gift for our friend (also deleted). We asked him to write down every LP he wished he had in his collection. Then we filled up a box with those plus a dozen or so extra for a total of 75 records. Blew his mind!
Woolworth's
I started in the Sporting Goods Department which was a total bore. It was so slow that some nights I set up a small range behind the counter and shot target practice with the .177 caliber air pistols. When the old lady in the Music Department retired I begged for the job. It was just as slow but I got to listen to all the albums I wanted to hour after hour. Cool thing about Woolworth's: They paid us in cash! On payday we lined up at a pay window and they handed each employee a manila envelope with all our deductions handwritten on the outside and our pay in cash inside. Who needs a bank account?
Variety Records
I got to work in a real record store! With snotty music know-it-alls who thought my admiration for Todd Rundgren and Neil Young was quaint, to say the least. I fell in love with a girl that worked there but she was involved with another guy and he caught us holding hands as we walked around the Tysons Corners Mall. So that was over right quick. Coolest moments: 1) I met Walter Mondale's wife and daughter and 2) Met Liberace. Hey, a celebrity is a celebrity...Everyone thought the General Manager was a complete dickhead, and when I met him I shook his hand and then dramatically wiped my hand off on my shirt. I was fired three days later. Go figure.
First Foto
Back to the photofinishing darkroom. I operated film processing machines and drove deliveries into Washington, DC. The business did one thing: Within mere minutes of their birth, babies in our contracted hospitals were wheeled under an overhead camera and had their portraits snapped. Anyone who's seen a newborn knows the expression "a face only a mother could love". Then we would sell package deals like the ones you get in school. The whole staff of package assemblers were black girls from the 'hood who sold me dope when I needed it. Thanks!
Budget Rent-a-Car
Way out by Dulles Airport, but not in the airport. Pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Same thing day in and day out: Customers get cars, customers turn in cars. But a few things made for an interesting time there.
One day during the big OPEC "gas crisis" we got a visitor, one Joe Theisman of the Washington Redskins. Redskin Park was just down the road and we were the only gas station open. You'd think a guy like that wouldn't have time for a bunch of starry-eyes football fans, but when one of the service guys asked him a question about last week's game he thought a bit and then sat down and talked about it. He stayed for nearly an hour, gabbing with us and treating us like "real folks". We all became fans for life.
One Sunday night we were getting ready to close up shop, a little before midnight. I was in the back room making copies of our daily car inventory report when I heard the front door burst open and a loud voice shout: "This is a stickup, man! Give us your money!" Hilarious! It sounded just like one of the guys that worked in the garage. "What are you guys doing here so late?" I said from the back room. Immediately, a short black man with a nylon stocking over his head walked into the room carrying a large kitchen knife. "Get out here!" he yelled. Yikes! I put my hands up and went into the front room. As I turned the corner I saw the other guy, also a black man with a stocking on his head, pointing a gun at my face. I took one look at the gun and my brain knew two things: 1) It was a replica, not a real gun and 2) Shut the fuck up. I had sold pistols just like it at Woolworth's. It was an 1850 Colt revolver made of aluminum and had a bead front sight. Problem was, if this guy had drilled it out to fit real bullets it would have fired, maybe, blowing off his hand and perhaps putting a hole in my head. And the kitchen knife that was pressed into my back was real. I was pressed up against the wall just under the Budget Rent-a-Car sign. I was thinking to myself "This wouldn't be a good recruitment poster for the company." The other
rental clerk shoveled everything out of the safe into a bag and the guys took off. They had smashed the front phone but the back one still worked. I called the cops and they were there in 5 minutes, roaring into the lot and jumping out with guns drawn, too late. We found out later that the robbers had been stopped for a traffic violation and released when they saw there were three people, not two, in the car. I carried a small scar on my back where the knife cut me, but it's faded with time.Travellin' Jones
My life was becoming routine and I didn't feel like there was any future in what I was doing. Jobs were always fun to start and then got boring. I wasn't making any progress musically and I never did the dating scene because I was so intensely shy. Friends weren't always there because they were getting on with their lives while I sat in my apartment alone, listening to the jerks upstairs screwing every girl they brought home and partying until dawn. I went a little stir crazy, especially when the weather got so bad that winter that my damn car door wouldn't even latch shut. I needed a change. And then that Spring, along came cousins Joe and Bob to offer a solution. One that would change my life forever.
Saturn Returns at 28: Goin' to California
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