Whoa! Didja get the numbers off that truck?!?

2001-08-25 - 8:46 p.m.

I�m inspired

I read Uncle Bob�s account of his Flag Suit. I remember 1976, Uncle Bob. But I didn�t have a denim flag suit.

Anyway, back to my inspiration. He told a story from his past, so I think I will too. It�s not from 1976 it�s from 1981.

My first ex-wife

That�s right people, for the record I�ve been married twice. Some say that the first one doesn�t count because it didn�t last very long. But it was such a wild and enthusiastically bizarre time in my life that yes indeed it counts. It sure counts a lot because I learned some deep down valuable lessons from it. It didn�t stop me from repeating those same mistakes again though. Which one of you has learned from his/her mistakes the first time? Hmmmm? Hands up now. That�s what I thought.

I graduated from tech school in March of 1979 and moved to Michigan, right on the lake. It was a dream come true to live on the lake. I saw fog roll in like smoke there, I�ve never seen that anywhere else. I was 24 years old and very very single.

I was so single because I didn�t know a soul. For the first few months I was locked in isolation, emotional and physical. They�d just had a God Awful Snowstorm that year and everything was covered in snow and ice. I read a lot of books that spring. I did start to meet people, especially girls. I was a single guy. Bring �em on. My first date in MI was a fricking disaster. You couldn�t find two people more dissimilar on the face of the planet. We toughed it out though, through dinner, through �The China Syndrome� and then to her house. I took the long way getting her back home. She told me that after I got her there.

I�m new in town, you bitch. Have a nice life.

Well I eventually got laid. More than once. Broke up with her and dated some more.

Fast forward to Halloween 1981. I was at the Lud-man�s party, dressed like a nerd. No really, that was my costume. I had a thrift shop suit, a half tube of VO5 in my hair and dark framed glasses on with the lenses pushed out. I probably had them taped up too, I don�t remember. That�s when I saw her.

X1. (That�s the code name people) Oh what the hell, her name was Deborah. Not Debbie� never Debbie, hell no. Deborah. Who knows where she is these days and if she stumbles upon this web page� well she�s famous now.

I don�t remember what Deborah was wearing but I do remember wanting to know what was underneath it. She had a fine set of wonderful tits. I guess that was her calling card. They were 38D. I found that out later. We struck up a conversation and I think I impressed her with my charm and wit. I charmed her enough to get into her apartment and slept with her that night.

We spent the next day together too. And many many days after that. She was very demanding. I took it as possessiveness and I liked it. It was more on the control freak side of possessiveness, but I was too young to see that. My youth, inexperience and general naivety also inspired me to do the next stupid thing, which was to move in with her. Hey we�ve known each other for a month, what�s not to like? We rented a pretty little two bedroom house right on the river, for way too much money.

She had a three year old son too, from her first marriage, one half of a set of twins. His brother died at less than one year old. Baggage? We got Samsonite, a matching five piece set here. Kevin was a good kid, with a very good father who wrote support checks and saw him every other weekend.

I forgot to tell you that on one of the trips helping her move her stuff into this rented house, I proposed marriage to her. She said yes. Isn�t that romantic? I didn�t have an engagement ring. I�d known her for three months. We�re grown ups. Grown ups get married.

The wedding plans begin. It�s kind of like starting a fire on dry timber because it starts to spread and you lose control of it. It became her �project.� She was going to wear the wedding dress that her mom wore. I don�t know why they didn�t recycle it for her first wedding. They had to alter it a bit; Deborah was blessed with a larger balcony than what her mother had. The wedding was going to be held in a historical old church that had been moved to a new location; it was in sort of a preservation park. More recycling. It was non-denominational too, because we were non-denominational folks. Her parents were strong dairy farming folk. Dairy farmers don�t get out much. Cows don�t take vacations.

The blessed event approacheth. July 13, 1981. It rained like hell on that day. I don�t remember if that�s a good sign or a bad one. It sure got humid. My parents and two of my sisters and my older brother showed up for this wedding. Knowing what I know now, I would have told them not to waste the air fare. The ceremony came and went. The pictures were taken. The reception in the basement took place.

No booze. THAT�s when I knew it wasn�t my wedding. And no booze means everyone leaves after about an hour. It�s about three in the afternoon and I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me. Where did everybody go?!?

So we gather up our wedding gift cash, leave the rest of the gifts with Mr. and Mrs. Dairy Farmer and head off to our honeymoon. We planned on seeing Greenfield Village in Detroit, and then points north to Spring Lake. As we�re driving away, I start to feel a strong and profound sense of depression setting in. Is this all there is?

We got to the Detroit area near sundown. I don�t know if you�ve ever been there but we ended up in Inkster. Inkster is not a place you go to, it�s a place you wish you�d left. But there we are, at a Howard Johnson�s motel room. The room d�cor was probably in bad taste even when it was installed in the seventies. People probably went there to get the inspiration to commit suicide, it looked that bad.

Honeymooners have sex, don�t they? I wanted some, and she gave it up, y�all. It was probably akin to the same tradition that kisses are distributed at New Years Eve. It certainly had that same dispossessed feel to it. Awful, in a word. She cried afterwards.

What a tremendous gift. I felt truly blessed. What a pantload.

Read on, people...

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