Dismissal

       Nothing pisses me off more than when someone wants to pull the string on my “Speak and Say”, and then refuses to listen when I go on to tell them what sound a cow makes. Rejection, in general, is something that is easy to handle but when people dismiss me altogether I really burn up. Paul Jensen used to say that the best thing that happened to him was when his hair fell out and his gut distended. It wasn’t until then that people started to listen to what he had to offer in the residential construction industry. Myself, I am not waiting for that. For one thing, my hair will thin only lightly and my stomach will always remain trim. All of the Lindner men, (my mothers side of the family), had a youthful appearance and never became overweight. They also died before their mothers. I suppose, with all of the skills and mindset that I am hated for, I will be hated for that too but that’s okay because there are too many things that I dabble in to let it really get to me. And I fear that I too will be dead before my mother, which is why I am frantically working on things I feel I need to do before that happens. Working on my mothers house, in Conklin, was not on the list.

Conklin is a small town just a few miles south of the Muskegon County line. My mother purchased a run down house on the dead end of Miller Street as part of one of her retirement investments. The home was in a shambles but then again, so was the rest of the town. A town it barely was, only kept alive by the fifty or so residents whom lived there. Today, in the whole of Chester Township’s 65 square miles there are about 2300 people. It has a very small U.S. Post Office, one small grocery store that rents videos and sells alcohol with the exception of Sundays when a person has to go five miles north to Ravenna- just outside of Ottawa County. There was an old train route that was converted to the Musk-Ottawa Trail, an asphalt pathway for bicycles and family strolls.

The town of Conklin got it’s start as a Railroad stop for the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad. A United States Post Office was opened in June of 1887. It was, and may still be, kept alive by an agricultural Co-Op, where local farmers sell and purchase grain and other livestock supplies, as they need them. An Irish Pub sits across the street that had, and may still have, authentic Celtic music Jams where people came on Saturdays from miles around. Fenian’s Irish Pub was quite well known and may have been the chief reason the town hadn’t completely dried up- other than the Co-Op. Many of the buildings that held businesses are in such terrible states that they cannot be rehabilitated for anything other than demolition and repurposing of the lots they occupy. It may be a very long time before anyone takes an interest in any of the properties there for any reason at all.

The project, with respect to myself, began while Sandy and I were still together, and ended abruptly because of Sandy. Or rather because of Sandy’s discovery of some very personal items which were none of her concern, although she made them her concern. This concern of hers was the final beginning to the end of her and I- a bit of a blessing in disguise though I didn’t realize it at the time.

After taking up residence again with Danny, I continued to try helping finish the project. That is up until I became involved with Julie, which happened to be a three-year distraction to my life’s path. Or was it?

It became that I resided there on the property while helping my mother complete the renovations to the home, and the fact that I had no other place to go. My long deceased Uncle William Russo and Aunt Bernice, (Uncle Bill and Aunt Bern), had an old camper van that my mother had acquired somehow. This was parked behind the house, and was where I slept with my dog Dusty.

The project went on for quite some time. It had started with her now ex-boyfriend Stan spearheading the work. No matter what I did on this project I felt my efforts were useless. Stan had pumped so much spray-in foam insulation that the house trapped the moisture that seeped out of the ground. The perimeter of the property was marked by a ditch on three sides revealing the water table at about three feet down. The seepage kept the sump pump running almost non-stop and the moisture built up continually on all of the windows in the house. This made it so that every piece of wood fabricated to finish the windows maintained to be wet which ruined my woodwork efforts and caused for a great deal of anxiety and frustration for myself that didn’t help my mental health at all.

My mother was from the old way of things. Everything that was removed during the demolition process was kept and earmarked for re-use no matter how much work was involved in doing so. That is, everything except for the addition that joined the garage to the house. This was all new construction that was done by a bunch of drunks other than me. They made a drinking spree out of the project- spending the money my mother paid them at the Conklin grocery store on beer, just as fast as they could drink it. The fact that I was insulted over her paying them real money instead of me was grating, especially since every time I tried to work on this particular part of the house there was an obstacle because of them and the piss poor work they had done. To begin with, the walls were all set on top of a layer of fiberglass insulation instead of sill sealer, and there was not one single piece of flashing anywhere, so every time it rained in the least the water came inside of the house. My tongue proved to be tough since I bit it quite often throughout my experience there but I did as my mother wished and used every single thing from the rubbish heap that I could make work, scraping glue from boards and re-milling it into trim material, cutting up the old doors to extract material from them, and practically re-engineering each and every situation along the way. What a nightmare. From the road the house was beautiful. The smoothest part of the project was when she and I stomped the ceiling with crow’s foot texture. As for paint, well, she didn’t waste money on primer. We used a two-coat roller head. The flooring in the kitchen was a snap-together scratch resistant floating floor system. The Kitchen cabinets were prefabricated and went together fairly well. The countertop was a bit of a different story altogether. We were back to “mission highly improbable.” She had a bunch of oak trim she acquired from somewhere- trim that was designed for library panels and chair rail details. It ended up being that I had to assemble two pieces stacked and offset to make the width work, which ended up looking really nice but was a huge amount of extra work. The laminate for the countertop was pretty nice. I can’t imagine what she would have had me do if she hadn’t actually purchased the stuff to be installed like I was accustomed to. The only router bit I had was a forty-five, which is about how many miles worth of cutting I made it do to detail the place where it needed dressing up. That was the kitchen, the bathroom, the window and door trim, the entire staircase system- the whole damn house was a forty-five degree bevel finish. Uniform throughout- continuity is about the only thing the place had, which matched the corner tub and matching riser that I had built for it.

The sump pump crock in the basement corner was a convenient place for my mother’s boyfriend to urinate, since the toilet upstairs was too far to walk when drunk. He had been pissing there for who knows how long.

The pump seemed to run non-stop due to the ground water seeping in from around the footing, and had become in need of replacement. Frantically, I worked to remove and replace the pump before my work area inside the crock became filled. My utility knife had a fresh edge, dressed with the sharpening stone I kept in my bag along with antiquated items- like a rasp, that I was routinely criticized for by other persons I tried to work for. It saved me quite a bit of time and money to drag it across the stone a few strokes. In my haste, and without much needed assistance, I lost control of the knife, slipping from the mass of electrical tape that Stan had used to wire it in, and cutting deep into my left thumb. Quickly, I squeezed the flesh together in an attempt to stop the blood flow as I dashed over to the utility sink to clean the wound. Both, my mother and her boyfriend were there but as soon as I said that I had cut myself they just ducked out. It was one of those situations where you needed an extra pair of hands. Flabbergasted, what could I do? What could I say? They were gone out the door so fast that they didn’t have a chance to hear a single syllable. It was as if I had lit a stick of dynamite. Blood kept gushing, and all I could think about was the bacterial infection that I could lose my thumb over. The cut was held together with my fingers as though I had taken over pinching the penny. Had I not been used to doing everything alone I might have ran across the street to have the neighbor help me. The struggle of washing, drying, and preparing the wound with a triple antibiotic ointment was a real trick. And struggle, to say the least, is what I did. A roll of duct-tape and some paper towels near the sink area was all I had to work with, so that’s what I used to bandage my hand with. From that day on it was difficult to work with the wound- not to mention the wound in my mind that I was once again abandoned in a serious time of need. A carpenter cannot work without a thumb, and I was already too handicapped as it was.

By the time my thumb was completely healed I was burnt out on the project. The bathroom still needed grout for the tile. The faucet needed reinventing in order to install it on the sink, and the place needed carpeting throughout, as well as the various inspections for an occupancy permit. The building inspector never did show up to this day, no matter how many times my mother called him. I think he eventually just sent her the permit.

Now, it’s June of 2008 and I finally received word that I won my disability claim. My sister, her husband, and their five children had taken up occupancy in the house. She put the grout in the bathroom but they never did put in carpeting. My mother figured it wouldn’t need to be replaced if it was never there to begin with. And with several kids and a slew of animals the carpet becoming ruined was inevitable. For all the things in this project that went on that didn’t make any kind of sense, holding off on the carpet installation was the one thing that actually did. Several animals and children could destroy carpet in no time, no matter how hard a person worked to keep it clean. My mother was always over thinking and maybe that’s where I get it from but I only have half of a brain. Is it possible to over think with half of a brain? I’ll have to try and think about that one. Maybe that was a family trait because when my first grandchild was born he only had one complete brain mass- no split hemisphere’s, and died forty five minutes after his birth.

The first time I ever played and sang was the twentieth of July at about 12:23 in the afternoon. Grandma had just passed but I had no idea. Something made me set up my camera and record a playing session. There was no particular song but something I just played on this old nylon that my mom found broken and in the trash.  After rebuilding it I really started to fall in love with the feel and the sound of it- teaching myself to do some finger picking. Two days later they tracked me down to tell me Grandma had passed away. The song, titled, “Life is passing by” is more or less about my life being ripped apart from every angle. There is nothing anyone can do to hurt me now.

My First Kiss-updated

We moved to Hudsonville Michigan when I was about nine years old. My stepfather, which I did not know that until I was around fourteen, would soon make enemies of the general community by hitting golfballs in the school yard, across the street from the duplex we lived in, on Sundays. Since Hudsonville was a zealously religious community, they frowned on everything but church and family gatherings on Sundays. It wasn't apparent to me at the time but now I see how he failed to research the community before moving there to regain employment, especially since I have done the same- minus the golf balls.

While attending, Hudsonville elementary, I was fitted with a musical instrument for my body type- the trombone. This really began my music education and was much more intense than playing the recorder- and more interesting as well. I felt like I was on the way to chasing down my dreams of being a musician, as well as working towards getting the attention from my immediate family, that I was so starved for all of my life thus far.

Had I known it would be a bigger part of my extended reality, I don't think I would have just wished it to gain positive attention from my parents.

I had a wish to be famous but it was only to get the attention of just one person in the whole world- my mother.

Sooner or later we found a piece of property with a small cement block shack and some outbuildings on it in Marne Michigan. We began going there on the weekends to fix the place up enough to live in. It was the fall of my tenth birthday when we moved in. I was a gangly boy with, unknown to me, visible emotional wounds- and though caused by severe familial trauma and just as noticeable a bed-wetter. 

It was here that I began writing, mostly because I was a deep thinker- brooding constantly while nursing my various mental contusions. I did so because of a comment a teacher had made a couple years prior that stuck in my head- "creative writing".

She said this because of some of the trouble I had gotten into over confusion about a blown up picture of the moon that my dad had- telling the kid in my class that he went to the moon. One kid asked his name, I said, "Musselman". The kid scratched his head, remembered "Armstrong", and the relationship was accepted as substantial. I still laugh at that, and how kids digest things. We were all confused- especially me. Now even more so than ever.

Sooner or later we had added on to the place, which gave me my education in the building trades and processes. If I was to never become a famous musician, I would become a great laborer, gaining my mothers attention in that regard. Having no toys, the woods became my shelter and my mother gets the credit because when I was bored she would tell me to go out in the woods and gather up a leaf from every different type of tree and find out what it is.
It was while doing this that I became best friends with my real mother- Mother Nature. It was while with her that I felt safe and secure. Everything that I needed was right there with her- water, air, food, the birds and animals and their beautiful voices. They sang and spoke to me when I listened, and when I was not listening because of my tears and grievances. 

I think my mother should at least get the credit for giving me the three greatest gifts that she never really intended to give me but for any other reason but to just have me out of her hair- music and nature and the mother that I found there.

Sooner or later, my "father" would quit his job and take up Golf full-time, giving lessons and shagging ball on a range that we rented from Elkterra Country Club. Mostly it was just a convenient way to chase skirts, which he did as a side hobby. And although we made a lot of money from the driving range, we were still without for various reasons related to skirts and golf. And, yes, he did write a book but mostly it was an ego trip, I think. It fell short of success because of the lack of financial dedication, or a better word- and more operable, would be COMMITMENT.

I was twelve or thirteen when I began working the driving range, selling and shagging golf balls to be hit on the range by people warming up for their leagues or what-have-you. It wouldn't be long before someone would notice the long hours I spent working there while "dad" was out giving lessons or playing golf... or actually what it was was gambling on the course. But he had a dream and I was a believer- or captured supporter we'll call it. 

Anyway, people would call child protective authorities and have him cited for child labor laws. He would talk his way out of it and everything was fine but they noticed just the same and there may be something of it on file somewhere. I am betting that it is nowhere in MY police record though.

Well, he would have group lessons and as many as twenty people in a group at times. One of the people in the group, come to find out, was my Aunt Cheryl- my mother's brother wife.

My mother's brother happened to be my favorite uncle- Uncle Gary. Well, had I know that Uncle Gary would soon lose his sentiments for me over it, eventually making it known that he blamed me, I might not have felt so bad when I learned the truth.

And for a minute, my mother paid attention to me but it was only out of her grief over finding out she was being cheated on after thirteen years of marriage. And had he not left me abandoned with no way to go home, he would not have been caught till who knows how much later than when he did. And that was only because I had someone take me to his hotel room where he was working on writing his book.

Finding a woman's bag and belonging there, I left the hotel very afraid. Had he found me there, I don't know what he would have done. I might have been successfully killed that time- he would have tried harder. 

During one of my parent's fights around that time, whether before he was caught or after, he would make a comment about being my father for so many years. Well, me being a thinking kind of fool, I quickly did the math in my head- like when I exclaimed my true age at the drive in when he was trying to get a discount to get in. It was then that it dawned on me that he was not my real father at all. Now I was confused, relieved, angry, and befuddled. Who was my father, if not him? And why wasn't he ever there for me?

It wasn't long before he left. And I was soon to discover that the source of my psychological disturbances had gone with him as well. No longer would I have to feel the hood of the car. No longer would I fear being at the table for dinner. No longer would I have to fear having been at a friend's house when he came home from work. No longer would I find peace by going to or staying at school. No longer would I have my pants yanked from me to see if I had hit puberty yet or held down and forced to kiss my sister. No longer would the shower door get ripped opened while I was in it. No longer would I be told that I had been peeing in the shower because there was condensation on the ceiling. No longer would I be baited with semen like substances like hair conditioner, dripped on the toilet, or by porn being left out, only to be spied on through the cracks in the walls or door. And it wouldn't be long before I no longer wet my bed. My healing began when he was no longer there to constantly pick at my scabs to keep my wounds festering.

My dreams were of having my own wife and raising kids that didn't fear my coming home. But because of my visible mental wounds, I would never have a high school sweetheart to help put all of that into motion.

Having never been loved, or not ever knowing what love was, I was truly handicapped in the worst way possible. And soon, I would become handicapped even further by alcohol, confusing it's sweet kisses for the affection I so desperately searched for.

Thanks for reading my stories. I sincerely hope that you find value in what I am trying to do.
I am always watching- leave comments below.
Thanks-Zach 4-12-17

Love and Seasons

Summer keeps a place in my heart but I cannot Love Summer without Spring. And I cannot Love Spring without Appreciating the Winter. And Fall.... Fall is Lovemaking and intercourse- making Love to them all... A pregnancy is Winter, and a new birth is the Spring. Summer is foreplay. And Fall drips it's beautiful juices. And I cannot help but to savor every drop.

I said that. ZSP

Escaping The Despondent Sea is Available on Amazon and thru Goodreads.com

Zachery Scott Polk

updated 4-6-2017

Crozier Country

Water made its signature sound as it splattered unseen beneath the house. Siena was showering in the master bathroom since her bathtub had a crack in it. The garden needed tending, which placed me close in proximity of the shower. The sound was recognized but disbelieving, I told myself it was a loud drainpipe. 

Several days passed until I got up the nerve to do what my conscience said, and that was “get under the house and inspect it.” The year started off quick for me since I was released from prison one week into April 2012, beginning with our new Akita having gotten into it with a Porcupine.  One hundred and thirty quills later and six hundred dollars for the poorer, I found myself behind the eight ball of life. Now, six and a half months later, I am climbing down under the house. This was not something I looked forward to doing. I had already avoided going down for the two years we have lived here, especially after discovering this year that we were infested with Black Widow spiders. The first one I found was in the woodpile. 
There was a tree on the edge of the driveway that needed some trimming up, dead trunks etc… I cut it up with my chainsaw and had it in a pile with all the other tree messes from a recent storm. It was a good sized pile of wood, about two face cords. Jenny wanted to chop wood while I was entering a recent hand written manuscript into the computer. After about a half hour I began to feel guilty because I had just “sat around” for a year in the joint while Jen was left to fend for herself out in the forest; recently transplanted from Lansing with no prior life outside of the city.  
I went out and started throwing the cut wood closer to where it was to be stacked while explaining that I couldn’t let her work so hard by herself. I had her move to stacking, and started chopping. Placing a second piece on the chopping block, I noticed a glossy black spider. On it’s back were two red dots. 
“Jen, I said. “You know, I have never seen one before but I am willing to bet that this is a Black widow. My father always told us about them being in the log piles and dead limbs.” She ran into the house and jumped on the internet. She hollers back a few seconds later and say’s, “That’s what it is.” I told her to get Siena’s bug box to put it in. 
Days went by as I studied its habits and traits. My computer took me to files about them from many different sources. I learned to recognize their web and where to concentrate my search in the yard. Twenty-two Female Black Widows, and two males later I am even more afraid of going under the house. These spiders were all found within twenty yards of the front door. 
Finally one day I just say “fuck it” and slide the couch away from the trapdoor. I open the door see the ladder and climb down. Everything is nice and dry like it’s supposed to be. The concrete block foundation wall and footings look great. The framing looks nice and cleanly put together. It’s a nice addition job to a trailer. One problem is I can’t access the other side because there is no entry made to be able to. There is a spot where the blocks are stepped down in one place, a couple missing blocks, allowing me to be able to see a little bit. The other side is a concrete slab with a about a foot and an half to two feet of space between it and the underside of the trailer. It just depends if you are between the main beams or if there is blanket insulation hanging. The trap door side is more of a full basement depth, earth exposed, and a dirt floor. It is suprising how free it is of cobwebs and insects. 
Now I go around the house to the crawl space access under the back door. Removing the steel door panel, the first thing I see is a spider web and a spider. It is a male Black widow. “Dammit,” I yell. Shining the flashlight back toward the shower, I see water puddeling, trailing from the shower drain. There is a piece if grey sheet metal hanging from one side where it is nailed to a joist. There is black woven fiber fastened to the underneath, covering the insulation. It is sagging in the middle as if being weighted down with something heavy. The water main coming into the house is sticking up through the cement floor within reach of the access panel. It has insulation taped around and a blue electric heat-tape to keep it from freezing. I wonder if it works. The water heater is above it, sealed in the walls of the laundry room. This place was just remodeled while I was in prison after a pipe had broke and sprayed water for weeks unnoticed by Jenny, causing the subflooring to lose integrity.
 The people who remodeled it were hacks, low-balling the bid and then going back and raising the price as they went along on the job. I went inside the house to look down the drain to see if I could see anything, and there it was… the cement floor. “Unbelievable!” I yell. There is a small piece of the joist that falls in-line with the drainpipe, making for it to need to be carved back to fit. They never hooked the drain up to the shower when they installed it.  

A few more days go by while I stew over the situation, me, having a habit of blasting away at people, and not wanting to mishandle the opportunity of working the contractor over because of it and everything else he did fraudulently on this house. 
Finally I decide to go in. The thought of sliding underneath the house with the spiders and sewage does not settle well in my stomach so I put together a suit consisting of an expensive pair of fishing waders, a hooded rain/windbreaker, and a pair of safety glasses. Checking to see if my flashlight is good, I head for the panel. The spider at the door is nowhere to be seen. Diving in through the opening, I keep making the phone in my pocket come on, so I lay it underneath the deck between the rain lines from the planks above. Walking with my elbows and forearms, I drag myself under the house. There is even more standing gray water than ever before. I grit my teeth in spite. The dangling sheet metal becomes reachable and I turn to look up. The wood joist is about three inches wide and the drain rests a quarter of an inch over onto it, keeping it wet. I roll and maneuver my body to get a different perspective.  The black belly liner is all ripped up around the drain area and the insulation is all removed under the shower. My hand does not reach onto any pipe that it could have been hooked to, thinking maybe they just forgot to glue the pvc together but then again there are no parts lying on the floor either. I conclude that it was never hooked up. Looking around I see the best place for me to tie a drain in is about ten feet away. This is going to make for two cuts in the main line, a cut on the pipe to tie it in, one cut on a drain stub, and a trap. Plus a street Y: six inch with a 2 and one quarter fitting. Already sliding in sludge, I inspect the rest of the area while rolling and crawling/crawling and rolling. The heat is leaking out in several places. They never put the material back as it should be when they did the work. So, now I have two bathrooms and three bathing units. The bathtub/shower in the main bathroom has a hole in the bottom. The shower in the master bath is draining under the house, which now is linked to Jenny’s mysterious coughing when she lays down in our room. And then there is a garden style tub in the master but you have to use all the hot water to fill it AND be careful not to let it get up on the tub face because they never finished it off with a backsplash or caulked it in any way. They never caulked the kitchen countertops in either. There is a big gap all around the top of the splash and the seams are delaminating on the surface. 
A couple days later my computer kicks out a bunch of information on the contractor. I see a bunch of places where I can rate his business. Having a plan of tricking him into coming out for an estimate on the siding, I call and leave a message at his office. He calls me back a day later but I let it go to voicemail.  I let him run with the line a couple more times. Still, have yet to call him back. The plan is to draw him in closer and then lift the sheet off of the project. Then I’ll give him an option of doing the work himself or paying me to do it. Either way I plan to execute a smear campaign to slow him down on the internet.  
A plumber called me back and I described in detail, what the job incurred for a price accordingly. Mike said it would be three hundred and fifty dollars just to plumb in the shower drain. That’s about what I figured it would cost. I had already rehabbed the front entrance floor, 125.00, and painted the garage doors- 250. Yesterday I finished applying asphalt roof patch over everything that looked like it leaks- 250. This alone was a day and a half. The subfloor in the main bath has to be removed and replaced due to the decay around the toilet and tub. That is going to require taking the shower/tub enclosure out along with the sink base and toilet, which pretty much guts the room completely. I already have the carpet and pad pulled out but stopped when I realized I would need a saw-zall. 

Actually, I needed the saw-zall for the front porch too but when I realized I could use the chainsaw I got it finished. The chainsaw isn’t a good option for the bathroom due to it being so far inside the house. The front entrance was practically outside. Two-stroke oil smell would hang in the house forever if I use that. SO, here I sit at a halt. 
In the meantime my gal, Jenny, is driving one hundred and eighty miles a day to work and back, which is roughly four hours, which means we have to find something closer. My stomach aches when I think of what it would cost to have the tranny rebuilt or something. Subaru Outbacks are great cars but I get nervous when it’s being ran so hard. Winter encroaches and we have no back up vehicle but for my motorcycle.  Between rent and fuel expenses we have fifteen hundred dollars off of the top of our budget. She is required to take call on the weekends requiring her to be within twenty minutes of McLaren Hospital. It’s aggravating because we have to incur the added expense of driving round on her days off, looking at houses. 
Especially aggravating is that I am on parole, so if she gets pulled over for a taillight I go to jail on a parole violation. It makes me uneasy anytime we drive anywhere.  The top of the heap is that it takes away from our time alone together. The last house we looked at had a deed holder that would have really cut in on our time. Thankfully we didn’t do business with him. The last absurd requirement is that he wanted us to have the septic tank drained if we moved out. I have heard a lot of shit in my day but that was a first. 
It wasn’t so bad that he insisted on plowing the driveway at my expense for fear that anyone else will knock the posts down for the upper deck. I could deal with that. Then he said we could use the barn but only in pictures. There was an animal pen and a fenced in area. When I mentioned how we had been thinking about a couple pigs or a couple calves. He immediately jumped in saying he would go in half with me. 
The roof is a really low-pitched thing with many flat spots and transition lines. The snow has to be removed routinely but it’s a trick to use a shovel on the shingles, so he had to do that at our expense as well. 
The house has a wood furnace and there is a large stone chimney and hearth area that extends out into the room eight feet, beautiful to look at but there was no woodstove because he had taken it out… okay, we’ll get a stove for it. 
He would sell us our wood. There were two big bedrooms that each had a nice closet and great windows. There was no flooring installed yet and it wasn’t quite ready for paint. If I wanted to cut the hole in for the door etc… I could use those too. They were only part of the house. 
This guy, Crozier, went on and on rambling like a madman on speed. I could feel he was greasy but I just let him run with his sales pitch while he groped our arms and flirted with my gal. Oh, he was the nicest guy. 
I didn’t like him. He was a tyrant. Hundreds of acres of forested land on a hillside overlooking Deer Lake, and he wouldn’t get off an inch of it; just enough to hold the house … and a strip along the driveway twelve feet wide to the road one hundred fifty yards. Lake access came with the house if we decided we wanted to purchase it, access that’s deeded to three people. 
Come to find out this guy is in hot water with property taxes. He owns so much land and has so many homes. The one he is showing us needs to be his primary residence. His problem (out of the very many) is that he doesn’t want to rent the other house out to anyone because of the maple floors. So he has to sell it. 
He lead us to the bank where we withdrew one thousand dollars. Jen and I were discussing it the entire time. We both felt really weird about it and drove out of there to home immediately. 
He was so pissed off, having us so close to putting the cash in his mitts but we backed away. “I just want a little honesty,” he said a few times. Well, honestly, he was out of his mind. He told Jenny that if he saw our dog in the woods he would shoot it.
 While at the house with the maple floors he showed us his mounts. Big Whitetail Deer, some Boone and Crockett’s. One had a dropped tine, he pointed out to us. There were ten or twelve of them, all taken from these woods. I couldn’t find a place to shoot that he’d have allowed. Or I could shoot along the driveway or, to a spot up on the deck, down to a low area. Either way it would be a lot of running around. 
 As for the interior of the house, it was finished of in almost all areas, with a stained wood paneling. It was done board and batten style. He wanted 165,000 for the place. It looked like it was a bear to heat up, quite large with high ceilings in areas. “Seventy a cord,” he told me, “You find some place else to get wood, good luck.” I couldn’t cut any trees up around the area. This was all his, right down to the dead rabbit he threw in the weeds near the house. His “dog had killed it the day before”, he told us as I find it with my foot in the weeds. Sure enough, a rabbit. I picked it up and show it to him, asking “this rabbit?” He took it from me and threw it a little farther into the trees. 
“There’s a pen, I think they had goat’s, or, no. It was a pig, they had a pig. They had goats too but the pig stayed there."
Truth was that he was a pig entirely, robbing his "wife", a mail order bride, of her children that he had with her. I knew there was a problem when he explained having a mail order bride from Honduras. The fact that he could not find a wife in his own area was very telling. But then again, I can't find one either, so... yeah.

Out of the Ashes

Turns out that the girl that robbed me in the mangroves was busted in Marathon key at a motel within a half day of the incident. The cops had kicked the door in on the motel, finding her and a drug dealer with guns and drugs, landing her a prison sentence. My bunkmate, Moses, was at the location that night when I was robbed and arrested. He was smoking cocaine. He told me how he was there, saw my things in the mud, and was also arrested that night.  

My spades partner, Oneilio, was in for cocaine as well. He was actually a friend of Andy’s- more or less, supplying him with his cocaine. Oneilio explained how he had routinely delivered prostitutes and rocks to Andy. It all became quite clear that I was set up from the beginning as I had suspected but now I had proof and witnesses.

Andy had planned on working at getting Julie to bend his way, painting me in a bad light, in order to get his equipment back, and suckering Julie out of all the money he could get, while knowing she was in control of her mother’s estate. That is, if she wasn’t conspiring with him all along. Knowing that didn’t do a whole lot for my situation except to reaffirm my awareness related to what my drinking had done in conjunction with my needs, like the need to be wanted or be part of something.

It was overwhelming, my wanting to file charges against him but I was not with any way to do it, so I thought about it all the time, remembering how Andy’s mother had told Julie about Andy doing a year or so in a Florida Prison for being involved with a situation where they cut a guys stomach open to get the Heroine out that he was trafficking. It was odd that she would tell Julie this. Maybe she was involved in the scam too. Was that why she bought Andy the Jolly Roger flag for the boat? The whole thing was making me crazy.

Once again, I was released from jail. It was around noon when I left. It is easy to remember, only because I wanted to eat first and they wouldn’t serve me. My feet quickly took me to the area of activity where I thought I could find some assistance. Lots of people had told me of a church that would give you a bus ticket to get home if you were stranded but this proved to be untrue.

At one point, during my hike, I met a group of hippie kids from upstate that were hanging out for whatever festival was going on at the time. They were down here selling pot and mushrooms, planning to leave in the morning. I was given a pair of shoes and some mushrooms. Seeing no point in not eating them, I did. We wandered around as a group and I felt safe. They took me to where they had been staying, which happened to be the rooftop of an abandoned building. There was a ladder to get up with that they pulled up onto the roof to conceal their whereabouts.

We hung out and talked about our travels that day and into the evening. We drank a little bit and smoked a lot. They invited me to leave with them in the morning and I gladly accepted. Then they gave me more mushrooms. As we wandered around, finding cell phones and money that had been lost by people, the drugs took affect and it became very difficult to manage. Feeling out of sorts, I had to get somewhere to rest out of sight. We headed back to their camp on the rooftop. Somewhere along the way I became separated from them.

When I was able to think, I found myself being walked back to the room where I had spent the majority of my time, in the Monroe County Jail. It had been all of fourteen hours.

When I woke up from my coma, I found myself in the same bunk I had been in for the past three arrests. Toilet paper was wrapped all around me like I had been mummified. Moses and the guys were laughing at me when I broke out of the bunk. It was funny to them, that I was wasted when I came back, and that I had been so adamant about leaving but repeatedly failed after they had told me it was near impossible to leave this place.

The officer’s had given me the charge sheet when I came in but I wasn’t able to read it. Now, I see that it says I have been charged with trespassing. When I finally speak with my Public Defender, I explain to him that I want a trial.

My chance to go back was gone, just like Gilligan’s Island. 

The kids, I would learn, had made their way up to Miami. They were staying in a hotel when they met up with a grave situation. The girl that was traveling with them, “Rose”, had been killed by the slitting of her throat, one of the guys was dead of an overdose of Heroine, and another guy was beaten badly and left for dead. Prison sentences were handed out but probably not for the people who did the killing. Had I not become separated from them, I would have been right there with them- dead or going to prison that time. That’s where the kid they found alive in the room went.

Was it that I was spiritually guided from that or was it just a coincidence? It sure wasn’t feeling like I was being guided.

People I had known on the streets were being found dead in many strange places. One man, who claimed to be a Veteran of the Marines named, Sonny, was found dead near mile marker fifteen. His throat was slashed. He was lying in the ditch on the side of the road when a motorist found him. Another man was killed while he slept on the beach by a hammer blow to the head. People were being killed by methadone overdoses. All of these people were homeless people. Of course, no charges were ever filed.

Within a week or two they sent a Psychiatrist in to evaluate me because no one goes to trial with a trespassing charge. He interviews me, tells me to “Keep fighting champ”, and then leaves. Several continuances later, they tell me that because I am unfit and incompetent, that there would be no trial. Forty-five days after they brought me in I am sent to court where they give me time served. I was released on Valentines Day.

Chapter; fourth release

That very night, I went to the Safe Zone. When I awoke the next morning, a truck had arrived that was driven by an elderly man looking for people who wanted to go to work. Wiping the grease from my face, and grabbing my belongings, I ran to the vehicle. It seemed only one other person was interested. It didn’t seem peculiar at the time; that no one was really interested. And I didn’t care about anything but the question of work. After I got in the truck we headed for a marina, where a boat was being loaded with tools and supplies to transport us out to an island.

As we waited to leave, I was told that we were to be working on a home on Ballast Key, ten nautical miles west of Key West. Smiling and filled with a renewed hope for a change, I was able to finally enjoy the moments as we cruised out to Ballast Key.

On the way out, we were told that the job entailed storm damage to the home used by the servants and guests, one of two that were built on the island. The project was at the drywall repair stage since the work had already been done to the exterior.

The first night there, I slept under the stars in a hammock on the beach. It was beautiful to have the sounds of the surf, the warm air blowing, and the starlit sky for company. For some reason, I awoke from a dream at about two thirty in the morning. My eyes focused in on the stars, and I looked for meteors and shooters. That was when I saw the red streak shoot across the sky at a great distance. It went from south to north. As I attempted to understand what I had just seen, a blue streak shot across the sky from east to west, traveling from as far way as I could see to the farthest it could be seen traveling. This was perpendicular to the path of the red one. It was a very strange and confusing sight.

Later, I would inquire many places about it but received no comments of any sort. Why the coloration? Why did they intersect? Why did it seem like one was responding to the other? Was one or both meteor or comet? What was it that I saw? I want to know. 

We were going to be staying for several days, I found out, possibly a week or more. On the third day things got ugly. The guys I had come to work with turned into pirates, attacking me for my cigarette tobacco, taking my food, kicking me out of what they had going on and beating me up in the process. Now without food, I used the moon, lighting the waters up in the shallows, making it easy to find lobsters among the rocks for my supper. It seemed like a great idea to relocate my bedding area, moving to a new location to sleep at that night. It had to be somewhere they would not find me, for the fear that I would disappear permanently.

That night, while the property owner slept in his home, they had looted the property, throwing the rifles into the oceans surf that they found in the home. They raided food stores that were hidden, as well as vandalized the entire home, starting by slinging cooking oil all over the walls that we had just repaired, demonized by the liquor they had stolen.

The next day I asked them what happened, thinking that refugees had come ashore. They said it was a “power play”. That was a curious thing to say, and I am not sure what they meant but it seems like they were trying to extort money from the owner, David Wolkowsky. That’s when the guy I joined them with decided it would be best if we stuck together. It didn’t matter by then because we were loaded onto the boat and taken back to Key West within the next few hours. It was a silent and uncomfortable ride with evil but for the sounds of the boat cruising on the ocean.

When we arrived back at the marina, they asked me to join up with them in going up the Keys to another location to work. As I took down their phone number, I thought “Yeah, right”, while gathering my things. In another ten seconds I hit the bricks running. They probably had plans for me due to the fact that I had witnessed what they had done. This I was certain of.

Back on “Coquina Rock”, I searched for a place to hide like an animal. Finding a marina on the north side of the island, I met some street people who also resided in the area. They tell me that if I take five dollars to Dante’s Inferno, I can hang out there by the pool all day without any hassles from the Key West Police Department. They explained that I would be a paying customer, giving me the right to be there, which turned out to be true but that only lasts for as long as you can come up with the daily five bucks.

After the money that I had was gone, I began hiding my clothing that I had acquired from the thrift shop, underneath a low hanging palm tree, so I wouldn’t be seen carrying a bag. It was one of my only defenses to blend in.

As for the thrift shop, even if you have no money, you can still get what you need to have. 
The Salvation Army will gladly outfit you with whatever your needs are, taking down your social security number to submit for the accounting. If you ever need help, don’t hesitate to go to the thrift shop for help. No matter what help you may need, they will get you on the right track. And the best thing for you to do, if you ever find yourself down and out, is to stay away from anyone else on the street accept for the one person in the crowd that you can grow to confide in. Usually it’s the old man in the wheel chair that will be the most instrumental in recovering. Everyone else will keep you down and out, and don’t you forget it. This could prove to be life saving information if you ever find yourself on the street. 

The most potentially deadly situations will be found while searching for change, booze or a little dope. Keep to yourself and go without anything you think you need. All you need is air to breath, warmth, and a place to sleep. Anything else could get you killed- instantly or slowly but certain and definite.

Very quickly, I became acquainted with an old man in an electric wheel chair who was a Musician. He had a place that he stayed at behind a building that was condemned. There was an awning on the backside of it that was helping keep it concealed very well, along with trees, bushes, and fencing from the surrounding backyards. The awning kept the weather off of us pretty good, and it had a safe feeling about it. He said that it was the safest hide-away on the streets. Adding that he has used this particular spot for several years.

The first night I slept there with him, I had a dream about this humanoid demon. His chest had a cage door and behind it were my children. Their screams for me to release them were ear piercing. The head of this creature was extremely large and made of, what seemed like, Paper Mache. The head grew in size as I fought with this monster. Hacking at the head with a knife, I tore a large hole in it from the right temple to the chin on the opposite side. It laughed and said that I couldn’t destroy him, and that he was one hundred and forty eight years old. Terrorized by this nightmare and vision, I awoke, only to lay there the rest of the night wishing I could sleep again without the visions.

During the days, I hiked the local harbor where I would check in with boat Captains for work. There was a public head with a shower facility for the people who lived in the harbor on their various types of boats. If I stayed by it, I could manage to get inside before the door closed all the way, since being a person renting a slip or mooring ball is the only way to get a key to use it.

One day I had managed to acquire some money and went to a Tiki bar to sit and get a drink, while watching them feed the Tarpon from the docks with chicken scraps. The Tarpon were huge. Marveling at the sight of these Tarpon, I sipped my drink. That’s when I noticed a woman with a baby carriage walking along the dock in front of the Tiki bar. She had a sun hat and large sunglasses on, the air blowing her sundress around at her knees. It was Yoa, Sean’s new girlfriend, and an Icelander.

Yoa was the woman Sean had been seeing when he was thrown out of the apartment. She was from Iceland, here on a Visa to work as an Actress. She had become pregnant, which concerned Sean. He would often ask me about the situation but I just told him that it could be the best thing to ever happen to him if he let it be.

Yoa, of course, wanted to marry, becoming a U.S. resident but he shared his fear with me that she may have been using him. They had the baby just months before this, and were living together somewhere on the island. Routinely, I had been checking in with him at The Island Dogs bar when I was not in jail, only hoping for some news I could use.

Speaking her name got her to look my way. She was quick to join me at the table, where we talked for a while. It wasn’t easy to explain to her that I needed a friend and some guidance at finding a way home. It felt as though she may get the wrong impression, so I was careful in explaining my situation and the circumstances surrounding it.

There happened to be a place that was having a Grand Opening that night. Yoa mentioned that it was a new bar/restaurant that was having an Open Mike and outdoor dinner and drink special. Fifteen dollars got you a plate of food and all the beer you could drink. They were going to be there that night. Happily, I agreed to meet them there, with hope of getting some help with my dire needs from Sean.

Sean and Yoa showed up after I had been there for a few minutes. We got a table and were served our food and first round of drinks. Yoa snapped a photo of me that evening, and they brought me back to their pad, where I stayed for about two weeks.

During the time that they let me stay at their apartment, I managed to get a call back home. Calling Bob, practically begging him to help me get home, was a bit humiliating but I got over it. He agreed to help me, purchasing a bus ticket on the next bus leaving Key West for Grand Rapids. With the help of the last couple hundred dollars Bob had to work with, I would be leaving Key West within the next few days.

Before I left, Sean got a job working as a home stereo salesman for a well-known department store- Sears. We would sit on his porch when he got home in the evening, smoking cigars and talking about things that were important in life. Yoa didn’t really like it that Sean would be gone all day, then come home and sit outside until they went to bed. There isn’t a woman alive that would appreciate that but I think he was afraid of the strange new environment of being a father. Feeling it was my job to put him at ease, I did what I could to reinforce him about the situation. He was doing the best he could at the time.

Andy happened to drive through one day, stopping when he saw that Sean’s car was home. Andy soon found out that I was there and quickly worked himself into a frenzy. It was hard to keep from getting into a brawl with him over all the wrong that I felt he had done to me but, because I was at someone else’s apartment, I kept from being moved to creating a disturbance in the community.

Andy persisted at telling me that I had to leave Key West. His fear that I was in the area only reinforced my understanding of his malice towards me. It made me feel a sense of satisfaction that he and Julie were together as a couple. The way I figured, they deserved each other.

When he finally left, Sean commended me for being a “class act”. All I really truly wanted to do was pummel Andy into a bloody, quivering heap, load him into a fishing boat and put him into a chum machine. That’s exactly how I felt. It was with a sense of gratitude to Sean, that I controlled myself. And I was just thankful that this didn’t happen to me. Finally. I was leaving.

Chapter; Going Home

It might have been a Friday when I boarded the bus. So many emotions were running through me; happiness, relief and nervousness, especially since it was March, cold up in the states. All I had to wear was a pair of sweat pants and some other scraps of northern clothing that I managed to find at the thrift store.

Settling into my seat, I wondered if the drama was over. It made sense to start seeking out, through the people around me, for a traveling partner- someone to bond with on some level. Feeling that I needed someone to be a second pair of eyes to sense danger before it happens, I did a quick profile of the people around me, examining the clothing that they were wearing, their shoes- anything that would tell me something about them.

Picking out a person, I introduced myself. We exchanged short versions of what we had been doing in Florida and where we were off to now. This person was going to Indiana. Perfect, I thought. Since I am going to Michigan, we will be traveling the distance together or at least as far as Indiana. He and I had much in common, making me feel at ease about the trip, for the most part.

It was pretty wild seeing the sights along the way. There were things like wild hogs along the highway, and various stretches of some of the most beautiful mountains I had seen.

Georgia was pretty scary when I got off to transfer. There were cops, DEA agents, and what seemed to be drug pushers. It seemed likely to think they were Narcotics agents who were posing as pushers.

Kentucky was pretty cool also, with the famous Kentucky Derby Horserace Track.

When my traveling partner got off in Indianapolis, there was some downtime before the next departure. He invited me to a sports bar for a drink. It was easy, at this point in my big adventure, to decide that it wasn’t a good idea. All I wanted to do was to get home. Enough had happened to me already, and I was so close that it didn’t make sense to chance another mishap. Amid the baggage and chaotic clusters of citizens, I stayed at the station, waiting patiently.

Chicago… when I got off at the Chicago stop, I wanted a drink. Of all the places to be alone, this was not the one to go exploring in but I decided to anyway. There wasn’t a place in sight that looked like a store or a bar, so I began walking to find one. It was a bad time to explore to, since I was under a time constraint. Feeling like I could manage, I set out to find a place to buy a drink.

After asking around, I found a place, buying myself a twenty-two-ounce bottle of beer. Walking back, I was asked for a cigarette. This person also asked me for a sip off of my drink. Handing him the bottle, while thinking that I couldn’t drink the whole thing without being busted anyway, he slammed down over half of it, asking me if I was from the country or something. It must be that only a fool would give out any handouts in Chicago. It’s a good thing I was there.

Boarding the bus bound for Grand Rapids, I felt a sense of closure on the detachment with my home. By the time I finally got off of the bus in Grand Rapids, it had been almost a full twenty-four hours and I hadn’t had much more than four hours of sleep. Bob picked me up at the station and drove us back to the house he had most recently built, anxious to hear the whole story and to put me to work completing the odds and ends that needed to be done before he and his family could legally take occupancy. I would be staying there for a period of time unknown.

Within the next four days, I had done many of the major tasks that only I could have done with an acceptable level of quality. I was thankful to be back performing my trade, and it showed. He took me to the shop that he had been spending much of his time at, to give me a shot at working there. It was more like dragging in fresh meat to abuse.

The company manufactured, and sold, high-end cabinetry. By the end of the day I had proven myself and was offered a job for very little pay for my skills but I was very pleased to have something to build on, and accepted. When I attempted to ask for a better wage, I was told that I would have a very hard time finding anything better. There was little I could do to argue since I felt an indebtedness to Bob for assisting me with my flee from Key West, and out of my gratitude for that help, I stayed. It didn’t make sense to complain any further. It didn’t matter much either way but I couldn’t just accept the pay without trying to get a better deal negotiated.

Everything was great at the job, especially since it was right on a stream that the salmon ran up to spawn. About a week into it, we were on our way to the “rat-factory”, as Bob called it, when we noticed a brand new Dodge Charger that the Michigan state police were driving on the expressway. It had passed us. My surprise at seeing the State Police using these Dodge Chargers caused me to make a comment to Bob about it, so he sped up a bit to get a better look at it.

The car was sweet. And then this sweet looking Michigan State Police cruiser slowed down and got behind us. His bubbles went up a minute later, while Bob was asking me if I had anything on me. The cop came to the window and told Bob that he was in violation with his window tinting, and that he had a tail light out. That’s when the officer asked me for my I.D. The officer went back to his car and ran our information, came back and handed Bob his license, telling us that he had to take me in on a child support warrant. Great. Here I was again- lucky enough to get back home in time to get a job somewhere. Now, I was probably going to lose it because I was going to jail for Child Support, AGAIN.

My court day rolled around the next day or so, where I told them that I had gone to Florida to work but failed, explaining how I was waiting for my disability insurance to go through. The judge said that when I got it, I should bring it in to them framed, as the prize that it would be. After proclaiming to them that I would, she handed down a sentence of ninety days. Bob had been in contact with the court to verify that I did, in fact, have a job, earning me the work release program. They moved me into the old Animal Control complex, once a residential mental hospital. How fitting. Within a day or so, I resumed working and saving my money up.

On the weekdays I worked at the rat-factory, and on the weekends, Bob sprang me out to work on his house in the cornfield. It worked out very well for me because all I had to do was sleep in the work-release program and bring them my rent, saving the rest of my money for something useful. That something ended up being a brand new laptop computer that I intended to use in order to fulfill my promise to publish the music that Danny and I had created.

Now, the problem I had was in the factory setting. Adam and Bob taunted each other with their seemingly friendly badgering of one another. It was part of the “fun” they had at work. Keeping as busy as I could, while refraining from being a part of it was nothing new to me, at all. Trying to ignore them, I couldn’t help but understand that Bob was finally getting a taste of his own medicine.

At some point in their head games, Adam must have said something along the lines of replacing Bob with me. Bob began trying me at my abilities to decipher how to use and understand machinery in the shop. He normally took it upon himself to belittle me by giving me extensive instructions, as if I was lacking experience with woodworking machinery. This also gave him an excuse to be doing very little.

Bob had tried to make me look incompetent by sending me to change shaper bits, set the machine’s equipment up to do the machining, and run the cabinetry parts on that piece of machinery- machinery that I had never, ever, seen before. It really displeased him that he didn’t have an example of incompetence to give to Adam.

Bob was becoming more nervous about me replacing him, and doing what was within his power at making things worse for me. Because Bob was my ride, I absorbed the impact on the ride home with the head games that would accumulate, having a destructive affect on my psyche. My stress level was going through the roof, triggering my Paranoia, which caused a lot of disturbance for me. Things compounded until I began to make a lot of mistakes on the job. My first instinct was to think that someone had moved my parts that were stacked in a certain way, in order to be cut or shaped properly. And maybe they had been.

On another occasion I was working materials through a machine fed overhead belt sander that always accumulated a large pile of sawdust beneath it despite the dust collection system. Deciding I had to sneak a cigarette, thinking that my nerves would calm down, I used the vacuum of the system to evacuate the cigarette smoke from the area. Since I was at the other end of the shop, they wouldn’t be able to see me smoking, and since they frowned on my taking a cigarette break I would be able to conceal it with the help of the vacuum.

Well, I had set the cigarette down and the cherry fell off into the pile of sawdust. The smoke started to come from underneath the unit, filling the area. They thought I had burned the belt but it was the sawdust pile smoldering. I panicked, trying to find the fire before they came over. It was now a glowing spot of ember about eight inches around. Luckily I managed to take care of it before it could be a serious problem but part of me thought it would really be something they deserved for the dangerous games they were playing with my head. It was well known by all involved, that I had been coping with psychological issues as a result of my automobile accident. Fortunately, my Social Security claim was finally granted to me- a full award of benefits.

A very short time after that, I quit and moved in with my sister, Amanda. The house was the one in Conklin, where I had been helping my mother before the Julie fiasco. It didn’t feel safe in Bob’s company any longer, and having my disability award gave me the independence needed to get away from him once again. Although we have had our many differences, I would continue to think of him and his wife. And although he may never know or accept it, I understand why he has issues enough to see past his Ego, and care for him as a friend, though scarred as we both are.   

Now that I had a job, and a goal, I decided to try, one last time, to find someone special to share my time with. Having heard the many commercials for eHarmony for a few years, along with many other dating sites, even though I scoffed at them, I decided to start looking into the idea.

EHarmony’s site was the most logical to me. I mean, if you’re going to try it, you need to be logical. Things began with trying the offers to check out these places for free, and then I figured that the eighty or ninety dollars it cost was a glass ceiling- a way of grading the prospects. If a person wasn’t concerned with the fee, they were probably worth my time, even if I wasn’t what they were generally looking for in life but then again, I was looking for a particular person myself. It was all fair play.

Never breathing a word to anyone about my plans, I set up a free account to browse with. Using the photo that Yoa had taken of me in Key West, I filled out my profile information, went through all of the protocol for getting my matches from the database, and started surfing for potential women to interact with.

When I knew I was onto something that looked meaningful I bought a money order, mailed it to them, and waited for the notification that I was able to start the process. That’s when I met Jenny.

Jennifer was not the first girl I tried to start interaction with. There were several women that I had screened, all rejecting me for something I had written in my profile. The question of what that was got me to wonder if I had said something wrong, so I inspected it, deciding that I had said nothing wrong at all. Something I said might have sounded strange to them but I wasn’t going to go in and change it to improve my chances. If they didn’t like what I stated in my profile, then it was only because they weren’t worth my time. It was only a matter of time before I would meet the person who could appreciate what was there to move on with, which is exactly what happened.   

Jennifer had posted a photo that was taken by Siena, her four year-old little girl. It wasn’t a flattering photo but I instantly knew when I saw it, that she had used it for a reason. The photo, for the sake of what she looked like was unimportant. It was what that photo said to me that was important, and it spoke volumes. We started out by picking the questions that were prewritten, the ones that help you get to know something more but providing a buffer from the rejection a person might feel if it goes wrong somehow. We read each others answers, continuing the process until she decided that she was interested in taking it to the next level, which was direct chat communication over the computer.

Our cerebral connection grew until we decided that it was time to meet and see if there was more, even though her friends told her that I was probably bald because of the hat I was wearing in my photo. That was in September of 2008.

My mother insisted on driving me to Jenny’s apartment instead of me taking the bus, so she could lay eyes on her, determining if she was a good idea for me to be dabbling with. Knowing my history with all the wrong women, it was possibly the most loving thing my mother could have offered me in our relationship at the time.

By November we knew we were compatible. She liked how I got along with her two children, and I liked being with them. By Christmas we were comparing notes to be certain that we had something that was real. Before the winter had begun, we knew that we wanted to end our search, and before winter was over we knew that we had finally found what we both searched for and wanted to keep.

This new birth between Jenny and I led me to move to Lansing with her. There were a few inconveniences with re-establishing my medical care but I didn’t care. Certainly, I am not about to say that life has been a bed of roses. Anyone who thinks it is, clearly, hasn’t actually had to do anything for their self, and will find that they are helpless when they are forced to have to carve an existence out of the Earth on their own.

Roses need tending to and only become as beautiful as you care for them to be. Ours are growing just wonderfully where we are in Boyne Falls, Michigan. She and I have never been happier in life despite the wolves that always seem to be at our door. Without those wolves, we wouldn’t be able to fully love and appreciate each other as much as we do, and can only hope for the rest of the world to one day have for their own. 

Not having found what you do not want in life, how will you know what you do want? Joy, Love and Pain go together. Life is Good when you let Love Win. Don’t go through life without feeling it.         

I hope you liked it.