How I Got Separated from the Love of My Life

        

 

"...I worked for these two clowns...one looked like Popeye and the one who sucker-punched my girlfriend looked like Ernest Hemmingway..."

 Here’s how I got separated from the love of my life, which turned out to be Miami.

          I was finished with my undergrad degree, but now it was time to decide what to do, work-wise. My degree in English sharpened my critical thinking skills to a fine edge and I was critically thinking there were no jobs out there.  I had a vague idea about wanting to teach in a women's prison eventually.

          But not yet.

          Enter Captain George from Islamorada. He was one of Jeanne’s oldest, best friends and years before he’d saved her from certain destruction by hauling her out of a bad spiral, teaching her to sail, enlisting her in the volunteer fire department and getting her out of the small town gossip machine that can grind up young dykes in little towns. He looked and talked a lot like Pop-Eye the Sailorman, cap, pipe and all.

         Now it was ten years later and he had a new job working for another captain in a tiny town in Burgaw, North Carolina. This other guy, Captain Jack, came back to the place where he grew up and was setting up a boatyard on the Cape Fear River.

         Jack was financing it with bales he smuggled on hollowed out sailboat hulls built at this very same boat yard, but we didn’t know that at first. I started to figure it out on our first payday when were handed bundles of cash wrapped in aluminum foil and doled out of an Igloo cooler.

            We’d gone up to Burgaw before graduation and I loved it. George had a beautiful woodworking shop on the first floor of this building he’d designed and constructed. From the outside it looked like a barn, but the inside was outfitted with a 2nd floor home that amazed me. Huge windows showcased the forest outside and the river flowed right by the back dock.

          I fell in love with North Carolina and when George offered us jobs, we talked it over and decided to go for it.

       Jeanne made it conditional. First, we’d need for it to be known that we weren’t doing any smuggling under any circumstances. We were there to build and work on sailboats, only. Next, we came as a set. They had to take us both even though I’d never been on a sailboat and hadn’t hammered anything since I was eleven.

       Jack, the boss, was burly and gravel-voiced and looked a little like Hemingway. The story gradually emerged that he’d spent his forties in a federal prison because he was caught off the Keys with a boatload of Jamaican marijuana. He’d kept quiet about the financers and after he was paroled, they bank-rolled him again.

        I never trusted him, and it turns out I was right not to.

Too Late; This One Was Already Recruited

     

My brother Richard was just a few years older, but our social lives didn’t really intersect until we moved to Miami and I got a best friend who was stacked.   Rich hung out with a group of guys from around the neighborhood who liked having her around.  I came with the deal, so it was a time in my life when we went places together a lot.


       It was 1977 and I was 17. This betty crocker clone named Anita Bryant was on a campaign to root out gays from school system employees and public service workers. She was a celebrity because she sang a jingle on TV for Florida orange juice and she was hateful in the Name of the Lord.

       We talked about the issue in 4th period journalism and every night I read about it in the paper and on TV news, but I’d never heard my brother talk about it. We were riding in his car with me in back and Dennis riding shotgun, on our way to Peacock Park to play Frisbee when we passed a gay bar on the corner.

          Richard said, “A bunch of dumb asses from Palmetto’s football team went over to pick a fight with the gays in that bar. They thought it would be real easy because they’re sissies. But when they started the shit, the gay guys chased them out with whips and chains.” He thumped on the steering wheel with his palm, “Whips and chains!”

           I said, “You don’t see anything wrong with being gay?”

           He said, “No, I don’t care as long as they don’t try anything on me.”

          I said, “With that mug, I’m thinking you don’t need to worry.”

         He said, “Back at you, slim.”

         That was a couple of years before I, too, became a gay, but I knew he wouldn’t turn his back on me. Richard was a real good guy in those pre-grown days, and he turned into an amazing man.

A 38 Caliber Gun and a Mirror So You Never Have to Turn Your Back on the Little Thugs

          

          My first adult professional job was teaching high school English in an inner city school in Miami, and Principal Freddie hired me.  .

          I went to the interview and told them I’d be willing to take over the debate team but I didn’t know anything about competitive forensics. I bragged about my sister being a state champion on her high school debate team as if I could pick it up by breathing the same air.  Then Principal Freddie, this boozy old former Dolphin, slurred,

             "Thass’ OK, young lady. It’s easy! They win awards and what not. Plus, there’s a two thousand dollar extra bonus and what not. You’ll learn it.  Ain’t a thing to it and you know, you’ll see…” then he leaned way back in his chair, laced his hands behind his head and looked like he might be falling asleep.

          He rallied and went on, “…these chirren will teach you. They win trophies and what not!  Coach! Get this lady some paperwork to sign!”

           At last.  A real adult career-style job was just what I’d worked toward, but panic set in.   I knew nothing about debate, needed to brush up on English rules about gerunds and dangling participles,  and when I looked at myself in the mirror I saw a kid  pretending to be an adult.  That's before I knew the secret:  all adults feel that way some time or another.

         Plus, I was nervous about the teaching gear they’d given me. Namely, none. No textbooks to scan, no literature lists to start reading.  Marta's boyfriend Mark said,  "The only gear you'll need for that school  is a .38 caliber gun and a mirror so you never have to turn your backs on those little thugs."

         I called to see what I’d be teaching and Principal Freddie put me on speakerphone.  It sounded like a party in the background.

         He said,  “What are you teaching?  What are you teaching!? That all depends.  What department are you in?

          I said, “English. And debate.”

          He said, “Then you’ll be teaching English and debate, I guess.   They’re still working it all out.  Anyway, I was fixin’ to call you.   You want to teach newspaper, too?   There’s a fourteen hundred dollar stipend and what not.   And the chirrun' are good.  Goooood chirrun’. Yes, Lord.”

            I said, “Well...ummm...OK, sure. Yes ”

           “Good!   Now who is this?”

"Give me one of them dicks on a stick..."

         
      Every summer as a kid, we spent time at The Lake. Growing up it was paradise; we hung with the cousins, fished off our dock, hunted weird bugs and stuff in the woods, grilled out every night, and even though there was on-again/off-again plumbing, we scratched chigger bites non-stop and the temp hovered around 104, I’d count the days until we could go.
 


           Until I turned 16. That was the year I decided I’d rather work than get stuck with the family at the lake. Work was the only thing that got you off the hook from the annual family pilgrimage but the vacation the year before was a scorched earth experience with non-stop squabbling, no toilet and very little to do.  Back then, in 1976, teens could actually get summer jobs.

            So I got a job at a dive called Arthur Treacher’s Fish and Chips. It was up on U.S. 1 at the shopping strip on top of Marlin, walking distance from our place on Bel Aire Drive.  The plan was to work until the family split for Georgia and the lake, then bag the work thing and flounce around with strange older guys who owned vans.

             I meant to be more of a slacker, but I’m my father’s daughter and hyper to boot, so I turned out to be the best worker there.  It says more about the other numbskulls on the staff, really.

             After a while, the chance to bolt presented itself when Crazy Katy invited me to see Blue Oyster Cult in her MG Midget convertible at the Sport-a-Torium.  Berneatha, the manager, told me no, so when I took out the trash, I just kept going.  Turns out it was a dead night and half the workers got sent home so she never brought it up.

          A few days later, a guy came in with his aunt.  We were selling corn dogs, and when it was his turn to order he said, “Yeah, and gimme one of them dicks on a stick.”  I turned to the microphone and said, “…and one dick on a stick, two hushpuppies….” and so on.  Berneatha waddled out and fired me on the spot!       

        Finally. 
       
       But when I came Thursday to give her my uniform and get the last check she said, “Go get dressed. What are you standing around with your face hanging out for?” So I sucked it up and went back to work.

           Only a better job at the Dairy Queen saved me from a teen career in fried food planks.