July 9, 2002

• Before I slide back into the time tunnel, I want to correct a misconception stated by LuckyStars.  I’m not now, nor have I ever been, “normal”.  Normalcy is for average folk.  I’m weird, and if it didn’t just come natural, I’d have to work at it.  What my life and my efforts at healing have brought me to is not normality, but better mental health.  Normal people in this culture are neurotic.  I’d rather be different, thank you anyway.

  
  

  FAILURE

  
  

  I knew when I let Marie go with Bobbi that I’d failed as a parent.  I knew it before then, when my child begged me to let her go with this babysitter.  What I didn’t know until about sixteen years later when I found Marie again was that Bobbi and her family had done a bit of brainwashing on my child, stolen her affections, and manipulated both of us to get a child the easy way.  Bobbi didn’t think she could have children of her own.  I’ll go into that some more when I come to it.

  
  

  For now, it’s back to the late summer of 1963.

  
  

  My coping style back then was, when something hurt to think about, I just didn’t think about it.  I found other things to occupy my mind.  My immediate need at the time was a job.  An opening came up at Town and Country Drive-In on the corner of Pawnee and Seneca, just outside the main gate of McConnell Air Force Base.  I’d worked there before and was happy to go back.

  
  

  Another girl there, named Marva but called Dusty, was new to town and needed a place to live.  We pooled our resources and got a two bedroom apartment together.  It wasn’t furnished, and stayed that way for a few weeks until we saved up enough tips to put some cheap furnishings in there. 

  
  

  First we slept on piles of clothes on the bare floor, then moved up to mattresses on the floor and finally got beds, a couch and everything we needed except a kitchen table and chairs.  The kitchen was just where the fridge lived.  When we cooked (about once every two weeks), we sat on the floors and ate from paper plates. 

  
  

  We were both going out with airmen in the Air Police squadron.  I had met my boyfriend Earl almost as soon as I’d started that job.  He spent every night of my final week in the old apartment there with me.  The sex was good, and it was frequent… all night every night.  His buddies kidded me that he was falling asleep on watch, and that this skinny Cajun guy had lost ten pounds the first week he knew me.  They said I should give him a break, but Earl didn’t see it that way.  When I think of him now, the image that comes to mind is me bouncing naked astride him, both of us laughing.

  
  

  After Dusty and I moved into the new place together with a lot of help from the USAF, APs could be found at our apartment almost every day.  The guys started referring to the place as “Rusty and Dusty’s Pad”.  It became a routine on payday twice a month for them to bring in a bag of groceries and have Dusty and me cook a big pot of stew or something that would feed everyone.  The guys had cars and by pooling our cash we managed a lot of cheap fun.

  
  

  Casual, low-stakes gambling was common and popular with that crowd.  They’d have chugalug contests, betting on who could swallow a quart of beer the fastest.  I won frequently because all that was required was to get it down long enough to pick up the stakes.  Then I could go puke it up, and I always did.  Soon they declared I was just wasting beer, and excluded me from their contests.

  
  

  One payday, the living room was packed and the crowd was circulating through the arch into the kitchen.  There was music and lots of laughter and loud conversation.  A small group went into my bedroom and laid out a blanket on the floor, shut the door and began a quiet crap game.  I joined… and I won.  They whacked me good-naturedly on the back and declared that I was one lucky redhead.

  
  

  I don’t recall how I responded, or whether I really did respond.  My mind was spinning with what had just happened.  I’d read in the books by J.B. Rhine about experiments with dice.  Some people could influence the way they fell through telekinesis (now more commonly referred to as psychokinesis or PK).  Others could predict how they would fall through precognition.  (We just say, “precog”, now.)  I had the feeling that I had been doing some of both.

  
  

  This was intriguing.  Think about it.  I was already fascinated with the topic of ESP.  I was also very money-hungry as well as competitive.  I’m one of those people who loves to win but doesn’t hate to lose, the happiest of competitors.  These crap games could only occur on paydays, so I’d have to wait two weeks each time for the next one.  If no one else suggested it, I would.   I was really hooked, but the way I played it wasn’t a gambling addiction.

  
  

  Eventually, I’d won so often that I was accused of cheating but there was no possibility of any loaded dice or anything of that sort.  They furnished the dice themselves. 

  
  

  I, of course, wasn’t talking about what I was doing, but I was getting better at it all the time.  At first, it was only when I threw the dice myself that I had an edge.  Then I started winning a lot of side bets on other people’s play, just by paying close attention to the dice as they fell, giving them a little *nudge* onto the face of my preference.

  
  

  The frequent losers who had kept coming back time after time to try and get even, finally got mad.  They didn’t know what was going on but they figured I had to be to blame for it.  They would refuse to play in my room, and then in that apartment, but if they let me play I’d still win, wherever we went. 

  
  

  Attitudes turned ugly.  I lost friends.  A few guys persisted, as if it was important to them to shoot down the top gun or something.  I no longer wanted to play at all.  What’s the use of playing to lose?  And if winning is penalized, what’s the use of playing?  A few years later I would go through a similar cycle of experience when someone taught me to shoot pool.  I’ll get to that, eventually.

  
  

  Rusty and Dusty’s Pad soon disappeared.  Dusty and her man decided to get married.  Earl went on a TDY (temp assignment somewhere) and while he was gone I fucked the friend he had assigned to watch over me and keep me from fucking anyone else. 

  
  

  I found a job closer to the middle of town at another drive-in which had once been part of the Town & Country chain, but under new ownership was called the Buggy Whip.  They hauled an old buggy onto the roof to catch attention.  I found a cheap studio apartment nearby, and my friend Statch helped me move.

  
  

  I’ve just been wondering whether it might be better to quit here.  There is a lot to tell about Statch, and this blog is pretty long already.  Greyfox just helped me make the decision by pulling into the driveway, so, for now… later.

  • 10:56 pm
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