Off the seat of a bicycle
Chapter 57     Back to California / job failure / a changed man

Fresh from my latest failure, I felt more confidant than ever and returned to California for a brief stint working at a lumber yard.

My girlfriend in Indiana wanted some space, so I left to strike a root elsewhere. She was ‘right’ for me, but I couldn’t set the hook, so I was back casting in the river.

I lived in Ventura and my old girlfriend came up from LA. She spent the night but there was no hanky-spanky because she was searching for something … she had come to weigh her options.

In the morning, I got up early and went for a walk along the beach. I thought it was a favor … you know … let her get up and take a shower and brush her teeth. The apartment was real small.

But oh shit. My solitary walk was an affront to the lady. She was peeved. Plus she was peeved the day before when directions for getting to my apartment were off by two miles. Wow … that relationship was my mother and father, and I didn’t need glasses to see it.

It was nice to see her, but it was nice to see her get on the bus and go back to LA.

Three weeks later she called and wanted to come up again.

We got along as friends. That part was effortless. She was an artist and spoke flattering of my work, and we could talk about anything, but somehow we lost contact when the ‘relationship’ deal got going. I enjoy a lot of space in my relationships and need solitary time, but she was a ‘lets do everything together’ gal.

A day or two before our ‘big date’ I failed in a job interview.

Personal computers were just starting to sell and there was a new store advertising for sales-people. The owner was a business leader and I could see that, but just as quick, I knew he puked my style.

My pants were probably hanging off my butt and I cut my own hair for years. I really tried to fix myself up for that interview, but I looked ‘lumber-ape’ and computers were hoity-toity at that time.
 
A few weeks before that interview, I failed another interview with Hillman Bolt Company for a sales job calling on hardware stores. That guy looked at me the same way and said he could only offer a warehouse job.

Well, I guess my father was right. Creased pants make the man, and I didn’t have the ‘right clothes’ and so I didn’t get either job and was feeling low. I was ready to move up but it wasn’t happening.

I was wallowing around in self-pity when date night arrived. The date went terrible … we went to a movie … afterwards we drove around in my car and she said something about my mood, and I said, ‘I told you I wasn’t going to be much fun.’ I let her know before she came up how much I staked-on getting the computer job.

She wasn’t nurturing, and I couldn’t share my failure with her. She wanted me to fit an ideal, and that’s what people do when they’re trying to find a mate, but I probably ruined everything by being so self-defeated … not that it mattered, but I didn’t want to let anybody down.

She told me the next day that she had the same boyfriend in LA, so I figured she was visiting me to make him jealous.

We took the long route through the mountains on the way back to LA, and I dropped her off at her apartment, and that was it. There was never going to be a relationship, but I would’ve liked to have stayed friends. I called her a year later from Indiana and her boyfriend answered, and she was very abrupt on the phone. There was no friendship there and I should have hung up when he answered, lol.

It was all about expectations with her … and I don’t have a lot of expectations from women other than frank honesty. I like a woman who has her own life and doesn’t mind dragging me along.

About this time, my girlfriend from Indiana called and wanted me back [again] … and fortunately I was wise enough to recognize I needed a woman brighter than myself … so I reversed course and drove to Indiana to make a stand.

My wandering days were over at 32 ... I was a changed man, and decided to return to college, and become a self-employed ‘contractor.’

I called the university. Seems my cumulative GPA was a ripe D+ … and they asked for a plan, so I said ‘the plan’ was to get A’s … and despite resistance, the computer punched out the ‘probationary’ enrollment card and Phase I of the big-change was underway.

Next came self-employment. I passed out flyers and offered real skills and hard work … and the repair and painting business took off immediately. Phase II underway.

Then my girlfriend went to Houston to attend an ‘Educators’ job fair.

Indiana education was not a growing field and she got ‘riffed’ off contract that summer.

She called from Houston and said she found a job and an apartment down there. Well holey shit … I was going to be the boyfriend ‘back home’ … but it was ok, I had stuff to do, and Houston held a bright new future for her.

When she came back from the job-fair, I met her at the Indianapolis airport … and in another patently comical move, I stuck my over-sized body in a cheap polyester suit that my father bought me 15 years earlier. Yeah, I was damn cool-smart, loitering around wearing that dusty-shouldered, ill-fitting piece-of-shit suit, in a dead-bang effusion of my new top-drawer image.

You have to be an idiot to have as many stories as me.

She walked off the plane … and laughed. I was so transparent. But let’s face it, anybody who knows paint cans and shingles shouldn’t be going ‘New York City’ in a 15 year-old polyester suit from Indiana. Come to think of it, that was the same suit I wore to those interviews a few months earlier in California, LOL.

A couple weeks later, I loaded my girlfriend’s stuff in a U-Haul and drove it to Houston while she followed in her car. She had a sunny new apartment on the second floor, and it seemed safe. So there she was and I went back to the ‘dark regions’ to finish my education.

For two years our relationship revolved around holiday visits and a nightly phone call, and we actually got to know each other better over the phone … of course it didn’t hurt that I was doing well in school and was working hard to save money.

Chapter 58  Self-employment, school, another arrest
Index of chapters