Dear Friends,
Sometimes I look back on different eras of my life and just shake my head. 1988 was a year, of course, but it was an era for me, too. I settled into a nice routine of hanging out and then living with my friends and creating a party spot that I would put up there with any of them from that era.
We kind of had a reputation building there for a while because we threw a lot of parties. It was kind of our thing. We had our jobs, of course, but it seemed like we never worked too late at the call center. I think maybe we closed at 9 or 10. Oddly enough, that was my first experience in working in one.
“Thank you for calling Pizza Hut deliver. Can I get your major cross streets?”
This was the start of every call. Sometimes when it would get really busy and we would see a bunch of calls backing up, we would just hang up on everyone in the queue so we could sort of start over. This was pretty funny to us. When people would finally get to us, they’d say something like, “I was on hold and then it just hung up on me. I don’t know what happened.”
When we weren’t working for the Hut, though, we were partying. If we went to someone else’s party, the party would often end up back at our house. We had a crew of people that knew they could come hang out and drink beer and no one would give them a hard time about anything.
Because the complex was so empty, there were no neighbors to bother. We ended up breaking into a few of the apartments above us so that we could have a little privacy if we needed it sometimes. Suzi and I were still together for much of that time, although we broke up a lot, so if we needed some alone time, it was either go upstairs to one of those places or go for a drive and find a quiet place to park.
Suzi’s friends liked to come over and hang out with us, too, and that was awkward sometimes because her friends were not exactly a loyal bunch, so I would often have to say, “Hey, I don’t think this is a good idea” when one of her buddies would want to see one of the vacant apartments when she was not around. Looking back, a couple of her friends had no shame.
There was also the embarrassing day when Matt, Andy, Jeff, and I were sitting around our apartment getting ready for work and our friend and my bandmate, Tom’s girlfriend Kathy came over and dropped the bomb on us that she had figured out Tom was cheating on her with one of Suzi’s friends. She made it very clear that she wanted revenge and one of us was going to be just the guy to give it to her. Luckily, I had to work first, I think, or maybe second and got my ass out of there. She left there empty handed and I don’t remember if I ever saw her again.
We were pretty scandalous dudes. Jeff and I were each other’s wingmen quite a lot and we liked going to after hours at a few of the different clubs that would have dancing and such from 1am to 3am. Occasionally those excursions found us entertaining different house guests. I can honestly say, though, that I was not the lothario that I hoped to be. I just didn’t have that in me and as I look back, I’m thankful for it.
I did enjoy, though, that our apartment was a place that people liked to come and have fun. Andy’s brother, Jim, was still in high school, so he would bring some of his friends over and they were cool. He had a buddy named Bruce that we all liked a lot. He also knew some girls from St. Mary’s. I think Jim had been dating a girl named Julie that we all became very close to over the years. She had her little crew, Stacy, Melissa, and Suzanne, that came over a lot and we looked out for them.
Lots of people who hung out with us were still in high school, so we made sure they were relatively safe and did our best to avoid trouble. One night we pissed someone off and there was a big fight outside our place, but we got it calmed down. No one got too hurt. We thought we were badasses but we really weren’t. We just handled things if we needed to handle them.
Except for the night Matt decided that we should all beat this guy up that none of us, except for Matt, had a problem with. It was really funny. Matt kept needling and needling this guy and finally they decided to go outside and settle it. Matt kind of ran up and punched him and then ran over to the rest of us and said, “Let’s gang beat him.”
The rest of us were like, “No.”
I think Matt ended up fighting his brother for a while and then we broke it up. I think Matt learned a valuable lesson that night. We loved him and would stand up for him, normally, but not when he was starting unnecessary shit.
This may have been the night that I threw the first bag of trash into the pool.
This was another not so proud moment, but it didn’t take long for us to fill the pool with garbage. I don’t know why I did it. I can assume many, many beers played a roll. Eventually, though, one day we noticed someone cleaning out the pool and they left it empty for a while. I noticed in the current pictures of the place there is no longer a pool there. I wonder if we killed it for good.
See you tomorrow.
Imagine this, but a hundred times worse.
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