Cindy Called. Butch was Back in Prison & She and Mary Needed a Place to Stay...
Part 10: We Told Tom About the Hot Waitresses, and They Didn't Disappoint...
Like clockwork, Moose and I met Tom at the strip in Fort Lauderdale every Saturday night. Despite several close calls on the motorcycles, we continued pushing the limits further each time.
Tom had become a friend and coconspirator, and as fucked up as I was, I didn't have a foot even near his territory. Serving three tours in Vietnam and watching his buddies get sent home in body bags had left him severely damaged. To help him deal with civilian life, he became an adrenaline junky, living on the edge, which was as close as he could get to war without being back in Nam carrying an automatic weapon…
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Riding at high speed on his motorcycle wasn't enough, but doing it high, drunk, and on amphetamines was the kind of near-death experience he needed.
When he spotted us on the strip in Lauderdale, standing next to our bikes, drinking heavily and smoking weed, he knew he had found two willing participants…
I had a clear understanding of Tom and myself, there were no misconceptions. I knew how fucked up we were, but Moose was a bit of a conundrum. He smiled a lot and appeared happy and well-adjusted, but he was always trying hard, sometimes too hard, to be the center of attention. I’m no psychiatrist, but Moose was a middle child, and maybe his older and younger brothers had gotten more attention than him growing up and he was still after it.
Ultimately, Moose became a thrill seeker. He was all-in on all things dangerous, which provided him with all the attention he needed.
The three of us together were a toxic mix…
The next Saturday night in Lauderdale, Tom arrived not looking especially well. His eyes were blinking rapidly and he was pacing and appeared anxious. He smelled like whiskey, and after he swallowed some pills and smoked some weed, his speech became slurred, and he wasn’t making a lot of sense.
He said he wanted to go for a ride, and we figured it might calm him down. We agreed to go. As soon as we took off he started winding his bike up to redline in each gear and going faster than usual, like he was trying to get away from something…
I was trying to chase him down until Moose pulled up alongside me and said, "Let him go…"
We backed off, and he disappeared into the night. We knew he had a death wish, and Moose didn't want either one of us getting near him the way he was acting.
By then, we had Tom's number, and he had ours, but he never called or picked up his phone. He disappeared from our lives just as quickly as he had arrived.
We hoped he was still alive and hadn't wrapped himself around a pole somewhere off the beaten path in South Florida…
Shortly after my father and I had a heated conversation about his young, attractive Colombian secretary, Moose and I got laid off. We had no choice but to sign up for unemployment while we went looking for new jobs.
We met John in Lauderdale. He was 21 and from Hingham, MA, which was a pretty upscale town, even back then. He came to Florida for the winter to escape the cold weather in Massachusetts, and by the time we met him, he was sporting a dark Florida tan. He was about five-ten, 175 lbs, clean-shaven, with curly brown hair and a perfect smile. We weren't sure where he'd been staying, but he was carrying a green canvas duffle bag full of his shit, the kind you buy at an Army Navy Store, and he said he needed a place to crash for the night.
For all we knew, he could’ve been Charlie Manson or just a rich kid taking a semester off and trying to figure it out. Either way, he seemed like a decent guy, so we let him crash on our couch. After he bought us breakfast, we let him stay for as long as he needed to. He had his own weed, which he shared, and he drank Southern Comfort.
Cindy called right about that time. Butch was back in prison and she and Mary needed a place to stay…
You know that it would be untrue
You know that I would be a liar
If I was to say to you
Girl, we couldn't get much higher…
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To be continued…
*All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental…