Susie and the Electric Kool-Aid Basso Test

 Grenada.

Late evening, following a full 36-hour pileup of travel mishaps involving small aircraft, questionable maintenance, tiny airports, and infuriatingly-leisurely island scheduling.

90-plus degrees after sundown.

Open-air airport, roaring with the alien sounds of a tropical summer night. Whiffs of wet green earth and a trace of raw sewage saturate the already-near-saturation-point air, through which one sole sore-thumb whitegirl is laboriously dragging a duffel the size of a portly human corpse. It is naively packed with a year's supply of Dramamine (for previously well-established reasons), as well as a comical selection of  ridiculously stupid shit like economy-sized tubs of specialty shampoo, hardback novels, sparkly evening gowns and heels (you never know!), and a ziploc full of aspen leaves, among other even less practical items, toward customs.

Wait, back up.

(Still not sure how to empty the dust bin on this thing.)

Six days prior, I'd gotten the call from Billy Boulangerie. Did I want to take his sailboat job, thus essentially signing myself over to a slightly less secretive, but still Witness Protection Program-esque, make-you-disappear sort of arrangement?

I'd thought about it over one sleepless night. I'd mulled it over with local pals and relatives, whose reactions ranged from "You can't be fucking seriously considering that, right?" to "Send me postcards, you lucky bitch!", and then... I'd pulled the plug.

Classes: dropped.

Possessions: jettisoned.

Parents: shocked.

Stress-level: THIRSTY.

(No I'm not. HahaHAHAHAyes I am.)

Before I left Fort Billy, the weather turned absolutely miserable - torrential sheets of rain, gloomy grey mornings undifferentiated from gloomy grey afternoons and gloomy grey evenings. Symbolically, I told myself, this was old Fort Billy giving me the lights-out.

And so, for five days, I glanced repeatedly at my printed travel itinerary, pinned to my fridge by a magnet bearing a washed-out snapshot of myself and four of my closest coworker-family amigos laughing arm-in-arm behind the bar at The Homebar, as I buzzed about a grayscale Fort Billy tying up loose ends.

It was my one-way pass to a sunny mystery island northeast of Venezuela.

It was like Charlie's golden ticket, a Get Out Of Jail Free card, asylum granted to a bright new full-color world.

It was also, the closer I got to dislodging that photo for the unknown that waited behind it, like a hangman closing in on me at the gallows. I know, I know, I'd just fallen ass-backwards into going to go live - on a generous salary! - on a sailboat... but I found myself realizing, as nostalgia ramped up with unexpected speed approaching D-day, that there was a lot I loved and would miss around here.

(What if... there's no dependable high-speed internet to keep up with memes?)

And then, seemingly all of a sudden, it was like I'd just woken up from a dream, and shit got Quantum Leap real in Grenada. No more doubt or agonizing or rethinking potentially-rash decisions, because now I, not unlike Quantum Leap Sam, didn't even really have a plan-B to get me back home. I mean, I didn't even really have a Ziggy to give me hints.

(First of all, wrong Ziggy. Second of all, that outfit isn't even the most ridiculous thing I brought.)

Wide-eyed, I found my way out of the airport.

And into the realm of Billy Basso.

Billy Basso is one of those guys you hear long before you see him. In the island world of liltingly-unintelligible Caribbean "English," Billy Basso's voice came plowing through the night at me, unabashedly loud, unyieldingly low, un-fucking-mistakably American. I knew this was my guy long before I rounded a corner and actually saw all 6'4" of him - the sort of person whose presence actually has its own gravitational pull - holding court with a crew of laughing airport personnel.

This is the hurricane I am swept up into for the next year: Tropical Storm Billy.

(Like so, but I was slightly less prepared).

Billy Basso picks me out of the thin crowd instantly and advances on me, brushing aside my professional-handshake-ready arm with an oblivious-to-our-height-disparity bear-hug. Then he hefts my body-bag to one shoulder in a quick flicking movement, gives me a momentarily judging-yet-hilarious “WTF?” look when he feels the weight of the thing, and turns his back, already striding away on legs that take one step for every three of mine. Over his other shoulder, he booms out: “C’mon already, let’s get a drink.”

At this point, I’ve talked to Billy Basso on the phone exactly once, most of which conversation involved him making me repeatedly assure him that yes, I was serious; no, if he bought a ticket he wouldn’t be waiting for a no-show at the airport; yes, I understood this wasn't a fucking vacation; and yes, I thought I would be able to physically handle the sails on a big boat in dicey water (I'll just let you guess which of these questions I'd answered with purely-optimistic lies).

The truth was, I had not, in those few international phone minutes, found a way to broach the subject of my stomach’s complete failure to pass my one and only test at sea. 

But you know what? 

Now I was here.

Now there was no turning back for either of us. 

Now was definitely the the time to take some preventative Dramamine.

(Luckily, Dimenhydrinate's OTC. Now, if I can just find it amongst all these cowbells in my luggage...)

Furtively, I fished a couple pills out of the container in my pocket and dry-swallowed.

We tossed my sarcophagus of useless land-life shit into the back of a ratty rental Jeep and sputtered out into the night.

(Good thing I also packed a wide selection of turbans to keep me from freaking out!)

Lest you get the wrong idea here: Billy Basso was not, technically, a Billy, in the dating-prospect sense. In fact, if he was the personality-punch maelstrom that swept the last traces of my old life away in those first few Gilligan's Island weeks aboard, his girlfriend – an adorable little redheaded Alabaman Gulf Coast belle also there to greet me at the airport – we'll call her Ginger – was the calm harbor that never EVER ran out of cabernet and girl-talk to share on the deck or docks. And from pretty much the first three-way toast at our patio dinner table, I knew things were gonna be alright.

But back to the immediate matter of dinner. After wine glass number two, I suddenly remembered a warning I’d received from a much more sea-seasoned friend (who had achieved the unthinkable and gone on a three-day cruise once): “Drinking will make you ten times more susceptible to seasickness.”

Oh fuck.

But Billy Basso had already summoned another bottle to our table! I didn’t know if our boat was at a dock, bobbing around in an anchorage, or maybe we were setting sail within the hour. I still knew nothing about what I was getting into, except that I was woefully unprepared and didn't want to show it. One more glass to be polite, I told myself. One glass, and then double up on the Dramamine. I swished two more little pills down in a gulp of house red, raising my glass to Billy Basso’s “To new crew!”

(Think happy non-barfing thoughts...)

And now cut to the near-future where I am drunk. Not completely Susie Solo In the Wonder Years Shitfaced, but definitely tipsy enough that I suddenly remember, with slight panic, that I’m too drunk to even attempt the insurmountable task of not spewing on myself as soon as I step aboard a boat. A boat! On the water! You idiot, you’re capable of getting sick from sitting on a floating pontoon-dock! The jig will be up! You’ll be on the first plane home tomorrow!

But Drunk-Susie then suddenly remembered a fix: Dramamine. I held the magic solution right in my pocket! No time to waste: two more pills down the hatch.

And one more for good measure, because Drunk-Susie is forgetful and incapable of performing simple arithmetic and let’s just be blunt – a goddamn moron.

(There's a lot of wiggle room in dosages.)

So we leave the ramshackle restaurant, and bounce off again through the night, launching over potholes and scrambling down steep sprays of gravel and careening around dark corners like a go-kart safari. Or maybe we just idled calmly across a parking lot. The thing is, I don't know, because somewhere around this point all that Dramamine, no doubt augmented by a healthy dose of wine, started to do its thing. By which I mean, if you take too much of it, as I had inadvertently done, Dramamine apparently does a mild sort of thing-on-acid.

(Alright, who unpacked my disco ball?)

Everything was big and loud and confusing. I mean, Billy Basso really actually is big and loud and kinda confusing, and I was travel-and-wine tired. But on top of those factors, everything else just started to seem incomprehensible. And inebriatedly struggling to process that I was in the beginnings of a mild-to-middling Dramamine OD, I dimly realized with horror that I was kind of unintentionally tripping balls.

(First impressions are really my forte.)

I remember stumbling out of the back of the Jeep and laying eyes on the boat in the cool blue moonlight for the first time: she was a floating figure of classically-swooping outlines, sparkling stainless steel, twinkling mast lights, soft silvery teak, ghostly spirals of furled sails, leather-stitched helm wheel and, from the end of the dock where we stood, the faintest echo of Billy Eckstine wafting out from the salon. I felt like I was stepping back in time. I also, slightly less magically, felt like my lips were going numb and I was starting to hear weird shit Billy Basso and Ginger weren't. And though I wisely hadn't confided in either of them, what with them being my brand new boss and coworker, I was certain that the boat knew it. 

Onboard. Ginger is showing me the tricks to finding the hidden light switches in every room, and I'm steadfastly setting them all ablaze because the bright lights seem to normalize things a little bit.

Then we're in the dim galley and Ginger is pouring me a grotesque glass of wine from somewhere and I'm accepting because aforementioned Drunk Susie shortcomings, but then when I reach for it, there's no wine glass. While Ginger watches with a somewhat astonished look on her face, I casually paw at the walls till I mash the right button and fire up enough wattage to dispel the phantom stemware. I'm so fucked. Meltdown imminent. This is going to be the shortest, most embarrassing employed-to-fired period in my life. Goddammit, Susie! This was your once-in-a-lifetime golden opportunity! Biggest. Fail. Ever.

Then Billy Basso is touring us around the working innards of the boat, opening tiny Alice In Wonderland doors and odd-shaped hatches and hidden compartments, proudly showing me things that make no sense: weird little showers, fucked-up electrical sockets, endless switch-panels, optical-illusion walls that curved in illogical places, pulleys and levers and ladders to nowhere, engines and generators and watermakers with blinking sensors and toggles and dials and shit.

It was way too much for a drunken, sleep-deprived, Dramamine-addled Susie. There are just not enough lightbulbs in the world to make it through this.

(Now just one more, for good measure!)

And then something wonderful happened.

The boat - in the one and only instance of mercy I ever experienced from her - came to my rescue: lights-out.

The boat, that wonderfully demanding, fitful, grand old dame, had taken pity on me and called the game just in time - with every possible filament aboard lit up like a nursing-home birthday cake, she'd blown the power to the entire dock. Deus Ex Machina - the night was over!

Billy Basso unleashed a torrent of lower-register expletives, knowing he was in for a long night of futile trouble-shooting by flashlight. Ginger sighed, knowing she was in for a night of hearing about it. And I sighed in relief, as Ginger spirited me away to my bunk, urging me with a wink to just go to sleep and stay clear of the action.

"Just come up whenever you wake up, you must be exhausted," she said from the deck as I descended a ladder into my room with approximately the same amount of grace and elegance as my bag, which Ginger had unceremoniously stuffed through the hatch and let thud like a dead body to the floor ahead of me.

Oh, you have no idea, I thought, collapsing into bed as she let the hatch fall closed behind me.

There was moonlight coming through one small porthole, shifting with the boat's position. I could hear docklines creaking somewhere level with my head, and water rippling around the hull under my bunk. The last thing I remember was having the distinct but somehow unalarming impression that my duffel, slumped on the floor, was snoring.

Tripping. That's how I started my years-long trip on the Sailing Yacht Delirium.

Lights.

Out.

Billy Blades's Ship Has Sailed

I got back to online dating immediately after Billy Bullfight terminated my contract, relationship-wise, mostly at the behest of girlfriends who insisted I should distract myself (and amass more Billy Stories, which I suspect was a slightly self-serving motive). So, because dating is something of a team sport among my local network of gals, and also because goddamn if I was going to be unaware of the down-to-the-minute, not-if-but-when of Billy Bullfight's return to electronic matchmaking, I bit the bullet and reactivated my profile.

(I see you've failed to change your status to "divorced" now that we're both back online, BILLY.)

Immediately, I got "favorited" by somebody whose overview details included a tiny thumbnail of him in what appeared, at that minute scale, to be a questionable flat-brimmed baseball cap/sports-jersey "street" style combo, and the fact that he was already somebody else's baby-daddy. He looked to be all of 22, and from the one main image I saw, I would have bet on the probability that he had his (undoubtedly exceedingly Caucasian) surname tattooed somewhere on his own body in Olde English font. 

I did not click through.

So the summer progressed, I racked up a few ridiculous Billy yarns, and just as my three-month subscription was about to expire, I happened to browse back through the various "connections" that had been made with my profile and saw a picture of a possibly... kinda... actually pretty darn... waitwhat? whoah, hell-O there! Billy I didn't remember seeing before in any previous notification. My exact thought was something like "WTF how did I miss this one?!"* 

*(accompanied by involuntary grabbing motions in the direction of my computer screen, because I am subtle).

(Of course it is, otherwise it wouldn't be Billy-Blog-worthy).

It became clear after the first two pageloads of his profile that I had seen him before, but he'd changed his main picture from the unfortunate prior Wiggerz4Lyfe-ish icon to a totally respectable, dare-I-say gahtDAMN snapshot of himself flashing a genuinely happy smile, while rafting or climbing or engaged in some such outdoorsy activity that's high on my sexy-points list. I had about 48 hours left before the lines of commo were set to be cut off, so I jumped into (highly-delayed-action) action. It was like my final cyber Hail Mary.

And it worked! Even despite the fact I'd ignored his indication of interest for a good two months based solely on my shitty superficial assessment skills, as soon as I made contact he messaged me back immediately to say, in effect, "Thanks for (finally) writing - yours might be the most memorable profile I've seen."

We emailed. We texted. With every exchange I learned something increasingly attractive or intriguing or just fucking cool about him - we had some obscure, long ago and far away life-experience stuff in common, he did interesting things, he was pretty into being a dad, and the cherry was that one of my friends actually knew him in-person and attested to his real-world hotness and general seems-like-a-decent-guy-ness. So we set a date.

On my profile, I had included a photo of me from the roller derby facet of my life. Picking up on this, he suggested we meet at the local roller rink for a skate date. Nonconventional, physical, and likely a little out of his comfort zone with potential for mutual embarrassment and/or bodily injury? I giddily sent something like:

"Really, roller skates on a first date? That, sir, is a bold opening gambit... I'm in!"

...to which he quickly texted back: "Well... I'll be on blades."

(.................Oh.)

***

You've probably heard this one before: What's the worst part about being a rollerblader?

(No no no, not "telling your parents you're gay." It's realizing you're also a cop.)

***

Punchin' Judy and I have a mutual friend who also used to work at The Homebar with us. Will is a hugely-tall guy, he has kind of clumsily thrown himself at every female coworker to cross The Homebar threshold, over the years, and to my knowledge never once sealed the deal. It's legendary by now, because he actually seems relieved to be able to assume the platonic-pal role once his halfhearted advances get turned down. So in summary:  he is terrible at women as elusive moving targets, but wonderful at women at point-blank, stationary Friend-Zone range, because he's super sensitive. He's a listener. He's a damn good honorary-girlfriend, and when added all together, the sum of it was that he was known at The Homebar (quite openly) as Big Gay Will.

(One time Will actually wore a kerchief. Nope, not Halloween.)

Even he jokingly called himself "Big Gay Will" from time to time, as if he was so obviously hetero it was just a funny lark, but here's the thing: he really might have been gay. Not in the fabulous, self-loving, "And, so what?" way that I adore and support, but in a kind of pent-up, closeted-even-from-himself way that I still adore and support, but come on. Come ON.

So one time, I had this dream that Big Gay Will was having a very important package delivered, but it had to come to my house because it was a secret from his family, who was visiting or something. And in the dream, I came home and there on my porch was Big Gay Will's box. Like an enormous refrigerator box, size-wise. So I dragged it inside and during the dragging, that monster came a little untaped and from it, spilling out like a slot machine jackpot, came an everlasting cascade of rollerblades.

Ladies and gentlemen, I will rest my case and allow you to draw your own conclusions from here.

(Ahhh... yes, sure, it's true that they "weren't your size," Will.)

***

Anyway, so Billy Blades and I had a roller-date. 

I'm not really sure what I expected. On the one hand, I was pretty interested in talking to him face to face, but on the other, I still didn't have a firm grasp on whether I would even recognize him in person - such was the chameleon nature of his photos. To that end, I made sure to arrive at the rink slightly early. Alone. On an open skate night. Technically, in the late afternoon hours of "Wacky Wednesday."

If, like most of us, you've not been to a public roller rink since somewhere around third grade, and if, as was my situation, you are not at said roller rink to sit on the sidelines with a celebrity gossip magazine while your small uncoordinated offspring teeters around in circles, let me tell you what this is like: you immediately feel like a suspected pedophile.

I mean, parents are looking at you so hard that you even start to suspect yourself after a minute or two. Who knows, maybe it has to do with the odd lighting, or the "manic clown" theme decor, or the blaring kid-friendly music, or the fact that the one other adult in the place who's actually wearing roller skates is a middle-aged, denim shorts-clad, mulleted dude with a creepy pencil 'stache and shifty eyes who is also clearly NOT here with a child under his charge. Maybe it has to do with the fact that the particular roller rink where we'd arranged to meet happened to be exactly right next door to a topless "gentlemen's" club (totally true story because WTF, zoning?). Maybe it had to do with the fact that I am a pretty short female, and this:

(No, glaring mother of a 6-year-old, I'm not taking pictures with this thing.)

Holy shit, Billy Blades could not arrive fast enough.

And then he did.

And he was beautiful.

And he was charming and irreverent and smart, in just the right proportions.

And yeah, he was wearing roller blades, but I swear to god that man made even roller blades hot, or at least he made me forget he was on them while we skated around and talked. At some point the conversation turned to sailing, and that's right about where I started to get blown out to sea.

He knew the same spots in the Bahamas that were dear to my heart. His retirement dream was to run away on a sailboat, too. Sitting on a bench while that awkward "expanding Solo cups" skating game was underway, he casually finished my thought (between mild bouts of delightfully horrific jokes about the "stretching-machine" Mr. Jorts -  who by this time was one of the finalists in the cups game, ogling the leggiest tweeners as they straddled ever wider in skates - probably had in his basement):

"You'd just need the right partner to make it work."

And lingering eye contact.

Aaaand scene (begin montage).

(Terrible humor and the same endgame? Be still my beating heart, Billy!)

Right there. Right there I saw it clearly:

Our wheels touched and I envisioned Billy Blades and I skating around on the deck of our sloop, shamelessly escalating each other's most tasteless jokes right into the sunset. He side-smiled at me and I started to think about multi-faith relationships - could I convert him to roller skates? It didn't matter, love conquers all. He brushed my knee with a gesturing hand and I started to think about how dual-religion families raise their kids - would our little ones start off on skates or blades? Would our liveaboard be called the SS Quad or the SS In-Line? Or maybe some combination of the two?

A random little boy toddled up to us, interrupting as Billy Blades was about to expound on the splits-stretching pulley system Mr. Jorts secretly strapped himself into by night just to be able to skate to the painful end of the cups game amongst the most coltish of prepubescent girls. And this child, clearly sent as a divine messenger, handed me a tiny blue hair clip, then wandered away. "Perfect," my brain immediately realized, "Here it is, a sign: something borrowed, something BLUE."

The bench beneath us started to rock as if upon gentle waves, the years-of-burnt-hot-dogs-and-stale-cotton-candy odor of the dark rink gave way to fresh sea-salt breeze and bright sunlight, the incessantly high-pitched shrieking of children became the music of chattering seagulls, and Billy Blades, O captain my captain, my co-pirate, glanced knowingly at me. Our 16-wheeled, seafaring life together, the one we'd both been unwittingly, perfectly leading up to with our every waking move, every day of every past trip we'd both made around the sun without each other up to this point, had begun.

(But not in a creepy jean-shorts-mullet way.)

"I have to go to hockey soon," Billy Blades said. It wasn't exactly how I'd imagined his marriage proposal being phrased, but I, unfazed, accepted.

With full sails, we set our course toward the doors, as not only were our lives destined to change today upon meeting, but, it turned out, he also really did have to get to hockey. And anyway, I admitted to myself, parents would definitely not approve of us consummating our starcrossed love right here in the concessions area. Somewhere hidden in the laser-tag room... maybe, but not right here. Next time. Next time.

We navigated out to the parking lot, where Billy Blades had parked right next to me. Even our vehicles were drawn together by an unseen force! I looked at him. He squared off to me. This was going to be it: the defining before-and-after moment. From here, forces joined, we would set sail on the greatest journey of all!

He lowered his chin and I raised mine, flush with anticipation.

He looked deep into my eyes, right into my soul, and smiled. He knew me.

I coyly asked if he'd like to go out again, knowing it was a frivolous question, knowing he understood the implied meaning: when would we pick up where we'd left off, on this, our ever-after life of adventure and romance on the high seas?

"Uhh," said Billy Blades, "I've kind of just started seeing someone else, so I probably shouldn't."

(You really should have thought of that before I married you in my head, Billy.)

Um.

So wait. 

Now when we sail off over the horizon, this other gal is going to have to come too? What kind of a stupid third-wheel fairy tale is this? My captain's been bewitched by another siren and we haven't even gotten off the fucking dock? I mean, we don't need a second-mate, Billy. In fact I'm kind of starting to question your Captaining ability if this is the way you're going to staff our bo---

And then.

And then...

...he shook my fucking hand and bade me good day.

(I believe the old saying goes: "Red sky at morning, sailor take warning; handshake in strip-club parking lot, sailor--hold on, have you even read the script, Billy?!")

Lightning. Roiling storm clouds. Swells building to mountainous tossing walls of water. Suddenly, gale-force winds whistling out of an ominously-dark sky, drowning out the polite farewells from our mouths. Our future, heeling over at an alarmingly unsustainable angle, rigging groaning and snapping, sails ripping at their seams, me stumbling and falling on the heaving, splintering, foam-washed deck. And then right before my eyes, Billy Blades swept overboard by a crushing wave, never to resurface despite my frantic, wind-whipped scanning of the whitecaps.

I mean, realistically, of course he was lost at sea. 

Nobody can swim with fucking rollerblades on.

Billyridge Blues

Here's the dirty secret behind most true love stories:

For a couple months, I was hedging my bets on Billy Bullfight and dating other people. I have no qualms admitting this because even though we all like to pay lip service to "love at first sight," everybody does this at one point or another. Every. Body.

OK now, don't take this to mean that I wasn't into him - I was - but the signals were a little mixed (which made me less than all-in), we were both in and out of state a few times during that dawning era (which made barely-yet-established commo protocols even patchier), and he lived a full hour's drive away (which sucked just enough, logistically, that I entertained the idea of it being a dealbreaker).

And, here's the honest truth, Billys:

Once you're a Susie of a certain age, you no longer have months and months to exclusively spend figuring out if things might work out with every damn Billy who crosses your path (because here's a spoiler: chances are, they won't). So, unless he's a particularly promising specimen, or you really want to end up an old maid who's collectively wasted years  landing a string of consecutive little mini-relationships instead of casting a wide net and concurrently sorting through a little more bycatch in the hunt for your Big Fish, guess what? Until you have that Dreaded Talk, your brand new semi-swooning Susie is probably still playing it safe and continuing to fish until it's clear you're the one she wants to put in the creel and call it a day.

(All aboard! You? Yes? Oh, not you? Alrighty then, next!)

I mean, I was hoping Billy Bullfight would get on the boat, but I wasn't pulling in all my lines until he did.

Enter Billy Board-Coach.

Billy Board-Coach was an online candidate who I'd actually started talking to before I ever stumbled across Billy Bullfight, but it took a while for the chatter to lead to a date. This was because Billy Board-Coach lived an hour and a half away from Billy City, in the mountain town of Billyridge.

Having grown up kicked around a foster-care system, he'd found his identity on a snowboard, ended up sponsored and featured in various "extreme gravity sports" type movies through his early twenties, and he'd since retired from the semi-pro circuit and founded a non-profit snow school for under-privileged kids. Yes: to make the world a little more fair, he now spent his workdays teaching little hoodlums how to land jumps and get air in the pipes; except in the summertime, when he spent all day every day showing little hoodlums how to skate bowls and vert ramps, all while presumably imparting some sort of positive male role model bullshit in their little shithead hearts.

(Overload. Explosion.)

So Billy Bullfight and I had seen each other a couple times, but even before that, Billy Board-Coach had been calling me on the regular, and we'd sometimes spent two hour blocks chatting about who-knows-what at a stretch. Communication, not Billy Bullfight's forte, was definitely not a shortcoming for Billy Board-Coach.

After our first meetup, it was clear Billy Board-Coach was into it - at least enough to invite me up to hit the slopes in Billyridge over a weekend, and to make the drive down to Billy City a few times during the following weeks. And, during those initial weeks, Billy Bullfight all but fell off the edge of the Earth while out gallivanting around Mexico with his family and traveling globally for friends' weddings and whatnot. I barely heard from him, which both disappointed me, but also gave me a very low-scruples green-light to keep answering Billy Board-Coach's calls.

(Me, approximately every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday morning.)

But of course, because nothing brings a Billy's underwhelming performance back up to snuff like the Sixth-Billy-Sense that he might not be tops on my list, Billy Bullfight then made a comeback and started pinging my radar with a frequency that grew in direct proportion to the amount of time I was shunting toward Billy Board-Coach. In fact, one evening while Billy Board-Coach and I were shooting  Patrón and making fajitas in my kitchen, I actually was semi-drunk enough to field a 10-or-so-minute call from Billy Bullfight in Billy Board-Coach's presence.

Later in the week, bellied up to a bar with Billy Bullfight, texts from Billy Board-Coach rolled in to my phone so incessantly all evening that I sensed they were catching Billy Bullfight's attention and turned that noise off. Shit was starting to get confusing, not clarified at all by the facts that I really wanted Billy Bullfight's weight to shift, while at the same time Billy Board-Coach wasn't keeping his cards very close-hold: he wanted in on a real relationship. Decision-time was nigh.

Then, of course, came the crux.

Billy Board-Coach, out for brunch with me in Billy City one Sunday, reached for the bill and commented idly on our server's unique name: "Huh, I've never known another ____ except this chick I used to work with at my buddy's cookie shop."

Wait. At your what's what?

(Act normal act normal act normal act normFUCKING FUCK!)

I wisely chugged the rest of my mimosa to buy time, as my brain sluggishly wrapped around, and then digested, and then shat out the impossibly-minuscule odds:

• Billy Board-Coach lived 90 minutes away from me, and Billy Bullfight was another hour in the opposite direction.

• Billy Bullfight had lived in Billyridge formerly, for years. Where he'd owned his first cookie shop. Which he sold to move down the mountain and start another.

• There is only one cookie shop in Billyridge.

• Oh. God. DAMMIT.

Because I am a complete idiot, my first, stupidest reaction was to blurt out "No way, do you know [Billy Bullfight's real-world name]?"

He did. Not only that - they had been friends. They had been wingmen before Billy Bullfight had moved on from Billyridge.

So as that's settling into my shrieking psyche and I scramble to casually change the topic as fast as fucking possible, of course here it comes: oh, hey, how on earth did *I* know him, Billy Board-Coach wanted to know?

(I'm gonna need a cookie to sort this one out.)

Panicked, I bumbled through some dismissive thing about a friend of a friend or something, then sent Billy Board-Coach back up to altitude and immediately got online. I had to see just how bad it was. (Facebook, don't fail me now!)

It was bad. I won't go into too many details, but suffice to say, there was, on one Billy's account, a profile picture featuring him with the other Billy in question.

 (Billy, I just LOVE that you have SO MANY friends!)

It was clearly time to cut somebody loose, and even though Billy Board-Coach was a lot of fun, he had to go. He knew too much already. I shoveled him back overboard as humanely as possible and later in the evening, sped to see Billy Bullfight, where I got The Dreaded Talk that very night.

And that was it. From then on we were in a relationship. I was a fisherwoman no more.

***

I still think about Billy Board-Coach occasionally, with a twinge of compunction for how quickly I threw him back and disappeared, especially in light of how poorly things ended with Billy Bullfight.

And I still occasionally entertain the idea of throwing out a line in his general direction, if for no other reason than to apologize and perhaps score some one-on-one snowboarding coaching.

But then I remember that I'm possibly the most unlucky angler I know, and I jettison that idea to sleep with the fishes.

(Yeah no shit, "when you least expect it!")

Billy BenReilly's Story Arc (Issue #1)

I have no idea how Billy BenReilly and I became friends.

Here's a snapshot of the essentials that formed my concept of his character: Billy BenReilly roaming through the halls of my first duty-station barracks, all 6'4" of him elbows and kneecaps, every part of him including his hands, his feet, his nose, whatever - lanky and jutting and too long for human-proportioned clothing. Billy BenReilly unapologetically wearing flowing silk shirts with comic book characters emblazoned on them, Billy BenReilly donning a fedora every time he strode, like a daddy-longlegs, over the seaside hills of Billyrey Bay to and from the chow halls. Billy BenReilly somehow endearing himself to a crowd of his Army cohorts, who were themselves the more elite picks - the athletes, the charmers, the intellectual outliers that the few resident Susies gravitated toward - Billy BenReilly somehow found a niche under the wings of those sought-afters even despite an inexplicable penchant for making random and startling dinosaur screeches while prowling in stylized velociraptor posture up and down the barracks stairwells, even despite a tendency to go around mock-shooting webs from his wrists à la Spiderman, complete with sound effects and an occasional, spontaneous Spidey crouch-stance. Billy BenReilly getting busted in morning formation for having what turned out (much to everyone's - including our Platoon Sergeant's - relief) to be a Marvel comic book stuffed down his pants. 

Basically, Billy BenReilly just being an utterly, unabashedly absurd presence.

(Just doing whatever a spider can. Nothing to see here.)

Here's the first encounter I really concretely remember: walking into Billy BenReilly's barracks room, a room he shared with one of the hottest topics on the floor, where Billy BenReilly had decorated an entire wall-locker interior - every shelf, every drawer - with Star Wars figurines. And even though we were just barely grown-ups, most of us still highly susceptible to the currents of social approval, Billy BenReilly did not give a shit. He was so fucking proud of that toy collection, of his fedora, of his horiffically-awful billowy silk shirts, that he had stopped me in the hall, just some strange new Susie on-station he'd never spoken to before, to show it to me. It was done with the wonder and panache of a five-year-old showing off a secret fort to a trusted adult confidante.

I was not impressed.

(That is never gonna pass locker inspection.)

But Billy BenReilly's edge was in his incredibly naive and self-confident persistence, and eventually I started to find myself accompanying him through the foggy stretch of cypress standing between our barracks and the dining facility on weekends, or biking down to the wharf with him for clam chowder from the farmer's market, or engaging in silly little projects he would orchestrate, like stealth-planting tree seedlings in the barracks lawn to see how long whoever was being punished with groundskeeping extra-duty would just assume they were there officially and mow around them (as of just a few years ago, one of those fuckers was still standing and taller than me), or volunteering for heavy-lifting in some rescue group's sea-lion release event, or renting out a billeting room with a kitchenette so we could actually cook food, or sneaking into the Billyrey Bay aquarium with homemade people-watching Bingo cards: making a game out of finding the mom-with-a-stroller-blocking-traffic, the way-too-stoned-for-public-kid-lurking-in-the-jellyfish-room-for-hours, the first-date-not-going-well couple. The thing was, every single one of these adventures was good, wholesome fun - Billy BenReilly didn't drink, he didn't smoke, he still had his V-card, for fuck's sake (see what I did there?) - and yet they all went horribly wrong in some hilariously memorable way.

To wit:

One weekend, Billy BenReilly knocked on my door breathless, wide-eyed, champing at the bit for me to get dressed (in a new DareDevil logo T-shirt - he was always buying me T-shirts featuring super-nerdy things he adored) and out the door, because he had stumbled upon a sandwich-board-wearing man advertising the best idea ever: a whale-watching trip. Outside of Minnesota lake canoeing, I had never even been on a boat before, and so I took the bait. Joined by a handful of his benevolent social-buoy older, higher-ranked boys, we biked down to the dock.

I'm not sure what Billy BenReilly expected. I mean, I knew even at that age that he was hopelessly in love with me, and also that No. Not going to happen. But through what plenty of you Billys out there will recognize as tragic attempts at courtship rather than just the ridiculous foibles of an oddball dude, he'd actually achieved a superstar friend-zone slot, one of my most fun partners-in-family-friendly-crime, and - admission - I knew that without a signal from me he was never going to actually make the move for a kiss, so I just wore the shirts and went on the adventures and otherwise let that dog lie. Was it the right thing to do? I don't know. Maybe he boarded the boat with visions of us on the bow like some comic book superhero versions of Kate and Leo in his head, and maybe that day irreversibly changed how he thought of true love, in which case yeah, I'm an asshole. (But also, Titanic sank, the metaphorical romantic implications of which are pretty obvious.)

No, I'm not sure what Billy BenReilly expected. But I can tell you what he got, because it is all captured in an exquisite photo set by one of our aforementioned pals.

(Did not see this one coming.)

Leaving the dock, we are all smiling, waving, looking out at the bright and promising day sure to be full of gleefully-leaping cetaceans ahead of us. It is an uncharacteristically-sunny morning on the Bay. Everything looks to be turning up aces. If we were a Warner Bros. cartoon, Billy BenReilly's googly-eyes for me would be issuing fluttering hearts.

And then, flipping through the action-shots, the casual observer will note that one of us appears to be fading, growing pale. It is me, my face looking more and more desaturated compared to my bright red DD top. I am still resolutely smiling, though there is a trace of tension in my jaw, with Billy BenReilly obliviously joyful at the romance of sailing by my side.

(I *am* smiling.)

Now out at sea, fully committed to several hours afloat, I am a ghost. There is a slight look of dull panic in my eyes and my smile, still among the healthy, happy, rowdy group of strapping young soldiers in their weekend civvies, is more of a grimace. In one of these photos, I am gripping a railing with unduly-whitened knuckles, and Billy BenReilly is looking at me with adoration and a touch of concern.

And now the sun is gone. And now the waves are visible in the background. And now in half of the pictures, the horizon is at a strangely-skewed angle suggesting our boat might be having the balance issues of a staggering hobo. In these photos I am mostly cut off, maybe just the top of my head showing because I'm sitting down. In one of them, Billy BenReilly is kneeling in front of me with an earnest look of loving compassion. The look I am returning can best be described as "hate-lasers."

And then I am gone from the group shots.

(No. OMFG I wish.)

And then, because there is nary a single shit-eating whale apparent within 100 miles of us, because this whole trip is a goddamn motherfucking hellish lie Billy you sonofabitch, possibly because of my bright red shirt popping like a flare in contrast to the now-colorless day, I become the focus of photography, about which I am clearly far from thrilled yet incapable of warding off.

Here I am with my head in my hands, Billy BenReilly stroking my hair.

Here I am with a face indicating I might be pronouncing an "F" sound, flipping two birds at the camera as Billy BenReilly, looking honorably defensive, tries to shield me.

Here I am leaning over the boat's gunwales, clearly hoping for swift drowning death while Billy BenReilly reassuringly pats my back, the very picture of selfless caring.

(Oops! Spoiler.)

And here, a veritable gem of photographic art, is me, losing something like my last eleven days' worth of meals to the water. And no longer beside me but at the precise distance one might immediately acquire between oneself and, say, a just-discovered cow carcass bloating to distention in mid-August heat, stands Billy BenReilly, now sporting a look of complete horror. Billy BenReilly, completely disheartened and betrayed by the world and slightly terrified. Billy BenReilly with the shell-shocked look one might have if one managed to stumble and fall *into* aforementioned carcass. Billy BenReilly backing away, shielding his face from my true colors, the palette of which could be summed up as "every possible shade of puke, Jesus FUCK what did you even eat?"

If you've ever lived on planet Earth you'll a) easily recognize the below meme, and b) it should concisely clarify what sort of human behavior cause-and-effect I'm describing in the above photoset.

(Susie : Whale-watching -- Moshzilla : Dancing)

The final picture is the masterpiece.

On the dock, safely ashore, stands our small group of intrepid seafarers. Captured in a raucous knot are the handful of our Platoon's cool Billys, laughing and pointing and hamming for the camera. And on one far end of this group is me, a disaster-survivor's smile of thin relief on my face and - I shit you not - what upon close scrutiny has been judged by several analyzing parties to be multiple spots of backsplashed vomit marring the DareDevil logo on my chest.

And on the opposite edge of the picture slouches Billy BenReilly, facing the camera but slightly detached from the group, his enthusiastic naiveté of the morning now replaced by the haunted 1,000-yard stare of a grown man who has seen terrible things.

We did not go to the chow hall or, come to think of it, do anything involving food together again for a very long time.

Kryptonite, Part I

I flew back down to visit Billy Builder less than a month after our first grown-up run-in. And then I came back again less than three weeks later. And then he came up and stayed with me. And then I weaseled my way out of normal life for another few days at his place. And then we went to a mutual friend's wedding up by my hometown Billyville - where we met all those years ago - a dude I knew from high school, for whom Billy Builder was a groomsman. And then I went back down south as soon as I could to Billy Builder's. And somewhere early on in that exchange, I found myself in a ripcord-pulled-but-no-parachute-deploying freefall for the guy.

It was not exactly what select girlfriends of mine had in mind.

(Is a *little* support too much to ask when I'm about to make terrible life decisions, you bitches?)

But here's the thing: when Susie Solo's stupid brain, or heart, or whatever sort of manipulative arrangement between those two you might believe is running the show in these sorts of affairs, makes a call, shit does not get reversed. There's not even a replay-review option. So instead of listening to various friends who knew us both (including one, The Mover, who actually shook me by the shoulders one night a few beers in and told me Billy Builder and I combined were "like Whitney and Bobby, for fuck's sake!"), I toed the accelerator to the floorboards and maintained course.

(LalalalalalaIcan'tHearYouLalalaLA!)

Why the alarm from my nearest and dearest? Well, Billy Builder... was a fuck-up.

I don't mean his life was a total wreck or anything, but he'd been through some shit, and maybe spent some time as a less-than-great human - and because we had a lot of social overlap, a few of the people in my life knew about it. But here's what I saw: the aforementioned stumbles, yes, but he'd come out the other side thinking harder about things. I mean, isn't that the whole point?

Confession: I have discovered, over the years, that I have not just a tolerance, but maybe even a bit of a preference for guys who've had to crawl their way out of some trainwreck situations of their own making. I don't mean just your average hood-rats who are still trolling the bottom-waters and hurting people along the way, and not the never-had-a-chance sad-sacks with terrible family histories, and not your typical cliche "bad-boy" dead-ends. I mean folks who have learned the value of making their damn bed properly not from a textbook, but by personally fucking it up royally, and then having had to sleep in it in the past. These are the sorts of lessons that tend to turn boys into men (and girls into women, to be fair), and I actually have more respect for someone whose perspective has been shaped by a two-steps-back, regroup-and-get-smart, three-steps-forward kind of history than I do for someone who's just always been on a greased downhill track toward success. "I seriously question the life values," young Susie used to say, "of anyone who's never been arrested or fired." (That's still a little bit true.)

(I can't see how anything could go wrong here.)

And so things were fine. As things tend to be, at first. Fine as in: that moment you lay eyes on someone, like through the airport glass or walking toward your door or even just waking up in the morning, when your heart both somehow stops, but also feels like it just started beating in fast-forward, all at once - that kind of fine. The Billy Builder Experience was initially housed in a hazy envelope of those kinds of moments.

And then I had this terrible dream about Billy Builder, the night before I was booked to fly down to see him again.

I don't believe in any sort of clairvoyance or other metaphysical bullshit, but I do believe in intuition, and this one was the sort of dream that wakes you up like a punch to the gut, half-sitting upright and gasping for a deep breath of air in the dark while your brain slowly assembles the reality that it was a dream: that you're awake now and you didn't kill that guy or your sister's not really possessed or you're not actually at work without your pants or whatever, and so your life's not ruined here in the real world, and you collapse back onto your pillow in relief. But you don't fall asleep again for a long time, just blinking at the ceiling and waiting for the dream-dread to ebb while you slowly absorb the concept that that shit wasn't real.

(There are nicer ways to wake up.)

Except it was.

It might sound crazy, but I somehow knew from the minute I saw Billy Builder standing at the bottom of the airport escalator, smiling up at me standing there with my carryon the next afternoon, that it was true.

We went out for drinks at the bowling alley a couple blocks from his place, where I watered my liver to germinate the words for the question I already knew the answer to. Then we went home, where those words sprouted and unfurled and filled out into complete questions, growing up my throat and out of my mouth in vines that choked the space in the room between us. And instead of cutting back the jungle, Billy Builder's answers just obscured him in more green, unchecked.

(Did not sow. Don't want to reap.)

Details are not really useful here, but in very non-detailed silhouette: Billy Builder was still hung up on his ex. And she was back in the picture. And suddenly, my whole summer with Billy Builder was like the Lost City of Z, buried in vines, maybe nothing more than an Amazonian myth to begin with.

There are a lot of things I'll fight against, for the right reason, but going up against The Ex is an exercise in futility, and even at that young age, I knew it. She was local while I was a thousand miles distant. She was a two-year indelible scar on his past while I was just a currently-fleeting kiss, leaving no mark. And without even having met her, she was immediately my least-favorite person on Earth - a faceless nemesis made of Kryptonite.

(Two faceless nemeses, actually.)

I'd like to say I was graceful about it. I'd like to report that I handled myself with poise and dignity. But what really happened was more like this:

Without much of a choice at that hour, I quietly went to bed with Billy Builder, where he probably stared at my back without blinking all night, afraid to fall asleep or disturb me by, say, breathing too loudly, lest I fucking stab his face off with a broken beer bottle snatched from the nightstand. Then, predawn, I gave up on sleeping and dove into the most effective therapy I know: I went for the sort of run that makes everything else seem small: ranging miles and miles longer than I was currently trained up for, charging farther and farther from Billy Builder's house, pushing harder and harder, growing more and more out of breath until the fallout of the night before finally caught up to me by the side of the road. The actual moment - the sinking into defeat - is gone from my memory, but suddenly, this: me, on hands and knees there on the gravel shoulder, forehead touching down amidst the grubby constellations of discarded fast-food wrappers and cigarette butts stirred by the tailwinds of the morning's first early commuters. Time stopped there, as far as I remember, until a kindly dad-type pulled over, no doubt thinking I'd been clipped by someone's sideview mirror or something, buoying me back to the surface with approaching footsteps crunching through the weeds toward me and a cautious "Miss? Hey... Miss? Are you OK?"

And then I got to my feet, brushed the broken glass from my palms, and packed up and won the tiny battle of not looking back at Billy Builder as my taxi pulled away from him there on his stoop, my hands fighting each other in my lap and my disobedient heart lurking somewhere in the growing mileage between us, refusing to accompany me as I flew home.

(Coping, steps 1-7. Step 8? Blogging.)

If I could say the story ended here, it wouldn't have ever been blogged. But, because this is my weird life, and my weird blog, it didn't.

In true Susie-Tailspin fashion (know your predispositions and own up to them, folks), I proceeded to get fired from my job (my abovementioned life values are just fine, thank you very much). Then, later the very same evening I got canned, I received a phone call from someone who, at that point, I still mostly just knew secondhand through Punchin' Judy: Billy Boulangerie.

I hadn't seen or even spoken to him for probably nine months - the length of time since our first ill-fated encounter. For crying out loud, I didn't even have his number in my phone when he dialed me at close to three in the morning. I almost didn't answer, but because this is my weird life, for some reason I did, and here is what the semi-stranger on the line had called in the middle of the night to ask:

Did I want to take his job? You know, the one we had talked about nine months ago at the bar that one time he was in town? The one I'd said I would love to do sometime, if I wasn't already in this charmed relationship and happily employed and all? The job where he was one of three full-time salaried crew on a small, private, race-built sailboat that traveled all over the globe?

Because if I did, he was suddenly needing to find a replacement for himself and was offering me right of first refusal.

And if I wanted to be that replacement, I would have to let his Captain know within a day.

And if I said yes, I would have to get my current landlocked life shut down and put on ice, and meet the boat in Grenada - yes, the spice island just north of Venezuela - by the end of the week, prepared to be on-board and out-of-country for at least a year.

The Captain would call me tomorrow for an answer, said Billy Boulangerie.

Just think about it, said Billy Boulangerie.

Good night, said Billy Boulangerie.

Billy Blue-Suede

By their nature, outdoor summertime concerts are probably the most surefire way to stumble across an eligible Billy (or Susie). So, that's where I met Billy Blue-Suede: he and his boys were dancing next to the spot a couple girlfriends and I had staked out, in - you guessed it - a ridiculous pair of very, very blue shoes.

Footwear is, in fact, one of the first things I happen to involuntarily assess when I meet someone (anyone - not just Billys), and Billy Blue-Suede's kicks were pretty impressive, in a "this guy is somehow pulling that off... or is he?" sort of way.

Let me explain: you know how some people are so fashionable it hurts? Billy Blue-Suede's shoes took that level up a notch. They were all showy seams and strange tread-nubs and Italian-looking logos and alligator straps and faux buckles and shit, when everyone else at this lawn concert was in flip-flops or barefoot. In bizarre incongruity, the rest of Billy Blue-Suede's attire was event-appropriately relaxed to somewhere well below "casual Friday" standards. It was a little bit like if he'd rolled into the local Dullfield, Kansas drive-in movies in a Lamborghini... and work overalls.

(Built-in moves right there.)

But, I made the mental allowance that perhaps they were his Dancing Shoes (we all know how I love Billys who can dance), and we ended up organically chatting a few times between songs. Via the small snippets exchanged, I gathered that he was kind of interesting and was some sort of CFO for an investment firm downtown and had an adorable southern drawl and also, beer, so by the end of the show, Billy Blue-Suede and I were arms-over-shoulders yelling together along to songs that definitely do not need to be yelled along to, and I put my number in his phone when our two packs split ways.

We went out for drinks a few days later. If I was afraid I might not be able to pick him out at the bar with 100% certainty, due to aforementioned beer the night we met, I needn't have been: the one thing I could have recalled for a precise eyewitness police artist sketch was the shoes, and you better believe Billy Blue-Suede was sporting them again - despite the fact we were out on a rooftop tiki-themed patio on an 85-degree day and nobody who wasn't forced to by health codes was wearing closed-toed shoes. But, I guess if you've spent as much as I cringe to guess Billy Blue-Suede had spent on a pair of sneaks that hip, you get your damned money out of them, which at $3 a day, would maybe have required wearing them about 400 days a year.

The next time we talked, Billy Blue-Suede offered to make me dinner at his place. Some things I already knew about Billy Blue-Suede going into it:

a) He was from New Orleans
b) He was a Saints fan
c) He was a hobbyist home-brewer

It will be handy to reference this list, as well as my corresponding responses:

a) neutral
b) neutral on football in general, though NFL-sound in the background when nobody's watching is a distinct un-favorite thing of mine
c) positive, duh.)

So I show up and at the door is a shoe basket into which I add my own sandals. I notice two things immediately: I can hear a football game on, and Billy Blue-Suede is still strapped and buckled and cinched and lashed into his beloved shoes. In his own home. Where there's a shoe-basket at the door.


He greets me, gets me a beer, and we talk about the whole brewing craft for a minute before he excuses himself, saying something like "I hope it doesn't bother you but I'm gonna have to peek at the game every now and then while I cook... sorry, it's my team!"

I let it slide. I mean, if there was a good gymnastics meet on TV or something, I'd probably do the same. What I probably wouldn't do would be yell at the top of my lungs at the TV, which is where Billy Blue-Suede and I apparently differed. Turned out, "peek at the game" meant something a little more like "offer so much loud ref-heckling and through-the-screen coaching for pretty much the whole game that I literally make myself hoarse, while you, my date, have your beer in the kitchen and sort of involuntarily take over the whole cooking operation."

(While we're screaming and all...)

I find TV-yelling to be a particularly painful phenomenon. So, being a resourceful Susie, I made a little game out of it: Every time he yelled, I drank. Every time he called out to request that I stir this pot or check that burner temperature (so that he didn't miss a play), I cracked open another homebrew. Dinner could not happen fast enough.

(The Saints, you say? Saint Pauli Girl is my favorite!)

When I was probably 4 bottles deep, after the game was over, we finally ate, after which I made moves to get going. Sensing his closing window of opportunity, Billy Blue-Suede told me to hold on and dashed, still in his dashing shoes, to his bedroom. "I have something I'd really like to share with you!"

He came out with a Bible, from which he proceeded to read to me.

You know one thing more futile than yelling at an image on a plasma screen? Reading the fucking Bible to me.

(What do you mean, "Thou shalt be skeptical of nonsense" isn't a commandment?)

After about the fifth verse, I suddenly found myself staring at Billy Blue-Suede's decked-out feet and doing math. Four beers. Unknown ABV, but I was feeling pretty tipsy. After all the shouting at the Saints, how many Bible verses could he read before he lost his voice altogether? How long would it take me to get my sandals back on on my way out the door? What were the odds of getting pulled over driving across-town with my currently questionable BAC?

I looked up, as Billy Blue-Suede had stopped reading and asked me what I thought. It was really kind of a sad scene - him expectantly waiting for me to agree or freestyle my own favorite verse or praise Jesus or break into a Creed song or something (hey, I don't know what these sorts of people want!); me in a state of mild flight-mode panic. I had to get out of there.

I think I stammered something along the lines of "That's... nice?" and backed quickly toward the door, fishing my sandals out of the basket while realizing, as I stumbled trying to put one on, that there was no way in hell I could make the drive at this point. But what could I do? The time for exodus was clearly nigh.

After twice-failing to strap my sandal correctly, I stood, one shoe in-hand, and bade Billy Blue-Suede, still holding his Bible, thanks and good night. And then I bailed out the door faster than any semi-drunk person has business to be moving. I almost fell down his steps in my one-shoed Cinderella flight, sure he was going to come out after me to insist I sober up and listen to more Holy scripture, and I think it was at this point that I dropped the unworn sandal, which fell into the dark beneath his porch steps.

(This is why I can't have nice things.)

No time for that. I booked toward my car, expecting to hear more of the Good Book behind me at any moment, got in, fired it up, and drove around the block. And there, summer crickets singing and moths wheeling under the streetlamp down the road, I sat in my car, in the dark, and waited to be sober enough to drive my ass back across god's creation and into my own goddamn bed.