The rest of the story

I know you are dying to hear, as Paul Harvey would say, The Rest of the Story of the ill-fated trip to New Orleans in 1979.  Well, here goes.

My "roommate" at the time (perhaps a euphemism (or not)) and I were sitting at the dinner table on early spring day (in just spring) (when MSU was on terms) at our rental house in Lansing (which we were about to not have our lease renewed for any number of neighborly complaints (in just fall)) and she pined about being on break (she being a medical student in her last term) and wanting to go south for the break.  We didn't have a lot of money but she had a car and gas money so I lied to my parents and said I was going to Chicago with a friend for break and off we headed to Hot Springs, Arkansas, ostensibly our only destination.  We made it in a day of constant driving, with me behind the wheel at daybreak somewhere in Arkansas as I pulled the little red Toyota off the road and stalled the car.  She drove the rest of the way to Hot Springs, which was a lovely, deserted old town.  We had a very cheap breakfast in town and then headed to one of the Hot Springs resorts for the waters and a massage.  While we were being kneaded into senselessness she waxed poetic about New Orleans, where she had done her undergraduate degree at Tulane.  Gee, she said, wouldn't it be fun to go there again.  And I was so relaxed, and consuming great amounts of Jack Daniels, said Sure, why not? So less than twelve hours later we pulled into her friend's house in Metarie, Louisiana, where she proceeded to dump me where her friend, who was nice enough to show me the French Quarter.  Prior to her leaving me with a friend the car we were in was rear-ended as we sat at a traffic light.  The Good Hands People were good enough to total the car out an let us keep the vehicle while giving us just enough money to last a week in New Orleans, where my roommate proceeded to look up old flame after old flame and desert me.  Then there was the night where we were all together, eating a dinner of crayfish etouffee and watching MSU and Magic Johnson beat Larry Bird and Indiana State for the national title in basketball.  At which I consumed more Jack Daniels and smoked some really good grass and managed to puke all over the guest bathroom, which caused my roommate great emotional distance and remorse on my part.  Next day woke up clear as a bell, with a lovely hangover, and we left for parts unknown, including a side trip for her to see yet another old flame in Atlanta where she dumped me with yet another of her old friends and left me to stew the night away on a sofa bed in a living room of total strangers while she did God knows what for the next twenty four hours.  I was upset beyond all recognition.  When she finally re-appeared she was not contrite about the situation she had set me in and we did not speak again until in Indiana.  We were running out of the car crash money and things were getting tight in that we did not know if we would have enough gas money to get back to Michigan.  We were smoking butts of cigarettes and drinking water instead of Jack Daniels, not eating for almost twenty hours before finally and safely arriving in East Lansing the Tuesday after classes had resumed.  In just spring.  The class I was T.A.-ing for had already met once and my prof had signed me up for classes.  I was less than happy as I was left in East Lansing doing mundane things while roomy headed back to Carson City, Michigan to finish her internship.  That summer we both graduated.  She with a degree in Osteopathic Medicine and me with my M.A. in history.  She promptly moved out and moved to Detroit and did a residency.  Oh, and did I mention she was a "nun" in a crazy religious cult that had paid for her medical education whereupon she and another "priest" in the same order, left the cult, got married and had at least one child together.  Boy was the order mad.  This was the year of Three Mile Island and just a year after the mass suicides at Jonestown.  Her order, The Holy Order of Mans, sent out a tape right after Jonestown, instructing the members of her order how to respond to charges that they, too, were a CULT.  The whole purpose of her year with me was to get me to go to EST training, get "baptized" in her cult, and then for her to move on.  I was lonely enough and clueless enough to fall for the whole shebang.  By the same time the following year I had drunk myself out of the PhD program and was on unemployment and was singing part time in a bar in the heart of Lansing as Katy Muldoon.  I was also in great need of therapy as the bipolar boogies were descending on me fast.  Whereupon I had a new roommate and bought a house.  I was lonely enough and clueless enough to fall for the whole shebang.   And fifteen years later I finally moved out and the rest is misery.  I moved to the condo for eighteen weird years and now, finally, am safe without remorse in my new chateau, Sans Souci.   And I am no longer lonely enough and clueless enough.  I don't think my "baptism" in the Holy Order means squat anymore.  Who knows.  I have no idea where I left the past, I just know it is gone and I have, finally, moved past some of the rougher spots.  I like Hyphen 2.0 as she is always telling me how far I have come (in just since late July with her).  And I guess I have.