WyzWmn's World©

the sound: Black Sabbath-Wizard, AC/DC – Highway to Hell, Edgar Winter – Frankenstein, Deep Purple – Child in Time, Steppenwolf – Born to be Wild, Iron Butterfly – In a gada da vida, Alvin Lee & Ten Years After – Slow Blues in C, Santana – Revelations

That was the beginning. I didn’t trust men so much because I think maybe I was three the first time I was sexually/physically abused…I may have been older and I may have been younger I’m never really sure.

I didn’t remember it until I was 13 years old, and I didn’t tell anyone until I was 16, but it happened thereby setting the stage for things to come. (Now no one but me remembers being told or doing the telling, but it happened none the less.)

By the time I was three my family lived in a huge house with a big yard and lots of neighbours. The house had a big veranda and a large back porch.

It had a huge yard and the flowers in the garden to keep my mommy happy. It had a big tree for forts in the back yard…but better yet the whole back of the lot was surrounded by plum trees and an old cedar hedge that was perfect for hiding in.

It even had a side door that let to the butler’s pantry and shutters for the windows. When the storms came my mother would get me out of bed and fully dressed to sit in the window seat with her and watch the lightening. I always thought is was for the “learning experience” but it turned out it was her fear.

See, my mom grew up on the prairies in the 30’s and 40’s and there lightening storms usually meant rolling prairie fires that could cause great balls of fire to roll right through your house(started by lightening and attracted to the metal of your wood stove and chimeny….so she was being prepared.

My mother’s friends called the big green on green house on Pete Street, across from the River Tay their favorite coffee house, and the traffic at the front door was non-stop. My parents were sociable people in those days…always had and went to parties and one of the neighbour’s daughters babysat.

When my mother and father went out together they usually left via the front door. The baby-sitter would let her boyfriend in the side door through the butler’s pantry. The boyfriend was a biker and he had a big knife. Any knife was big to a little girl’s eye.

While the baby-sitter came upstairs and woke me up to bring me downstairs, the boyfriend would pull down all the window blinds in the house…all except the one right over the couch.
And when the baby-sitter brought me to the living room the biker made me stand on the coffee table and keep watch out the crack at the bottom of the blind over the couch…so he and the baby-sitter could do things on the couch and not get caught.

When I cried he held a knife to my throat and told me that he would kill my mommy and daddy if I ever told. So I decided to be as strong and strong could be and save my mommy and daddy’s life.

And I didn’t cry again.

Ever.

And I didn’t tell anyone for more than 10 years. But by that time the dye was set. I didn’t even tell when the biker boyfriend did the same things to me that he did to the babysitter…which made the baby-sitter cry.

The baby-sitter was not anywhere near as strong as I was and that made me proud.

The Sound: Vangelis – Heaven and Hell, Pink Floyd – Wish you Were Here, Bob Seger – Beautiful Loser, Eagles – Hotel California, Tom Waits – Small Change, Fleetwood Mac – Rumors, Lynard Skynard – Freebird , Led Zepplin – Stairway to Heaven, Alan Parsons – Eye in the Sky, Lou Reed – Heroin

You see, Mike and I met when he came to live in my hotel. Actually I already knew him but we had never really gotten along. I was a major waste of oxygen in those days but I had it together enough to see that Mike was having a tough time and decided to help a bro out.

His birth mother was dying of breast cancer and he’d been in a bike accident. Some idiot in a cage had run a red light and T-Boned him on his shovelhead. Totaled the bike and as a result he had both legs in casts from the knee down. They weren’t walking casts so he was living in my hotel cos he couldn’t make it up the three flights of stairs to his apartment. Besides, room service sounded like a good plan for a man on crutches.

For the first couple of weeks he was as resistant to help from me as any human being could be. I knew he didn’t think much of me cos he’d always made no bones about what a waste of time and money drugs were. And how smart people didn’t go that route.

In the past I’d always flipped the bird at him when he got up on that soap box…but I was getting tired and was beginning to come round to his way of thinking. The thing about being a junkie is that you spend your whole drug laden career trying to get back to that very first euphoria.

And it never is that good again. All it does is eat ya. And your money and your family and your friendships.

I was a very old twenty and I was holding on to my hotel by the skin of my teeth. I was pretty much convinced that I was gonna have to go to a loan shark or I was gonna loose it for taxes. My grandfather had left me this hotel when I was eighteen and two scant years later I was about to lose it.

Then one night I was in the bar and someone said something about Mike runnin outta money. That got me to thinking so I went into the kitchen. I made him a big old ham and cheese sandwich, grabbed a coupla beers and then went round and banged on the door.

At first I heard nothing. Then I heard a splash and a big thump, but still no answer, so I used my master key.

I walked into his room and no Mike, but I heard some serious hard core cussing coming from behind the closed bathroom door.

So I called out to him, “Hey Mike…you ok?”

“Fuck…whosssssat?” says a voice from behind the door.

“S’me Baby…you ok?”

“Ahhhh…hmmmmmm ummm nope, ummmmmm don’t come in!…I ahhhh don’t think so…uhhhmmmmm…don’t suppose ahhhh you could get Big D or Al or Boomer er one of them boys to come up here fer a minute do ya?” he says hopefully.

“Wassa matter? Maybe I can help,” says I, as I shoved open the bathroom door.

“No no no no no…shit woman don’t you never listen?”

And there’s Mike, buck nekid, layin in the bathtub, half full of water (the other half having splashed out all over the bathroom floor). One casted leg in and wet, and the other out, and kinda stuck between the shitter and the tub. And the six pack, whew. Lord Tunderin Jesus, that man was built like a brick shit house.

I continued to look up till our eyes met and it was then that I discovered that true red heads blush everywhere…not just in the face!I guess he’d been trying to get into the tub for a wash using those great big arms of his to lever himself in and slipped. And there he was. I couldn’t help myself. I started to giggle which led to a laugh. I mean come on…have ya got a visual?

Eventually he started to laugh as well.