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EXCERPT FROM THE
BOOK:
VINCE'S GYM
Stor 'n' Locks Or Camping
Out As Possible Options
I was coming to the end of my lease of the gym. The job
situation in the area had not improved. My Veteran Benefits were
not going to last much longer, the song and dance that Larry and
Harry had given me about ‘One for all and all for one” was just
them talking bull crap. Before I moved out from Pennsylvania, my
friends had told me that they would never let anything get in
the way of our friendship or get in the way of helping each
other out. Harry had told so many lies to Stacy telling her that
I was not to be trusted around women that she put her foot down
against me moving in with them, claiming that it was up to me to
get better situated. Larry’s woman did not want me to move in
either.
The thought of having to move back to Pennsylvania in failure
with my tail between my legs was not an option. I did not feel
too good about chatting with my parents about my situation. In
my mind, I could just hear my mother and Jake, “My kids are
prospering….James is making big bucks on the Alaskan Pipe-Line,
Lynn, is a high falootin director at the Smithsonian Institute
and my oldest boy is living in a cozy stor 'n' lock and is a
tribal leader of his town's homeless. We are just so proud!
It wasn’t just my pride that kept me from moving back, I felt
that my options back east would be even more limited. If I went
back to Pennsylvania, I would be faced with the same niggling
problems that I had faced before I got hired on with the federal
government. Where would I live and where could I find
employment, -- if they would hire me?
I thought of moving to more promising parts of the country, but
I had no way of knowing if I would be traveling great distances
to find out if I was essentially jumping from the fireplace into
the fire. I figured at least in the area of Oregon I lived the
weather was temperate enough that I could live in a tent in the
surrounding hills and wilderness if I had to. I could live in
the wilderness behind the Community College. During this period
of my life I had not learned how to put my pride aside and work
on the skills of networking.
I was so busy, self absorbed and reserve, I did not understand
the importance of making new friends to network. My natural
inclination to mind my own business kept me from interviewing
people about their lives, which would have helped me to gather
more information and perhaps given me more options. My natural
inclination to minimize my problems, kept me from sharing with
other people my plight and of course this lowered the
possibility of anyone volunteering their help or ideas. Mainly,
aside from my mother, I have been conditioned to believe that
the only one I could truly count on thru thick and thin, from
beginning to end was just me. My other friends proved to be a
dead end as far as options went, either by their disinterest or
because back home they were struggling like me at home with
their parents, or with their spouses.
The only option that I had was the women I met as a dancer, or
from school or the gym. Many of these ladies had made it clear
that I could move in with them. The problem with that option was
the spoken and unspoken insinuations of sex and commitment. It
was one thing to have sex and even friendship with these women
with an understanding that it would just be fun times; it was
another thing to lead them on or allow them to lead themselves
on for the sake of keeping a roof over my head.
I looked at the wilderness around the community college and I
even took my tent and enough camping supplies that I could carry
and I did set up camp for five days to see how feasible that it
would be. I had a locker at the college and I could walk down
from the hills into the campus and change and shower there,
which is what I did during that week. I figured I could still
scrounge the supermarkets dumpsters for produce, get government
cheese, eat at the cafeteria and perhaps even see if I could
store my stuff in a stor 'n' lock as close to campus as
possible. I knew I could make it work.
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