Summer of Love

We used to spend a lot of time down in Panama City Beach - me and the McDougals. The McDougal clan loved Panama City - the sand, the surf, the drunken barely legal Alabamian hair stylists. The McDougals would grab a few every quarter when we went down there.

That was in the heady pre-Internet days of the early 90s - back when a man actually had to break a sweat to make a living in the sex industry. McDougal was running a sex shop up in Shreveport and found that the margin on sex slaves was far greater than on anal nitrate and two-headed dildos.

So we had this one girl (a black one or a Mexican or something) used to ride motorcycles professionally like in the circus or something. This one was a fighter. Took three tranq darts before she went down and even then by the time we come up on her she was rolled over on her back taking wild shots at me and McDougal's then wife, Kathleen, with this rusty Walther P-38 that I later learned she won from her grandfather in a game of Omaha when she was seven years old.

McDougal took a round in the face and started just kickin' the shit out of her. She's loaded up on like 15 mg of Trifluoperazine from the dart gun and she's taken like nine good shots to the ribs from McDougal and she's still fightin like a bobcat. All the while, Kathleen's in the background yellin' "Don't kick her in the face. Don't mess up her face!"

And she grabs onto McDougal's calf and just latches on with her teeth (not Kathleen, but the girl of another ethnic background we were trying to abduct and force to work as a sex slave in Shreveport) and McDougal's swinging his leg around wildly now, but she's locked on and ain't lettin' go.

McDougal tells me, "Fuck it. Just kill this one. She's not worth all this."

So I walk up and I'm gonna slit her throat and she looks up at me like she ain't even scared. Her eyes are all defiant and whatnot. So I fall in love with her right there and we end up getting married and having three kids in five years and things were really moving too fast. We were just so young and inexperienced. I couldn't find work at first -- not good work, not the kind of work that she needed to support her and the lifestyle that she grew up in. Her dad was a stewardess or whatever you call men who do that (I know, apparently they're not ALL gay or whatever) and her mom was like a union luggage handler so, of course, her family always flew wherever they wanted for free and were always rubbing that in your face.

Her dad was always really condescending to me, but that didn't really bother me because he was a fey Mexican or British guy or something. Her mom was actually pretty nice. Her name was (and I presume still is) Denise or something like that. Bernice maybe? Eunice? I don't know. One of those "I'm not from America" kind of names. Paula? Shit, I forget. I nailed her one Christmas though. Completely random. We were both on a shitload of pharmaceuticals that she stole from the airport. She was always stealing shit from people's luggage. Especially nice luggage. She told me never to buy expensive luggage because that was always a tip to baggage handlers to steal shit from you. She used to let me go out to the airport and "search" people's bags with her, which mostly meant I just sniffed a bunch of dirty panties and stole some change and stuff. And my then wife (I forget her name now -- maybe Kathleen? Shit, I don't remember) was passed out on the kitchen floor and me and my mother in law. Luke? Or Lucas? (something like that) were alone naked in the hot tub because her husband (my fey Genoan flight attendant father-in-law) had just died of a heart attack and was just kind of floating in the water next to us. I guess he'd died actually like a day before because he was pretty bloated and filled with air and looked like a blowfish, but things were already going South with me and Amy (I think her name was) because I don't want to say anything negative, but she had a pretty bad cocaine problem and was not the most compassionate woman I ever met - I think because she was Italian. And I remembered that I had a bunch of ether on a rag and one thing led to another and next thing you know I'm a dad again.

Anyway, McDougal said he knew our marriage wouldn't last. He convinced Sarah that the baby was hers and her mom was just carrying it because of the drugs and whatever, and last year we had to move because McDougal transferred me to Provo to handle shipping and receiving at the Starlight Complex, which he bought in like the '40s or something and has been running with this kid Dave from Chicago ever since. It wasn't really a promotion, but it was a little bit more money and it was closer to my family, so we took it. It's not like you can turn down these kinds of offers anyway. And it was really hard on Jim because he was just finishing his Freshman year in high school and he's bald (nerves or whatever) and it's hard for him to make new friends because the tats make him look kind of mean. And he's sort of slackjawed and dimwitted like his real mother.

And Tammy and the other trhee kids left me because she was scared of another move and because she fell in love with a prison guard down in Tallahassee. The other kids all go to high school or work in a bank or something. So McDougal was right in the long run, but I don't hold any grudges because nothing lasts forever and she told me she didn't want any money. She just wanted to be free of me and Brian, whom I call Scooter on account of he's 14 and still can't walk.

But every year about this time I wonder what's going on down in Panama City Beach because they really do have beautiful beaches, and some people think it's kind of trashy, but the people there are really nice and not pretentious or condescending in the least. It's the kind of place where a man like me really feels at home.