Freque Factory - Post High School, Part 4

Freque Factory

Post High School, Part 4

   After I got back from Alabama the UN moved to my home town.  My bedroom was miniscule, but I loved it.  I got myself a new job, as a salad maker at our local smorgasbord.    The job didn't last all that long.  My bosses didn't think I was strong enough to handle the giant trash cans full of salad.  

   But at the job I met a man that I had liked the look of a year ago when I started college.  His name was Bob.  Bob and I began a relationship pretty quickly.  It was easily one of my worst ideas.  Turns out he was a heroin addict.  He had gotten hooked while fighting in Vietnam.  He had developed a cycle of getting clean, then staying clean for 6 months or so, then slowly, over a year or so, getting deeper into addiction until he needed to cold turkey again to function.  Some of these cold turkey sessions were in jail.  The biggest thing I learned in this relationship is that I never, ever want to be involved with an addict. again.

   R & H got married late in the fall.  It was a low key ceremony in our front room.  I think they took the weekend off for their honeymoon.  They were working hard to finish school.  The plan was to transfer (it turned out to be San Jose State College) the next fall.  Their combined families were willing to help them continue their schooling, but there were strings.  One of them was that the two of them needed to have their own place, not with 2 single women.  So the plan was for HJ and I to get our own place after the first of the year.  We were back where we started.  Except now HJ and her boyfriend were very serious.  I expected them to be engaged by Christmas (and they were).

   This was my second Christmas with my parents apart.  It was better.  At my mom's suggestion I invited my roommates to join us on Christmas Eve.  R & H didn't come.  I think they spent the night with her family.  HJ appreciated a chance to avoid her local relatives.  She'd be spending the next day with her guy.  Barbara came as well.  Since she was raised Jewish, it was the first Christmas she had ever celebrated.  She really had a good time.  We all did.  We ended up getting together during the Christmas season for several years.

   So in January we moved to the new place.  I had broken up with Bob the addict before Christmas, so I was free to date anyone, sort of.  The young man I had met, and fallen in love with while in Alabama was wanting me to move back there to be with him.  HJ was engaged and planning to get married within a few months.  And Joanne had moved in with us.  Jim was in basic training.

   Having Joanne move in with us was pretty horrid.  She and HJ never got along.  She irritated me most of the time.  We were all glad when Jim finished basic training and they moved to Texas, his first posting.

   HJ and I talked.  She was getting married in April.  After the honeymoon she was moving in to Bob's house to start married life.  I decided to move to Alabama.  But first I was going to visit Monique in Minnesota.  She was sounding more and more despondent.  We had a set of plans.

   HJ's wedding was fun.  It was very, very small-in front of a justice of the peace.  Afterward we had a traditional Chinese wedding feast with her family.  It struck Bob (the groom) and I funny that us two white folks could use chopsticks and some of HJ's younger cousins couldn't.

   I stowed my stuff at my mom's apartment (mostly in my old room), packed my suitcase and off I flew.

   My visit to Minnesota was eventful. Monique and Blonde were living in a basement apartment on the outskirts of St. Paul.  Winter was over, but spring had yet to arrive.  Everything was gray and dead looking.  Mostly it rained.  A cold, cold dreary rain.  Not encouraging.

   Both Monique and Blonde were working.  It was all they could do to keep their bills paid.  There was a real change in Blonde.  Where was the charming, outgoing guy we had met in CA?  This was a sullen, brooding guy.  As I found out, he had become a real mamma's boy.  Or maybe he was always that guy and just changed once away from Momma?  Blonde was using a lot of drugs too-mostly marijuana.

   Speaking of Gert, Monique took me over to her house one day.  Monique and Blonde had lived with her in-laws for the first few months there.  The house really did have salmon colored deep plush carpets in the hall way.  I did have to take off my shoes there.  Gert was a huge woman with a voice like a fog horn.  Highly opinionated.  Her husband was a mousy little man.  It felt like he was hiding behind his wife all the time.   I couldn't imagine living there.

   One night they took me to a "house party."  They're popular there, but I hadn't experienced one before.  The idea was to cram as many people as possible into a house and party.  I hated it.  Way too many people.  I felt like there wasn't enough oxygen.  Plus I didn't really know anyone except Monique and Blonde, who vanished early.  Despite the cold I escaped outside.  I talked to others out there for several hours until Monique showed up again and we got to go home.

   Monique confided to me that she was becoming desperate to have a baby.  Gert was putting pressure on them.  She was pretty clear that if Monique couldn't produce a grandchild for her, then Monique wasn't good enough to be her daughter-in-law.  Monique was trying to convince herself that having a baby would "save" her marriage.  Despite all her efforts, no pregnancy.

   I left after a week, even though I had planned to stay longer.  I was done with the gray and dreary.  I wanted warmth, green, and the affection of a Southern man.