After leaving high school and entering my own life, as it were, there were four driving passions that compelled my actions and decisions. These were sex, chemicals, career, and God. Through all that I have gone through, and will go through, God was always there, and I wanted to be where he wanted me to be. He knew I had the prodigal son thing in me that had to be worked out. I will go through these things one driving force at a time, then tie them together at the end.
When leaving high school, the first thing that I set out to do was to become a millionaire by the time I was twenty. How hard could it be? The first summer out of school I worked at a golf course and a dentist office, about sixty to seventy hours a week. Then came college, and work. When leaving high school, I had been accepted to the University of Minnesota Institute of Technology, and could have gotten a degree with an outlay of $6,000, the rest through grants and scholarships. Helped by poor parents and high ACTs and SATs. For economy's sake, went to the local community college to save some money on the required that would transfer. I hated the thirteenth grade, and finally quit after two months. Mainly because it interfered with my partying. Then I was accepted by the Domino's Pizza I was working at as an assistant manager. Domino's Pizza was huge at the time and making many people rich. So I thought that was my ticket to riches and my best friend agreed. So we decided to make a play for some franchises in western New York. We found out exactly how stupid, naive, and ignorant we really were. We failed miserably. We went back to the franchisee that we worked for before. Because of the large amount of partying I still did, I was unsuccessful as a General Manager. Also because of that partying, I decided I needed to dry out, and moved home to Mom and Dad's. There I got a job at the local Domino's Pizza, which led to a transfer to Des Moines Iowa. Even though I was always partying hard, I was always extra successful where ever I went. Always excelling in the performance of the restaurant's sales, profits, and service. I knew I was great at Domino's Pizza, and in the end I was, but always trying to find my home.
Then there was the adolescence's attempt at trying to figure out how to deal with women. In the real world, it was very different from high school. I did not have women throwing themselves at me because of my social status, so I was completely unable to deal with a relationship on my own. This led to many strange situations. One of the most notably, with a married woman. Her husband became suspicious of us, he was an Air Force missile cop. He had a gun, and came to my home with it. Luckily, that night she was not at my house, like she normally was. We finally calmed him down enough that we let him in. He looked around, did not find her and called his house. She was at home. Close call. Then there was her friend that went trolling for threesomes. She would have an affair, then see who would be willing to have a threesome with her and her husband. Normally the lure was her sexual inhibitions, most young men would only fantasize about, she would do. Then there was potato chip, or free-to-lay. She would often take on multiple partners at the same time. I will not go on, but this just kind of lets you know where that drive went. It was not healthy at all. But in Des Moines that changed.
Chemicals were also a driving passion. I could drink A LOT. So much it would astonish people. When in high school the point of pride would be that I could drink a case of beer in a night. Yes, by myself. But after a while, this begins to be repetitive. So we, my best friend was almost always there, went in search of more interesting ways to become blasted. Our mentor was a guy who came from California, he had done everything chemically, and kind of guided our path along. This is the period of time my chemical use got out of hand. I had only two rules, nothing addictive, and nothing lethal. But that still leaves a lot of things to do. A typical day would see me drinking until I was at .34 or better alcohol content. Alcohol only leaves the system at .01 per hour. So by the time I started drinking again, I was still over .1. I was drunk for six months straight. On top of that was dope. Smoked it everyday. It was all free, so what did it matter how much was done. Got it from the guide. Then when coming home some days, I would be told to open my mouth, then something would be popped in it, and I would be off. Normally it would be revealed to me later what was having this effect on me. Then the Stones concert and my all time favorite drug, LSD. Loved LSD. It would have been the one thing to totally take me over if I let it. It was carefully rationed. Then came the day, when I drank over a liter of hard liquor, and woke up without a hangover. This scared the hell out of me. Realizing that I could drink myself to death, and never puke. My body, just being so used to the alcohol, would not realize anything was wrong until I was dead. I decided to move to Mom and Dad's because of this. When my pastor father came to help me move, he walked in on the beeramid. Over two thousand beer cans that had accumulated in under 5 months in the apartment of me and my best friend. Oh yeah, he was right beside me through all of this stuff. When in Duluth, MN trying to dry out, my body had some real strange reactions. The first time I drank, I ended up driving through a residential neighborhood at 90 miles an hour to a local airport. Where I promptly ran into an airplane. Then got out of my car pissed of and started jumping up and down on the plane. Went back to a buddies house, rifled the purse of the person he had brought home, puked on his couch, and went to sleep. Only to be awoken by the irate woman. After she left, he looked at the mess on the couch, turned the cushion over, and thought that my escapades were cool. So I had another drinking buddy. Another time, later into the drying out, I totally lost contact with reality on very few drinks. Maybe four or five. My body was really rejecting everything. Then I moved to Des Moines.
Through all of the debauchery and intoxication, any time a decision to move or make a big move came, I always prayed about it. Strange I know. To believe that you could still have a connection to God through all of this seeming Godlessness. But, being a pastors kid, I had seen all of the parents in the church in compromising situations. Parents don't hide their freakiness as well as they think they do from their kids. We would talk about it. So when these things were happening, it was just normal that drunkenness, sex, and other things that were in the church, were in my life. At the time it did not seem like any contradiction at all. I know better now, but not then. This brings everything to a new and pivotal place in my life. Where the career took over, and my savior found me. No, my savior was not Jesus, it was a woman.
