An Introduction III

I intend to make this my last installment of my world acclaimed series cleverly titled "An Introduction" . It's my hope that having read this you'll have a better appreciation for the events that have formed me, and for some of the life experiences I bring to the table.

In my last post, I think I left off with my stunned surprise at the failure of my first marriage or the second time. I've already confesses to you the fact that I'm alcoholic. By this time I was firmly in the grip of that dread disease, and if you know anything about alcoholics, then you know that most are convinced that they are the center of the world. It was no different with me. My failure in the domestic arena could not possibly be my fault. I could solve that problem by drinking more. That'd ease the pain.

It didn't work. My job performance plummeted. Bills piled up. Friends got pissed off. I ended up in a deep depression which required hospitalization. It was during this treatment that I made the connection between my life's failures and my love of drink. I don't claim credit for this epiphany, I had to have a professional draw a map for me. It took a while, but I finally managed to connect the dots.

Questions had answers. What did I most want to be in life? An Army officer. Why didn't you become one? I quit university. Why did you quit university? Because I partied instead of studying. Why did your marriage fail twice? Because I was hanging with buddies drinking instead of being with my family. Why don't your friends come around and support you? Because I'm usually out drinking, or sleeping off a drinking bout. Why isyour commander pissed off at you? Because I'm late and doing shoddy work because I'm drinking all night and hung over.

Yes, I really had to pay some guy cash money to point this out to me.

So, I had a problem with drinking. The solution was easy. I'd just quit. So I did. But, what I didn't realize was that I didn't have a drinking problem...I had a thinking problem. Things got somewhat better, but not much. I left active duty.

I moved in with my mother and got a job selling cars. I was actually a pretty good salesman. My mother and I couldn't get along though. Too many rules. I moved in with a friend. Too many rules, we couldn't get along. I got my own shoddy, run down apartment. Not enough rules, I was too tempted by my old habits.

I decided on the old geographic cure. I moved to Georgia with my brother and his family, got a job selling cars. The job went fine, but my brother and his wife had too many rules. The same with the room mate I took closer to the city, too many rules. Our room mate-ship ended nearly in physical fighting. I left Atlanta literally in the middle of the night bound for the home of another kind friend in Indianapolis. I got a job as a waiter, I was really good at that. But, of course, my friends with who I lived had too many rules. It was time for me to have my own place anyway.

I found a nice little apartment in an artsy-fartsy section of town. When I describe the surroundings, I'm sure that anyone familiar with Indianapolis with recognize the locale. It was an old building, dating from the 1920's, brick, with large windows. It stood near a corner. Two doors down was a jazz club. Just north, across the street was a grocery store. Across the street to the west, a bar and grill with awesome burgers. Next door to that, a coffee shop with wonderful sidewalk seating where you could enjoy a smoke and coffee whizz watching the world whizz by. It was a major hangout for all the neighborhood characters, of which there were plenty. Everything was within walking distance, a video store, a barber shop, a dry cleaner, a news stand selling selling tobacco products, even upscale cigars.

The most important feature, though; the one feature which was to change my life forever, was the little diner right next door. The food was bad, inconsistent and rather bland; the coffee reminded me of dishwater; the decor was weird; always crowded, the owner never made money because the employees were giving away the store. But it wasn't the food, nor the coffee, not the decor that made it important. It's importance lay in the woman I was to meet there. She would change my life. Over the course of the next six years she would teach me so much about myself and about others that I may never otherwise have learned. It's through her that I formed some of the most treasured relationships I have today. She is Dori and to her I owe everything.

The next post will be "My Dori". Sorry if my promise to end this series seems deceitful, but after writing this, I realize that to try to summarize Dori in a paragraph would be unfair. You're just going to have to get over it. Until then, all the best. Joe