The Perils of Pamela, Part 2

So this "thing" with Pam continued, unchanged, unsettled, undone and unsung.

For three weeks, the blond ex-cheerleader kept pursuing and I kept playing hard to get which, on the surface, seemed completely counter-intuitive. But at the end of the day, Pam's good looks and blond locks weren't enough to change my mind. I know; what’s wrong with that picture?! I guess you just had to be there. Still, no matter how hard I sought separation it was nearly impossible getting untangled from her.

There was the almost constant parade of phone calls. Even if she didn’t catch me- or I ‘forgot’ to call back- she’d still managed to put a bug in my ear. And it bugged me. She kept coming to our hockey games, too, though I told her she really didn't have to. Which was polite-speak for I really didn’t want her to. She also kept showing up at the dorm and almost always uninvited. At least she wouldn't smoke if we were together. She even sat in the lobby for two hours while I did a weekend air shift on the campus radio station, KWRS. That really annoyed me. But then I felt guilty about it because every half hour or so she'd come upstairs, smile and take my coffee mug, then bring it back refilled from the student union coffee shop downstairs. On her dime.

So I passively let her crowd me and did nothing to stop it. Of course, none of this was really her fault, which bugged me, too, because most of it was mine.  I guess I was a slow healer, and though it'd been over a year since the great divide came between me and Kelly, I’d yet to figure out how to divide my still broken heart and share it with someone new. Not then, anyway. However, if timing in life is everything, then poor Pam unfortunately picked the wrong time to show up in mine.  

 

Still, I should have been shouting to anyone who'd listen, "Hey, look who's with the hot chick". Instead, except with the guys on the hockey team- who’d seen her in action- I worked hard to keep Pam a secret. And though I know she thought of me as a boyfriend, the best I could do was think of her as an annoying kid sister; or at worst, an albatross. But I gotta give her credit for hanging in there. She didn't give up. Like trying to find the needle in the haystack, that's how hard it was trying to find the right way to say 'stop’, ‘slow down’, or ‘go away’; not until the Sunday after my birthday. That night, though I didn't find the needle, I finally found the last straw.

 

Pam said she had out of town family coming over that night, and was expected to stay and entertain. Our twenty four day kabuki dance had left little time for me, just me, to have a night to myself and I was pretty jazzed about it. But a little before 7 p.m. - knock, knock- I opened the door and found Pam on the other side. She was smiling. I probably looked like I'd come down with food poisoning. "Change of plans, so I'm all yours instead", she announced as if I'd just won the lottery. Damn! But before she could set her purse down, I grabbed a hold of her arm. "Come on", I said forcefully. "We're going for a walk."

 

Out in the hallway, I pulled her behind me and led her to the exit. “What’s wrong?” she asked, but I think she thought I was teasing because the echo of her giggling followed us down the stairwell. “What's wrong?” she asked again when we were out of the building and since I hadn’t spoken since leaving my dorm room, her voice conveyed a more genuine since of concern. Still holding her hand, I relaxed my grip and steered us in the direction of the Loop, but not sticking to the rules of conversation, answered her question with a question of my own. "What's wrong? What's wrong with you?" I countered. "Me? What'd I do? I just got here."

 

Point well taken, but that was the point- she was here.

 

“You know what I mean. I wasn't expecting you. I had plans to play poker with the guys tonight but now you’re here." It was a mean thing to say; meaner because there was no poker game. But Pam didn't know that and I really wanted her to ‘get it’.  "You can’t just keep showing up here all the time and expect me to drop everything because you are; especially without calling first. What are you doing here anyway? I thought you had family stuff.” Pam started to sniffle and pout. ”They were boring, so I left. But it sounds like you'd rather play poker than play with me.”

 

I couldn't tell if she was being clever, but she couldn’t have been more right. And in the chilly night air, the quiet grew louder as she waited for me to disagree until, becoming impatient, she vigorously let go of my hand and, still sniffling, rephrased her statement in the form of a question. “Well? Is that stupid poker game more important than me?" We were finally at the crossroads, and my answer would take tact, diplomacy, and nuance. Unfortunately, I possessed none of those qualities and simply blurted out the hard truth. “In this case, yes it is.” Now Pam's tears fell in cascades and I instantly felt like a creep because I hadn’t seen her cry before and it really hadn’t been my intent to hurt her. But I wasn't completely ignorant.

 

Sitting down next to her on a bench near the Campanile, I tenderly blotted some fresh tears from her cheeks. In the three and half weeks I'd known her, it may have been the closest and most real moment we'd shared. “Aww….don't cry. It's okay. I’m sorry. I really am... It's just that....” With my sentence unfinished - and before I could say what I knew needed to be said- Pam threw her arms around me and, like we’d been cast in a really bad movie, breathlessly gushed, “Oh, it’s all right. I know you love me…”   Then, before I could say anything else, her mouth was on mine.  

 

With her tongue unexpectedly tied up with mine, she’d regained the upper hand and, if the situation was allowed to remain unchanged, things could very quickly spin out of my control. On the other hand, I wasn't dead either and Pam's tightening arms were a pleasantly warm buffer against the heavy damp air that surrounded us.  At last, though, I delicately pushed her away and stared up into the cloudy night. “What’s wrong?” Since practically dragging her from the dorm and out into the night, it was the third time she'd asked that question, and this time I knew I needed to come up with a better and more definitive answer.

 

"I'm sorry. We shouldn't be doing this anymore. We can't be doing this anymore."

 

"But, why?"

 

Trying my hardest to find just the right words, I looked up into the sky again for some sort of guidance. And once more finding none, I blindly stumbled into a really ragged explanation. "Wow….This is really hard and please know I don’t want to hurt you and well, if things had been different….But they're not and it’s just….it's just that...it's just that I don’t feel that way about us. “  I think she knew what I was going to say next; her eyes were full of tears. And I was hoping I wouldn’t have to, but I had to seal the deal. Close the door. There was no other choice; for her sake as well as mine.

 

“God this is so hard to say…and I’m so sorry….But, Pam …. I’m…I’m not in love with you.”

 

So there it was, raw, but honest, and now out there in the open. And like switching off a light, Pam's demeanor suddenly went from aggressively sensual to dark naked disdain.

 

“You son of a bitch!"

 

And over the course of the next ten minutes, that was the nicest thing she said. Pam shot up from the bench like it was on fire, turned on her heels and broke into kind of a half run, half power walk. Before she got too far ahead of me, I reached for her hand to try and slow her down so we could walk and talk together. But as soon as I did, she recoiled and twisted from me as if she'd been bitten by a snake. "Don't touch me. Don't you ever touch me again" she hissed and continued taking two steps to my one, forcing me to jog to keep pace. 

"Pam, listen….." As I ran beside her, I tried to apologize and ward off the coming meltdown. But it was no use. The conversation remained one sided and ugly. Starting with, "Screw you, asshole", it kind of went downhill from there. She made no attempt to be conciliatory or spare my feelings in a lengthy rant, riddled with profanity that lasted all the way from the Campanile to the gravelly parking lot on the west side of the dorm, where she'd left her car. And without giving me a second look, she threw the door open, plopped down behind the wheel and slammed it shut behind her, with as much force as an angry 100 pound girl muster.

 

But I could see inside, and once she'd unleashed all of her invective and run out of names to call me, watched her, take several deep and wounded breaths and, totally spent, quietly and sadly hang her head. Suddenly I felt a wave of compassion and wanted to reach out to her. I took a step closer to the driver’s side window. “Look, Pam, I like you and you’re a nice girl and I know you’re gonna meet somebody who can, ya know, love you too, the way you want. The way you deserve." I was gentle, trying to soften the blow and give her some encouragement as we parted. But she was having none of it.

"Shut your stupid face and get the hell away from my car!" she yelled from the other side of the closed window and turned the engine over with a vengeance. Glancing up at me, she vigorously rolled it down with the fire returning to her eyes. "Don't ever forget this night, Rocket. Because it’s the last night anyone ever cared about you. And that's past tense, by the way, 'cuz I sure don't anymore. Don't know what I ever saw in you in the first place. You're a freaking troll. I guess I felt sorry for you because who's gonna love a troll? Not me. Not anymore. I'm movin' on, loser. But take good care of yourself, okay, because I want you to live a long life, alone, miserable and missing what you could've had with me.”

 

There was more, but most of it just heaped-on cursing. I got the gist, though- Pam didn't much like me anymore and the “relationship”, or whatever it was, was unquestionably over. There was no ambiguity about our final conversation either. We were done. Her car's headlights popped on and Pam shoved it in reverse. Then just as quickly, she jammed it into first and, with tires squealing, angrily drove off into the night with her middle finger waving prominently outside the driver’s side window. 

 

I watched her taillights disappear onto Hawthorne Road then went back into the dorm, feeling suddenly bled dry, though I should’ve felt a sense of relief because I'd just completed a crash course in Woman's Scorn 101 and lived to tell about it. I'd withstood the intensity of her fury, taken her best shots and didn't flinch or pee my pants. I didn't try to reason or rationalize, either. I just took it. I probably deserved it too. If she got nothing else out of our "friendship" she should at least get the last word.

 

Still, I’d never been talked to like that with so much anger and hate before. And as I tried to fall go to sleep that night, Pam's words played over and over in my head. They hurt and stung as if she was still there yelling at me. From the beginning, Pam and I had been a disaster just waiting to happen, an uncomfortable screeching train wreck, from pointless beginning to its merciful but explosive end. An eventuality I knew was coming but hoped somehow to avoid. 

 

So why didn’t I click with her? She was a golden opportunity, pretty and luckily easy after an unlucky break up. Turns out though, all we really were, were really wrong for each other. Underneath a nearly perfect outside, inside Pam's soul was a clash of imperfections- sometimes coarse, often clingy, whiny and immature; an unhappy person and general pain in the ass.  Of course, nobody's perfect and some of those things could be overlooked. In fact, some of those things could be said about me.

 

But adding up all those negative attributes made her a hard person to like. And that was the rub. We never really become friends. If I couldn't fake liking her, how could I ever fake loving her?  And in the middle of the night, it finally all began to make sense.  I wasn’t retarded after all; breaking up had been the best thing to do, not just for me, but for both of us. I could live with that, and the next morning woke up feeling free and ready to move on.

 

However, two days later, there was another hockey game. And like all the other games since I'd met her, Pam was there that night, too. But not to see me. Making it perfectly clear she’d wasted no time mourning for me, her sights were already set on Hank Savland, one of our burly defensemen. Shoot, she and I had spilt on Sunday but by Tuesday night it appeared Pam and Hank were already an item.  I’m sure that’s how she wanted it to look, anyway. However, knowing she’d recently been my girl (sort of), Hank wanted to get my permission, as if, by then, it'd even matter. What Pam wanted, Pam usually got. But Hank and I were teammates, and though I had no dog in the fight anymore and found it a little uncomfortable seeing her with him, gave him my "blessing". I also gave him some advice. "Don't get on her bad side. She’s not so pretty from that side."



And that was that. They started dating and Pam was at the rest of our games that season, cheering on everyone but me. Our games were sparsely attended and I heard her ‘boo’ every time I touched the puck. I knew her voice. She was the only one doing it, too. She also made it a point to give Hank a big pre-game smooch right on the mouth, and usually when I was close enough I couldn’t miss it. It was curious because I don’t think I ever saw any of the other guys get kissed by their wives or girlfriends before games. She certainly hadn't kissed me like that at rink side. But she slobbered all over Hank like a dog slobbering on a meaty bone. He was embarrassed and I knew she did it mostly out of spite towards me. Everybody connected to the hockey team knew it, too. There was nothing I could do about it though, except live with it.



Still, it kind of hurt. Like I said, I wasn't dead yet and though I was glad Pam wasn't throwing herself at me anymore, on some primal level it hurt to see her throwing herself at somebody else. It was sort of bizarre to witness, and to his credit, Hank finally got fed up with it and told her to knock it off. When she wouldn’t, he banished her from coming altogether. "If she comes out here again, I told her we're through." It must've worked, too, because I never saw her after that- even at our celebratory party after winning the championship two weeks later. Hank was a great teammate, but turned out to be an even better friend.

 

I didn't play hockey the next season. That was the year I lived at Lake Tahoe. But by 1979 I was back in Spokane again and playing in the same league with some of the same guys from our ‘77-78 championship team. Hank and I ended up on different teams, but the first time we went head-to-head we, met at center ice during the pre-game skate to catch up. And after exchanging pleasantries, I said, “So, what’s new?” He took a long pause and, haltingly, mentioned that he'd gotten married....to Pam. Ouch…Awkward.

 

But not really. A year and a half after the fact, enough time had passed and, for me, Pam was mostly just a bad memory. So I congratulated him and asked how it was  going. Hank hesitated and looked away before answering. “Biggest mistake I ever made” he said dejectedly. ”Such a cute mouth until she opens it. She never shuts up and swears more than I do. My mother won’t even come around anymore if she knows Pam’s there. And to tell ya the truth, I’ve started taking double shifts and extra hours at work, just so I don’t have to go home. I can see why you dumped her”.  

 

Well, to be honest, Pam dumped me, not the other way around. Not that it mattered to Hank.  By then it was a moot point, anyway, and I felt really bad for him. He looked so sad and I wondered. Aloud,  if he’d thought about leaving her or getting a divorce. But Hank just shrugged his shoulders. "I can’t now. She’s pregnant, due next month. And the worse thing is, I’m not 100 percent sure the kid’s even mine. Pam's always liked to, ya know,  party, and though she always says she's just out with the girls, well..." His voice trailed off. 

 

Poor Hank. To an outsider, it looked like he had it all- good job, tall, strapping guy, great looking wife and a kid on the way. He shouldn’t have had a care in the world. But it wasn't that way at all. He was miserable. "It all happened so fast and it all seemed so wonderful at first", he recounted.  “But it fell apart so fast, too”, he lamented. Hank stared down at the ice, shaking his head, knee deep in thought and the crumbling ruins of his life. I though he was going to cry. It was two minutes till game time and the conversation, humanely, had to come to an end.  Skating away, Hank wished me a good game. "You too" I answered, now well aware that the outcome of a rec league hockey game was the least of his worries. I watched him rejoin his team at the bench and felt so sorry for him- but so thankful I wasn’t him.

Hank said they’d gotten married on July 1 in the summer after our successful play-off run. July 1?!  That seemed awful quick, but that’s what he said, too… "It all happened so fast… “ I didn't have a 2-year old calendar laying around, but when I got home after the game used the 1980 one to calculate just how fast. And the number was 69. The gap between April 23, 1978 (the night Pam and I broke up, an event so distasteful it was hard to forget), and her wedding day was only 69 days, or about 10 weeks. Wow. When she told me she was moving on, I guess she wasn’t lying.

And I didn’t really know what to think about all that, except for maybe one thing: there, but by the grace of God, go I.

 

 

The Perils of Pamela, Part 1

“Hey, number 14, you played great.”

 

The voice was definitely female and came from behind, up in the stands where literally handfull's of people came to watch guys like me play in a scrub hockey league. The game had just ended and I was in the back of a crowd of players leaving the ice for the locker room. I was also the only #14 on either roster that night and, though the assessment of my game was questionable, knew whoever it was, was probably talking to me. So I turned in her direction and, somewhat bewildered and definitely out of character, skated in her direction. “Uhhhh… Who me?  Ummm, thanks.”

 

Ah, yes, the pleasing repartee of a brilliant conversationalist.

 

“My name’s Pam”, she answered, ”and I really think you’re a good player. Have you played long?” I still didn’t get why she was talking to me, but explained it was my first year playing competitively and was having a blast. We started making a little more semi-awkward small talk, but I had to get off the ice because the two teams playing next were coming on. So I thanked her again and began skating away. "What’s your name?” she shouted. As I stepped onto the plastic mat outside the ice surface, I turned and hollered Rocket!, then she yelled back, 'Okay, Bye', waved and walked away to the public exit.

 

Our team had the upstairs dressing room that night, and climbing the steps I passed Dennis Bossingham, our roly-poly goalie who’d been watching the encounter from the landing. ”Well, well. Who’s that, lover boy?” he demanded in his nasally smart ass voice. “Beats me. Never seen her before. Said her name’s Pam”, I responded, brushing past him. “Ohh….She’s cuuuuute!" he bellowed, then made a follow up recommendation on what I should try for ‘my next move’ that was so obscene, even I blushed. “Oh, eat shit and die. What’s the matter with you, anyway? I just met her. Pull your head out of your ass. And the gutter, will ya?" Sometimes, Dennis’ lack of tact was too much, even for me. It made being around him annoying.

 

Anyway, I didn't want a puck bunny for a girlfriend. I didn't want a girlfriend, period. In the year since breaking up with Kelly I hadn't dated for real, except maybe with Jill Bauermeister, but hadn’t really tried and didn't really want to. So, I forgot about the accidental meeting at the hockey rink till the next afternoon when the dorm phone jingled. I was closest to it when it rang and when I answered, a girl’s voice was on the other end of the receiver. ”Hey there, remember me? This is Pam.” Pam? How the hell did she recognize my voice?! And how the hell did she get the dorm phone number? And, for the moment bypassing any pretend pleasantries, that's exactly what I asked her.

 

”From the official score keeper at your game last night. He lives down the street and, after you left, I sweet talked him into letting me check over the rosters and that’s where I found your name and phone number. Hope you don’t mind.” Well….I kinda did, but then again I mostly didn't. It was kind of flattering. “Sooo, I was wondering if you might like to go have pizza with me tonight? And then maybe a movie or something else, too, if ya want.”

Not bad looking and forward too, it finally hit me- she was asking me out on a date. I didn’t even have to work at it. But as usual, instead of being spontaneous and just going for it, I had to stop and think.

 

I didn’t know how I felt about the idea-- or her yet, either. I was doing a poor job of rebounding from my first relationship, and my buddies in the dorm and on the hockey team were enough for now. Besides I’d spent maybe all of 45 seconds in Pam’s company and, still strung out from loving and losing Kelly, was pretty sure I could live without any further female entanglements. But then I took a breath. Wait a minute......hmmm....On second thought, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to just see what this chick is all about. Though my broken heart still belonged to someone else, the rest of me was a free agent. I liked blond girls and this one was pretty hot, too. What the heck. Since you only live once, I pushed the past aside for the moment and took a step into the present. “Sure. I'd love to.”

 

I’d live to regret it.

 

We met at Shakey’s Pizza on East Sprague. Not wanting to appear too eager I planned to arrive late, but managed to get out there first anyway. So I found a table and waited. Pam came in about ten minutes later and quickly had my full attention—and everybody else’s.  When she walked in she was clearly not the girl I'd met the previous night. Instead of the wool leggings and loose Letterman's jacket she wore at the rink, Pam had squeezed into about the tightest pair of jeans imaginable. It was amazing she could even breathe. While showing off a nicely shaped derrière, the pants held her butt and torso in such a clenched vice grip, it made her gait look stiff and uncomfortable, like she was trying to walk without breathing or moving her hips. Every guy in the joint was checking her out, and I guess that was her intent.

 

She’d also feathered her blond hair and tossed it about in a cheap Farrah Fawcett imitation. It looked great in Farrah posters but on Pam, just kitschy. To make things worse, she’d saturated it with too much bargain hair spray. Lucky for her, we settled into one of the darker corners because she was probably a walking fire hazard. Then underneath a thick winter coat, Pam’s bright red blouse was wide open--wide enough to drive a Zamboni through. With so little restrained about her appearance- or much left to the imagination- Pam was about as subtle as a category 5.  And to top it off, the girl swore like a merchant marine. 

 

Now generally speaking, curse words were no big deal to me; I tossed them back and forth among the guys all the time. But hearing them pour out of an otherwise desirable looking female mouth was extremely unattractive, like filth draining from a sewer. Pam dropped f-bombs like writers use commas and periods. Her lexicon was littered with them. And call it a double standard if you like, but it was an almost instant turn-off. Her use of profanity seemed more deliberate, too, either to make her feel more important or taken more seriously. Problem was, it did neither. The syntax she chose made her sound “small”,  not terribly bright and kind of dirty, though not  in an alluring way; dirty, as in rolling in garbage.  So in less than a day this once interesting girl had transformed herself from kinda cute to pretty tacky.

 

A Rogers High grad, where she'd been a varsity cheerleader and girls softball player, Pam was now 19 and bored. Her days were spent in the little key making booth outside Sears Northtown. It was a dull job, she said, without a lot of customers which gave her plenty of time to contemplate just how dull it was. She still lived with her mother and older sister. Dad was out of the picture. Her current plan was to save enough money to go to France, or get married right away and have a bunch of kids. Uh-oh.  Not that I had anything against kids, but the way she said it not so delicately implied she might be on the look-out for someone to father these future little darlings. Better she go to France. If it’d help ease me out of the picture, hell, I’d even chip in.

 

We didn't do the movie or anything else but I stayed through the pizza part of the date, listening to Pam talk almost nonstop. Mostly about herself. I don’t even think she stopped to swallow her food. Yet she never said anything. The “talk" was a lot of moaning and griping about her life, her family, her job, her car, and her last boyfriend. You name it, whatever the topic she'd soured on it. Everything was horrible, everything was a crisis. It was easy figuring out she wasn’t a very happy person. What was hard was getting her to shut up.  So I knew right away that Pam wasn’t for me.  She wasn't Kelly. That much was certain.

 

Pam appeared to be a paradox: pretty but unattractive; over-dressed, over emotional, over sexed and over the top.  Nice looking on the outside, her beauty ran only skin deep, where it stopped dead in its tracks. If ‘trampy’ was currency, she’d be worth a fortune and the longer I was with her, the less I wanted to be. As our ‘date’ wore on, seemingly endlessly, she made me miss what I didn’t have anymore. Kelly had been wholesomely cute but not-in-your-face about it, comfortable in her own skin, down to earth, fun and warm.  On the other hand, Pam was crude, humorless and, like a walking billboard shouting in bold letters- I’M SLEAZY, BUT EASY- the calculating approach she used to appear hot turned me off cold. I saw her for what she, shallow and manipulating, and by the end of the evening had decided I simply didn’t want this one. If I’d caught her fishing, I’d have thrown her back.  

 

But she’d prove to be a hard one to walk away from. Like a bad penny she kept coming back, starting with our hockey games and wanting to hang out after. The only way I could lose her was if the team went to a bar. Still 19, she couldn’t follow me there. I hated doing it, because she’d beg me not to. Having the guys see her clinging to me so tightly was sort of embarrassing, literally and figuratively. So I’d go in, say I wouldn’t be long and then keep peeking out a window until I didn’t see her car in the parking lot anymore. By midnight, no later than 12:30, she’d finally give up and go home. Honestly, I was just trying to discourage her. Though I didn't want her hanging around, I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, either. Not really. But maybe I should have.

 

And when I wasn't trying to dodge her at night, there were multiple phone calls I tried ducking during the day. Pam called from the time she got to work until turning in. Often I was in class or doing other things- like having a life- but sometimes I was polite enough (or dumb enough) to call her back. But after a while I stopped, because all she wanted to do was complain about being bored, badger me to come over and keep her company till she got off work, as if I had nothing else to do, or not so subtly beg for a date. I never realized how pathetic that was, being on the other end of it. I hope I’d never been or sounded that desperate.

 

But then to my horror she figured out where I lived, and one night showed up at my dorm room door. As a senior, I was living in one of the singles, so didn't have a roommate to run interference. I’m sure I had a look of ’shock’ when I opened the door, but after inviting her in- bad mistake- I told her I wasn’t expecting company and probably wasn’t going to be much fun because I was studying. But she said that was okay, that she didn’t mind waiting. Then she picked up a book I wasn’t using and sat down on my bed to read. It was uncomfortable, and as I went about my business ignoring her figured it’d probably come down to a game of wills trying to get her to leave.

As the long evening went on, she’d get restless and want to play and tease and get silly, and when I wouldn't bite, said she wouldn’t go unless I kissed her. Sigh. It wasn’t that I didn’t like kissing, I liked that a lot. I just didn’t like kissing Pam. One, she sucked on cigarettes all day, so kissing her was like kissing a smoke stack. And, two, I always believed a kiss was special and supposed to mean something and didn’t want her getting the idea that she was. But late into the night, I'd have done just about anything if it’d make her leave. So using the least energy possible, I complied.  “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” she teased when it was over. Good grief. Was she stupid and blind??  I'm not kissing back, hello?

But what an ordeal. At least she kept her word and left. Yet alone, I sat down on my bed and felt bad. I knew Pam was just lonely and looking for a friend. Shoot, I'd been in her shoes before and sort of felt that way then. What's was so wrong about that? Nothing. So, maybe there’s something wrong with me.  Check it out: a sexy blond ex-cheerleader, chasing after me. All I had to do was let her catch me but instead, I was running away! What's wrong with this picture?! In high school, and before Kelly, wouldn’t I have sold my soul to be the head-liner in that scene? Would it have killed me to give in? What was holding me back? Was I afraid? A fool? A dullard? Gay?

No. There was nothing wrong with me. I liked girls. Unfortunately, after three weeks of trying, and in her case trying way too hard, I just didn’t like this one. Maybe Pam was unaware of how desperate she seemed; that she was coming on too strong. Some people have a blind spot to that. Maybe I should’ve said something, spoken up instead of letting her continue chasing someone that didn’t want to be chased. Maybe this was all on me. Maybe. Bottom line, though, I just wasn’t interested, but clueless how to tell her. I had no idea how to dump someone. I'd always been the dumpee, never the dumper.

So, until I could figure something out, our little game of pursuing cat and unwilling mouse would, unfortunately, continue. More next time...

 

 

Hanging Around the Haunted House

Halloween is coming up in a few days. Obviously it’s been a few years since I last went out trick or treating, and I'll spare you the suspense and let you know I won't be going out this year either.  But I haven't forgotten the fun of dressing up on Halloween night and going out with the gang- and my sister- in hopes of commandeering a ginormous haul of bad-for-you-stuff from all the neighbors. But I think the most memorable Halloween experience for me was the year I worked as a volunteer 'haunter' in the KROY Haunted Mansion.

1240 KROY was the radio station we all listened to in Sacramento as kids, and in the days leading up to Halloween the KROY Haunted Mansion was the place to be and be seen. Every October the station went out and found an old abandoned house, creep it up and then throw open its doors to the public during the week of Halloween. They charged 50 cents a head, and all proceeds went to a co-sponsoring service organization. How I ended up haunting the haunted mansion one year came about because I was one of the fortunate few teen agers who actually knew KROY’s #1 d.j., Chuck Roy, personally.

 

Okay, Chuck was actually Dad’s friend, but sometimes in life it’s not always what you know but who you know and, in this case, I was lucky Dad knew Chuck. But it felt like I was meeting a star that day when Dad introduced us during my senior year in high school. Though I wasn’t yet 18 and Chuck was already a 30-something married professional adult, he and I managed to forge a causal friendship anyway. Whether he was just doing a favor for Dad’s sake, being forced to humor a teen-age mutant radio wanna-be, I don’t know. But he was always nice, never blew me off, really seemed to take an interest in what I was doing and became kind of a mentor. I am not exaggerating when I tell people I wanted to be on the radio because of him. He was one of my early heroes.

 

Chuck spun the hits weekday afternoons from 3-7 and many days after school I'd get in my car and head down to the KROY studios and talk shop with him while he did his show. The on-air studio faced the street and anyone could walk by, look in and watch what the guys “on the radio” were doing while they were on the radio. The station had a mounted two-way squawk box on the window sill and if the jock wasn’t terribly busy, sometimes he might talk to you. Like Chuck did with me- all the time.

The KROY building, on Arden Way, was situated three blocks north of the Wonder Bread plant, putting it tantalizingly downwind from the delicious aromas of baking bread. The radio station also sat on a line where North Sacramento began encroaching into Del Paso Heights, putting it just this side of the seedy part of town. Despite the welcoming smells, you wouldn’t want to go down there after dark. But as an insecure geeky kid, no matter the hour it felt pretty cool to hang out and talk about life and broadcasting with the best d.j. in the Sacramento market, Chuck Roy.

Anyway, it was during one of these lengthy hang out sessions, between records and commercial breaks one hazy October afternoon, when Chuck suggested I help out at that years Haunted Mansion. He knew I was shy, but encouraged me to go anyway. ”You’ll have a lot of fun and meet some new people; maybe even some girls. And you’d be helping the radio station, too. We always need help for this thing.” One of my lifelong goals (at least when I was all of 17) was to someday work at KROY and with or for, Chuck. Shoot, if he told me to go jump in a lake, I’d probably ask which one and go hurl myself in.

But being around and having to hang out with a bunch of people I didn't know, and doing it in front of even more people I didn't know, wasn't exactly in my wheel house. So it took Chuck three tries- two more visits- to get me to sign up. And, to get his approval-and so he’d quit asking- I did (but hoped the paper work would get lost and nobody would ever call. No such luck- probably because of Chuck’s intervention- because the very next day somebody did call from KROY- probably a secretary or promotions person; I didn’t recognize the name or voice anyway- providing me with directions to the Haunted House and instructions to be there at 7 the next evening for orientation and a walk-through. As far as this person was concerned, I was now an official member of ‘the crew’.

 

I said okay, but all day the next day I still tried talking myself out of it. I mean, it’s not like they were going to come drag me down there if I didn’t show up. I was, after all, a volunteer.  If I didn’t want to go, I didn’t have to. But I didn’t want Chuck to find out and be disappointed in me, so I showed up when they told me to and once orientation as over, I didn't have any more time to re-think or retreat because, now part of the ‘crew’, I’d already been given my assignment for opening night, which was now less than 24 hours away. I could hardly wait.

 

The KROY Haunted Mansion that year was in a run-down three story old Victorian, maybe 8 blocks over from the state capitol building. At one time it'd probably been somebody's stately family residence. But by the fall of 1972, it’d been sitting empty and gathering dust for many years, awaiting either a new owner or the demolition crew.  But with co-sponsors, the Sacramento Big Brothers and Youth for Truth, KROY appeared to have spared no expense in spooking the joint up. From street level the house looked a little like Herman Munster's place from TV and inside, every in-use room, nook and cranny, on all three haunted floors, was dripping in creepiness. In their promos on the radio, KROY billed it as the most "Spook-tacular" Haunted House in Northern California. And judging from what I’d seen during orientation, they weren't exaggerating. It was pretty cool.

The sequence of events for the volunteer actors went like this-

Be at the house by 5:30 and, after the first night, find out where you're working. Then go to the make-up room, actually the kitchen area, where one of ten actual make-up artists, made you up. Then you got your costume and went through a quick run through.

 

After that, everybody had the last ten minutes before opening to relax and chill out. The time was used to get something to eat, go to the bathroom or out on the back deck (out of view of the public) either to catch one more breath of fresh air, or, for some, puff on one more cancer stick.

 

At 6:55, everyone made one last bee-line through the make-up room/kitchen to grab a Coke or two and some munchies to keep handy (and out of sight), before taking their places; because after the doors opened at 7, there were no breaks until we closed  at 10.  And after the house was cleared and closed, and make-up and costumes removed, everybody got to help clean up. 

 

That usually didn't put any of us out of there until well past 11. With school and/or jobs, it was a long day, not just for me, but for everybody involved.  But that was our routine and I ended up going through that routine all five nights the Mansion was open.

 

KROY broadcast live from the house each night, too, and I thought Chuck or some of the other d..j.'s might come by, at least on one of the nights. But Chuck was a 5 night no-show and the only station personality I ever saw was Bob Castle, or “The Blue Wiz”, as he called himself on the air for some unknown reason. Bob/Blue Wiz was the    7-midnight guy and did his show from the Mansion each evening- at least till closing (some weekend dude did his last two hours back at the station).

 

But working with, ”The Blue Wiz”, was more like working with “The Blue Horse's Ass". He was snotty and blew everybody off. The man hardly ever looked up from what he was doing, although, doing a live remote from anyplace- especially a loud, dark building like he was doing those five nights- is really hard, really stressful. Having done a few in much less inhospitable environments, I can cut him some slack now. But back then, though our paths crossed every night and were even in the same general area on two of those nights, I can says without fear of contradiction, that during our “collaboration” at The Haunted Mansion in 1972, Bob Castle was a first rate turd.  However I was generally too busy doing whatever I was supposed to be doing to get too worked up over Bob’s turdiness. But I wondered if everybody in radio was that full of themselves and cranky when they weren't "on".

 

On my first night as a ‘haunter’ I was placed in a hidden crawlspace next to the main staircase, given a pair of over-sized black gloves and told to reach out and touch random someones as they went by. The walls were dark and, with very minimal light, nobody could see me or my hands. But I could see them and getting a reaction was simple; especially the chicks-one quick brush or touch and they'd predictably shriek and recoil. It was funny. The more curious or brave of the fairer sex would try and peer into my hiding place. But I was so well concealed, for them it was like staring into a blank wall, even though some were looking me in the eye and never knew it. 

 

When I wasn't groping at girls, though, I got an even a bigger kick out of pawing some unsuspecting supposedly macho guy. When I spooked one of them, they started screaming and flapping about like little school girls about to wet their pants. Tough guy. Though I was working completely by myself that night, I had a ball scaring the daylights out of people.

 

The crew chiefs, as they were called- the adults in charge- rotated everyone around so I only got to do the stairwell once. In fact, nobody worked in the same part of the house twice. On night number two, I was a friendly ghost sitting on a ledge over the exit door and waving as people left. That was boring. But on my third night, I drew a plumb assignment, getting to work in the “torture chamber” room.

 

The torture room included a rack, a bed of nails (all rubber of course), and in one of the corners, on a raised platform with a large hole in its center, a gallows set-up. The basketball stand contraption stood concealed behind a black curtain and featured a harness/winch device that, used correctly, gave the appearance of "hanging" someone.
Four people worked the “torture chamber”; three got to be ‘tortured’ or ‘killed’, while the fourth played a mad scientist roaming the room and hollering at his victims and the guests passing by- and if necessary, inflicting more pain on the tortured. That was the plumb role. But as the smallest and lightest one in our group, I was “volunteered” to be the dead man hanging. It was an easy part to do, though- no acting or lines; just play dead.

 

At five minutes to 7, after the run through and scooping up a couple of Cokes to have during breaks, I went behind the curtain, climbed the platform, dropped my jeans and stepped into the harness. One of my cast mates synched it securely and, after I pulled my pants back up, placed my head through the loosely attached noose and waited for him to crank, lift, and lower me through the opening.

And from floor level, it really looked like I'd been hung. But that's when things got a little dicey. Though the device felt fine when I put it on, once I was lowered through the hole and the harness took control of gravity, my crotch suddenly became the crux of support for all my body weight. The noose, of course, had plenty of play; I wasn’t going to strangle myself. And the harness had been designed to allow the "dead man" some wiggle room, too. But either I wasn't hanging right- no pun intended- or we’d put it on wrong because there was no give inside the harness at all and I was almost immediately in discomfort. 

 

But by then, it was 7:00, the doors were opened and, hanging ten feet off the ground, I was stuck and going no place.   

At first I tried holding perfectly still because I figured no movement would mean no pain. But though I was supposed to be dead, I was still breathing and the harness swung lightly with each breath. So I was always in a constant subtle motion, which did little to soothe my increasingly sore stones. As the scrotum crush continued, all I could do was squeeze  my eyes closed and try to avoid crying out in agony (which, of course, would've really ruin the illusion of not being alive).

 

Trying to block out the pain and not draw attention to myself, it felt like I'd been hanging there an hour. But we were only 10 minutes into the night, had only seen the first wave of spectators and weren’t supposed to have our first tiny breather until 8:00; 50 more minutes. I wanted to die- for real. But a couple minutes later, it got real quiet, signaling our first lull and my first chance to speak up.

 

“Hey, guys, I’m dyin' up here. My balls are breaking! ” They started laughing. "No really. I'm not kidding. I think I'm hung wrong" (again, no pun intended). The mad scientist, the only one not tied to a rack or strapped into a bed of nails, the only one with freedom of movement around the set, walked over, looked up and told me to hang tight (and once more, no freaking pun intended). He examined how the contraption was holding me up, saw I was in pain, but there wasn’t time to figure out a solution. Another group was coming through. Quickly returning to his mark, he promised he’d flag the crew leader as they passed and let him know they needed to get me down. 

 

Thank God; relief was on the way. But before it did, I had to ‘hang around’ another 15 minutes. It was not pleasant; I was really suffering though it and it seemed like the longest quarter hour of my life. Finally, around 7:30, though a coordinated and timed effort, they briefly stopped the line of customers at the front door creating an artificial delay, long enough for the guys in the set to quickly get me down and out of that damn harness.
I'd been hanging there for a little over half hour, and though I'd done my best to hold still and swallow my discomfort, was about to turn green.

 

They told us the delay at the front door would be about three minutes; after being cut down, that’s all the time I had to recover or leave the set. But finally set free, I could hardly walk or breathe, and wanted to throw up. For a second, I thought I was going to. Soon enough, though, everything below the waist began to relax and I felt marginally better--well enough to stick around.  But we had a problem with casting. Nobody wanted to go into the harness.

When the crew chief came through with the one minute warning before the ‘show’ resumed, he saw nobody rushing to take my place in the sling. There wasn’t enough time anyway, and it didn’t seem like a good idea anymore just in general. So he quickly suggested the other two guys remain in their roles and have me just lay down on the mad scientist's table- empty, except for a couple of hand tools he'd occasionally threatened to use on the other two torturees- and be his “patient” the rest of the evening. All I'd have to do was lay there and scream in agony any time he hunched over me with a hacksaw or pickaxe. And considering what I’d just been through, screaming in agony was a part I was pretty sure I could handle.

 

But nobody else was placed in the harness during Haunted Mansion’s the final two nights.

 

The next day KROY along with their Haunted Mansion co-sponsors, and in consultation with their legal experts, insurance carrier, and the set designer, decided it was in everyone’s best interest to lose the hangman’s noose. So it was removed from the “torture chamber” room before the next performance, never to be seen again. I hoped it wasn’t because of me-it probably was- but for the half hour I’d lived in it I had truly been inadvertently tortured. I probably didn’t get into it right or something, but to avoid hurting anyone else, it was pulled from the show.

 

However, by alerting the crew leaders of the problem, and cutting me down when they did, the guys I ‘acted’ with that night probably saved my life. And I didn’t even get their names; at least I can't recall them now, which in hindsight seems a little odd. Oh, thank you, you saved my groin from permanent damage - what'd you say your name was? Still, instead of ripping me over it- which was a real possibility- they closed ranks with me.

 

The episode became kind of a bonding experience and the four of us became pretty tight. We were that night anyway,, laughing and teasing about it during breaks and lulls, through clean up, and sipping Coke and eating snacks together later on in the make-up room. And afterwards, if we'd been old enough, I'm sure we might’ve all gone out for a round of beers. I would've bought, too. It could've been the beginning of a couple cool new friendships. But we all went separate ways to separate homes, and the next night I was told to go haunt the "library" with some new people, and didn’t meet up with any of my torture chamber buddies again. They may have been there; if they were, though, in all the confusion, I never ran into them. Too bad, too; I really would’ve liked to thank them.

 

Yet despite almost getting the life squeezed out of my nuts, the Haunted Mansion was still a pretty good time and I recommend everybody work in one at least once. (Although that was the only time for me; when I was asked the next year, I don’t recall why but I declined). However, when you do volunteer, and get roped into being the hanging dead man, and they're using a suspect-looking homemade device to do the hanging, tell them to go find a wax dummy or cadaver to play the role instead.

Trust me on this one. You- and your nether regions- will thank me later.