CHAPTER 1: FREEFALLING

The following events are basically true.  The names have been changed to protect people whom I will loosely refer to as the innocent.

January 12th, 2002.

It was my first time leaving home.   

I would end up leaving home several times over the coming years, but that first time was the most important. That’s the day you realize there’s no going back; for better or worse things will never be the same.

My Mother told me she’d take the drive to Orlando with me. Six months earlier, I’d prepared for the journey by driving half-way there to visit my Father in Destin. I told Mom I could make it there on my own, but she insisted. Part of me was glad. I’d never lived outside of New Orleans and I admit now to being a little afraid.  

My decision to join the Disney College Program was made out of necessity and determination, not love. I’d only been to Walt Disney World once, on a family outing in 1981. I had no great connection to the Disney Parks, since I'd only been to Disneyland a few times. Though I did love the Indiana Jones ride.

My early twenties started off very lonely. Almost all of my friends had enough of me and let me know in no uncertain terms. At the time I worked as an Assistant in a Law Office and most of my interaction with other people was with my much older co-workers.

Aside from occasionally watching the World Wrestling Federation with my high school friend Matt, most of my few outings were with those same adults at a local bar frequented by lawyers. That was fine for a while. The truth is that I was always more comfortable around adults than my peers. With adults, I was still a weird kid, but they respected my mind. Around people my own age, I was an alien, so I avoided them for the most part. I volunteered to be an intern in the most Magical Place on Earth because I thought I needed to join the world. It was time for me to get out there and meet people my own age.

Mom and I started driving early in the morning. We were hoping to get as much of the first leg done as quickly as possible, but those hopes were dashed when I had a blowout just past the state line.

Great start… I thought to myself, stuck on the interstate in the middle of Mississippi. 

Ironically, the tire that had blown out was brand new. We must have struck something, because the tire wall was completely shredded and as I tried to turn the lug nuts, the wheel started spinning. 

Adding insult to injury, it started raining as soon as I opened the door. I cursed my infamous luck. The rain pelted me, soaking my clothes and blurring my vision. The cold wind cut through me, making it hard to grip the tire wrench. The lug nuts were on as tight as possible, taking all my will and strength to remove them. By the time I got the spare on and made it to a tire shop, it was noon. We wouldn’t be on the road again until that evening.

In the end, it took us two days to drive six hundred and fifty miles. Orlando was a vast city, much bigger and more complicated than the greater New Orleans area that I’d grown up around. We got lost for two hours before we found a hotel near the airport. 

 Mom and I sat at a Bennigan's Restaurant across the street from my hotel and talked about my future. Actually it was mostly her nagging me, but she really just wanted to be sure her first born was ready to be on his own in a far off land. Mom’s achilles heel has always been fear. She worries. She’s always worried. The day before, she’d been yelling for me to put a coat on in the rain while I was changing the tire. She was worried that I would catch a cold. As I withstood the rain and rant, I quietly cursed God and Fate, considering that maybe bringing her with me was a bad idea. But in the cold neon lights of a Bennigan's, as the time when I would put her on a plane bound for Louisiana came closer and closer, I was glad my Mother was there.

An hour later she got on a shuttle to the airport.

She asked me if I would be alright. I had my doubts, but she needed me to be okay, so I lied. She told me she loved me and kissed me goodbye; then, just like that, she was gone. I stood there as the shuttle disappeared in the distance and realized that for the first time in my life, I was truly alone. For most young people, that would be a moment of glory, but I had never been much of a party animal. Actually, I had never been much of a young person. Though I was twenty two, I was too psychologically old and too emotionally immature for my own good.  

I went back to my hotel room, waiting for the sun to rise and my new life to begin. Unfortunately, it was only seven at night. There was nothing worth watching on the hotel television and I was too restless to sit there anyway. 

I had no idea what to do with myself and there was nowhere to go. I didn’t know my way around Orlando. There were no Google Maps or GPS back then. So there I was, sitting in an empty hotel room. The silence hung heavy in the air and my anxiety slowly crept in. 

As I lay on the bed, I started thinking about a woman. Sooner or later, we all end up meeting a special woman. From then on, for better or worse, every other woman gets compared to her. For me, that woman was Gina. 

A month earlier, I’d reached out to her; reconnecting after a rather brutal falling out a couple of years prior. That was the first time she had kicked me squarely out of her life and it took a couple of years for those wounds to heal. She was someone I cared for quite deeply, but over the years she would break my heart, time and again.

The September 11th attacks had only been a few months prior. The shock of those events had a kind of phoenix effect on a lot of people, including me. I reached out to mend old fences with lost loved ones. Gina was among the first on my list. The fence was mended, but our reconnection was still tender. I wasn’t quite sure where we stood.

I sat on my hotel bed and stared at the phone. Should I call her? Would it be weird? I didn’t know, but I knew that I needed her. 

There was something about Gina that was always comforting to me. She was witty and well-read. She was smart and devastatingly beautiful. She had an amazing smile, infectious laughter... and tits like a Nebraska milk maid.

Back then she had an effect on me like no one else. Being around her made me happy. Hearing her voice made me feel seen and appreciated. I knew that no matter what had gone on between us in the past, if there was any one voice that could make me feel less alone, it was hers. I let the phone ring for a few minutes, but when it went to voicemail, I got nervous and hung up. 

The silence became even louder and I was even more depressed after my failed attempt at human contact.

There was nothing to do. I had nowhere to go, unless I wanted to go back and hang out by the bar at Bennigan's. The thought of sitting alone at the bar of a chain restaurant near the airport was enough to send me spiraling. Without any other options, I tried the television again. But then as I flipped through endless channels, I stumbled upon Busty Backdoor Babes #13. 

And suddenly I’d found salvation. It was time for the world’s oldest anesthetic for loneliness. I was going to molest myself.  

Unfortunately, in 2002 internet porn didn’t exist, so I would have to pay to watch it. I had never paid for cable porn before. It always seemed gross and desperate… but at the moment, so was I. Well… desperate anyway. 

My right hand and the free hotel baby oil on the sink crooned their siren song. The problem was that I had no idea how any of it worked. The one time I had paid for porn was a few years earlier when I found a stack of old, used Playboys in the back of an antique store in the French Quarter. And if you think that is gross, I should mention that I didn’t bother cleaning them before use. Look, the Twentieth Century was wild, y’all. You did what you had to in order to survive.

Meanwhile, back at the LaQuinta hotel in 2002, I walked, meek but determined, to the hotel lobby. 

The front desk had two attendants; a man and a woman. There was no way in hell I was going to the girl to ask for help getting myself off. I had to wait it out by pretending to read a newspaper in the lobby until she left, because I didn’t need her giving me that judging look just before I masturbated. Guilt is only arousing during sex, not before. 

I had to wait a long time. So long that I was starting to wonder if one of them was going to ask if something was wrong. Eventually the woman walked away and I ambled up to the desk, looking as suspicious as humanly possible without a trenchcoat and a fake mustache. As I stood in front of him, I looked around to make sure no one else was in earshot and leaned in as though a drug deal were about to go down. I explained my situation to the guy and with a knowing smile, he gave me the nod which told me that I wasn’t the first pervert who had asked him how to work the television remote. I also made doubly sure that my Mother wouldn’t look at my credit card statement and see a listing for Anal Sluts #57 or whatever. He told me I was all set and not to worry.

I walked cocksure back to my room; the walk of a man who was about to seduce himself.

Once I entered the room, I promptly dropped my pants and hopped on the bed. I didn’t even bother taking my shirt off. It would have taken too long. I turned on the television and prepared for romance… of a sort.  

In retrospect, I should have paced myself. You know, maybe lit a candle or something. As it turned out, pay-per-view porn was thirty dollars for three hours, made up of a string of random eight to fifteen minute clips of drug addicts getting ugly-fucked.

Thirty dollars for three hours. 

I was done abusing myself in about two minutes. There wasn’t even a shitty storyline for me to follow. I kept watching it just so I could feel like I got my thirty bucks worth. I didn’t even want to give it another go. The women in the video weren’t porn stars so much as women who looked like they had been tricked into having sex on camera with promises of cocaine and half of a tuna fish sandwich.

Ironically, I did end up feeling guilty. Not for watching porn, but for having spent thirty dollars on that garbage.

I didn’t dwell on that fact for too long, though. 

To my surprise, Gina called me back. I told her about the previous forty eight hours and how alone I felt. For some reason I didn’t mention my earlier adventure in self-flagellation. She would have thought it was hilarious. We talked for about ten minutes and like magic, she made me feel better. 

I was a little sad when she said she had to get off the phone, but she’d given me what I needed. Well… not what I really needed… but she made me feel better. 

I slept well that night. I felt ready to move into my new home the next day.

About a month later, Mom called. 

"Did you rent a movie at the hotel? It's on your credit card statement."   

Shit. "Yeah... yeah I was bored so I rented a movie."

“Okay. What did you watch?"

"...  Pulp Fiction."

THE MONORAIL I TRAINED ON