Single White Female

So... let's talk about this Allison person who's come up a couple of times. Obviously, I don't wish to devote a lot of time or space to this individual, but since she filled up a good portion of the next year and a half (i.e. the space between the Army and The Queen), she's about as worth mentioning as the Third Reich is in German history. Yeah, the Germans don't like talking about that either.

Once I got out the Army, I was completely clueless as to what to do. I lived at home, but had bills left over from the Army, so I had to work. Trouble is, I hadn't the first clue as to how to get a job, much less one that paid some kind of decent wage or something I wanted to do. I started by looking through the paper for music jobs...yeah, just guess how that turned out.

My first stumble was into a multi-level marketing company called Equinox. My first experience with that sort of thing, and being that the people putting it out there were good and selling whatever, I was hooked into the too-good-to-be-true deal. I pulled money off one of my credit cards and was in...yeah, no. I failed miserably at it, and quit rather quickly that much further in the hole.

Next was the Salvation Army as a bell ringer, but not a bell ringer, exactly. Remember, I was looking for musician jobs, and the Salvation Army had a captain who played trombone and thought it would be cool to have someone play Christmas carols instead of ringing the bell. So through that season, I stood outside stores and played Christmas carols on my trombone (and occasionally saxophone, which made people ooh and aah) to get those wonderful donations.

I actually did really well. The pay for this job was minimum wage plus a bonus percentage based on how many donations you receive, so technically speaking, I made a pretty decent wage for that month...that I blew relentlessly since I didn't know how to spend or save properly. But people at the stores just loved me and I got free soda and such quite often. Nevermind that a mouth full of liquid candy is about the worst thing you can drink before playing any instrument, but ah well.

Following this stint, I was out of work again, though I did agree to teach the young trumpet class at the Salvation Army for $10 an hour (read, $20 a week). I was considering pizza delivery, since it looked easy and I'd seen a help wanted sign at one point while driving around (in my 86 Camaro). I had previously registered at the employment office and was dropping in occasionally to use their job search computer (yeah, I had no clue what to look for, so that didn't work for me either -- did I mention I'm kinda stubborn and don't like to ask for help?).

So on that fateful day in January so long ago, I had gone into the Employment Office in Broken Arrow that is no longer there, and looked on their computer for a job. When I approached the terminal, a girl stopped me and said she knew me. This happens to me more times than I could begin to conceive of where people know me and I don't know them. But she said she knew me from high school, and I probably said, "ok." Being how I was then (that being so incredibly introverted that she was likely lucky to get even an "ok" out of me), I went to the computer and plopped down to search.

I came up empty as I always did (apparently people with open musician jobs don't post them with the employment office), so I got up to leave. About that time, she came back in to the office and stopped me. She said she never did this before, but she wanted to give me her number and asked me to call her sometime. She had written it out on a paper scrap along with her name. I took it, and said, "ok." I was a man of few words. She left. I left.

Note that during this time, I was very much hung up over Juliet back in Colorado. I had called her on Christmas to say hi, and we'd had a nice chat then, but that was the last time I'd talked to her. Also during this period, I was participating in the play "She Stoops To Conquer" more or less observing how everything worked backstage and occasionally helping out. I dressed up as one fellow's missing dancing bear for the curtain call, so I was driving downtown as well.

But one evening not long after meeting the girl in the employment office (what a great hangout for singles, eh?), my curiosity got the better of me and I called. Even now, I wished I'd lost her number, but God help me, I called. Someone answered and I asked for Allison. This person said she'd "check" to see if she was home. My thought was "goodness, how big a house to they live in that they aren't sure if someone is home or not?"

Allison got on the phone, so we chatted about how she knew me. Apparently, once upon a time when I was in 10th grade, she had noticed me in the lunch room. She told her friends at the time (the people she referenced were the popular crowd) that she was going to try and talk to me. They told her I wouldn't say anything to her, but she was going to try anyway. She walked over to where I was hunched over my cheeseburger (lunch of champions and geeks), and said hi. I looked up and stared at her. She didn't even get an "ok." She walked away to the laughter of her friends who their "I told you so's" in.

I had no idea I was that way in school, but after she told me that, I got to thinking about it, and it was true. I was very closed off, even at that point where I'd begun to open up. This continued to align later when the Queen told me how I was back then (i.e. very quiet), so my introversion was in more than full force all the way through school. Allison said she'd been going through her yearbook only a few days earlier and spotted my picture and wondered whatever happened to me.

Now, to justify that title up there... If your mind went straight to a psychological thriller from 1992 with Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh, then you're on the right track. You see, Allison had a "sister." Not a biological sister, you see, she was a sort of a foster sister, but not an official one. Hedy latched onto Allison in school, and Hedy's mother dumped her on Allison's mother to care for. While Hedy saw her mother every once in awhile, she lived with Allison.

Hedy was very dark (personality, not skin tone) and seemed very angry most of the time. I did not at any time see Allison without Hedy tagging along and when I'd called the first time, it was Hedy that answered the phone. It made for a really strange relationship, and to make matters weirder, it was Allison who showed me Single White Female, and even said people she knew related Hedy to the Hedy in the movie. This begged the question, "why is she still here then?"

Oh, but there be an answer to that one. I wouldn't learn the full extent of that answer for quite some time, but little by little I got enough to learn what the real deal was between these two. In fact, the whole thing turned out to be one huge drama that I would never have willingly put myself through because it not only involved me and Allison and Hedy, but Juliet as well.

As I said, I never would have done it willingly, I never want to go through anything like that again, and I just wished I'd lost her number to begin with.