Holy shit...

I just found a picture of my (life)buddy Jack...

He's the one I think I just mentioned the other day who had an accident.
He's also the one who shares the responsibility for me being called "The Drag Queen".
In addition, he's the one who took my kinda quiet little flickering Viet Nam Vet light and turned it into a screaming torch.
He's the one I used to ride behind. The only one I've ever ridden behind.
He allowed me to be a vicarious part of something so real and so meaningful...

I also put his colors on once.
Man.... that was intense.

But then, so is Jack.

Handsome lil booger, ain't he?
I LOVE that 'stache.
But, don't let that 'serious, Mr. Responsible' expression fool ya. Jack is excellent at his job, I have to give him that, but he is soooo adorably ornery!

If ya take a really good look at that little look in his eyes, you can see the essence of that 'other' Jack. The one who wasn't my Boss when I worked for the County.

If ya look for it, you can see the Jack I rode behind. The one I fell instantly and forever waaaaay too much in love with. The one I think I scared the crap out of... the one who loved me then and still does now.

My very first memory of Jack is from yeeears before I really met him. They had just built the new communications center and it was in the middle of what used to be a field I rode my horse through and around, so I didn't see any reason I should stop just because somebody stuck a building in it. I remember one day, I was riding by, after having cut across the lawn probably, and I heard one of those heavy doors open. I saw a guy in a white shirt standing there, watching me, so I turned Diablo around and rode up to him.

It was Jack.

We just bullshitted for a few minutes about the horse and whatnot and that was it. For then....

In 1990, right after my mom died, I tried for a job as a dispatcher at the county comm center. I had absolutely no business trying to do something that in-depth, that complicated, at that point in my life, but what did I know?

I don't remember one single thing from the training then or when I did get hired two years later. All I remember is Jack... sure, I also remember the stupid people and the bullshit, but all I remember that matters, is Jack.

(Time for some iced Tequila Rose. For real, this time... brb.)
(Oh, and by the way, the tape playing as my soundtrack while I stroll down this well-traveled, much loved path in my memory is Eddie Money's first album. "Baby Hold On" and all that...)

The first time I tried for a job there... Gawd. The console looked like the dashboard of a 767, or some damned thing. It was wild. There were tons of fire departments and ambulance squads and they all had their own lights, tones and rules for responding. How the hell I was ever gonna get that down in the first place was open for discussion... let alone Jack being the one training me.

See, this time when I met Jack, it was different. It was ELECTRIC.

Jack is, for me, one of those ever so rare people, whom, the instant you look in their eyes, you KNOW they're yours forever and vice versa, no matter what. There will never be a time now, for the rest of your life, that you do not know this person. That you don't love them... no matter what.

Training with Jack was... *giggle*... it was very... intense. I was supposed to be paying attention to what he was saying, showing me, explaining to the nth degree, but all I could focus on was his eyes, the sound of his voice and the jolts I was getting every time we bumped elbows or knees or eyes (caught each other peekin', I mean).

To be perfectly honest, I don't remember not getting hired. I mean, I know I wasn't, but I don't remember any of that, because sometime during that 'training', as it was becoming clear that wasn't what I needed to being trying to learn, it was also becoming clear that the JOB wasn't what God sent me there for anyway.

I do remember that sometime during the end of that minor mess, Jack gave me his card- all in the name of professionalism, don'tcha know- with his home number on it. He had my number from the comm center, so there we were.

Again, I don't remember who called who first, I just remember Jack. Suddenly, there was this man on a Harley showing up at my apartment, taking me for long, mostly wonderful rides around the county and just loving me for who I was, which was fuckin' heroic of him, considering how fucked up my head was back then.

I can't even figure out how to start with the things I remember with Jack...

The way he always looked at me, the look in his eyes, is the most prevalent thing. It was a look that said, "Jesus GOD, I love you... but, I can't." That look gave me life and killed me, all in the same moment. He still does it.

I remember the walk we took that night, out around the back of the smokehouse at the comm center. Being at the VFW with him and that look he had then that was sayin', "Yeah, y'all... she's with ME!" God, I loved that... lol.

He was a DJ, too. I remember being at the Washington Club with him one night while he was DJ-ing. We wound up singing some love song together and I remember a coupla people I knew there anyway telling me "I didn't know you could sing..."
Yep. One of my many mostly hidden talents.

I remember Jack being at my apartment one night, laying on my couch. I had a tape playing that I'd made. Love songs from the 70's, of course. When Boz Scaggs "Love, Look What You've Done to Me" came on, I looked at Jack and saw tears. I just held him. Wasn't anything that even needed to be said.

He had this really cool apartment right on the edge of the Delaware River, in Elsinboro. Man, I loved that house. I remember sitting in the kitchen one morning, watching him make bacon and eggs. Seeing the river out the window behind him. Wondering how a man like him ever fell for a goof like me...
Chief of Communications for the County, cookin' me eggs...wow.

I also remember the pain in his eyes and in his heart. He'd been married, had two kids- a son and a daughter- and he'd been hurt. More than once. I could see that. I could feel it. It just made me want to be able to love him correctly-in whatever way it was he needed- even more.

I failed. Abysmally. It wasn't entirely my fault, but still. I didn't do it. I didn't manage to 'fix' it for him. God, I wanted to so bad.

I knew about the ex-girlfriend. It was the new heifer that was a surprise. (Wheezer, Jack. Where the hell did you find her, anyway?) She was the end of that part, pretty much.

Best memory I have with her in it was the night Jack nearly shit himself. He'd been seeing her for God knows how long. I was pissed, of course, when I found out. I wanted to kill her, but then I saw that she outweighed me by about 200 pounds, so I decided to try another tack.

I went to his house one night and found them there. I was drinking, I think... Jack Daniels, if I remember correctly. I peeked in the window and could see him passed out on the couch, so I knocked on the door. She answered. We just looked at each other for a few seconds, then I said, "We need to talk." She stepped aside and I stepped in. As I passed him on the couch, I looked at him, then her and asked "Yer sure he's alive, right?" She cracked up and we were good to go.

We sat down and started talking and drinking more Jack, her and I. After an hour or so, the dead body on the couch stirred. He sat up, looked into his kitchen, shook his head, looked again, saw what-or I should say WHO- was going on and all we heard was "Ohhh, shiiiit."

We both fell out laughing then.

Once he was up and about, they decided they should talk. So, I took Jack's what had to be gallon-bottle of Jack outside with me to wait. I was being polite, so he could blow her off and...

Right.

I don't know the exact sequence of events, but I'm certain they involved me climbing his flagpole, trashed outta my mind, and swiping his huge POW flag and threatening to shove his Harley into the river. I think I had too much time to wait, or something.

Neither of us two stupid asses 'won' him that or any other night.

Not too long after that, a year or so later, I did get a job at the comm center. By then Jack was back with the ex, whose Dad was the janitor there. We called him Bull. I loved that guy. He knew exactly who I was and was so very nice to me... Thanks, Bull.

Me working there that time didn't work worth a shit, either. I still loved Jack too much, too currently, for it to work. It took me over a year of working there to give it up, though. Best part is, the only thing I lost was a sucky job.

Between the time I resigned and when I moved here to Pa., I still stopped out to the Comm Center all the time, just to see Jack and every single stupid ass working there knew it. They could all see me coming up the drive, parking and walking in. Jack couldn't, though. He was downstairs. The way HE knew I was there was when he heard the cleats on my boots clicking and scraping their way to his office door, down that long, echoey hallway. By the time I got there, he'd be leanin' back in his chair, grinning his head off. I'd always get a hug, melt into him, lay there for a few, kiss his cheek and peel myself offa him and find a chair. He always smells sooo good. Feels really good, too. Just being in the same room as him is.... ahhhh. Whew. An "I made it"-kinda thing.

I'll make it back there again, someday, too. Got to. Long as we're both still alive. Maybe even a few years after that, too.

Jack is one of the ones ya don't- and don't ever WANT to- lose.
And, God Bless him, Eric's not the kind of man to make me.
So... I won't.
Ever.

'Kay, Jack?
459, Babe.
(Times infinity.)

Shine on, you Crazy Diamond.

Posted by: Stevie at 12:27 PM

Comments

Posted by: mike at June 01, 2004 03:26 PM (Or4tU)

Posted by: Emma at June 02, 2004 02:07 PM (NOZuy)

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