My Bio - Part 24

The fact that a guy named Steven sold our house for a surprising $83,500—just shy of our asking price of $85,000—only two weeks after it hit the market raised a red flag in my mind and sent my bad vibes crawling. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was about to go wrong, as if a higher power knew we’d need every penny we could get.

Steven was one of the biggest con artists we’d ever encountered, alongside Dan, the well driller, and Gravity, the general contractor. They were all part of an elaborate scam, with the well driller being the worst offender. He deliberately underestimated the necessary depth of our well to extract more money later, but we refused to pay beyond our initial agreement. Instead, we ended up spending three months in hotels while they botched multiple aspects of the project. To help stay on days, I took Melatonin, which I managed for an incredible six months.

The first month was spent at the Siesta Suites in Scottsdale. The place was typical of Arizona apartments—noisy, with thin walls and constant activity, whether it was landscaping, painting, or repairs.

Despite the chaos, we found some enjoyment along the way. We shopped for new items for the house, and even though it was hectic, I relished the process, even as I regained all the weight I had lost after quitting smoking and jumped back up to 125 pounds. With the circumstances being what they were, watching my weight wasn’t a priority.

Dennis, a coworker of Tom’s, seemed like a lifeline when he loaned us his thirty-year-old, twenty-seven-foot trailer on October 17th, 1999. While it was far from glamorous, it was better than a hotel room. Still, we had to visit hotels every other day for showers. Siphoning water into the tank was a hassle, and the near-pressureless showers were less than ideal. Keeping the propane tanks filled was a struggle, too; while the days were warm, nights were frigid. As a result, we became regulars at the Fairfield Inn, where I often chatted with Teresa at the front desk while grabbing coffee and snacks.

Tom and Dennis agreed on $400 a month for the trailer, but by the time we were finished with the trailer, we owed him $1,000. Dennis had initially seemed generous, so Tom didn’t anticipate he’d demand the full amount upon retrieval of the trailer to buy some sporting equipment he wanted. Instead of helping us, Dennis exploited our situation, seeing it as a way to make money.

After Tom switched from nights to days at the bank, we finally moved into our new home, which I proudly named Desert Winds Ranch, just a few days after New Year’s 2000. It was a welcome change from the noise of our previous life, with the nearest neighbor over 400 feet away. Occasionally, we’d hear distant music, but it was nothing compared to when we were in Phoenix. Plus there were some sonic booms and gunshots during hunting season, alongside the distant barking of dogs.

Our house featured a living room, a den, a dining area, and four bedrooms, including a small retreat off the master suite with a spacious bathroom and a garden tub separate from the shower stall. Though the model showcased two sinks, I opted for one sink and extra cabinets instead. The closet was large enough to fit two twin beds.

The kitchen had a skylight, a dishwasher, a garbage disposal, and an oven with a digital temperature display that beeped when preheated. It was self-cleaning too, something I’d never had before until then. However, the refrigerator’s ice maker remained unused, as our well water tasted surprisingly salty.

A few things were done poorly that bothered me, like the absence of an evaporative cooler. Installing one would have required additional money and awkward ductwork along the vaulted ceiling. The wallboards were also sloppily done, with noticeable seams that could have benefited from tape and texture, but that was more costly too.

The denim blue carpet turned out darker than I had expected, and the tulip design I chose for the kitchen and bathroom wallboards wasn’t as appealing as it seemed at first. Still, denim blue was better than brown, and the tulips weren’t ugly.

The best part was that the house was custom-made to our specifications, aside from the basic model. No one else had lived there before. While I didn’t have many options, I chose whitewash for the kitchen and bathroom cabinets and white linoleum for the kitchen floor. Unfortunately, there was an ugly red stain in the spot where they marked the vent. I opted for blue exterior paint with white trim, my first choice from the available options. The smooth countertops were a welcome change from the drab ceramic tiles we had in Phoenix.

For years, I had used my grandparents’ furniture and my parents’ silverware and plates, which was fine at first, but finally, we had our own items—things we had selected ourselves.

It was hard to believe that less than a decade ago, I worried about where my next meal would come from. Now, my biggest decisions revolved around color schemes and decor. For a while, it would be that way, anyway.

The view was breathtaking. Gone were the sounds of shouting, honking horns, and blaring sirens—now, the dominant soundtrack was nature itself. Mountains loomed in the distance in every direction, and in one direction, you could see at least forty or fifty miles away. At night, the distant lights of Casa Grande twinkled like stars on the horizon. It was hard to believe that barely a decade ago, my view consisted of run-down, graffiti-covered buildings. I had come a long way from that filth, poverty, and ugliness.

But the land wasn’t without its imperfections. At some point, someone had gutted a trailer on our property, leaving all kinds of junk behind. People also had the habit of tossing trash they didn’t burn, and the desert winds would blow old shopping bags and other garbage onto our land.

Dogs were another issue. With no leash laws and many in Arizona unwilling to keep their dogs indoors, our land became a free-for-all for the town’s roaming pets, even a few horses and a llama!

While the neighbors weren’t problematic, they could be nosy. I was surprised, considering this was a place people moved to for solitude. George, the elderly man who owned the ten acres behind us, made it a point to introduce himself. He informed us that he’d split his property into five two-acre lots and planned to build rentals on the two that remained empty—a plan we weren’t thrilled about. We suspected he hoped we’d offer to share our well, but we never did. Later, his workers brazenly ignored our “no trespassing” sign, strolling onto our property when they saw our well-being worked on, eager to know all about it and slow things down even more.

Our nearest neighbors were a Mexican family—consisting of a woman in her forties, her daughter, the daughter’s husband, and their five-year-old son. They came by to meet us and to ask if we owned the loose dogs that had killed their chickens.

Dan, who lived diagonally from us, could be obnoxious at times, revving engines for hours or blasting music. He moved a year later, but not before stopping by when he saw Gravity and his tractor—hoping to hire some tractor work for himself.

It seemed the more I tried to escape people, the more they intruded. They were on the phone, in the mail, at the door. I half-expected to open the fridge and find someone in there, too!

Maricopa, split by the Ak-Chin Indian reservation, was a farming community with privately owned lots with manufactured homes. Few houses were built on-site, and the range of residents was broad. It wasn’t unusual to see a well-kept home next to a dilapidated dump strewn with trash.

The only downside to the fresh country air was the occasional whiff of horse manure, though that depended on which way the wind blew. Maricopa had rules—one house per acre, one large animal per acre, and no home closer than twenty-five feet from the property line.

In spring, beekeepers often worked on the farms nearby, and swarms of bees would gather in the trees, including those on our land. The incessant buzzing was something straight out of a horror movie and rather unnerving.

It was convenient living just fifteen minutes from the reservation casinos, but financial problems soon resurfaced, limiting how often we could go.

Maricopa’s town center didn’t offer much back in 2000: a Circle K, a Dairy Queen, a feed and grain store, a junkyard, a manufactured home dealer, a church, a school, a funeral home, and police and fire substations. Even the small town I grew up in back East had more. Maricopa didn’t even have a bank, though it did have a small post office, where we rented a P.O. box after transferring our mail from Tempe, as there were no delivery services where we lived. Today, it’s quite a bustling town.

Being outside the Valley of the Sun, Maricopa had more extreme weather. Summers were hotter, and winters were colder, with highs and lows fluctuating greatly—a 70º day could plummet to 35º by morning.

Tom and I settled into our new home, and life was good. We set up our new furniture, and I had fun decorating. We talked about future plans—a pool, an Arizona room, porches, sheds, barns, horses, fences. I had achieved all my major goals and no longer craved the ones I hadn’t.

We bought a home gym, and I started to tone up and lose weight, getting back down to around 105 pounds.

The only sad event after moving in was losing Scuttles, my favorite rat at the time. The dark brown rat died suddenly, just five months after we brought him home. Vanilla Belly had passed while we were still living in the trailer, leaving us with Ratsy and Bear. I despised Bear; he was a mean, half-blind tan rat. He died around the time we got Houdini, a light brown rat named for his escape artist antics. He’d often hide behind boxes in the master closet. Houdini eventually nestled into my heart even more than Scuttles had.

Yes, life was good. We had a beautiful house, and it was finally quiet. But as predicted, things did break and leak more than they should have.

Little did we know that while we had left the noise behind, something else followed us. Something filled with a hatred far beyond our understanding, and one day, after finding myself bored with nothing left to do, there was a knock on the door.

Suddenly, I wasn’t the least bit bored.

My Bio - Part 23

As much as I cherished my husband, it became evident that we were not entirely compatible in the bedroom. This realization weighed heavily on me, along with the fear of infertility. The thought of being unable to conceive was more distressing than our sexual struggles.

In the early years of our marriage, I harbored a desire to have a child and honestly, I don’t know what the hell I was thinking at the time. Nonetheless, I wanted one at this time, not realizing that the desire would fade away in a few years. Although Tom initially expressed acceptance of this idea, subtle hints and his difficulty in climaxing made me question his true feelings about parenthood. I grappled with self-doubt, wondering if I was to blame for his challenges in the bedroom until I later learned more information.

Despite undergoing tests that showed no issues with my reproductive health other than a horned uterus., the shadow of potential infertility loomed over me due to my mother’s past medication use.

Over time, Tom’s difficulties with climaxing persisted, leading to a period of dwindling hopes for a child. My priorities shifted, and the once-burning desire for motherhood gradually faded away. I found solace in the companionship we shared and the love that grew between us, even as the physical aspect of our relationship waned. I hated noise and didn’t want to lose my freedom to a child. Then there was the fact of how costly kids were to consider.

I looked up Paula and Shelly, my foster sister, and contacted them as well.

Paula and I kept in touch until she decided to dump me in 2015 due to not being willing to pay for her to visit us for two weeks. I’ve missed her one bit. She was incredibly dumb and selfish. Many times during our “friendship” I had thoughts of cutting her off. I was glad she took the liberty of beating me to it, so I wouldn’t have any lingering guilt.

Shelly didn’t do anything wrong, but I eventually chose to cut ties with her because I would only hear from her if I reached out to her first.

In 1994, Bob ended up in prison for supposedly raping a minor. Despite the statistics, I never believed Bob was capable of such a heinous crime. You just had to know the man. I don’t doubt that he allowed minors alcohol, though. He was the type of guy who was too nice to say no, even when he knew he should.

Sometime in the mid-nineties, I called Nervous’ mother after finding his phone disconnected and failing to find a new listing for him. She told me he had passed away from a sudden heart attack. He was fifty-three.

Kim visited us for a few days during this period, bringing her boyfriend Phil and a deaf friend named Alex. I enjoyed their visit, but Tom sure didn’t. He was working the third shift, trying to sleep while we hung out by the pool or went sightseeing, including a trip to Sedona. We got too noisy at times and disrupted his sleep, though I suspect he felt left out and a bit jealous.

Physically, I was healthier in Phoenix than I had been back east. I stopped getting frequent colds and infections—sometimes years went by without one. Despite being home most of the time, I became more active, exercising regularly and doing more around the house. Tom also got me hooked on computers, and I began keeping my journals digitally instead of by hand. I have been keeping a journal since 1987!

After months of sensitivity in my bad ear, I had an ear canal drilled in late 1994. It began to fuse shut, so I needed a second operation in early 1995. In hindsight, we should have simply dismantled the frame, but we didn’t know better at the time. The canal was necessary to figure out what was causing the sensitivity and rule out tumors, and while the surgeon was at it, he built an eardrum. Unfortunately, I didn’t obtain much hearing. Another surgeon later dismantled the frame. Having half an outer ear isn’t the prettiest sight, but it’s far more comfortable.

I never made it to the Grand Canyon, but I did visit Laughlin, Nevada—a much mellower gambling spot than Vegas—and made a trip to California. The first trip to California was more symbolic than anything, a way for me to say I’d finally made it all the way across the country. We were near the Nevada/Needles, California border during a Laughlin trip, so we shot across the border. I was thrilled to make it there just before turning thirty.

On October 4, 1997, at age thirty-one, I finally quit smoking with the help of Nicorette gum. Quitting was tough and smoking and talking on the phone had always gone hand in hand for me. As a result, I started to enjoy chatting on the phone less and less. Besides, Andy was becoming more of a pest, only visiting when he wanted a favor and calling every day for long conversations which I no longer had patience for. He was getting hooked on the same few subjects, mostly God, food, and celebrities.

The cravings to smoke lasted four months. There were times when I wasn’t sure I’d make it through, but I did. However, quitting smoking came with its own set of problems, mostly gaining weight. Losing weight was much harder now that I was older. To shed the pounds, I had to drastically cut calories. My days of being able to eat whatever I wanted without gaining weight were long gone. My appetite, however, had increased dramatically. What used to be a necessity—eating to live—became a constant craving, living to eat. It took nearly a year, but I eventually dropped from 125 to 105 pounds.

The more I came to resent people, the less I wanted to sing professionally, even though I still loved doing it for fun. I just wanted to be with Tom and retreat into our little world. I wanted our house to be our sanctuary, our escape from the rest of the world. Unfortunately, the world’s drama often found its way inside, invading our peace.

I preferred to keep a small circle of people in my life—less drama that way. Tom wasn’t very social either, with only a few acquaintances and no close friends he regularly spent time with. Many people frown on being anti-social, but we were happy and that was all that mattered. Solitude isn’t the crime many think it is.

In March 1998, when I was thirty-two, I got braces. I needed braces because an impacted adult tooth began to push through my gums—it was an incisor right next to a molar. After having all my wisdom teeth pulled, this baby tooth was the fifth tooth I had removed.

In the summer of 1998, I cut off all contact with my parents and brother. I was tired of the constant bickering, hypocrisy, lies, and nagging. At that time, I wasn’t sure whether to cut ties with my sister and nieces, so I held off for another year until we moved. I even cut ties with Kim and Andy, though I had mixed feelings about that. In the end, I felt it was best to wipe the slate clean. When it came time to move, I didn’t give many people our new address.

Toward the end of 1998, I began collecting dolls. My collection included a wide range of colors, nationalities, races, sizes, styles, and materials.

In July 1999, I decided to cut my hair, which had grown to just above my thighs. It was a relief to no longer deal with its weight, though I eventually missed my long hair and let it grow for four to five years between haircuts.

I had always wanted to move from the Phoenix house. I longed for a bigger, more modern home, with more space between us and the neighbors. The assholes next door were becoming unbearable, and even Tom, who is usually very tolerant, had grown tired of living inches away from what felt like a constant circus.

Each set of neighbors seemed to get progressively worse. When we first moved in, a man with two kids and two loud dogs lived next door. Thankfully, they left a few months later in late 1993.

Next came a large Mormon family. They, too, had dogs—plus a crowd of screaming children who would drive me crazy for hours playing outside. Their basketball games were especially annoying because they were no more than ten feet from our house, and it felt like they were bouncing the ball off our walls. After two long years, they moved out, and somehow the house ended up in the city’s hands, which opened the door to all sorts of freeloaders and trouble.

From the spring of 1996 to the spring of 1999, a Black woman on Section 8 moved in next door. It was supposed to be just her (Joely) and her year-old daughter, but her boyfriend Mike and a handful of others ended up living there too. They had a dog for a short while, but once she was caught with it, they were ordered to get rid of it. The visiting kids were sometimes a nuisance, but the real problem was Mike’s boom car stereo—and that of their frequent visitors. Despite our polite requests for them to turn it down, they continued blasting it, coming and going without a care for how much noise they made. They were loud, rude, and obnoxious, with no regard for anyone else.

At one point, after suspecting I was behind some prank mail I sent them (yes, I was guilty of that much), they left sexually explicit notes in our mail slot, and once even left a voicemail preaching about racial harmony while Tom was at work. I didn’t tell him about these things at the time because I didn’t want him to worry.

Tom sent a letter of complaint to the city, and while it helped temporarily, the noise always resumed a few months later if even that. He’d have to send in another letter just so we could hear ourselves think. If I had known then how badly things would escalate and how long they would victimize me, we would have gotten the hell out of there sooner or just tried to put up with their shit if we could.

Finally, in June 1999, a large Mexican family moved in, also on section 8. There was less music and no barking dogs, but instead, there were crowds of people of all ages constantly yelling and screaming. Unlike the previous neighbors, whose noise was mostly confined to certain hours, this was an around-the-clock ordeal. Little kids, often in diapers—or sometimes stark naked—would run around in the yard and even in the streets at 3 a.m.! I couldn’t watch TV, read a book, or even enjoy a quiet dinner with Tom without being disturbed by their antics. Scores of vehicles came and went at all hours, and it was obvious that none of the adults worked, despite appearing perfectly capable of doing so. Repeated requests to quiet down were ignored, as were complaints to the city. These people were extremists, rebellious, and determined not to be told what to do, even though we had been there first and it was our tax dollars helping to support their lazy lifestyle.

Realizing things weren’t going to improve, we started looking for land in the rural town of Maricopa, an hour south of Phoenix and about two hours north of the Mexican border. We also visited manufactured home dealers to check out different models. While I liked all the homes we saw, I fell in love with one particular 2,100-square-foot model at the fourth place we visited. I was moved to tears—I knew it was the one.

Finally, on September 24, 1999, we left Phoenix for good.

My Bio - Part 22

By April 1993, after ten months at Vista Ventana, I had enough of the rude residents and management. It was time to move on. I did most of my moving late at night, always making sure to casually bump into Andi’s door on my way past, tossing unwanted junk onto her porch—dead plants, old food boxes, things like that.

But even after I left, Stacey and Andi weren’t finished with me. Together, they lashed out one last time. Meanwhile, I sent a long, detailed letter to Stacey’s boss, exposing what a completely unprofessional jerk she was.

Shortly before I moved, a guy named Scott came into the club one night and showered me with money. He was twenty-eight, and one of the biggest bullshitters I’d ever met. He claimed to know people in the music industry and promised he could get me a record deal or some sort of opportunity to get my career started. I was skeptical, but I had no reason to think he was deliberately lying—what did he have to gain? So I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Scott told me he’d been framed for arson and spent years in jail until his father found proof of his innocence—a speeding ticket from the time the arson supposedly took place. That ticket, he said, was his “ticket out of jail.”

One night at work, I complained to Scott about how sick I was of Vista Ventana and about Stacey and Andi. He suggested the Crystal Creek apartments where he lived, claiming it was quiet. That, too, turned out to be a lie. I ended up in a second-story, two-bedroom apartment two doors away from him, but it was just as noisy as the place I’d left.

Had someone told me the day I moved in that my future husband lived between me and Scott, I would’ve laughed and said they were crazy—but they’d have been right. I met him about a week after I moved in.

At Crystal Creek, most of the noise came from outside, not inside. The 900-square-foot apartment wasn’t right on the pool, but close enough. I thought the creeks running through the complex would drown out the noise, but they didn’t. It wasn’t just people yelling; like at the Vista Ventana, there was always something going on. There was no grass to mow, but they’d be out with obnoxious blowers at 6 a.m., buzzing around the sidewalks and parking lots.

Once, I got home from work around 1:30 in the morning. After unwinding for an hour or two, I was rudely awakened just a few hours later by pounding on the roof—they were making repairs! Like I said, there was always something.

The only real differences between Crystal Creek and Vista Ventana were that the manager was nicer, and the complex was smaller.

Scott found it hilarious. “I swear, it was quiet before you got here,” he swore with a laugh. “Now, I hear kids screaming, people yelling, hammers pounding, and blowers blowing every day when it used to be once a week.”

Yeah, I believed that was probably the only honest thing he ever said.

Determined to keep to myself, I met only a few neighbors, mostly because of the pool. A security guard and a girl from the office lived below me and they were quiet.

While I lived there, I had a brief fling with a twenty-two-year-old Mexican girl named Julia. She was about five-foot-three, with long hair down to her waist. We met at the first club I worked at where she was a customer.

Around the time I met Tom, my future husband, Stacey and Andi decided to harass me one last time. Sure, I had been sending prank mail and making prank calls to Andi, but I’m convinced they would’ve come after me again anyway—they were just those kinds of people. Andi filed for an injunction against me, with Stacey supporting her every step of the way. Stacey was right there in court with Andi, too.

In the small courtroom, it was just the judge, a stenographer, Tom, Stacey, Andi, and me. Andi presented the prank mail—some of which were actually Bob’s nutty letters to me—and complained about the calls. Naturally, I denied it all.

The judge listened patiently but refused to issue the injunction. On my way out, I flashed a triumphant smile at Andi and Stacey, then got on with my life.

I first met Tom when he was heading off to work. Not only did he seem kind, but I was surprised by how good-looking he was, especially since I wasn’t usually attracted to guys. He was just about to turn 36 and worked nights at American Express. We met right after I last saw Scott and just before I moved to the other side of the property, away from the pool and the noise from the main road. Actually, Tom helped me move back there in May.

When I first moved, it was dead quiet, but within a week, a pack of college kids moved in next door, blasting music, slamming doors, and bouncing off the walls like wild animals. The people below them were just as pissed as I was, but asking them to quiet down did nothing.

Tom became my savior as things heated up between us. By then, he was preparing to move into his brother’s house since his brother was getting married and moving into his new wife’s place. Tom moved in June of 1993, and I joined him in September. We got married in Las Vegas on June 15, 1994.

At first, I was in denial about my feelings for Tom. Being hot for a guy wasn’t something I was used to. I imagine a straight person would feel the same shock if they suddenly found themselves attracted to someone of the same sex. But there was no denying my attraction to him forever. His hazel eyes, his nice white teeth, and his mellow, sensitive personality drew me in. I also discovered he was incredibly smart—he seemed to know something about everything. To this day, I still wonder how I managed to snag someone like him. Never again could I say all I got were crazy, unstable, dumb assholes! I finally had someone I could be proud of rather than embarrassed by.

Tom is a native of Arizona, though his parents were from Iowa. His mother, Marjorie, lived to be ninety-three and died in 2015 but his father, Raymond, died of cancer in the mid-nineties at the age of eighty-four.

Tom’s parents were very different from mine, and so was his childhood. His family was poor, and his father, who lived through the Great Depression, was a hobo who rode the rails way back when. Tom has one sister and three brothers, and his parents were always good to their kids.

When Tom was four or five, he was hospitalized with meningitis. Later, he badly cut his foot on a tent peg and needed stitches.

At a young age, Tom developed impressive intelligence, but he struggled to connect with people. They couldn’t see how smart he was, and as a result, he didn’t interact well with others. Even Tom didn’t realize his own abilities at first, assuming all kids were like him. He couldn’t understand why people treated him differently, speaking to him as if he were still a kid when he felt he had never truly been one.

In grade school, everything came easily to him. By eighth grade, he was already taking algebra. Some teachers wanted him to skip grades, but his mother refused after his older brother, David, had a bad experience with skipping.

Music was a big part of Tom’s early life. All of his siblings played instruments—Raymond on trumpet, David on trombone, Mary on clarinet—and Tom followed suit, choosing the trombone, which he was told was the easiest to play. Steven also played an instrument.

Another thing Tom was into was rockets and anything related to outer space, often building model rockets in his spare time.

Around age twelve, before school, Tom had a newspaper route. One day, he slipped down a flight of stairs while delivering papers, injuring his foot. A doctor discovered an old fracture and diagnosed Tom with a condition where the tendons pulled away from the joints. The injury forced him to stop all physical activity. If he disobeyed, he’d risk needing a full-leg cast.

By the time he finished grade school, Tom became fascinated by the structure of music. He also developed a passion for math and computers, particularly the way computers could take simple binary code and create complex outcomes.

Entering high school, his foot condition resolved, but it left him out of shape, making gym class difficult. He stuck with the trombone, playing in both marching and concert bands. However, most of his other classes bored him—he already knew the material. When he decided not to go to college, he stopped doing homework altogether, though he only needed to pass the tests to graduate. His grades fell to C’s, just enough to get by. He found high school miserable overall and only attended part-time in his senior year. He didn’t even bother going to his graduation ceremony, feeling it was pointless.

He got his first car, a 1955 Chevy, when he was fifteen. The engine needed rebuilding, so he and his father tackled the project together, an experience that taught him a lot about cars. At fifteen, after passing the written test, Tom earned his learner’s permit and began driving to school the very next day. His parents trusted him, believing he could handle anything. He got his license at sixteen.

His father also took him hunting and to the horse track as he got older.

Though his high school band director encouraged him to audition for the army, Tom wasn’t interested at the time but was accepted anyway.

One of his first post-graduation jobs was at a car wash, followed by various temp jobs. He worked in a factory that packaged Metamucil, which gave him insight into assembly lines. He also delivered furniture for Sears and held positions in mail presorting, labeling magazines and newspapers, and inspecting sandwiches for Circle K.

Still playing trombone, Tom eventually talked to an Air Force recruiter, who arranged for him to audition at Luke Air Force Base. After being accepted, he moved to Riverside, California for basic training, which he found tedious, like being back in grade school.

He performed throughout the Southwest, including at the Air Force Ball and a celebrity fundraiser in L.A. with stars like Gloria Loring, Jim Backus, and Charlton Heston.

After a couple of years, Tom left the Air Force and returned to Phoenix. He worked a series of jobs, including one making vinyl records, which paid well at the time, and another at the post office, which he eventually left due to simply not liking the job.

Before leaving, he bought a house and got married at twenty-three to a woman named Karen, a part-time music store employee. They had two cars, three dogs, and no children—Karen was afraid of them. She also had severe emotional issues, stemming from childhood trauma, which Tom hadn’t known about up front. Her brother had molested her. The marriage ended after just two years and he moved back into an apartment.

At twenty-seven, Tom started working for AMEX, staying there for about twelve years before being laid off. He later found work at Bank of America, where he handled check sorting and other tasks rather than direct money handling.

Shortly before we got married, my disability benefits were terminated.

Although I didn’t know Tom’s father for long, he was a kind man. Tom’s siblings were all married, but only his brothers had children. Initially, I was impressed with how kind his family seemed, but I soon saw the darker side of his mother and sister, whose selfishness I’d heard rumors about. They used Tom terribly, and it took him time to see it. When he finally put his foot down, we realized just how much time and money we had lost because of them.

Our first house together, built in 1950, was a 1,400-square-foot light blue tract home on a corner. It had a small living room, two bedrooms, a small bathroom, an average kitchen, and a large family room. There was also a two-car garage, a covered patio, and a pool in the back. The biggest downside was how close it was to the neighboring house—practically within arm’s reach.

Though I was initially happy to finally be in a house, that joy was constantly marred by noisy neighbors. It often felt like we were still living in an apartment, with shouting, loud car stereos, screaming kids, bouncing basketballs, and barking dogs just a few feet away. While the closest neighbors were the worst offenders, others contributed to the noise too. A family two houses down ran a daycare with two large, full-time outdoor dogs. A teenager across the street played the drums, and someone else had a dog that barked all day. I often had to play music or run fans just to drown out the noise, though nighttime was generally a bit quieter.

My Bio - Part 21

Stacey was my biggest problem at the first complex I lived in during my time in Arizona, along with twenty-six-year-old Andrea (Andi), the woman living next to me in Andy’s building. Through Andi, I got my first real sense of just how much Arizonans despise complaining, no matter how legitimate your grievance might be.

While I was still in the first-floor apartment, I had to give up Shadow, my cat, because pets weren’t allowed on the first floor. Even if they were, I couldn’t afford the outrageous pet deposit. So, Andy and I left the cat on what we thought was Stevie Nicks’ property in Paradise Valley, only to later learn we’d given him to her neighbor instead. Andy eventually figured out which house was really hers by going through her trash. He somehow became phone friends with Stevie’s mother, Barbara, after finding her number through her business—a little crafts store in some small town outside of Phoenix. He eventually went on to actually meet Stevie a few times.

Stacey had a reputation for being a difficult person, but one day, she began targeting me in ways I hadn’t seen her do with anyone else. To this day, I’m not sure what triggered her. I discussed it with Andy, Kara, and Randy, but none of us could figure out the source of her wrath. Maybe it was because I was Jewish (Arizona was as anti-Semitic as it was anti-gay), maybe it was because I was on disability, or maybe it was because I was short with green eyes and very long hair. I honestly had no idea.

Then, I developed a theory: some people, when they can’t get positive attention, settle for negative attention. Perhaps Stacey really did have some kind of attraction to me and was struggling with those feelings, especially since she was married. Others had speculated about this too, particularly after it became clear that she was practically stalking me. This wasn’t an exaggeration—she followed me around the complex, and it felt like she was scrutinizing my every move. I was stunned by how much she seemed to know about my whereabouts and the people I interacted with. My friends and I even searched my place for hidden cameras or audio recorders, but we found nothing. The only way she could have known what she did was by either tailing me, having someone else do it, or somehow gaining access to my apartment while I was out. I doubted that last one, but who knows?

I’ll admit Stacey wasn’t bad-looking for a light-eyed blonde, which wasn’t usually my type. She was tall and slim, with a Kate Jackson vibe—her voice, hairstyle, and mannerisms all reminded me of her. But even if she had been my type, I knew I’d rather be alone forever than settle for a controlling bitch like her.

One day, Stacey summoned both Andy and me to her office. Oddly, she insisted on speaking to Andy first, then me.

"Why can’t she just talk to both of us at once?" I asked Andy on our way there.

"I don’t know. Maybe she doesn’t want us to get our stories straight," he said.

"What stories?" I asked, confused.

"I don’t know," he said. "I’m just as stumped as you are."

Andy went in first, and then it was my turn. I sat down in front of her desk, and Stacey cut right to the chase.

"I have a report that you made some harassing phone calls to Ellie and Robert," she said.

"So?" I replied.

"So," she echoed, pausing.

"So I called them a few times. They won’t be hearing from me again, though. Besides, Ellie’s out of her mind. Ask the FBI agents trying to kill her with petroleum jelly as she claims."

"Then don’t have anything to do with her," Stacey said.

"I don’t intend to, but how does this concern you? You’re the manager, not our mother. Part of our rent goes toward your salary. You work for us."

She then mentioned some supposed vandalism but wouldn’t say what had been vandalized. I had no idea what she was talking about, and neither did Andy.

Next, she scolded me for asking to see the second studio apartment I had transferred to in Andy’s building before the previous tenant moved out. I couldn’t believe someone would complain about something so trivial! The girl didn’t have to let me in, and she hadn’t seemed bothered at the time.

Then, Stacey implied that I had been trying to invite people up to my place. I was completely confused. "What are you talking about? What people?"

"I understand that being home as much as you are can make a person rather lonely," she said, her tone patronizing.

"Oh, is that what you think I am? Lonely? And this concerns you because…?" I asked, beginning to realize what she was insinuating. She was implying that I was trying to get women up to my place for sex, which was total nonsense. No one in that complex appealed to me. After Rosemarie made her lack of interest clear, I backed off immediately. I didn’t want to push people who weren’t interested in me, and I expected the same respect in return.

Though I tried, I couldn’t get Stacey to admit what she was really implying. She never dared to use the L-word.

She also rattled off a bunch of trivial facts about my daily life, things like what I had for lunch, and this unnerved me. I was amazed at how well she had done her homework. With the exception of the vandalism and the absurd insinuation about my social life, she was frighteningly accurate.

Andy later told me he was just as shocked by Stacey’s knowledge of my activities. "She even encouraged me to dump you," he said.

On January 6, 1993, I finally decided to see about getting a job dancing. I didn’t have any marketable skills that would land me a decent job anytime soon, and I wasn’t about to flip burgers or clean houses again. Dancing seemed like a good option. Kara, who was a pretty big woman, acted as my bodyguard, and the three of us—Kara, Andy, and I—went to a nearby club with exotic dancers.

After just two dances and $18 in tips, I was hired for the 6 PM to 1 AM shift. I was excited, thinking I’d make tons of money, but it didn’t turn out that way. Maybe in Vegas it would have.

I eventually built up a small group of regular cab drivers. One of them even offered to be my bodyguard if I ever made it in the music business, and I gladly agreed.

Though dancing was preferable to most other jobs, there were downsides. I hated the sore feet and the way the owners used us to pay the DJ, bartenders, and bouncers. We had to give them a cut of our earnings because the owners were too cheap to pay them themselves.

At the clubs, we rotated sets on stage, where customers could tip us—or not. Table dances, one-on-one performances in front of a customer, earned the dancers $5. Dancers weren’t allowed to touch the customers or engage in anything explicit.

My stage name was "Mystery." Maybe if I had been a chesty, blue-eyed blonde with long legs, I would have made more money. But as a then flat, short, green-eyed brunette, I didn’t exactly fit the bill for a T&A bar. Still, I danced on and off for the next eight months at a few different places, including all-nude private room dancing with two-way windows, cameras, and armed staff. We often sat around for hours in between customers, bored out of our minds in front of the TV.

After I moved to the studio apartment behind Andy, I started accumulating some furniture. My parents sent me a blue card table with matching chairs. A friend of Andy’s gave me a twin bed, and a guy I met later on gave me a couch, a desk, and a TV.

At first, the building was relatively quiet. The guy below me eventually moved out, giving me a few things he didn’t want, like clothes hangers and a fake plant in a wicker basket. For a while, the apartment below me was a model unit, and the new tenant who moved in was quiet. Even Andi didn’t make much noise initially. She was hardly ever home.

The person I heard the most in the building was actually Andy. Despite his feminine demeanor, he stomped around like an elephant and slammed doors instead of closing them.

I had yet to learn just how sensitive Arizonans could be about noise complaints, but I started to get an idea when Andi had her fifteen siblings over for a few days. It was a nightmare—constant bumps and bangs at all hours. After being ignored when I knocked on her door to ask her to quiet down, I had no choice but to complain to Stacey.

Mary, a thirty-year-old woman with muscular dystrophy who lived directly below Andi, also complained. She was getting the worst of it. Mary informed Stacey that if she wanted her rent, she needed to be able to sleep so she could work for it.

Even Andy, who lived diagonally from Andi, could hear the commotion. The whole building shook.

When Stacey came to investigate, Andi tried to shift the blame. Our doors were right next to each other and standing just inside mine, I could hear everything they said.

"She does the same thing," Andi lied.

Right, Andi, I thought sarcastically. I have fifteen kids over, too.

The next day, the kids finally left, and I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking peace had returned and I could finally get some sleep. But I was sorely mistaken. Andi was furious that I had complained, and she wasn’t about to let me forget it. That was lesson number two about Arizonans: they weren’t quick to let go of grudges. They wouldn’t let you forget or ignore them either, no matter how wrong they were or how valid your complaint was. She was going to get her revenge!

Andi made sure to shake the building with her every move when she wasn’t at work or asleep, clearly not caring who else she annoyed along with me. She began staying home more frequently, just to make her presence felt. Since I knew I couldn’t physically force her to quiet down, and Stacey couldn’t monitor every slam, bump, and bang, I was seriously considering confronting her when a new idea popped into my head.

I doubted it would work, but I figured I’d try it before resorting to more drastic measures. So, I sat down and wrote a note, pretending to be a neighbor who had just moved in behind her, politely asking her to keep the noise down. I signed it with a bogus name and slipped it under her door.

To my surprise, it actually worked!

My Bio - Part 20

My nine-year-old niece, Lisa, took my departure from New England hard. We had grown so close.

I never saw Barbara again. She was never around the few times I went back to the apartment with Dad or Tammy to grab something. A part of me wanted to confront her now that I could breathe easier, but another part of me didn’t care. I was leaving. That was all that mattered.

By my last day in New England, I was completely exhausted. Excitement had kept me up the night before, so when we visited Cousins Boo and Max in Longmeadow, I crashed on their bed for a couple of hours before it was time to head to the airport.

I jolted awake the moment I heard my father calling me from the foot of the stairs. “Time to go.”

“Oh my God!” I thought. “This is it. I’m not dreaming—I really have a date with the friendly skies to sunny Phoenix, Arizona!”

And so did Shadow, who was flying with me in a pet travel carrier.

Boo and Max gave me $100, which was generous of them. They later sent a little more once I’d arrived. I hated asking for money, but I didn’t want to bother my parents. I asked Boo and Max not to mention it to them, but I’m sure they did. Either way, I was grateful for the help.

We drove back to Connecticut, to Bradley Airport in Windsor Locks. We arrived just before my 4:30 PM flight, which would land in Phoenix at 10:30 PM Eastern Time (7:30 PM in Phoenix), with a brief layover in Cincinnati.

As Dad and I walked through the terminal, I felt lighter with every step.

“I’m free now,” I told him.

“I know,” he replied.

I was overwhelmed with emotion, shock, and excitement, crying so much that Dad had to practically hold me up as we made our way to the plane.

“You can board with her,” the stewardess said to my dad, likely assuming I was afraid of flying.

He walked me to my seat, and we said our goodbyes. It would be the second to last time I ever saw him.

It felt like an eternity before the plane began taxiing down the runway. I took one last, long look at the world I was about to leave behind.

Suddenly, the plane lurched forward.

Life would never be the same.

It was 7:30 PM when the plane touched down in Phoenix on June 9, 1992. The flight had been long and exhausting, but exciting. I was amazed by the massive mountains and countless swimming pools dotting the landscape as we approached Sky Harbor Airport—there seemed to be more pools than in all of the Northeast combined.

I had no idea how different my life was about to become and I wholeheartedly agreed with those who said I deserved my newfound happiness. After years of misfortune, it was time for some compensation. Of course, I still faced my share of problems. For the first six months in Arizona, I was so broke I feared I’d starve. My parents sent non-edible items that couldn’t be bought with food stamps, but I couldn’t get food stamps in the first place for quite a while and there were only so many times I could go to the food bank. The food stamp and SSI offices really jerked me around. They take advantage of people who move, delaying things to save themselves money.

After Andy and I retrieved Shadow and my luggage from the baggage claim, we headed to his studio apartment at the Vista Ventana complex. The hot, dry air reminded me of Texas, where I’d visited my sister one summer when I was twelve. I marveled at the palms, cacti, and modern buildings. The massive mountains in the distance were breathtaking. I knew I wouldn’t miss the Northeast with its old, dreary buildings or the cold, rainy, and snowy climate.

“Quit smoking,” my dad had told me before I boarded the plane. “That can be your IOU.”

No, I thought. You owed me. After everything I endured because of you and your wife, you owed me this much. He would still get his request one day—just not as soon as he’d hoped.

Arizona had its pros and cons. My asthma improved slightly, but my allergies became a million times worse, causing me to sneeze nonstop for up to 24 hours at a time.

I missed having patches of woods to provide privacy and block sound. Arizona was so flat and open—you could see for miles, especially outside the city. The bugs were terrifying, with huge spiders, cockroaches, and biting ants. Bees were everywhere, year-round. And the drinking water was awful—like diluted bleach.

The dividing walls in the apartments were too thin. Though better than the NHA, I could still hear footsteps, doors slamming, and other noises that annoyed me as a light sleeper. I swear the NHA scarred me for life—every door slam made my whole body tense up. And as I would later learn, most buildings in Arizona were constructed the same way.

Despite the downsides, apartments, and houses were cheaper and more plentiful back then, and they were gorgeous and modern. Dishwashers and central heating/cooling were standard. The monsoon storms were intense but amazing, with vivid lightning and thunder that could rival gunshots. The rain was much heavier than anything I’d seen back east.

The complex grounds were beautiful, unlike anything I’d seen before. The complex stretched an entire city block, with clusters of buildings surrounding two pools, soda machines, pay phones, and laundry rooms.

After four days in Andy’s second-floor studio, I moved two buildings away to a ground-floor studio of my own. It was small—just 400 square feet, like my Norwich apartment—but functional, even if I had to use upside-down boxes for furniture. On the day I moved in, about 30 boxes of my personal belongings, shipped by my dad, arrived.

I met a dozen or so neighbors, but most weren’t very friendly. Robert, who lived above me, stomped around like an elephant. Mark, who lived next door, was a typical pig, constantly making inappropriate comments until I scared him half to death with a threatening note. He even talked about getting a gun the next day—probably not the first time he’d made enemies.

Donna and Rosemarie were attractive but turned out to be major backstabbers. Prejudiced against gays, they made me wonder if there were any good-looking people who weren’t so hateful. Rosemarie, who I found particularly attractive, freaked out when she learned I liked her.

“I’m religious, so I think it’s best if we don’t associate,” she said.

“Oh, I thought religion taught people to accept others as they are,” I replied.

Andy and I were open about who we were. If someone asked if I had a boyfriend, I’d say I preferred women, and if they didn’t like it—tough! However, I was shocked at how prejudiced people in Arizona could be. They were quick to target gays, yet anyone speaking against the city’s “ethnic freeloaders” was labeled a racist.

Andy and I met several people at this apartment complex, and I wrote weekly letters to my family. Sometimes they surprised me with letters of their own.

Angel and Dennis were among the few kind neighbors. Dennis helped me move, and Angel was a frequent chat partner at the pool.

Then there was Tara, who was into drawing, and Tonya, an exotic dancer, both just 18. Tara helped me improve my drawing skills, and Tonya made me consider dancing myself. I loved to dance and was tired of being broke, so I pondered the idea for a while.

Though Arizona had its challenges, it was the beginning of an entirely new chapter—one filled with unexpected twists, adventures, and opportunities.

Fay, a heavyset woman who lived across from me, started off as friendly enough. But over time, I realized she had a big mouth, so I gradually began to ignore her. She was just too phony and two-faced for my liking.

Randy, on the other hand, was one of the nicest people I met. If I’d been attracted to him, I could have easily seen myself wanting a relationship. He was easygoing and made for pleasant company.

Kara was also one of the better ones. She was a twenty-two-year-old with a year-old daughter. They lived with Kara’s mom and eventually moved to a nearby complex not long after I arrived.

Then there was Eluisa—now, that one was a bit strange. Ellie introduced herself to me at the pool one day. She seemed perfectly sane and friendly at first. But when she started talking about little FBI agents hiding out in her heating vents, I quickly realized what I was dealing with—a few cards short of a full deck. She could be in a fine mood one minute and then fly off the handle over the smallest things.

Andy and I continued our little pranks, calling random people around the city. With Caller ID about to hit the scene, we were careful not to keep dialing the same number—it was getting too risky.

As the weather cooled, Andy and I would laugh at friends and family back east, still stuck dealing with the cold and snow, though Arizona could get pretty chilly at night during the winter too. Arizona only seemed to have two seasons: either it was hot enough to roast you, or it was borderline cold.

Back in the projects, Debbie actually did me a favor—though I didn’t realize it at the time. Andy and I had sent her a weird, wacky letter. Nothing threatening, just bizarre stuff. Well, she panicked and ran to the cops, who ended up contacting the probation officer (PO) I was supposed to report to in Phoenix.

The PO had left his calling card on my door one day while I was out, but I ignored it, determined to take charge of my own life. I wasn’t going to let the past hold me back, especially over some petty phone calls. Since I didn’t have a phone during my first four months in Arizona, he went through Stacey, the apartment manager, to reach me.

I called him from Andy’s place and gave him a piece of my mind for dragging the management company into my personal business. I felt like he had no right to involve others.

But it turned out we were done with each other before we ever even met. Because of that letter to Debbie, he informed me that he was dropping my case and that I didn’t have the “blessing” to live in Arizona.

“Well, obviously I do or I wouldn’t be here,” I told him before hanging up.

Six months passed, and then I received a large envelope from Sheila, my original PO in Massachusetts. All she wanted was for me to fill out a brief questionnaire every month for about six months, and that was it.

My Bio - Part 19

The Norwich Housing Authority (NHA) projects were arranged around a square courtyard, with four strips of apartments on each side. The courtyard doubled as a parking lot and a playground for the kids, though they would literally play everywhere, including on my roof! Each strip contained four apartments: some had two or three bedrooms, while mine had one and four-bedroom units. The two one-bedroom apartments were on the ends, and the two-story four-bedroom apartments were in the middle, extending partially over the one-bedrooms. That’s how the kids next door managed to get onto my roof—by climbing out of one of their bedroom windows.

When I first moved in, no one was home next door and the kids were at school, so it was fairly quiet, just as the manager had told Tammy. It wasn’t until later that I realized what a circus it truly was but I couldn’t blame Tammy for that. I knew she’d been misled, and if she’d known better, she wouldn’t have helped me move into the place.

The apartment itself was filthy and tiny. It was so small that I couldn’t fit all my furniture in it, so I threw an old table out back. The unruly kids quickly beat it into splinters. Setting up my waterbed in the shoebox of a bedroom was impossible, so I slept on a folding cushion that could either be a chair or a makeshift bed, though it wasn’t much wider than I was at the time. With my then 23-inch waist, that wasn’t very wide.

There was barely room to move through the living room, and the bathroom, with its rusty old footed tub and sink, didn’t even have a shower nozzle. Baths were my only option, and it was hard to wash my hair in the tub as long as it was.

After Tammy and Bill left, I was slow to unpack. I was more miserable than ever and hated the place. I remember sitting down among the boxes and crying for hours.

Then a phone rang. Was that mine? I wondered.

It was loud enough to hear, but softer than usual. I wondered if the ringer on my phone was broken. I picked it up, but my “hello” was met with a dial tone, while the softer ringing continued.

Next door, I suddenly realized. My God, could the walls be that thin?

They most certainly were, as I soon learned when the family next door came home.

Barbara, the mother of the 4 kids next to me, liked to act tough, while her husband Dave was more laid-back. Their kids were wild and obnoxious except for their one daughter, who often visited me. The boys, however, screamed at the tops of their lungs, bounced balls off the walls of my apartment, and trampled over my head. It drove me utterly batty.

It was like sharing a house with them, except I couldn’t see them—I could only hear every sound. I heard everything from the sliding of their kitchen chairs to the squawking of their parrot. The slamming of doors, the ringing of their phone, even cabinets closing as if they were in my own kitchen. I could hear their conversations, word for word, despite being half-deaf. I could even feel the vibrations of the kids two doors down running up and down their stairs.

I complained to Barbara several times, and while she tried to help at first, she eventually became frustrated and angry. I was getting angry, too. I complained to the manager, to Tammy, to my parents—anyone who would listen.

“Talk to management,” my dad said. “Parents are supposed to control their kids.”

“Yes, Dad, I know, but these walls are paper-thin. Even if there were just one civilized adult over there, I’d still hear everything. I can’t put all the blame on the parents or the kids.”

“I don’t think you’re a bad person,” Barbara told me later. “I just regret the complications.”

So did I.

Debbie, who lived in the strip to my left, started out friendly but eventually became just as gossipy as Barbara. I ended up hating both of them, prank-calling them while I lived there and even a few times after I moved out.

As the weather warmed up, I spent more time outside to escape the chaos. But being popular with the kids didn’t give me much space outdoors, either. They followed me everywhere. It made me question why I’d ever considered having a child of my own through artificial insemination, though I had indeed seriously thought about it.

Then I met Lori, who lived in the strip to my right, and Lyle, who lived next door to her. Lori was pretty, but I knew she was strictly into men.

Lyle told me about his friend Rick, who needed a lead singer for his band. Excited, I met Rick at a bar where his band was performing. Although they leaned more toward rock, I hoped to convince them to let me sing some country songs which I was best at.

After Lyle introduced me to Rick, I sang an old Linda Ronstadt song.

“You’ve got a damn good voice,” Rick told me, welcoming me to the band.

I was thrilled. Finally, I was in a band. But after meeting with them a few times, they decided to disband. My excitement deflated as quickly as it had built up. I began to wonder if I was in the wrong part of the country to make it in the music biz, or if it just wasn’t meant to be.

Being a night person in the projects was nearly impossible. I was only getting a few hours of sleep each night. I wished I could go to bed early like the kids next door to get a full eight hours, but I also wanted to stay up late when it was finally quiet and I could enjoy the peace and hear myself think. The early mornings were torture as the chaos started up again. Even earplugs and the radio were useless against the commotion next door. By the time they left for school and the parents for work, I was too wired to go back to sleep. Between the lack of sleep and smoking with asthma, I was both physically and mentally drained. My lungs were in worse condition than I ever thought possible, and sometimes I felt like I was suffocating.

Life in Norwich was harder than it had been in South Deerfield. The bus system was absurd, looping around the city in such a way that a short trip could take an hour. I felt trapped in a life I didn’t want and couldn’t escape.

Tammy and I both tried, without success, to quit smoking. Bill, who had quit years ago, was always nagging Tammy about it. I had tried hypnosis back in Springfield, but it only worked for a couple of days. The longest I had ever gone without a cigarette was a week, but that was because I was sick. I tried the patch and the gum—nothing worked.

Living close to Tammy and Bill was getting pretty nerve-wracking, though I wasn’t surprised. They were moody, serious, domineering, and often treated me like a child. I felt more and more like I was being taken advantage of as a babysitter. It wasn’t that I minded babysitting, or that Tammy wouldn’t do things for me in return, but she expected me to help her without ever asking if I was up for it. She didn’t even call before showing up with the girls, nor did she knock—she’d just use the spare key I gave her and let herself in. It didn’t matter if I was in the tub, on the phone, or trying to relax.

“Unless this place kills me, I’ll probably never decline to babysit,” I told her, “but why don’t you call first? Maybe I want to be left alone or just laze out with a good book.”

Tammy bristled. “After all I’ve done for you…”

I cut her off. “This isn’t a contest. I’m not competing with you. I just want you to remember that I’m your sister, not one of your daughters.”

Bill really pissed me off one night too. After one of my asthma attacks, he stopped at a store on the way home.

“Want anything?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’ll come in,” I replied.

On the way back, he said in an accusatory tone, “I know you got cigarettes.”

Well, well, I thought. Last night, he undressed me with his eyes when he and Tammy returned home tipsy from a party, and tonight he’s playing daddy with me.

“Yeah, so?” I snapped. “You can’t make someone quit smoking. They have to do it when they’re ready. Besides, I don’t have to explain or answer to you. You take care of you, and I’ll take care of me.”

I had lost touch with Jessie and Paula but stayed in contact with Kim, Bob, Fran, and Nervous.

My other significant memory during those four horrendous months at the NHA was meeting Ann Marie. I met her twice after reading her ad in a gay magazine, where she emphasized that she was feminine and wanted someone equally feminine. She wasn’t kidding—she was the most feminine lesbian I’d met. Ann Marie worked in the meat department of a grocery store and was a year older than me, at twenty-seven.

While she was good-looking—five-foot-four with a slim, firm body and long brown hair—I didn’t care for her personality. She couldn’t accept me for who I was, and I knew the fact that I didn’t drive, among other things, bothered her. I didn’t bother to contact her again after I moved.

On May 23rd, I called the cops on my neighbors because they were getting louder by the minute. The next morning, Barbara threatened to beat my ass.

“Why don’t you come over here and try it?” I challenged.

Sure enough, she stormed out of her apartment and started banging on my door.

Who are you kidding? I thought. You can’t take this woman on in your condition. You can’t even breathe. Wait until you can take in more than half a lungful of air before you set this bitch straight.

But I never got the chance. I collapsed on the living room floor instead. It was terrifying. I genuinely thought I was going to die that day. Struggling to stay conscious as I wheezed and gasped for air, I miraculously managed to pull myself up on all fours and crawl to the phone. Tugging at it by its cord, the phone clattered to the floor, and I somehow dialed 911. If my number and address hadn’t shown up on their system, I might not have been saved in time because I couldn’t even speak.

I barely remember the ambulance ride to the ER or being transferred to Natchaug Hospital in nearby Mansfield.

Natchaug’s co-ed adult psych ward was a stark contrast to the ones I had been in at Brattleboro and Valleyhead.

“Don’t worry,” the psychiatrist told me when I expressed concerns about being drugged up. “This is the nineties. Back in the eighties, drugs were a quick fix for problems. Now, that’s more of a last resort. Besides, you’re not crazy—you just need to move.”

But where would I go? And what kind of life would I have?

The ward I was in was much nicer and less strict than other places I had stayed in. The kitchen had more than just tea and air-popped popcorn; it had fruit, cereal, milk, coffee, and more. We could smoke anytime we wanted, though it had to be outdoors and not after 10:30 PM.

The rooms were like typical hospital rooms, with two people in a room and ordinary hospital beds. Each room had its own toilet and sink, while the showers were in a separate area by the nurses’ station.

I’m proud to say I stood up to my threatening roommate, too. I don’t remember what the argument was about, but when she threatened me, I said I was ready if she wanted to fight. She backed down, calling it silly, so I backed off too. Instead, I managed to run her out of the room, and I mostly had it to myself after that.

There was a guy named Bob in his forties who hadn’t spoken a word in about twenty years, likely due to some trauma. He functioned normally but only made strange “wind” sounds as if he were learning to whistle. Other than that, Bob was silent.

That is until I accidentally changed everything. One day, I was in the courtyard looking for a light for my cigarette, as we weren’t allowed matches or lighters. We had to get our smokes lit by the staff or other patients.

Bob, the only other person in the courtyard at the time, hurried over to light my cigarette with his. I could tell right away he liked me.

“Thanks, Bob.”

A handful of staff and patients joined us in the courtyard. We were all quiet for a few minutes, lost in our own thoughts. Then I softly began singing Desperado. Next thing I knew, a male voice had joined mine. It was Bob! Everyone was shocked. From that day forward, not only did Bob talk—he sang! No one could get him to shut up. I’m sure his family had mixed emotions about me getting him out of his shell like that.

I broached the subject of Arizona with my father again. He had driven the fourteen hundred miles from Florida in just two days after I was admitted to the hospital. I urged him to contact Andy, and he did.

“Act all surprised when your dad tells you about coming out here,” Andy told me. “He asked me to keep it a secret.”

But I was surprised. I needed to hear it from my dad first to believe it. I hoped Andy hadn’t misunderstood, though I doubted my father would call him if he weren’t serious. I tried not to get my hopes up.

Yet, I remembered how confident Dad sounded when I asked if we could find me a place within a few days. I called Tammy to see if she’d say anything about it. She didn’t, but she sounded different—calm. Unusually calm, considering calm was not one of Tammy’s usual traits.

Something was definitely up.

As usual, I had trouble sleeping at night, even with Benadryl. Getting up at 7:30 AM felt like dragging myself out of bed at 3:00 AM.

Although it wasn’t as structured as Valleyhead, there was still plenty of structure at Natchaug, along with too much group therapy and not enough one-on-one attention.

After my dad confirmed that I was going to Arizona, and after I recovered from the shock, I made a surprising announcement during group therapy. We were discussing our plans after discharge, and when it was my turn, I said, “I’m going to Phoenix, Arizona!” The group burst out laughing, thinking I was joking.

On June 1st, I went to stay at Tammy’s house until I left for Arizona on the 9th. Dad and Tammy had already packed up my belongings and shipped them to Andy’s studio, where I would spend my first few days. My furniture was taken to Tammy’s house and sold.

The reality of it all slowly began to sink in as one by one, my lifelines to the East Coast were shut down. I changed my address at the post office, closed my bank account, disconnected my phone, and transferred my benefits and probation. In Connecticut, I had managed to avoid payments and counseling for four months. But now, I was really moving to the Wild West—to the desert. To a place I had only dreamed of and seen in pictures or on TV. It was the final chapter of my life in New England as the last few connections I had there were unplugged.