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.