Out Of The Slammer And Into The Fire- Part 7

If this were a story about my life and my depression and what transpired during this period, I would tell you about a woman I’ll call Lee who now worked for the mysterious and tall blonde I call June whose side of the road bed-making business was growing in surprising leaps.

Lee was almost forty and I was 33ish, and she took one look at my face, approved of its structure, and asked me if I’d mind sitting still for an hour while she made a plaster cast of it. I told her I was doing 12 hour days, and I would if she could wait, and she said it couldn’t because they were for a pending art show, and I agreed to let her come round to my place late one evening to mix up some plaster of Paris and wet some gauze.

It turns out, Lee had survived a similar bout with depression and recognized it in me right away. So while I was too busy holding on to reality with my left hand and working for Lulu twelve hours a day with my right, trying to keep Mitch from hurting himself while he tried to keep Lulu from having rage attacks while we destroyed parts of her house, Lee decided that she could help me take the lead pellet suit off because she had “been there“, and she began bringing really healthy macrobiotic food over for me to eat when I got home. She’d make me lay down and she’d do these “treatments” on me. Some involved massage. Some involved stones. Some involved some pretty dubious crazy sex where I just sunk into the earth while Lee took full advantage of my worn out condition.

The next thing you know, I was involved with an older woman that I had not really meant to get involved with- at least not in the “always at my house when I got home” way. She had promised me that she could alleviate the horrible weight I walked around with, and I had been suckered right on in. By the time Vee and Lulu’s first remodel episode was done, Lee was telling me things about her Mormon father I really didn’t need to hear. Sad things about being beat with a belt in order to be made to pray. Awful things about a small man whose piety basically tortured a family.

Crap!

Now my days off after a six week nightmarish construction stint were filled with the psychological purging of a blonde ex-Mormon artist woman with a lovely figure and a face that had sadness written all over it in deep lines that would never really fade. In my drowning state, I had been thrown a woman who had trouble swimming, but the sex wasn’t half bad and her healthy food seemed to be helping with the way the chemicals fought inside my body.

In the mail, a week later, came an announcement. Mitch was getting married to Marissa, and there was to be a grand wedding and party at Marissa’s three acre property, at the foot of Lulu and Vee’s long and windy driveway, and there were going to be clowns and pony rides for the kids, just like the days of old Mitch, only now things were different.

It seems that everybody that knew June the bed maker, knew Mitch. This whole incredible network of people that I had gotten to know, were all invited to Mitch and Marissa’s wedding. Marissa was not quite so well connected, but her office friends and her family and distant family all rallied for the wedding. Some dubious characters from Mitch’s past were also in attendance. All in all, there were well over three hundred people there. Mitch had been saving his pennies while working with me and had apparently sold a few things of value he still owned from his previous incarnation. He confided to me that the bill was all taken care of, mostly by himself but with a little help from his wealthy brothers back east, who had flown out to see the miracle of Mitch getting hitched.

So many people who knew Mitch and were rooting for him and his new life all came and gathered to celebrate the marriage of one of their wildest. Friends of Mitch’s who were all great musicians created a band to perform for the occasion, after the ceremony.

I stood out in the crowd, watching Mitch say “I do”, and marveled at life and how things could start out one way, and turn another.

One day, Mitch was let out of prison and arrived beneath me, talking up to me from the floor of a garage while I worked on his loft, his eyes averted and a cap pulled down to hide himself, his demeanor defeated and afraid. Another day, half a year or more later, Mitch stood in a tuxedo before me, a proud and happy man, his bride on his arm and three hundred people gathered, every single one of them rooting for Mitch and his new life.

After the minister had finished with the ceremony, the band kicked in and rocked the valley, the food spilled out all over everyone’s happy faces, the kids spread out and enjoyed the appearances of both a clown and a couple of ponies…

(to be continued)