Growing up sucks sometimes.

When I was in college, I met this one woman in my creative writing class. She, me and about 2 other people were the only ones who were reasonably decent writers, but I could tell that she had similar thoughts about some of our classmates who had a much higher self-opinion than they really had a right to. I'd been behaving myself and trying to remain constructive, but give a virgo a chance to critique something, and we're talking hog heaven. And there were a few times we layed into some of the piss poor writing because it was perfectly awful. It was there that we dubbed one of the awful self-important writers, Ferret Face. I think we both about died when Ferret Face, who literally looked like Frank Burns from M*A*S*H, stepped onto an elevator in Birkenstock and shoulder length dreadlocks.

So one day, I made a point of catching up with her after class and said hello. And after a while, she introduced me to friends at the Coffee House and we got to be buds. Turns out, she was a virgo, too. And my God, she was sooo funny.

Our coffee house got torn down and rebuilt, so we started hanging out at Cafe Roma here in town. Cafe Roma is your basic semi-bohemian coffee shop. And it was there, that I got hooked on Giant Mint Mochas. *sigh of nostalgia*

Sue and I spent hours talking about everything. I think the funniest quarter I ever spent was the quarter I had to take Shakespeare from a professor whose primary research had been cross dressing in Shakespeare plays. And this guy, while married and Catholic, came across as this total cross dresser himself. We both about blew mocha out our nose when I said,"I can totally picture him in pink garters and a pinafore, can't you?"

Of course, his class was the one I loathed the most, so instead of pulling an A, I got a B+ because I simply wasn't willing to write well. I was an asshole like that. If I loathed the teaching, I refused to write well. So instead of a 4.0 quarter, I got a 3.85. Waaah, huh? I could fully justify it...all I had to do was think pink.

One summer I went to work for the Forest Service in Northeast Oregon on a wilderness crew. My relationship with Bill was falling apart and I felt like I could use some time in the middle of no where without the memory of the heartbreak. I was pretty wrecked. I was going to take some time off at the end of the summer and spend fall and winter quarters working at a ski resort and go back in the spring and summer.

The season ended early and the snow came late, so there were about 2-3 months where I was totally unemployed and living out of the back of my pick up truck. I had a small camper and had opened the tail gate for it to be functional. I knew I could go back to school, but the idea of returning where the man I had been so deeply in love with was no longer, tore me up. I couldn't face it.

I had adventures. I ended up at one point working for a week as a bartender in a brothel in Elko, Nevada because the only other job available was working as a woman miner on a mining crew of men. Elko, I should let you know is the armpit of the universe if ever there was one,as well. The brothels there served to separate the miners from their wallets and libidos. The miners worked these 16 hours days for 2 week intervals and came into town, slept, got drunk, chased women and gambled. It was a self-serving economy. Of course, to get a hot shower, I ended up renting a room in a brothel that was being refurbished, which ate up some of my money.

I got enough money out of bartending to gas up the truck and get to Salt Lake City. Part of why I couldn't work longer is that the brothel owner wanted me to work for her as one of her girls because I was so nice to the customers. I didn't fuck them or lay a hand on them, but I was just too damned nice apparently. She begged me to work for her because she told me I could make a lot of money, but I simply wasn't *that* desperate.

I parked the truck on the side of the road by the Great Salt Lake for a couple days. I found a temp job in the city at a cookie factory, where they made all kinds of cookies imaginable. I liked the job because they would pay you daily, if you asked and sometimes, I got to take home cookies, which saved me money buying food.

One night, I got off my swing shift at the factory and got home about midnight. I went off to the day camp and used the port-a-potty and had brushed my teeth and started to get into bed. A white sports car that had been parked down the road about 200 yards away, flipped on his lights and drove up right behind my truck and stayed there, engine running, lights on. It was freaky.

I was shaking and scared. I had a big knife that I carried on my keychain that I used mostly when I had been on the wilderness crew for food preparation, but which made men leave me the fuck alone when I was out. I would sit down somewhere and take the big jack knife (four inch blade AND a canopener) out of my pocket and set it on the table. In a fit of brilliance, I took this knife out and stood on the tailgate of my truck and shook it and hollered,"Get the fuck out of here!" The driver gunned the engine and drove off and got back on the freeway. I stood shaking and looked around cautiously and got back into the truck, locking the door and shaking myself into a restless nightmarish sleep. I thought about how crazy I must have looked, but then I thought about my gut reaction to the actions of that car and decided I'd rather be safe than polite.

The next morning, someone knocked at my door. It was a park ranger, affiliated with the day camp I was parked outside of. I was afraid he was coming to let me know someone had complained of being threatened, but he asked me if I'd been staying there. I told him I had to wait a week or two to meet my boyfriend who was coming from parts unknown to the SLC airport. He said,"Legally, you can stay here, but I wouldn't recommend it. Two dead bodies have washed up on the beach within a short distance of here." I gulped,"Dead bodies?" (Further confirmation that my reaction to the white car might not have been too far off.) He gave me directions to a KOA and told me to ask them to cut me a deal and gave me his card to show them. The KOA cut me a deal, so at least I had a hot shower and a safe space.

The next night, after I'd come off my shift at the factory, I got pulled over by a policewoman who said my truck full of crud coming out of the commercial district was suspicious at midnight. I explained to her that I was living in my truck and staying at the KOA and showed her a receipt for the KOA and a timesheet for the cookie factory and she let me go, but again I shook all the way home.

I finally got hooked up with the boyfriend, ended up working for a couple weeks at a ski resort, tearing up my knee and spending some time on disability and then returning to Davis.

When I got back to Davis, Sue gave me a place to stay because I didn't have one. We were both broke, smoking cigarettes and playing card games. When I got back, she was recovering from what Pinhead had done to her. I was simply recovering from life and my relationship, still. She'd spent the previous summer telling men her name was Betty, so she knew whether she'd met them while drunk or not. Her nick name became Betty Von Abromowitz, aka Harsh Betty.

I just wanted to go back to school and found odd jobs doing yard work and landscaping. She wanted money, too, so I had her help me on this one yard job. The guy wanted some boards cut and asked if we had a saw. I did. After he left, Sue looked at me and said one of her most famous lines ever,"I have a master's degree and I don't do power tools." I laughed like hell. It's also the yard in which we decided that I needed a nickname, so I got named Red Neck Ruby, in the aftermath of weeks of telling her about my adventures over coffee, cigarettes and gin rummy.